Barrelhouse15,RIOTS, is now available for pre-order. I’m honored to have my poem “89 Fires,” which examines media double-standards regarding rioting in white communities vs. communities of color, included in the issue.
Michelle Bitting says of the chapbook: “This is a loving and mournful meditation, at once ode and elegy, and the everyday, in-between realities miraculously lived through.”
D.M. Aderibigbe says: “[T]he world suddenly ceases, and the only things moving are Brownlee’s lines.”
If you place your order before March 1, you’ll be taking advantage of our pre-order discount, and wouldn’t that be thrifty.
J. Scott Brownlee, On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County
Finalists
Abigail Zimmer, child in a winter house brightening
C.J. Opperthauser, Cloud the Shape of Bedroom
Tasha Cotter, Girl in the Cave
Duncan Campbell, Joysong Demarcation
Hearty congratulations to J. Scott Brownlee, whose manuscript On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County we’ll be publishing later this year!
The pool of entrants was stacked, and we’re thrilled to be publishing not only the winning manuscript, but also each of our finalists’ manuscripts.
A huge thanks for everyone who participated and supported the press, and congrats to these five fine writers who we’re so thrilled to be publishing in the future!
Pumped to announce these developments in our publishing queue at Tree Light Books! J. Scott Brownlee’s winning manuscript is heart-wrenching and beautiful and just so happens to contain “Wildflower Choir,” the first poem by Brownlee I ever read. The manuscripts of the finalists are tender and electric and solemn and philosophical and language-driven and lovely. Cannot wait to publish these books, y’all.
Over at Chicago Review of Books, I pick Kelly Schirmann’s Popular Music as one of the best poetry books of 2016 (the best book, poetry or otherwise, I read all year, for the record). It’s an incredible and surprising collection of poetry and essays, and you can read my praise (read: plea for you to read the book I can’t stop thinking about) at CHIRB.
Also worth noting and celebrating, the inclusion of Abigail Zimmer’s child in a winter house brighteningandJohn McCarthy’s Ghost County. This is the second year-end nod for Abigail, who took home the 2016 Chicago Review of Books Award for Best Poetry earlier this month. I interviewed John earlier this year to talk about Ghost County, his debut collection and the only book this year I finished in one sitting.
Congrats to all the amazing books that made the cut at CHIRB. What a year!
Abigail Zimmer’s child in a winter house brightening won the Chicago Review of Books Award for best poetry collection by a Chicago author in 2016. Thanks to Abi’s mesmerizing work, my press Tree Light Books now has a book award to add to our accolades, and I can finally say I’ve wandered through canyons with and drunkenly cried on the shoulder of an award-winning poet.
You can read Tree Light Books’ round-up of Abi’s panel discussion from last night’s award ceremony, along with a few thoughts on the win and publishing Abi’s chapbook at the Tree Light blog.
If you see Abi, buy the poetry queen a beer. If you see me, try to bring me back down to planet Earth. Or better yet, don’t.
Tree Light Books, the handmade chapbook I run, added another title to our catalog today: Tasha Cotter’s Girl in the Cave. An exploration of the south-central Kentucky landscape and a journey through the caves that lie underfoot, Girl in the Cave delves into the land and how it shapes our perspective.
These poems are thoughtful and inquisitive, both accented and driven by a curious landscape of caves, and “constantly surprising” (Charles Rafferty). Julie Hensley has said “The speakers in these poems follow and mourn the fissures of their pasts, knowing all the while each split makes a future upthrust possible. Cotter is a master at recreating the trapdoor effect of sudden, deep recollection.”
Additional praise, numerous interviews and publications can be found here. Beautiful, handmade (even hand-sewn!) chapbooks can be found here.
Recently, I talked with the folks at Speaking of Marvels about my chapbook Mole People (BatCat Press) and my work with Ghost OceanandTree Light Books. Huge thanks to Ashton Jones for these incredibly thoughtful and interesting questions and to Will Woolfitt for the space to talk about the things I love.
We decided to up the ante on the pre-order and throw in free postcard-size prints of Chicago mural artist Sick Fisher’s “Mangy Bear,” which he painted in response to Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert’s “A Bear with a Severe Case of Mange,” which first appeared way back in Ghost Ocean 3, which was before Bernie Sanders was a household name and before Donald Trump clogged hearts and national news coverage. Simpler times.
It’s been invigorating working on this chapbook with C.J., and the praise the chapbook has garnered is both well-deserved and truly connected to the spirit of the book. You can add the book to your Goodreads (and why wouldn’t you?), so that after you finish the wild ride that is Cloud the Shape of Bedroom, you can be sure that all your other bookish buds know just how much fun you had.
And in case you need further convincing, remember these limited edition chapbooks are hand-sewn with love, and I’ve endured numerous paper cuts to get C.J.’s high octane poetry into your hands.
Not going to LA for AWP16 this year? We aren’t either. But that’s no reason to miss out on all the great book deals or the annual browsing of new releases from the book fair, especially as many presses offer free shipping or similar sales prices online.
At Lettered Streets Press, we’re offering 3 books for $25, plus you can still pre-order our latest release, Way Elsewhere by Julie Trimingham, with free shipping.
And if that’s not enough, here are a few of our favorite presses offering sales and new book releases. So grab a beer or homemade cocktail, text some poet friends, set this poet/pop song mashup for your background, and browse our away-from-AWP book fair without ever leaving your couch—it’s just like you’re in LA. Without the traffic.
Latest Release: Inadequate Grave by Brandon Courtney ($5!)
Thanks to The Lettered Streets Press for putting this together for those of us skipping AWP this year and for including Tree Light Books! What a great list of presses to support!
