I’m so pleased to announce the contributors of CCM’s anthology, “A Shadow Map.” These essays and poems are not only just compelling, but harrowing stories of sexual assault. None of these pieces were easy to write–and were born out of traumatizing and terrible experiences. I am beyond amazed by the words of these incredible writers and survivors–and am eternally grateful they shared their stories with the CCM community as a way to connect with others–and help show that there is no one kind of survivor, we are all survivors.
-Joanna C. Valente
Hillary Leftwich is a native of Colorado and currently lives in Denver with her son. She is the co-host for At the Inkwell Reading Series in Denver and serves as the associate editor for The Conium Review. Her writing appears in Hobart, Matter Press, NANO Fiction, WhiskeyPaper, dogzplot, Gone Lawn, decomp magazine, Smokelong Quarterly’s “Why Flash Fiction?” series, the Review Review’s “Views on Publishing,” and other journals. She has a chapbook of poems forthcoming from Mutiny Info Press in 2017.
Prerna Bakshi is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of Burnt Rotis, With Love, a debut full-length collection of poetry from Les Éditions du Zaporogue (Denmark), long-listed for the 2015 Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK and cited as one of the ‘9 Poetry Collections That Will Change The Way You See The World’ by Bustle Magazine in the US. Her work has been published widely, most recently in The Ofi Press, Red Wedge Magazine, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism and Prachya Review: Literature & Art Without Borders. More here: http://prernabakshi.
Mila Jaroniec is the author of Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover (Split Lip Press, 2016). She is the editor of drDOCTOR and her work has appeared in Playboy, LENNY, Hobart, Joyland, Catapult and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, among others. She lives in Ohio with her partner and son.
lauren samblanet is a poet who is working on her m.f.a. at temple university. she is also a writer for thinking dance. her poems have been published in the vassar review, walkabout and adanna, and a dance-radio collaboration with skye hughes was published on colorado public radio’s website.
Erin Taylor is an American writer. Her writing often deals with her own experiences and trauma. It is usually poetry, with some exceptions. She has a chapbook of poetry OOOO out through Bottlecap Press and she’s the interviews editor over at Maudlin House. She is writing a book on loneliness. Her work can be found at erintaylor.tumblr.com and she tweets at @erinisaway.
Stephen Furlong is a graduate student at Southeast Missouri State University located on the Mississippi river. His abuse, at the hands of an older male cousin, happened five times over a three-year period. His current creative project is a manuscript of poetry following the abuse as lensed by the five stages of grief. In addition to receiving nomination for Best New Poets 2016, his poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in the Chariton Review, Open Minds Quarterly, and Big Muddy, among others.
Lillian Ann Slugocki, founder of BEDLAM, has been nominated twice for the Best of the Web, a Pushcart Prize, and winner of the Gigantic Sequins prize for fiction. She’s been published by Seal Press, Cleis Press, Heinemann Press, Newtown Press, Spuyten Duyvil Press, as well as Bloom/The Millions, Salon, Beatrice, THE FEM Literary Magazine, HerKind/Vida, Deep Water Literary Journal, The Nervous Breakdown, The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Blue Fifth Review, Non Binary Review, The Manifest-Station, Angels Flight * literary west, Entropy, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Sweatpants and Coffee, and The Daily Beast. She has an MA from NYU in literary theory, and has produced and written for Off-Broadway and National Public Radio. How to Travel With Your Demons, a novella, Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2015, chosen for the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Book Club. Her other books are The Blue Hours, and The Erotica Project, co-author, Erin Cressida Wilson. Anthologies include Wreckage of Reason 2: Back to the Drawing Board and Dirty Girls.
Sloane Eliot Mariem is a Florida-raised, Brooklyn-based poet exploring trauma, recovery, and the formation of new relationships in the wake of domestic violence. Her work has appeared in Vending Machine Press, Calamity, Electric Cereal, and is forthcoming in The Fem. She has read in NYC as part of the Vapors reading series.
Maggie Queeney reads and writes in Chicago. Her work can be found in Copper Nickel, TYPO, Southern Poetry Review, The Southeast Review, and Conjunctions.
Christopher Morgan is a Lebanese American prose poet who grew up in Detroit, the Bible Belt of Georgia, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently lives and co-manages Nostrovia! Press. The Reviews Coordinator at Alien Mouth, and the author of two chapbooks, “Shadow Songs” (Sad Spell Press 2015) and “Fables with Fangs” (Ghost City Press 2016), he loves hiking in the redwoods, aphorisms, and happy hour margaritas.
