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Sundress Releases Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess

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Sundress Releases Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess

wind on the moon coverSundress Publications announces the 2019 release of Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess, our 2018 Chapbook Competition winner. The stories in Wind on the Moon fit together seamlessly, creating a world that’s as real to us readers as it is enchanted with love and grief.

Katie Burgess uses playful form and familiar tales to distill the most complex family dynamics: a daughter reckons with her mother meeting her lover in the language of a math textbook. Adam and Eve become a husband and wife who “always did encourage each other’s bad behavior.” In the final story, the act of writing conflates with the creation of the universe, our narrator critiquing the work of a god: “I liked how in your first draft everything revolved around the Earth. That makes a lot more sense if the people there are going to be important.” And Burgess shows us the importance of all people, encouraging empathy and the desire to get to know every character, every person, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first. Burgess writes with an honesty so clear it aches. Wind on the Moon is one of those chapbooks you can’t wait to share with everyone you love.

Of the work, George Singleton, author of Staff Picks said, “I’ve never read in the literary biographies how Lydia Davis and Donald Barthelme hooked up, but the result is clear: Katie Burgess. Wind on the Moon is an amazing collection of short, jaundice-eyed, hilarious, sly, insightful, intelligent stories that the world needs now. One problem: This collection needs to be about ten times as long. These characters are human, human, human. They navigate in times that are increasingly disconcerting. They triumph and/or fail. I don’t know when I last read a collection of stories that made me think, ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Exactly.’”

And Diane Roberts, author of Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America said, “From the guys who faked the moon landing to what really went down in the Garden of Eden back in the day, Katie Burgess’s sly and sharp stories take you on a trip through the secret soul of America. Her prose shines like polished steel and cuts like an obsidian blade. She’s as funny as David Sedaris and twice as bold, giving God editorial advice and taking down the college industrial complex. Burgess is a writer on her way up. Read her now and be cooler than your friends!”Katie Burgess Author Photo

Katie Burgess holds a PhD in creative writing from Florida State and is editor-in-chief of Emrys Journal. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, New Orleans Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reductress, among others. Her essay, “Rahab’s Thread,” was listed as “notable” in Best American Essays 2014 and was anthologized in Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly (In Fact Books).

Download Wind on the Moon for free today!

 

Sundress Releases Manticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities

Sundress Releases Manticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities
edited by Nicole Oquendo

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Sundress Publications announces the release of Manticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities, an anthology edited by Nicole Oquendo. The anthology features the work of Jennifer E. Hudgens, Nic Campeotto, Nina Sudhakar, and Emily Corwin, along with over two-dozen writers and artists tasked with uniquely articulating what it means to occupy a hybrid identity.

In these poems, narratives, photographs, and striking hybrids of genre, Manticore compellingly reveals the ways in which the seemingly unified self is composed of infinite ways of being in the world. The anthology is not only populated with beautiful, multimodal works of art, but also includes statements by each contributor about how they conceptualize and are inspired by the notion of hybridity. Though not all of Manticore’s pieces are explicitly presented as autobiographical works of nonfiction, they each offer the honesty and vulnerability of the intensely personal. The result is an intimate, powerful, and visually striking collection that is as unique as its talented group of contributors.

“Hybridity, for me, has always equated to possibility, and the creative work I enjoy most inhabits multiple genres at once. Within the last few years, growing and changing along with the labels that make up my identity—nonbinary, disabled, queer, Latinx, brujx, and so much more—I have discovered there is a glorious intersection of identity and form when it comes to the creation of work outside the boundaries of what is traditionally accepted. In gathering the work for this anthology, I wanted to focus on hybrid identities and the hybrid work these identities inspire, and I believe this collection—in the form of various media, highlighting both the truth and what is imagined—is a fantastic representation of what we can do when we embrace possibility with ferocity.” -Nicole Oquendo, Editor

“Manticore is as surprising as it is lovely; exquisite, gut-wrenching hybridities that capture what it is to be outside. This collection of stories, poems, and images will captivate readers—its venom heady and delightful as it is deadly. A monstrous kind of magic is afoot here.” – M.R. Sheffield, author of Marvels

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Nicole Oquendo is a writer and visual artist that combines these elements to craftmultimodal nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, as well as translations of these forms. Their work can be found in literary journals like BOAAT, CutBank, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Stream, among others. They are the author of the hybrid memoir Telomeres, as well as five chapbooks, including their most recent, Space Baby: Episodes I-III.

The anthology is available for free download HERE.

Sundress Publications Announces New Series: Craft Chaps

Sundress Publications Announces New Series
of Free Craft Chapbooks

Sundress Publications is pleased to present our new series called Craft Chaps.

Craft Chaps offers substantive essays by contemporary writers on creative writing practice. Each chap focuses on one aspect of craft and also contains a writing exercise and bibliography for further reading. They are freely downloadable at Sundress Publications and can be printed and stapled as 5×8 booklets.

As creative writing teachers, we’ve been frustrated by the lack of affordable texts available for our students. Introductory textbooks from major publishers often include anthologies of creative work which significantly increase cost, while book length works of aesthetic theory privilege one aesthetic perspective.

