Tag: meg tuite

2016 AWP Roundtable 2: How to Publish Your Book Without an Agent

sundress

Welcome to our first Sundress Roundtable, a celebration of exceptional, not-so-lost AWP panels which did not make the AWP final cut for 2016.

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How do you place your manuscript with a good publisher if you don’t have a literary agent? Writers who have successfully done so will explain the process. This discussion will identify presses that consider unsolicited manuscripts and will explain how to use online listings to find reading periods and contests. The focus will be on submitting work without paying a fee. Panelists are fiction writers and poets who have successfully placed one or more books with a reputable independent publisher.

Publishing a book is every writer’s goal. But many manuscripts of literary merit go unread or unpublished because their authors can’t connect with the right editor or publisher. This panel will provide useful information on getting your manuscript read and accepted. We will discuss our own experiences—both the hits and the misses. We will encourage writers at all stages in their careers to act as their own agent to find the best home for their books.


Briefly describe the books you placed yourself at presses. Are they books of fiction, poetry? How did you find the presses and approach them? Was it difficult to find a press?

Joanna Sit: They are two books of poetry. The first one, My Last Century, is a collection of poems. The second book, In Thailand With the Apostles, is a book-length poem separated into parts, which can be read as “freestanding” poems as well. I sent the first book to book contests, small presses as well as bigger ones. I’d say I sent queries to more than 100 places, and the actual manuscript to about 40. This process took approximately three years, until I mentioned it to Nava Renek, who I’ve known from Brooklyn College and who had recently partnered in the operation at Spuyten Duyvil Press. She said she would take a look at it, which she did, and told me she liked it. Not long after, she showed the manuscript to Tod Thilleman, the publisher, who then agreed to work with it.

About a year later, at one of Spuyten Duyvil’s book parties, Tod and I were talking about long poems, and he told me how much he liked them. The poem, “In Thailand With the Apostles,” had been written years before, but no one was interested in publishing a long poem. So when he jokingly asked if I happened to have one in the back of my drawer somewhere, I answered, “Why, yes I do.”  I sent him the manuscript, and the book was published a year later.

Meg Tuite: The first collection I published was Domestic Apparition, and I had published over two-thirds of the stories over a few years. I sent the collection out to five different publishers and waited. I got an acceptance from two of them, but chose San Francisco Bay Press, because I liked the availability and enthusiasm from this press. I had published many of the stories without thinking of any cohesion until the editor said, “Why don’t you rework this with the same family throughout and call it a ‘novel-in-stories.’ ” I realized that it had a seam that moved through it, and it was a nice and easy transition working the collection into a novel.

I published a few chapbooks with indy presses that were also beautiful and put together with deep commitment to the craft: Monkey Puzzle Press, Deadly Chaps and Red Bird Chaps. I have had positive relationships with my publishers and have always loved the final product they have produced.

My second full collection, Bound by Blue, was published with Sententia Books. This was the first time a press was able to send out to ‘small print distribution’ and send out copies for review. And I was very much involved in every part of it. Paula Bomer, who is the publisher, loved the cover artist I chose and worked with me on every aspect of this and was an exceptional editor. She pushed me to work flash stories into short stories which was an amazing experience, considering I teach flash fiction and am always working my students to condense and hone their work. Although, I was originally writing short stories that were at least 20 pages, so she brought me back to my source, which I am grateful for.

Thaddeus Rutkowski: Each of my books has its own story. I sent the manuscript for my first book, Roughhouse, to Kaya Press, which publishes work by Asian-rooted authors writing in English. I sent it cold, though I was familiar with the press. The manuscript went onto the slush shelf, but by chance someone I’d been in a workshop with was a volunteer at Kaya. He saw my name on the envelope and passed it along to the editors, who accepted it and made a big deal about publishing their first and only unsolicited manuscript.

I sent the manuscript for my second book, Tetched, to several contests. I’d won a chapbook contest in the early ‘90s—and this new full-length book became a finalist in the Starcherone Books competition. As it turned out, I didn’t win, but Starcherone was interested in publishing the book anyway. Before that could happen, one of my adult students accepted the book for a small press, Behler Publications, where she was an editor. Tetched came out in 2005.

I kept in touch with Starcherone, which means “Start Your Own.” I even drove from New York to Buffalo to read for the publisher, Ted Pelton, who was in the English department at Medaille College. A few years later, I had put together another manuscript and offered it for the Starcherone contest. The publisher said he’d read it outside the contest and he also sent it to another reader, Lily Hoang. They both liked the book, and it came out with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts—we didn’t have to do a Kickstarter campaign.

bio photo w_ tattoo

Meg Tuite


What was the publication/marketing process like? Were you happy with the finished book, as a product? Did you promote the book (get reviews, readings) yourself? Were the publishers helpful?

