Tag: publications

Robert Long Foreman Chosen for Publication from Sundress Publications

An image of the author Robert Long ForemanSundress Publications is pleased to announce the manuscript chosen from our inaugural fiction competition is Robert Long Foreman for his exquisite collection of short stories, I Am Here to Make Friends.

Of the collection judge Saba Razvi, author of In the Crocodile Gardens (Agape Editions) and four other collections, had this to say, “Robert Long Foreman has a particular knack for instigating a curiosity in readers about things they might not otherwise think to explore—guns, pigs, bug bites, childbirth, death dreams, and the strangest parts of human intuition. In his new collection I Am Here to Make Friends, Foreman captivates us with each story, keeping us guessing about what will happen next and how we will respond to the actions of characters that remind us of ourselves and our friends, and the choices we would make only in secret. In crisp, compelling prose, this fiction collection’s journey into the psyche is a multifaceted odyssey into the storytelling impulses and cravings that whisper within us in the quiet hours, and its uncanny allure keeps us turning page after page, anxious to know what revelry and revelations wait beyond each turn.”

Robert Long Foreman has won a Pushcart Prize and the hearts of his wife and daughters. His first book, Among Other Things, a collection of essays, was published by Pleiades Press in 2017. His first novel, Weird Pig, is coming from SEMO Press in 2020. His short stories and essays have appeared in magazines like Agni, Copper Nickel, Willow Springs, Crazyhorse, Electric Literature, and Barrelhouse. He lives in Kansas City.

We received a large number of impressive manuscripts for our very first fiction open reading period and are delighted to have found the first of many winning publications to come. 

Finalists

TURMERIC & SUGAR by Anna Vangala Jones
PATRIMONIUM by Angie Pelekidis
OUTSIDE OF NORMAL by Jessica Barksdale Inclan
FURTHER: A NOVELLA AND STORIES by Deb Jannerson
AFTER ANY NUMBER OF THINGS, WHAT’S ONE THING MORE? By Kimi Traube

Semi-Finalists

COLLECTIVE GRAVITIES by Chloe Clark
PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE by Farah Ali
COLD CIGAR SMELL  by Viviane Vives
TALES IN MAGHREBI LANDSCAPES by Mary Byrne
STRIPPED by Leah Griesmann
IN JOSAPHAT’S VALLEY by Joshua Bernstein

Look for I Am Here to Make Friends in March, 2020!

A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

Website: www.sundresspublications.com      Facebook: sundresspublications
Email: sundresspublications@gmail.com          Twitter: @SundressPub

Hannah V. Warren Wins Sundress Publications 2019 Chapbook Competition

Hannah V. Warren Wins 2019 Chapbook Contest

 

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce that Hannah V. Warren with her chapbook, [re]construction of the necromancer, was selected by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello as the winner of Sundress Publications’ eighth annual chapbook competition.

Hannah V. Warren is an MFA graduate of the University of Kansas and, currently, a creative writing Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia where she studies fairytales and other speculative narratives. Her poetry has recently appeared in Prism Review, Whiskey Island, Bear Review, and Room Magazine.

Angela Narciso Torres’ chapbook To the Bone was chosen as this year’s runner-up and will also receive publication.

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange, winner of the Willow Book Literature Awards for Poetry. Recently, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, Missouri Review, Quarterly West, and PANK. She is an MFA graduate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education and has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She currently resides in South Florida where she is faculty for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival as a manuscript consultant.

Congratulations, also, to this year’s finalists and semifinalists!

Finalists
“Dispatches re: Year One,” Sarah B. Boyle
“A Field Guide to the Natural Disasters of Southern California,” Charles Jensen
“Counting Softly the Seconds,” John LaPine
“Backstory,” Lisa Mase
“Unerase,” Fargo Tbakhi

Semifinalists
“our lady of deciduous teeth,” Chelsea Bodnar
“Breadcrumbs,” Lois Marie Harrod
“If You Had Left Your Brain Alone,” David James
“Church of the Unnamed Subdivision,” Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
“Tumbling After,” Sara Wagner

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A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

Website: www.sundresspublications.com      Facebook: sundresspublications
Email: sundresspublications@gmail.com          Twitter: @SundressPub

Meet Our New Editorial Intern: Kimberly Ann Priest

DSC_1183.jpegI’m a poet and an educator, but I didn’t become either until my late thirties when divorce propelled me to seek therapeutic tools to map experience and explore a catalogue of emotions that had been repressed for several of my adult years. As acts of both survival and exploration, I earned a BA, MA, and MFA—all with a focus on creative writing—and began to write and publish poems. These endeavors naturally led me to take on a number of academic teaching roles, primarily instructing first-year composition courses, but with a few opportunities to teach creative writing here and there.

Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to learn from some excellent faculty/poets and have my work published in several notable journals including The Berkeley Poetry Review, and Welter, in addition to the publication of my first chapbook White Goat Black Sheep—a series of lyric stanzas about two young sisters reeling in the wake of sexual assault. Most of my poetry explores themes related to trauma, sexuality, the female body, and motherhood. Writing on these topics has opened my world, both in terms of internal space and public interaction. I’ve been able to write through personal traumas and help others do the same.

Currently, as a writing professor at Michigan State University, I am working with a number of inspiring teachers and writers who are equally interested in how various forms of written composition impact health and well-being and I’m looking forward to leading workshops in the community to help survivors integrate grief and stabilize self via artistic expression. I am a strong believer in art, broadly defined, as essential to navigate difficult experiences, order chaos, beautify madness, and enact empowerment by re-shaping stories. When life spirals out of our control, art allows us to regain individual agency and invite community to share in that process.

This is why I’m delighted to be an intern with Sundress Publications and support their visionary concerns for community, diversity, and healing. I look forward to discovering how this internship will broaden my understanding of the publishing world, expand my writing community, and enhance my practicum as an educator.

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Kimberly Ann Priest is a professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, a poet, and a mother of two very-recently-inaugurated young adults. She likes to buy coffee mugs from coffee shops that impress her during her travels. Though she’s already visited nearly all of the forty-eight mainland United States, she will never turn down a road trip. You will either find her contemplating life and writing poetry or cruising in her Mini Cooper “Marilyn” (Monroe). This year, she has work forthcoming in The Coachella Review and Glass Poetry.

 

Call for Submissions: Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts

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unnamed Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period of May 15 to August 15, 2019.

We’re looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages; front matter is excluded from page count. Individual pieces or selections may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Single-author and collaborative author manuscripts will be considered. Manuscripts translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere.

The reading fee is $13 per manuscript, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title or broadside. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pays the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many manuscripts as they would like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store.

All manuscripts will be read by members of our editorial board, and we will choose at least two manuscripts for publication. We strive to further our commitment to diversity and seek to encounter as many unique and important voices as possible. We are actively seeking collections from writers of color, trans and nonbinary writers, writers with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary publishing. Selected manuscripts will be offered a standard publication contract, which includes 25 copies of the published book, as well as any additional copies at cost.

This year our top selection from the reading period also will receive a free one-week writing residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN.

To submit, email your Sundress store receipt for submission fee or book purchase, along with your manuscript (DOC, DOCX, or PDF), to sundresspublications@gmail.com. Be sure to note both your name and the title of the manuscript in your email header. For those nominating others for our reading period, please include the name of nominee as well as an email address; we will solicit the manuscript directly.

Although we are conscious of the lack of representation by women writers in literary publishing, we are a non-discriminatory publishing group focused on the creativity of all artists, regardless of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, education, etc.

A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

 

Sundress Announces the Release of Amorak Huey’s Collection, Boom Box

Sundress Releases Amorak Huey’s Collection, Boom Box

Sundress Publications announces the release of Amorak Huey’s collection, Boom Box. In this, Huey’s third published collection, the poems brim with desire and are hounded by the uncertainties of puberty, while Huey’s speaker chronicles the honest arc of an adolescence that is neither purely tragic nor purely ideal.