Craft Chaps aim to democratize creative writing education through making this material accessible for use both inside and outside the academy. We also recognize that “craft” is not a neutral term, and seek to contextualize it within a range of aesthetic and cultural contexts. Through offering chaps from different perspectives and literary communities, we encourage students to resist “universal”, often cis, white, male notions of “good” literature.

The first three writers featured in the new series will be Chen Chen, Ángel García, and Bayo Ojikutu. You can download them for free now! 

 

 

 

 

Doubleback Books Releases These Terrible Sacraments by Colleen S. Harris

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Doubleback Books Releases These Terrible Sacraments by Colleen S. Harris

sacramentsDoubleback Books is pleased to announce the release of These Terrible Sacraments by Colleen S. Harris. This poetry collection was selected in our 2018 open reading period for Spring 2019 publication. These Terrible Sacraments was originally published by Bellowing Ark Press out of Seattle, and we are excited to bring it back for new readers.

These Terrible Sacraments tells a story of military deployment and its aftermath, on the soldier, the family left at home, and the family created on return. Told with frankness and told beautifully, these poems speak truth in its many facets. It is true that war is horrible. Even so, it is true that beauty remains in the world. And it is true that we must bear witness to what humanity endures and creates. Harris guides us through the journey.

Colleen S. Harris serves as a librarian on the faculty at California State University Channel Islands, where she also teaches in the Freedom and Justice Studies minor. She is the author of God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), as well as the chapbooks That Reckless Sound and Some Assembly Required out of Porkbelly Press (2014). She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and short fiction, and the co-editor of Women and Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching and co-editor of Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Poets. Her work has also appeared in Main Street Rag, Wisconsin Review, The Louisville Review, Sow’s ear Poetry Review, and is forthcoming from Mezzo Cammin.

These Terrible Sacraments can be downloaded for free today on the Doubleback Books website: http://www.sundresspublications.com/doubleback/titles.htm

Look for Doubleback Books next open reading period this summer; submissions begin in April.

Bernard Grant Releases Fiction Chapbook

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of Bernard Grant’s new fiction chapbook, Fly Back at Me.

Here’s what people are saying about Fly Back at Me:
“Bernard Grant’s Fly Back at Me is filled with riches. One short-short after another shocks, hurts, entertains, and enlightens. His sentences are spot-on. If we thought we knew how households work, we discover how much we need to learn. Each page tells us a new truth and the linked whole leads us to an ending that makes us reel, makes us rethink everything, wises us up. Here is a brand-new and powerful young author whose voice insists on silence and revelation. Get in on the ground floor!”

—Kelly Cherry, author of Twelve Women in a Country Called America: Stories

“Bernard Grant’s tight and masterful collection Fly Back at Me is a story shown and never told, a mysterious and also detailed account of one childhood. We learn about a life through scene, detail, and image. Grant reveals his characters through shimmering slices of writing, fragments of a past that we can only grab onto fleetingly before going back to read and reread. Joy and tragedy and a deep mother-son love rattle here in their cages. Poignant and immediate.”

—Jessica Barksdale Inclán, author of The Burning Hour

“Bernard Grant writes with acute clarity; his language and his imagery alike are sharp and clear, and this collection seems nearly etched on the page. These fragments of childhood that Grant has gathered are—like childhood, like memory itself—both lovely and brutal, gentle and harsh. In prose utterly stripped of excess, Grant brings to life an era, a younger self, and a world that the reader will not soon forget.”

—Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted and Madness

Bernard Grant is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati, where he is a Yates Fellow. He’s also received residency and fellowship support from The Anders Center, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Mineral School. He holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University and his stories and essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, New Delta Review, and The Chicago Tribune Printers Row, among others.

The chapbook is available for FREE at www.sundresspublications.com/echaps.htm

 

The One Where I Ruin Your Childhood by Daniel Crocker Released by Sundress Publications

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Knoxville, TN—Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of Daniel Crocker’s newest chapbook, The One Where I Ruin Your Childhood.

“The poems in The One Where I Ruin Your Childhood are urgent and raw. Crocker uses popular culture to gut punch coming of age insecurities and all the ferocious sexual energy that comes with growing up. Whether in the form of a lust poem from Skeletor to He-Man, an existential lament for Snuffleupagas, or a poignant rumination on siblings, Crocker’s poems are at turns funny and haunting, and always bristling with the electric murmur of their characters making a place in the world for themselves.”

-James Brubaker, author of Liner Notes and Pilot Season

“I’ve never read a book so heartbreaking, so funny, so tender, so powerful, and so real. At a certain point in this book, one loses one’s bearings completely, and enters the darkness and confusion that Crocker has been hinting at. Then, Crocker takes that sensibility a step further. These poems needed to be written.”

-Steve Henn, author of And God Said: Let there be Evolution by NYQ Books

Daniel Crocker is the author the short fiction collection Do Not Look Directly Into Me and three collections of poetry, the most recent being Like a Fish from Sundress Publications. His work has recently appeared in Hobart, The Good Men Project, The Chiron Review, The Mas Tequila Review, and others. He teaches at Southeast Missouri State University.

Read the chapbook for free here: http://sundresspublications.com/
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