JS: The process was relatively simple and low-key. I prepared my manuscript complete with table of contents, acknowledgements, and pagination. The manuscript was sent first, and later, I sent the cover art and blurbs once I had them. Since there was no editing on the publisher’s part, I had to edit and proof all the contents. Even so, there were errors in both books. Overall, though, I was happy with the finished product. I would have to say that Spuyten Duyvil, as a small press, was not very involved in promoting the book in terms of getting it reviewed. I acted as my own publisher in that way, sending out copies to book reviewers. Because of my limited experience in this area, I missed the timing of sending out the book before it came out (such as Publishers’ Weekly). The publisher did make arrangements for a book-launch party for both books, and one other reading at St. Mark’s Bookstore in Manhattan for my first book.

MT: I had a friend who wanted to write a book titled So You Published a Book. Who the Fuck Cares?

I got that from the first book. The writing of a manuscript is one thing. Getting it out there is a whole ‘nother experience. I had a damn great time with my books. My book launches were parties at a kickass pizza place in Santa Fe, Back Road Pizza, that packed the house and sold many books. But, yes, I had to do my own marketing and if you are going indy, then get ready to work it in stages. It won’t come to you. You must go and find it!

Reviews are always an excellent way to get new readers. Also, GoodReads. Look it up. You can put your book up for a FREE GoodReads giveaway and decide how many books you want to gift. This is another way to get some readers and possible reviews from unknown folk from other continents.

TR: I’ve relied on publishers during the production process. They know about art, type, printing and Web presence, while I know about the text. After the book is produced, the review/promotion process begins. The publisher has often helped me with this–my first and third books were reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and American Book Review. Personal contacts also helped. Now, I’m working with a publicist (my wife, Randi Hoffman) to get my latest book out to reviewers.

I enjoy traveling and setting up readings, and I’ve been lucky to read in several countries and many U.S. cities. I think that having a background as a slam poet also helps. I’m no slam champion, but I can do a little performance. That little show helps to promote the work on the page.

In one case, I was planning to go to Santa Fe with my family because my wife used to live there. I contacted many local writers, and I was led to Meg Tuite, who told me to call a bookstore, where I was able to set up a reading. I asked a poet in Taos (who I knew from New York) to read with me. She brought a number of people, and it was a great event.

I’ve learned that a writer should use social media. You should have a website, as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts. I don’t have Instagram, because I don’t have a smartphone yet.

Thaddeus Rutkowski

Thaddeus Rutkowski


Would you advise other writers to take the same path to publication? If so, how would they get started?

JS: The way I finally got published was a singular one. I’m not sure the path can always be of one’s own choosing. However, reflecting on the process, I would say that talking to other writers and trying to get the word out about the work were very important factors in finally getting my book read. My sense was that the first book was the most difficult to get published, and after that, it might get easier. Maybe not. My advice, overall, is “always be prepared.” By that, I mean, keep writing no matter what. While you’re waiting for someone to publish your book, send poems out to literary journals and magazines, put your name out there. By the time someone expresses interest, you’ll be all ready.

Joanna Sit
Joanna Sit

MT: I started by checking the list of indy presses. Believe me when I say it’s a whole ‘nother job. Get ready to spend time reading books by presses and deciding which ones are sympatico to your collection, novel, or memoir. A great way to move through this is to find those books that you LOVE and write down the name of the publisher and agent. That makes the most sense to me and you also read more books, which is always a plus. FIND THEM! They are not out looking for you. Just go to one AWP conference and find yourself surrounded by over 12,000 writers and realize how much we have in common with ants.

I am a LOVER of INDIE PRESSES! They rock it and work with the writer. They trust in the abyss!

TR: I agree with Joanna and Meg. All writing activities are related. Take classes/workshops, go to public readings, read your work aloud (this makes you write something in the first place), go to conferences (if you can afford it). And, of course, do your research. There are websites that list hundreds of literary agents and break them down by the genre they handle. Likewise, there are websites, such as ones from Poets & Writers and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), that list small presses, their reading periods, whether they charge a reading fee, etc.

Amid all the non-happenings, something good is bound to happen. You have to be ready for it. You can’t just talk a good game. You have to back it up with good work. Yes, this is a big job. It’s a second life.

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Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the books Violent Outbursts, Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. Haywire won the Members’ Choice Award, given by the Asian American Writers Workshop. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York. He received a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives with his wife and daughter in Manhattan.