Geula Geurts is a Dutch born poet living in Jerusalem. She completed her MFA in Poetry at Bar Ilan University. Her mini-chapbook “Like Any Good Daughter” is forthcoming with Platypus Press. Further work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tinderbox Editions, Rogue Agent, Hermeneutic Chaos, Cactus Heart, Minerva Rising, The Fem and Jellyfish Review. She works as a Foreign Rights Agent at The Deborah Harris Literary Agency.
Sarah Lilius is the author of the chapbooks What Becomes Within (ELJ Editions, 2014) and The Heart Factory (Black Cat Moon Press, 2016). She has a chapbook forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press early next year. Some of her journal publication credits include the Denver Quarterly, Bluestem, Tinderbox, Hermeneutic Chaos, Stirring, Melancholy Hyperbole, Entropy, and Flapperhouse. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and two sons. Her website is sarahlilius.com.
Omotara James resides in New York City, where she is an MFA candidate. She is the recipient of Slice magazine’s 2016 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets, as well as the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Visceral Brooklyn, The Coil, Gnosis, Font, and The Anthology of Young American Poets. She has received scholarships from Cave Canem, the Homeschool and the Garrison Institute. Currently, she is an editor at Visceral Brooklyn and Art of Dharma. You can find out what she’s doing next at https://omotara-james-poet.squarespace.com
Lauren Milici is a Jersey-born, Florida-bred gal who believes the best art is derived from naked honesty. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at West Virginia University. She posts drafts, sketches, and other trash on her website, laurenemilici.com.
Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her first full-length book, Before Isadore, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. She serves as the poetry editor for The Boiler Journal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the following: Salt Hill, Stirring, Versal, The Texas Observer, Devil’s Lake, Four Way Review, among others. Hardwick also has chapbooks out with Thrush Press and Mouthfeel Press.
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has published Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and has work included in or forthcoming from Danse Macabre, Nano Fiction, and Black Heart. Sometimes, she feels human. http://stephanievalente.com
Isobel O’Hare is a Pushcart-nominated poet and essayist who has dual Irish and American citizenship. O’Hare is the author of the chapbooks Wild Materials (Zoo Cake Press, 2015) and The Garden Inside Her (Ladybox Books, 2016). She is based in Oakland, California and Taos, New Mexico.
Shevaun Brannigan is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as The Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House at The University of Maryland. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Best New Poets 2012, Rhino, Redivider, and Crab Orchard Review. She is the first place recipient of the 2015 Jan-ai Scholarship through the Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway, and a 2015 recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Also in 2015, she was shortlisted for the Booth Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the District Lit Poetry Prize, a finalist for The Tishman Review’s Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and received an honorable mention in The Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry prize. Her work can be found at shevaunbrannigan.com.
Amy Jo Trier-Walker lives and works on a tree and herb farm in Indiana and is the author of two chapbooks: Trembling Ourselves into Trees (Horse Less Press, 2015) and One Winter Night in the Pines (The Dandelion Review, 2016). She is the winner of the 2016 Permafrost New Alchemy Contest, and her work can be found in New American Writing, Caliban online, Salt Hill, Tupelo Quarterly, and inter|rupture, among others.
Marty Cain is a poet and video artist. His first book is a long poem called Kids of the Black Hole (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017). His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Fence, Jacket2, Tarpaulin Sky, Action Yes, Gigantic Sequins, and other journals. He received an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and presently, is pursuing a PhD in English Literature at Cornell University. Currently, he lives in Ithaca, New York with his partner, the poet Kina Viola; together, they run Garden-Door Press.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is a writer, teacher and Ph.D. candidate in creative writing at the University of Missouri. She is also an editorial assistant at The Missouri Review, a reviews editor at Fjords Review and an associate editor of Origins Literary Journal. Her most recent work appears or is forthcoming in editions of The Los Angeles Review, Jabberwock Review, LunaLuna, Split this Rock’s “Poem of the Week,” Puerto del Sol, The Feminist Wire and New Delta Review, among other outlets.
Alaina Leary is a Bostonian publishing professional. She serves as a social media assistant for the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books. Her work has been published in Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Marie Claire, Bustle, Bust, Everyday Feminism, The Establishment, and more. When she’s not reading, you can usually find her spending time with her two cats or covering everything in glitter.
Alexis Groulx’s work has been previously published, or is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review, Bridge Eight, Gravel, Off the Coast,Sun & Sandstone,The Missing Slate and others.
Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (Accents Publishing) The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Gulf Stream, The Journal, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and Diode Editions, and is Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar.
Abigail Welhouse is the author of Bad Baby (dancing girl press), Too Many Humans of New York(Bottlecap Press), and Memento Mori (a poem/comic collaboration with Evan Johnston). Her writing has been published in The Toast, The Billfold, Ghost Ocean Magazine, the Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. Subscribe to her Secret Poems at tinyletter.com/welhouse.
Stephanie Berger is the founder and CEO of The Poetry Society of New York, a 501(c)3 dedicated to promoting poetry within our culture. She is the creator and Madame of The Poetry Brothel, co-founder and director of The New York City Poetry Festival, and co-creator of The Typewriter Project. Her poetry has appeared in Fence, The Volta, Hyperallergic, Prelude, Bat City Review, and H_NGM_N, among other publications. She published a chapbook of poems, In The Madame’s Hat Box (Dancing Girl Press, 2011) and is the co-author/translator of The Grey Bird (Coconut Books, 2014). She received her MFA in Poetry from The New School and has taught in the English department at Pace University.
jacklyn janeksela is a wolf and a raven, a cluster of stars, & a direct descent of the divine feminine. jacklyn janeksela can be found @ Thought Catalog, Luna Magazine, Talking Book, Three Point Press, DumDum Magazine, Visceral Brooklyn, Anti-Heroin Chic, Public Pool, Reality Hands, Mannequin Haus, Velvet-Tail, Requited Journal, The Feminist Wire, Word For/Word, Literary Orphans, Lavender Review, & Pank. she is in a post-punk band called the velblouds. her baby @ femalefilet. more art @ artmugre & a clip. her first book, fitting a witch//hexing the stitch, will be born in 2017 (The Operating System). she is an energy. find her @ hermetic hare for herbal astrological readings.
Christine Stoddard is a Salvadoran-Scottish-American writer and artist who lives in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared in Marie Claire, The Feminist Wire, Bustle, Teen Vogue, The Huffington Post, Ravishly, So to Speak, Jimson Weed, and beyond. In 2014, Folio Magazine named her one of the top 20 media visionaries in their 20s for founding Quail Bell Magazine. Christine is the author of Hispanic & Latino Heritage in Virginia (The History Press, 2016) and Ova (Dancing Girl Press, 2017.)
Nicole McCarthy is an experimental writer/artist in the MFA program at the University of Washington Bothell. She is also the managing editor of The James Franco Review. Her work has appeared in Punctuate Magazine, The Fem, Ghost Proposal, FLAPPERHOUSE, Crab Fat Magazine, PUBLIC POOL,Tinderbox Poetry, and others. She is working on her first full-length hybrid collection.
Lynn Melnick is the author of Landscape with Sex and Violence (forthcoming, 2017) and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), both with YesYes Books, and the co-editor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). She serves on the Executive Board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Ashley Miranda is a latinx poet from Chicago. Her work has been previously featured in The Denver Quarterly, White Stag, pioneertown, and HOUND lit. She tweets impulse poetry and other ramblings @dustwhispers.
Leza Cantoral is editor of CLASH Media Books and Luna Luna Magazine Print Projects. She is the author of ‘Cartoons in the Suicide Forest’ published by Bizarro Pulp Press. She lives in New Hampshire with the love of her life and their two cats.
Corinne Manning manages the distinction between desire and longing by wearing wigs while chopping wood on a farm in the PNW. While currently at work on a novel about a queer family in post-Columbine America, Corinne has a collection, WE HAD NO RULES, flirting with presses; stories from which have appeared in Story Quarterly, Calyx, Vol 1 Brooklyn, Moss, and The Bellingham Review. “Primary Sources” originally appeared in Arts & Letters and is the first piece of writing that freed and transformed Corinne in its production. Once Upon A Time, Corinne founded a journal called The James Franco Review, dedicated to the visibility of underrepresented artists through reimagining the publishing process.
CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. The author of 9 books of poetry and essays, the latest is titled While Standing In Line For Death and is forthcoming from Wave Books (September 2017). He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, RADAR, Flying Ojbect and Ucross. For his books, essays, and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films 2016), please visit CAConrad.blogspot.com
Danielle Perry graduated with a degree in English Lit and Religious Studies from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. She now lives in Portland, OR, but will never lose her East Coast charm. She spends probably too much time on Twitter (@jekyllian). Her work has been published in The Toast, FLAPPERHOUSE, and Potluck Magazine, among others. Her chapbook Phases (2015) was published by Sad Spell Press.