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In Boom Box, Amorak Huey’s incisive and tender portrait of a GenX childhood, he challenges his readers to reconsider the way in which we relate to the past as we age. “What are the uses of nostalgia?” Huey asks. “What does it conceal, and what does it uncover?” Boom Box is suffused with the loneliness of small-town isolation and punctuated by the deep hurt of divorce. It is also rife with the pleasures of discovering a favorite album, and the powerful, restless energy of being seventeen. With the humor, curiosity, and earnestness of youth, Huey threads references to KISS, Star Wars, and even Dungeons & Dragons throughout the book, invoking at every turn the comforting sweetness of nostalgia. But Huey’s work is never saccharine. Instead, with each successive poem, and the discerning eye of a sage adult, his speaker untangles a web of early memories. By skillfully painting an experience of growing up in the wide rivers, gravel parking lots, and lonely dirt roads of Alabama, and by pairing those images with intimate snapshots of high school break-ups, missed connections, and Little League fathers who “never had a problem disappointment couldn’t solve,” Huey offers his readers a unique opportunity to remember the awkward trappings of youth through his artistically masterful lens. In this way, Boom Box revisits the foundations of the coming-of-age genre with style, clarity, and an emotional resonance that lasts long after its final lines.

Chelsea Dingman, author of What Bodies Have I Moved and Thaw, says, “If poems are magic, then the poems of Boom Box are rife with the magic of childhood in guitar-solo riffs of splendor and nostalgia. Amidst sweeping narratives, the past stands as a monument to be worshipped instead of forgotten. The sorrow, the thrill, the sex, the music, and the awkwardness, are all captured as if in time capsules—these are poems of loss and marrow and place, of time and the wars it wields. They are profound in their honesty, bittersweet, heartbreaking, yet redemptive. Like a stadium-rock anthem. Like the song thrumming in the background of a life that testifies ‘to love a place is to leave it behind.’”

Order your copy HERE.

amorakhuey

Amorak Huey is author of two previous poetry collections: Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015). Co-author of the textbook Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), he teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

 

2019 Poetry Broadside Contest Winner Announced

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce the results of the 2019 Poetry Broadside Contest. The winner’s poem will be letterpress-printed and made available for purchase in our online store. Orders for our broadsides will be open later this spring.

Picture1This year’s winner is Lisa Kwong for the poem “Searching for Wonton Soup.”

Born and raised in Radford, Virginia, Lisa Kwong identifies as an AppalAsian, an Asian from Appalachia. She is a distinguished creative writing alumna of Appalachian State University and holds an MFA in poetry from Indiana University (IU). Her poems and creative nonfiction are forthcoming or have appeared in Best New Poets 2014, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, the minnesota review, Banango Street, Still: The Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Appalachian Heritage, Pluck!, The Sleuth, and other publications. Her honors include poetry scholarships and fellowships from Indiana University, The Frost Place, and Sundress Academy for the Arts, where she was the 2017 Appalachian Writer-in-Residence.

Finalists:
“The Inception of Bees,” Trista Edwards
“Columbia Gorge,” Brenda Yates
“Violence of Lush,” Elisabeth von Uhl
“Self-Portrait as Etola,” Itiola Jones
“Aubade Without Ice,” Amelia Gorman
“We Will Take Life After Death,” Ashley Inguanta
“A God Lives in the Amygdala,” Jennifer Martelli

Semifinalists:
“Self-Portrait with Sun God and Charred Bodies,” Jessica Lynn Suchon
“How I Knew She Was Mine Before She Was Born,” Katy Ellis
“This is the Beginning,” Rachel Cloud Adams
“To the Drone All Objects Are Beautiful,” Amy Miller
“Second Story,” Halee Kirkwood

 

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A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

 

Email: erin@sundresspublications.com                                    Twitter: @SundressPub
Website: sundresspublications.com                                         Facebook: SundressPublications

Sundress Releases The Tripart Heart by Sarah Einstein

Sundress Releases The Tripart Heart by Sarah Einstein

Sundress Publications announces the release of Sarah Einstein’s new chapbook, The Tripart Heart. The chapbook follows three distinct chapters in Einstein’s life, proving that within every individual experience is room for growth.

tripartIn The Tripart Heart, love lays within the grooves and shadows of personal discomfort and there settles into the knowledge that the most important part of love, regardless of form or reason, is that it exists. The woman of Einstein’s stories longs to make an impact on the world. Her relationships echo her revelations as she moves through hospitality, transience, and honesty. A willingness to love guides her on a journey of change as she breaks rules for a dying man whose version of home is a tar paper shack and topples social barriers defining who-reaches-for-whom in a marriage, all amid the fleeting drug-magic of tie-dyed days spent at Rainbow Gatherings. Enlightenment through love traverses each complex facet of Sarah Einstein’s The Tripart Heart, as the woman’s battles with heartbreak and loss cause her to confront the naïveté of widespread affection and reshape it into concentrated moments of intimacy.

Penny Guisinger, author of Postcards from Here called the chapbook, “ … wise, witty, sharp-eyed, and full of compassionate heart. [Einstein] takes a hard look at how we treat and accept each other, how we overlook and discard each other, and how we revere and love each other. The Tripart Heart asks us to work a little harder at the job of being good humans.”

And Alex DeFrancesco, author of Pscyhopomps said, “Walking a line between deeply-felt memory and tender nostalgia for hard-scrabble times, Sarah Einstein’s chapbook delineates the path from trying to change the world to letting the world soften and make fertile the heart.”

Sarah Einstein is the author of Mot: A Memoir (University of Georgia Press 2015), author imageRemnants of Passion (Shebooks 2014). Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Sun, Ninth Letter, PANK, and other journals. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net, and the AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction.

The chapbook is available at http://www.sundresspublications.com

Subscriber Notice

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2019 Sundress Subscriptions Now Available!

Sundress Publications is excited to announce that our 2019 subscriptions are now available!

This year’s catalog includes full-length poetry collections from Leah Silveus, Amorak Huey, Aaron Graham, Ruth Foley, Zoë Estelle Hitzel, HK Hummel, and syan jay. as well as a copy of our handprinted letterpress broadside!

Subscribers receive all of these upcoming titles, complimentary merch, plus FREE entries into all of our 2019 Sundress competitions, open reading periods, and Sundress Academy for the Arts residency applications for themselves AND a friend.

From now until the end of the February, you’ll receive not only the entire 2019 catalog but also a FREE Sundress title of your choosing!

Subscribe today at: https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications/item/sundress-subscription

A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

2018 Chapbook Contest Winner

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Katie Burgess’ Wind on the Moon Named Winner 
of Sundress Publications’ 2018 Chapbook Competition

Sundress Publications is delighted to announce the winner for our seventh chapbook competition, Katie Burgess. Her chapbook, Wind on the Moon, rose to the top among many other outstanding works.

Stacey Balkun, Chapbook Series Editor of Sundress Publications and author of Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak, had this to say about the chapbook:

“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 Katie Burgessand 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 books you can’t wait to share with everyone you love.”

Katie Burgess holds a PhD in fiction from Florida State University. She lives downwind of a mayonnaise factory in South Carolina and performs with Alchemy Comedy Theater. She is also editor in chief of Emrys Journal.

It is also our pleasure to announce that Amy Watkins‘ Wolf Daughter was selected for publication. We were thrilled by all the great works submitted this year and would like to thank everyone for participating.

Other submitted Chapbooks of Note

Finalists
Rachel Federer- Lunar Fragments for the Scorpion Child 
Gail Griffin- Virginals
Jayme Russel- Threadbound
Amy Watkins- Wolfdaughter*

Semifinalists
Rachel Heimowitz-The Story of Dark Matter
Jed Myers- The Wire Said
Sara Ryan- but pink but want but blue

*Also selected for publication

VIDA Residency Fellowships Winners Announced

VIDA Residency Fellowships Winners Announced

Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the winners of the VIDA fellowships for the fall residency period, Raena Shirali and Nicole Connolly. SAFTA paired with VIDA, a research-driven organization aiming to increase issues in contemporary literary culture, to offer these fellowships for two women writers in any genre. This year’s winners were chosen by guest judge Elissa Washuta.

View More: http://giniaworrellphotography.pass.us/rshiraliRaena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Shirali’s honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry, and poetry prizes from Boston Review , Gulf Coast, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Raised in Charleston, South Carolina, the Indian American poet earned her MFA from The Ohio State University. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she is a coorganizer for We (Too) Are Philly, a summer poetry festival highlighting voices of color. Shirali also serves as Poetry Editor for Muzzle Magazine and is on the editorial team for Vinyl.

Author Photo

 

Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as ANMLY, Fugue, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Applications for spring residencies at SAFTA are now open and can be found at sundressacademyforthearts.com.