Joanne Sit is the author of two books of poetry: My Last Century  (2012, Spuyten Duyvil) and In Thailand with the Apostles (2014, Spuyten Duyvil). Her poems and translations have appeared in Five Willows Review, Ezra, Natural Bridge, Seneca Review and other literary publications. Her “Mickey Rourke Rondelets,”  appears in the anthology Wreckage of Reason II as “July 7” (2014, Spuyten Duyvil). She is working on a new book of poems, Track Works, and a ethnographic narrative, The Reincarnation of Red, about Chinese immigrants and Cantonese Opera.

Meg Tuite is the author of Bound by Blue, Domestic Apparition, Disparate Pathos and Reverberations. She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Revew and Connotation Press. She lives in Santa Fe with her husband and many pets, and she teaches at Santa Fe Community College.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Meg Tuite’s “The Healer”

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FROM “THE HEALER”

I’d been shaking since I was a kid. It felt like thousands of butterflies battling inside my internal organs. I would stop breathing and pretend that I was invisible. My siblings had other ways of coping with a raging father and a mother as afraid of him as we were, but mine was like a strange purple birthmark that a girl I once knew had plastered over half of her face. People would stare at her, furrow their eyebrows and then turn quickly away, but I knew that girl had noticed every one of them study her in horror before they moved on. She didn’t notice me smiling at her all the time like some kind of loon, but I was sure we were kindred souls. My birthmark was rupturing from the inside so that I was compelled to stay in motion or the tics and shaking would come to the surface. I ran track races and played basketball, baseball and raced on a swim team, but I never could outrun it.

(pg. 162-163)

 

When I arrived at the dirt path that led to the waterfall with a wooden sign welcoming everyone and listing the rules—silence and single file only, in three languages—I got in line behind a group of elderly women. They had a few kids with them, but no one that I knew, which made me calmer. It would be my solitary goodbye to Brazil. Some of the women wore their skirts and shirts into the waterfall. The kids were already stripped of clothes and in their bathing suits. I had gotten down to the rocks and was waiting for my turn. What a bizarre ordeal this had been. I felt worse than I had ever felt in my life. I was looking forward to getting home to my house. I came closest to what they called peace when I was alone. I hoped I could make it through the hell of the airport security and long flights without breaking down. I could see the birthmark getting brighter and brighter everyday.

I heard voices and looked around. I remembered that this was supposed to be a quiet sanctuary. One kid was pointing at me and a few of them were yelling out in Portuguese. All the old women were looking in my direction, putting their hands up, and a few dropped to their knees. There was a golden light beaming through the trees. I noticed blurs of blue around me. I stood on two rocks while a swarm of the most exotic, magnificent blue-purple butterflies whirled and beat their wings around me. They landed on my head, my arms, and fluttered everywhere. I smiled through tears trying to keep the butterflies inside me as still as possible.

I closed my eyes. He had seen me. I was inside a miracle. When I recovered I would make sure that Melanie wrote this one up in the books.

(pg. 170-171)

 

“The Healer” appeared in Meg Tuite’s book, Bound By Blue, available from Sententia Books.Purchase yours today!

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, and three chapbooks. The latest: Her Skin is a Costume (2013) Red Bird Chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale and is currently working on a mixed genre collection to be published in late 2014.  She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

Beth Couture is an assistant editor with Sundress Publication and the secretary of the board of directors of SAFTA. She is also the fiction editor of Sundress’ newest imprint, Doubleback Books. Her own work can be found in Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Yalobusha Review, the Thirty Under Thirtyanthology from Starcherone Books, Dirty, Dirty from Jaded Ibis Press, and other publications. Her first book, a novella titled Women Born with Fur, is due out in the fall from Jaded Ibis Press. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Meg Tuite’s “What Was That I Was Searching For”

 

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FROM “WHAT WAS THAT I WAS SEARCHING FOR?”

7.

Christopher was yelling at me in the street. “Come on, let’s celebrate.” He had a group of males with him and I had just left a known man of gluttonous descent. I thought to myself, nothing but moments, and went out to a bar with this hammered group. I said yes and our lips straddled each other in the frozen air.

His apartment was full of books. They were dormant. They lived only by their covers. No one had cracked them. I was dubious when he announced that Moby Dick was a long-winded staunch novel of men during the war. His best friend, whom he wanted me to meet, thought women were whiny and long- winded, as well.

He cried one night. “I never read these goddamn books. I just buy them to unnerve women.” I was fucking unnerved.

 

12.

I met the psychiatrist at a small bar downtown. I was doing my usual drunken rendition of some lounge singer with the micro- phone and he came to watch my act. He was older, shrunken and teaching at the University of Chicago. Yes, I was impressed and thought, what the hell. He lived in the rich part of the area. He’d just divorced and wanted to take me on.