Annie Virginia teaches English to high schoolers. She earned her degree in poetry and street vigilantism at Sarah Lawrence College. She worries people by fighting in public with men who need to be fought. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart prize by Broad! magazine and can be found in The Literary Bohemian, Arsenic Lobster, The Legendary, and “The Queer South” by Sibling Rivalry Press.
Claudia Cortese is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her first book, WASP QUEEN (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), explores the privilege and pathology, trauma and brattiness of suburban girlhood. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast Online, and The Offing, among others. The daughter of Neapolitan immigrants, Cortese grew up in Ohio and lives in New Jersey. She also lives at claudia-cortese.com
Kelley O’Brien is a disabled lesbian currently studying social work. She enjoys working in her garden and making jewelry, and hopes to make a little difference in the world.
Jessica Lynn Suchon is a poet, essayist, and women’s rights advocate. She is currently an MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Radar Poetry, decomP, and Rust + Moth, among others. In 2016, she was named an Emerging Writer Fellow by Aspen Words, a partner of the Aspen Institute. She currently lives and writes in Carbondale, Illinois with her boyfriend Josh Myers and their dog Gracie.
HANNAH KUCHARZAK is a poet and visual artist from Chicago. Her poems have been previously published in TYPO, Vagabond City, Requited, Pleiades, Pinwheel, Ghost Proposal, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Award and the Luminarts Award for Creative Writing.
Sarah Madges is a Brooklyn-based writer with an MFA from The New School Creative Writing Program. She co-curates Handwritten, an online project dedicated to the art and act of handwriting, and runs the monthly poetry reading series, Mental Marginalia. Her writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Killing the Angel, SCOUT: Poetry in Review, and elsewhere.
Staci R. Schoenfeld is a recipient of a 2015 NEA Fellowship for Poetry. She’s a PhD student at University of South Dakota and assistant editor for poetry at South Dakota Review. Recent poems appear in Mid-American Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Thrush Poetry Journal. Her chapbook, The Patient Admits, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in summer 2017.
Alexis Smithers is a queer black writer on the East Coast. Their work can be found in wusgood.black, Glass: Poetry, and Up the Staircase Quarterly and forthcoming in &thriving among others. They work for Monstering Mag, Winter Tangerine Review, Words Dance, and Voicemail Poems. They are a 2015 Pink Door Fellow and 2016 LAMBDA Literary Emerging Writers Fellow. A full list of their work can be found at lexleecom.wordpress.com.
Agnes Vittstrand is a nom de guerre, a feminist activist and author of “Allt som tar plats” (FRF, 2014) a collection of poems on strategies built after having her childhood broken by pedophiles. She has published articles in numerous Swedish feminist magazines and is also a painter of some astute. Her next book is in line for publishing by anarchist press Freke Räihä Förlag.
Freke Räihä is an elderly queer poet, translator and literary curator with more issues than vowels.
Jason Phoebe Rusch is a queer, non-binary writer from the Chicago suburbs. They have a BA in history from Princeton University and an MFA in fiction from University of Michigan, where they were a Zell Fellow and received several Hopwood awards. Their poetry has appeared in Luna Luna, their essays in Bust magazine, World Policy Journal online and The Mighty and their screenplay Banana Rat was a finalist in the 2010 Zoetrope contest.
Leah Mueller is an independent writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of one chapbook, “Queen of Dorksville”, and two full-length books, “Allergic to Everything” and “The Underside of the Snake.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blunderbuss, Memoryhouse, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Silver Birch Press, Cultured Vultures, Quail Bell, and many others. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.
MW Murphy is a poet and novelist. She is the author of the novel Second Daughter, which was endorsed with cover blurbs by best-selling author Wally Lamb as well as cult author and Yale professor John Crowley. Second Daughter was subsequently picked by NPR’s Faith Middleton as a “shelf-tracker” book of the month, and was also a featured book at R J Julia Booksellers. MW was selected for publication several times in the “Open Weave” poetry anthology published by Curbstone Press / Northwestern University, which also awarded her first place in its Poet Laureate Division. She has a short piece of fiction in the anthology Gathered Light which was published by Three O’ Clock Press in May 2013. MW also has recent poems in the international poetry anthology series “The Art of Being Human – Volume 13, Volume 14, and Volume 15”, all of which were published in 2015. She is currently nearing completion of an urban sci/fi fantasy novel which takes place mostly in Manhattan’s East Village.
Katie Clark is a queer poet & a sophomore at Mount Holyoke. Katie’s poems have been in several kind publications including Nostrovia! and Voicemail Poems. Tweets @octupiwallst
Christoph Paul is an award-winning humor author. He writes non-fiction, YA, Bizarro, horror, and poetry including: The Passion of the Christoph, Great White House Volume 1 and Volume 2, Slasher Camp for Nerd Dorks, and Horror Film Poems. He is an editor for CLASH Media and CLASH Books and edited the anthologies Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective and This Book Ain’t Nuttin to Fuck With: A Wu-Tang Tribute Anthology. Under the pen name Mandy De Sandra, he writes Bizarro Erotica that has been covered in VICE, Huffington Post, Jezebel, and AV Club. He is represented by Veronica Park at Corvisiero Literary Agency.
Lora Nouk is a New York-based artist and poet. She works across various mediums including net art, performance, BJD and text. She has presented work at Picture Room, New York; Kodomo/Manila Institute, Brooklyn; Mellow Pages, Brooklyn; MoMA PS1, New York; and David Lewis Gallery, New York, among others. She is the author of Snow Poems (Codette, 2015). She tweets @shad0w_paws
Diane Payne’s most recent publications include: Map Literary Review, Watershed Review, Tishman Review, Whiskey Island, Kudzu House Quarterly, Superstition Review, Burrow Press,Dime Show Review, Lime Hawk, and Cheat River Review. She has work forthcoming in The Offing, Elke: A little Journal, Souvenir Literary Journal, Outpost 19. Diane is the author of Burning Tulips (Red Hen Press) and is the MFA Director at University of Arkansas at Monticello.
EDITOR
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Civil Coping Mechanisms and Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in Prelude, BUST, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets.
Michael J. Seidlinger is an Asian American author of a number of novels including The Fun We’ve Had and The Strangest. He serves as director of publicity at Dzanc Books, book reviews editor at Electric Literature, and publisher in chief of Civil Coping Mechanisms, an indie press specializing in innovative fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he never sleeps and is forever searching for the next best cup of coffee. You can find him online at michaeljseidlinger.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter (@mjseidlinger).
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (ELJ Publications, 2016), & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets.
Ashley Farmer is the author of the women (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), The Farmacist (Jellyfish Highway Press, 2015), beside myself (Pank/Tiny Hardcore Press, 2014), and the chapbook farm town (Rust Belt Bindery, 2012). A former editor for publications like Atomica Magazine, Salt Hill Journal, and others, she currently serves as an editor for Juked. Ashley resides in Salt Lake City, ut with her husband, Ryan Ridge.
Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. She is the author of 
Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and most recently, The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She is Editor of the #RECURRENT Novel Series at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, Executive Editor of Entropy, and CEO/Founder of POTG Design. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Tobias Carroll is the author of the short story collection Transitory (
Henry Hoke was a child in the South and an adult in New York and California. He authored The Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and Genevieves(winner of the Subito Press prose contest, forthcoming 2017). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, PANK, Gigantic and Carve. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal.
“In Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz deftly navigates the land of dreams in what she calls a dreamoir. By telling us her dreams, by revealing her most unguarded and vulnerable self, Ortiz is, truly, offering readers the most intimate parts of herself–how she loves, how she wants, how she lives, who she is. Bruja is not just a book–it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing.”
“It’s the skull-fucking you didn’t know you needed.”
“The stories Matthew Simmons tells in The In-Betweens are strange delights. I love the way he writes, between the unexpected and inevitable, the very narrow place where comedy and tragedy both live, and I love the weird little worlds that first appear alien but later open up to reveal the actual ache and joy inside. The In-Betweens is a really fun and meaningful book and I am happy I was alive to read it.”
Lauren Hilger’s debut is a masterful expose of filmic proportions. In each poem is a film beckoning to be viewed, emotional resonance pulling you in for a full embrace. Lady Be Good is a delight and declares Hilger as an important voice in contemporary poetry.
“This is the short story collection as playful dance party among serious things—a remix of pop culture, gay sex and celebrity, ranging from the confectionary to the visionary. A collection of sparks for various fires, from a bold young talent finding his way forward.”
“Espinoza’s debut is a searing interrogation of the world and the self at once. Here, the body is a fixation–as if to look away from it, even briefly, is to risk having it erased. As such, this is a book of unblinking human preservation, and how we trespass ourselves seeking safer spaces. “There is nothing I love more than an honest storm,” Espinoza writes. There Should Be Flowers is a storm to ravage and rearrange us from our crushing certainties. This book doesn’t need a blurb. It simply needs to be read.”
“Ingenious and mysterious, the stories of Tobias Carroll are spun with quiet loneliness and wild surprise. Transitory is that rare kind of collection where each story stands shining alone and, in the end, forms a beautifully melancholic whole. Tobias Carroll is an original and deeply exciting talent.”
“This is a gorgeous slippery novel in the mode of Georges Perec or Magdalena Tulli or Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi or . . . Harold Abramowitz! I read it with a tumbling sort of pleasure by a small body of water as a hummingbird with a purple throat came and went. It, the bird, seemed, in its hovering, to be trying to read Blind Spot over my shoulder. Is that why it kept coming back? One impossibly exquisite thing seeking another?”
“A tale of elusive revelations is rendered through interruptions and undercuts in Ctch’s Able To/Always Will. Like the thin lines of this snakelike text, meaning bares itself undeniably and a breath later, twists and coils back into the basket of the charmer. Every assertion is cast in excruciating doubt. Is it 4 am? Am I able to? What is sacred? What is an act? Whether we know for sure or not, we always will. Knowing while not knowing, that’s the paradox that drives this meditation on dialogue in the digital age.”
“Justin Sirois has some really important things to say, and we need to listen. The Last Book of Baghdad is raw, riveting and revealing. Sirois is a master storyteller with the rare ability to highlight the perspectives of both the oppressed and oppressors. I guarantee that soldiers, policy makers and people who love literature alike will benefit, appreciate and learn from The Last Book of Baghdad.”
“Sara June Woods poems turn love letters into investigations. By treating her subjects with sincere admiration and wonder, she seeks out answers within a transitory world that may never answer: handholding becomes a flood, a burning field becomes a home, a girl stuck on a ferris wheel becomes a thing for birds to fly through. Careful Mountain regards the slivers of the world as not only parts of a whole, but the whole thing itself.”
“And what is the measure of self inside grief? Jordan Okumura’s novel Gaijin is a body song. By weaving stories of loss and myth, Okumura brings an identity to life, half real, half imagined. I was mesmerized from start to finish.”
“Remember to Never Get Better is Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers but on the page, written by an Emily Dickinson if she had been locked out of her house for her whole life instead of locking herself inside of it. I am in love, and I am finally starting to say the word poetry again.”
“Equal parts vulnerable, logical, affirming, and schematic, In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse is a frothing workbook with ‘Floating fractals everywhere.’ Like a vending machine stocked with formal innovation, fabulist imagery, and rigorous self-examination, Zaikowski drops goodies all the way through. This is a must for anyone invested in how a self processes the world–and how the world processes a self.”
“Andrew Miller’s If Only the Names Were Changed is the immensity of self turned into sharp, dangerous literature. The world/mirror inside the author has been dissected and is being offered for consumption, but not without a warning: this is brutal, sad writing that’s been touched by death, drugs, booze, heartache, and enough uncertainty and self doubt to make it as venomous as it is necessary, powerful, and true.”
Gaijin
“Love letters. Love poetry. […] Johannes Göransson’s letters to an ex-lover Ra — as well as the letters in this book to the radiator, history, Susan Sontag, America, poetry itself–come from a poet whose ‘heart [and poetics] belongs to a drive-by shooting.’ Reading them is to be invited into the theater of utterly mixed metaphors where nothing follows.’”
“In the spirit of Donald Barthelme, Dolan Morgan queers the every day and leaves a sinister domestic scene behind.”
“Told almost entirely through lyrical fragments and beautifully-observed scenes, Alexandra Naughton’s American Mary is the latest incarnation of the Great American Novella, at once unsettling and moving.”
“Reading Ashley Farmer’s The Women is like reading a cubist painting. […] Even as she unapologetically documents the power that systemic oppression has over our daily lives, her women emerge as brave, hungry, and resilient. The Women simultaneously made my blood boil and made me feel less alone.”
“Gary Shipley’s conception of reality is more like our actual present reality than our literary culture’s usual inbred narrative realism can afford. […] Literature almost doesn’t deserve this maniac, and thank hell he’s here.
“With pop pastiche, lyrical pirouettes, and sage insights parading as ‘confessions,’ these poems position—like a ballet class at its bar pivoting towards the mirror—the young against the old, the native against the new, and the innocent against the cynical to show them how, together, they more beautifully out of sync.”