He invited me to the ballet. He got a box for us and brought champagne. This was a whole new world for me. During intermission he ran into a couple he knew. They looked at me, wondering if I was one of his sleazy students. He said, “Have you met Martinique?” My eyebrows rose. My name was Elizabeth. “She was a prima ballerina for the Aspen Ballet, but she had a terrible accident one night and could never dance again.” My mouth dropped open. “Tell them about it, Martinique,” he prodded and the couple was intrigued now, nodded their heads. He was challenging me.

“It was horrible,” I said closing my eyes and looking pained. “I don’t speak of it much, but it was during a performance of Giselle. I played Giselle, of course,” my voice got shaky and I shook my head. “Bastion Hedrick, you know him don’t you?” I eyed the couple as they both nodded. “Well, he had me up in the air and we were doing the final lift and as I was coming down, I realized he was off” my voice quivered. “He was two steps off and I buckled under my toe shoes and ripped my Achille’s tendon.” The couple put their hands to their mouths. “No,” they said. I nodded my head again and then the lights were flashing and intermission was over. The woman rammed me against her chest and said, “I’m so sorry. You poor, poor dear.” She had tears in her eyes.

And that was how the psychiatrist got off. He would get down on his knees in crowded restaurants and propose. He’d start raging arguments with me in public. I never knew when I was on stage. It was exhilarating and heightened our lust.

And just like the curtain goes down, one day it was over. He said he’d meet me somewhere and never showed. It happened a few times before I stopped calling. He was still acting and I had become the unsuspecting spectator.

 

 

“Bound By Blue” appeared in Meg Tuite’s book, Bound By Blue, available from Sententia Books.Purchase yours today!

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, and three chapbooks. The latest: Her Skin is a Costume (2013) Red Bird Chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale and is currently working on a mixed genre collection to be published in late 2014.  She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

Beth Couture is an assistant editor with Sundress Publication and the secretary of the board of directors of SAFTA. She is also the fiction editor of Sundress’ newest imprint, Doubleback Books. Her own work can be found in Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Yalobusha Review, the Thirty Under Thirtyanthology from Starcherone Books, Dirty, Dirty from Jaded Ibis Press, and other publications. Her first book, a novella titled Women Born with Fur, is due out in the fall from Jaded Ibis Press. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Meg Tuite’s “Bound By Blue”

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An Excerpt From “Bound By Blue”

He stood in front of the mirror in a place where no one could find him. His mother had finally died in some old people’s home his sister had stuck her in. His sister liked to stash people away. She’d had Edward taken to the hospital twice for what the police called, “Potentially harmful to self or others.” His sister lived in another city but kept one eye on Edward at all times. She called him every weekend. He had been diagnosed and the mask of relief had imprinted itself on the faces of everyone he knew. There was a name for what he was. They all nodded their heads and spoke over him in quiet tones. He wasn’t violent. Never had been. But Schizoaffective was filed away to rectify any action he took that challenged the normal day-to-day repression that commemorated the lives of everyone around him.

And now Edward stood there naked, with a spoon. There was no gun or pills or rope to hang himself with. Just a spoon that conjured up the daily regularity of soup, cereal, ice cream or Pepto-Bismol. It was a utensil that graced the tables of conventionality. It was sublime in its household, prosaic banality. No one looked twice at a spoon.

 

“Bound By Blue” appeared in Meg Tuite’s book, Bound By Blue, available from Sententia Books.Purchase yours today!

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, and three chapbooks. The latest: Her Skin is a Costume (2013) Red Bird Chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale and is currently working on a mixed genre collection to be published in late 2014.  She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

Beth Couture is an assistant editor with Sundress Publication and the secretary of the board of directors of SAFTA. She is also the fiction editor of Sundress’ newest imprint, Doubleback Books. Her own work can be found in Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Yalobusha Review, the Thirty Under Thirtyanthology from Starcherone Books, Dirty, Dirty from Jaded Ibis Press, and other publications. Her first book, a novella titled Women Born with Fur, is due out in the fall from Jaded Ibis Press. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Meg Tuite’s “Family Extravaganza”

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An Excerpt From “Family Extravaganza”

“You’re every woman’s fantasy of a volcano. Look at you, baby.” Mom would snuggle up to me and try to drag me up on her lap like I was a Chihuahua in a St. Bernard’s body. “You’ve got the makings of a science project.” She’d rub my corpulent belly that was giving my knockers a run for the money. “Every day you could blow your fuse or blow a tire, you never know, but I say, keep on singing, baby, keep on singing and it’ll never catch up to you.”

I really wanted to slip some of my Zyprexa in her mimosa to see if she could see what I saw in her, but I never did. She was so full of some kind of life that neither of us had ever experienced. She was hopped up on a drug she’d never known. Mom’s psyche had become mutilated when she was a child. Some rank neighbor’s father had molested her for years, annihilated her kid-dom. She told me once that she didn’t speak for a year after that. “My mom never prepared me for bankruptcy,” she said. “What was there to say?” she’d ask and wander into an abyss that felt like trying to dig that hole to China. I knew what it felt like to dig for something that I’d never find.

“Rein them in baby, rein them in,” she’d say. I told her the bras she bought me were a structural engineer’s fantasy, capable of shooting boulders at any enemy who crossed us. She’d laugh and pull up my shirt, saying, “By god, you’ve got a goddamn gorgeous mountain range erupting on your chest.”

Mom was a true fan no matter what I did. And I barely did much. I attempted to date sometimes. Manager Pete, or some guy who ordered a 9-piece original, or another one who went for a 24-piece bucket without looking beyond my breasts—didn’t matter if they were single or had an entire family at home— would wait for me outside when we closed up. I let a few of them suck on me in their cars in the parking lot after hours and I could understand what the marrow felt like in those bones after they’d ripped away all the meat. What is it about the weight of a breast that makes a man lose his faculties and become a slurping, corpulent baby? I guess those weren’t really dates.

So, the psychiatrist took me off the Zyprexa before I launched into the girth of the state of Texas. He told me I would lose the weight on this new drug and that I was the psychic equivalent of a teeter-totter. I never met anyone that didn’t peer over the precipice of something.

 

“Family Extravaganza” appeared in Meg Tuite’s book, Bound By Blue, available from Sententia Books.Purchase yours today!

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, and three chapbooks. The latest: Her Skin is a Costume (2013) Red Bird Chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale and is currently working on a mixed genre collection to be published in late 2014.  She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

Beth Couture is an assistant editor with Sundress Publication and the secretary of the board of directors of SAFTA. She is also the fiction editor of Sundress’ newest imprint, Doubleback Books. Her own work can be found in Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Yalobusha Review, the Thirty Under Thirtyanthology from Starcherone Books, Dirty, Dirty from Jaded Ibis Press, and other publications. Her first book, a novella titled Women Born with Fur, is due out in the fall from Jaded Ibis Press. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: An Excerpt from Meg Tuite’s “Breaking the Code”

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An Excerpt from “Breaking the Code”

There is something about an unbroken line that makes me want to rip it apart. All horizontal and level and yet one hit of acid and I detect only ripples, bending, rigorous expansion that doesn’t speak the language of the linear.

My mother had cancer. It was floating submarines that attached themselves to her ovaries. I am sixteen with the same oval glass face that stares my mother back at me.

The gray eyes, tightened lips and blonde long hair that rats up in knots on an elongated body that mom didn’t have. She used to work away at the knots that felt like gum stuck to my scalp while I screamed until she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d finally cut them out. I grew up with empty weed patches around my head that she tried to cover over with the remaining bush. Her hands were magicians.

I’d sulk around the house and tell her I was bored. “Baby, break the code,” she’d say. And a book would appear laid out on her long fingers. One I’d never seen before that had me swimming in a vast ocean of some strange girl I wanted to know and be while my mom sipped tea across the room absorbed in her other universe as far away from me as the sky.

My mom told truths. Her lips formed words like philosophers. She spoke in large circles that moved inward like a labyrinth and I would follow the spiral as far as I could until I got lost. “Baby, listen to the voices that walk inside of you. They will always lead you to those places you don’t want to go. We always have something to say about someone else. Sew that pattern up in someone else’s housedress and move toward the sharks.”

 

“Break the Code” appeared in Meg Tuite’s book, Bound By Blue, available from Sententia Books. Purchase yours today!

Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, and three chapbooks. The latest: Her Skin is a Costume (2013) Red Bird Chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale and is currently working on a mixed genre collection to be published in late 2014.  She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and is the fiction editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College and lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets.

Beth Couture is an assistant editor with Sundress Publication and the secretary of the board of directors of SAFTA. She is also the fiction editor of Sundress’ newest imprint, Doubleback Books. Her own work can be found in Gargoyle, Drunken Boat, Yalobusha Review, the Thirty Under Thirty anthology from Starcherone Books, Dirty, Dirty from Jaded Ibis Press, and other publications. Her first book, a novella titled Women Born with Fur, is due out in the fall from Jaded Ibis Press. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA.