Cycling Through

Columbine

JRW Case

This book is at once a memoir, a travelogue, a dispassionate look at a notorious school massacre, by an author coming to terms with unresolved memories and heart-felt parental uncertainties. The reader isn’t just pushed along but rather propelled forward through the external and internal experiences of an insightful scribe relentlessly pedaling across space and time. –Brent Green, author of Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at A Time of Loss

As I bicycled along in my mind with JRW Case on the “blue highways” of this country, I couldn’t help but also tag along on his inner journey to explore those important 21^st century questions of values that we all face…who am I and what is my role in creating the world I desire for my children, and my children’s children? I encourage everyone to read this book and “cycle along” on their own journey of self-exploration. ~Mark Gilbert, author of Be Yourself Evolving the World Through Personal Empowerment

Author  JRW (Robert) Case...


 Running for Home

A Novel by 

Edward McClelland

  "Edward McClelland's Running for Home relocates Chariots of Fire to the Rust Belt, with Inland North accents instead of the Queen's English, and a way better soundtrack. A blue-collar bildungsroman with breakaway speed. I enjoyed the book so much it motivated me to run three miles today." ~Pete Beatty, author of Cuyahoga

  Edward McClelland’s Running for Home is a deeply moving coming-of-age story with a distinct, refreshing authenticity. This sympathetic portrait of a young man trying to find his way in a working-class town after the factory  closes has no easy Hollywood resolution (that often involves the main character running from home as if escape is victory). McClelland’s story rings true with the authority and complexity of an insider’s perspective. We immediately know where we are and who’s talking to us, and that we won’t be getting any bull from this narrator. A tight, powerful story crafted by a brilliant prose writer. ~Jim Daniels author of Middle Ages

Early Review in Lansing CitiPulse



Edward (Ted) McClelland


Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat

Poems

Charlene Fix

Taking A Walk in My Animal Hat is a tapestry of exquisite poems, phrases and lines that stun, rejuvenate, and have, as Audre Lord hungers for,” the potential to 'set us free.'” These poems are for those of us weary of what Adrienne Rich terms the “atrophy of our power to imagine other ways of navigating into our collective future.” Charlene Fix’s collection is the antidote to that atrophy. It is a call to don the “animal hat," to “manifest the state or aspiration of the soul.” One poem after another takes us there, always surprisingly….The poetry is knowledgeable, wise, whimsical, challenging, loving, and draws from a wide repertoire-–paintings, farms, porches, family, the marketplace, loss, life. This collection is a foundation for recovery, for restoration, for inspiration. ~Anna Soter, is Professor Emerita at The Ohio State University, the author of Breathing Spaces.

 In Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat, Charlene Fix, noticing hair on her arms, places us not with "those positioned in High Places," occupying a separate link on The Great Chain of Being, but at ground level, humbly sharing the earth with our sister and brother animal life forms. Considering theirs and our dewlaps, calves, pigeon-toes and myriad transformations, in the manner of each species plying its gifts, Fix employs a nimble, powerful intellect and deep senses of humor and rhythm with empathy and understanding classically human, uniquely hers. -Jerry Roscoe, author of Solving for X 

Charlene Fix

The Pears

Poems

Larry Smith

Harmony Poetry Series

64 pgs. $15.00

"I don’t wish to give too much away, this book is your ticket. It’s your turn now to ride this glass-bottom boat across a new lake. You will hear music and see the wind smooth the waves as underwater blurs become crystal clear. One delight after another, Larry Smith has made these poems out of dreams and diners with memories on the menu."

~Allen Frost, author of Pinocchio in America

 I’ve been reading Larry Smith’s work for over 20 years. That’s long enough to make his work seem like it’s always been there, and maybe that’s because the people Larry writes about are ones I recognize: mill workers and farmers, waitresses and librarians. He writes about family and everyday concerns. Sometimes those are scrambled eggs. Sometimes they are snow birds. He is a very tactile poet.

 This new book shows someone who is not afraid to change, even after many books. Along with his normal meditative Zen insight, there’s a joyful surrealism here. Even the most black and white, photographic poems don’t take themselves too seriously and open us up.

 Smith’s people spend a lot of time waiting. They wait for money, for night, or for the dark laughter of an epiphany to hit as a hard as “a busload of bibles.”  These poems exist right outside of town in a peddler’s encampment where fairy tales and bad luck mingle with white bread and pennies. These are magical riddles made up of the real and the nearly so. Feast on them and dance.~Mike James

        Larry Smith

(photo by Ann Smith)

MAGGOT

Robert Flanagan

  "When it comes to novels written about boot camp life in the United States military, nothing compares to Robert Flanagan's revealing and wonderfully written classic, Maggot." 

                                       -Donald Ray Pollock                                                                      



A thousand miles from the nearest war zone--in a foreign country call the U.S. Marine Corps, a few good men are finding out what living hell is all about. The place: Parris Island, S.C. The time: basic training. For Tom Adamczyk and Joe Waite--two of the seventy raw recruits of Platoon 197--it's a bizarre and violent journey into degradation, fear, and confusion under the onslaught of drill instructor Sgt. Maguire. Maguire is out to turn lowly maggots into Marines--and he'll use any means he can. But when Maguire crosses the line between cruelty and sadism, and an official investigation is launched, each man is forced to make a choice between the truth and a lie. And for Adamczyk and Waite the choice will shape the rest of their lives--not as maggots, or Marines, but as men.


    Author Robert Flanagan

Without a Plea

Poems

by Jeff Gundy

“How can we put the eroded/loaded world back into language?” Jeff Gundy asks in his splendid new book Without a Plea.  His answer, in poem after adventurous poem, is that “the world is full/of little possibilities for love” if one stays in conversation with everyone and everything—from Bob Dylan to the Book of Job, from “grouchy” geese to the “sweet tangle of sound” from his own guitar.  Impish, probing, and expansive, Gundy’s poems reward the mind and replenish the spirit, “speaking truth in the most human way.” ~Lynn Powell, author of Season of Second Thought

 Jeff Gundy’s ambitious new collection Without a Plea plunges into the moral conundrum of our spectacularized interconnected world, where suffering and impotent witnessing abound. For Gundy, every privilege—including the making of art—is a likely subterfuge, even as it is a blessing. These poems reconnect us to the destinies we hold in common. I’m deeply grateful for them.

~Donald Morrill, author of Awaiting Your Impossibilities

Jeff Gundy

What Burden Do Those Trains

Bear Away: A Memoir in Poems

Kathleen S. Burgess



What Burden Do Those Trains Bear Away is an intriguing and evocative travelogue in which Kathleen S. Burgess interweaves the personal and the political in gorgeously lyrical ways. Her sensibilities for social justice and her recognition of the way historical record informs the present never suffer from sentimentality. Burgess’s dispatches enunciate the complexities of human experience while subtly embedding hope that there should always be a next time when humanity will do it better. ~Rikki Santer, author of Dodge, Tuck, Roll 

What a memory this poet has for details!.....Such incantatory repetitions and masterful turning of lines! Who doesn’t love a good story, especially one that reminds us of a generation’s youth even while speaking with profound relevance to the treatment of asylum seekers at our border in 2018? These poems offer a trip, a rush, all taken with a dose of compassion. The breath you feel on the back of your neck is the zeitgeist of a caring era, one that was, is, and will be again. ~Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat

 

Kathleen and "Ted" in 1972

and Kathleen today





Crows in the Jukebox
Poems

Mike James

Reading Crows in the Jukebox is like driving a race car at qualifying speeds—on a track you’ve never driven before. There are more curves than straight-aways in Mike’s James’s poetry, and each new turn brings surprises that are addictive. Navigating the imagery of Crows in the Jukebox is one wild, imaginative ride.  ~Lee Passarella, author of Redemption  

In his wonderful new collection, Crows in the Jukebox, Mike James explores among many topics, his hardscrabble patriarchy, marriage and family relationships, and the clarity and persistence of nature.  As in his other work, he often surprises the reader with jarring quips and closures as in “Talking with Allen Ginsberg, in a Dream:” “I can fit you in my shirt pocket,” or the remarkable metaphor for the artistic creative process, “Swimming in the Rain:” “when she swims she’s always alone/no one who watches is with her.” This volume establishes James as a poet of the first rank, one who swims alone.

                        ~Tim Peeler, author of L2: A Poetry Novel

108 pages   $16.00

     Author Mike James



Unbroken Circle: Stories of

Cultural Diversity in the South

Eds. Julia Watts and Larry Smith

 26 fine authors share stories that embrace cultural diversity in the South.

Including: Laura Argiri, Anna Cabe, James E Cherry, Haley Fedor, Nancy Gustafson, Melanie Haws, Randall Horton, David Hunter, Robin Lippincott, Jeff Mann, Okey Napier, Chris Offutt, Erin Paul, Lynn Pruett, Cynthia Rand, Tom Ray, Bonnie Schell, Lacey Schmidt, L. Mahayla Smith, Spaine Stephens, Charles Dodd White, Anne Whitehouse, Meredith Sue Willis, Katie Winkler 

 "In turbulent times, what we need is possibility, and in this rich gathering of diverse voices, Watts and Smith give us just that. A girl molds clay against her deaf brother’s ears to heal him. A gay man finds his Appalachian clan in a dark world. These are stories and essays about the blues, about poverty, about families lost and made. Unbroken Circle is about broken and unbroken lives, and ultimately, hope." —Karen Salyer McElmurray, author of Surrendered Child

 We are a people as varied as the Southern landscape, from the mountains of Appalachia to the deltas of Mississippi to the skyscrapers of Atlanta. We are black, white, Latino, Native American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and multiracial. We are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, atheist and agnostic. We are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, straight, and questioning. We are urban and rural, old and young, poor and rich, and all points in between. We are all these things, plus more that don’t fit into neat categories. The voices in this collection represent some of the diverse voices of our region. ~ Julia Watts, from the Introduction

 Cold Air Return: A Novel

Patrick Lawrence O'Keeffe

 "Cold Air Return is a coming-of-age story that rings true from its first words. The bonds of boyhood are tested by the dimly understood forces of race and class and religion. The first twinges of love are shadowed by an adult world where evil is real. O’Keeffe builds his story deftly, each character drawn with knowledge and care. The climax is at once foreshadowed and unexpected, leaving our humanity exposed. I could not put this book down." –Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack’s Memoirs: Off the Road

Cold Air Return is to be enjoyed on many levels. It is about tradition, prejudice, discovery, sex, and cultural values. The story explores who we are, probing the essence of family, camaraderie, community, love, and even baseball.” –Nancy Dunham, former non-fiction
editor of Heartlands Today

  Author

Patrick Lawrence O'Keeffe

A Small Room with Trouble on My Mind

and Other Stories

by Michael Henson

"Michael Henson is the Philip Levine of the urban Appalachian working class.  His writing is so immediate that you feel the vibrations of guitar strings and sirens, smell beer and sweat, and hear broken glass crunch under your feet. Nothing is pretty in this world, but much is beautiful, seen through Henson’s compassion for his characters and his clarity about generations wrecked by capitalism without conscience. It is our shame as a society that A Small Room with Trouble on My Mind speaks even louder in 2016 than it did when it was first published over thirty years ago. We need this book."   ~George Ella Lyon, author of Many-Storied House,

"Mike Henson’s A Small Room With Trouble On My Mind, with its gritty realism and almost utopian faith in the transformative power of art, it provides a compelling voice for yet another disenfranchised, marginalized, and still misunderstood group in American society. Originally published in 1983, Henson’s book continues to resonate. It’s great to have it back in print." ~Norman Finkelstein, Xavier University



 Author Michael Henson

"I love Jeanne Bryner's poetry for the way it pulls me out of being lost in relentless abstract thinking and returns me to the real world of nature and people who know how to live and work in it. Jeanne sees and feels the actual world and also meanings and metaphors, and then shares her vision and her feelings in language that for me brings the word "health" to mind and then becomes: love, of the most generous kind. Love, strength and beauty radiate from Jeanne's poems as, indeed, they do from herself, personally."  -Gurney Norman, Kentucky author

          Jeanne Bryner 

 Brown Bottle

A Novel

by Sheldon Lee Compton

Wade “Brown Bottle” Taylor is an alcoholic uncle trying to protect his nephew Nick from the hardness of their region, Eastern Kentucky, and the world in general. To end Nick's involvement with drugs and drug dealers in the area, Brown must first save himself, overcoming a lifetime spent convinced he is unworthy. Brown Bottle's journey is one of selflessness and love, redemption and sacrifice, if only for a time.

 "Sheldon Lee Compton is a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown, and Brown Bottle is his best work yet."

~ Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time…..

"Sheldon Lee Compton is one of the new young breed of Kentucky writers--talented, fearless, and strong--bringing us word from the hills."

~ Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight



  Author Sheldon Lee Compton  

  Voices from the

Appalachian Coalfields

Mike and Ruth Yarrow

Photographs by Douglas Yarrow

As I write this, the death knell of Appalachian coal is being sounded.  Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, coal mining will only support a few people in the region.  Mike and Ruth Yarrow have performed a great service.  In Voices From the Appalachian Coalfields they have preserved the voices of the men and women who performed the dangerous work of mining in order to power the nation through the 20th century.  Coal miners have received little thanks for their sacrifice.  Perhaps these voices will remind us that the remaining miners deserve support as they face an uncertain future. ~Denise Giardina, author of Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth

This is an important contribution to Appalachian and Working Class studies. Grounded in the lives of Appalachian coal miners and their wives facing harsh economic times, these poems offer a vivid picture of their thoughts, emotions, fears, anger, struggles and courage. Hear their voices. Learn from them. Be inspired by them.  ~Steve Fisher, co-editor of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia

Link to Review in US Review of Books

Drone String

Poems

Sherry Cook Stanforth

“In this fully mature first book, Sherry Cook Stanforth braids together place, family, and music in imagery that ranges from homey as “hominy and banjos” to taut as a dulcimer’s string. Drone String re-members the familial past, and imagines how, through the integrative
power of tradition and memory, that past is part of now, insistent and intact.

Vivid portraits and telling anecdotes remind us that all our lives are worthy, full
of stories and meaning. A professor-musician, and part of a family band for decades, Stanforth has an ear for how people really sound, and for how poetry dances language into song.”    ~Dick Hague, author of Where Drunk Men Go

92 pgs.  $16.00

Author Sherry Cook Stanforth

Salvatore and Maria

Finding Paradise

Paul L. Gentile

Paul Gentile takes you along on Salvatore’s journey as he leaves Italy in 1902, works in the mines of Colorado, falls in love with Maria and moves to the Pittsburgh area to work in the mills. Like so many of that time, Salvatore rarely complains and takes his greatest joy in his family. The story that Gentile weaves here will ring true to nearly everyone in America. This book is for historians as well as those who enjoy a good family story.  ~Kathleen Ganster

Through fine writing and a remarkable level of research, Paul L. Gentile’s book is a compelling read, a powerful reminder of our shared history as American immigrants. ~Karen Kotrba

                                                                270 pgs. $18.00                                                                           

 Author, Paul L. Gentile

Jack's Memoirs: Off the Road

A Novel

by Kurt Landefeld

If Jack Kerouac had lived, what might he have done and written? Kurt Landefeld opens the doors on this for us in his remarkable novel.

"This is a moving tribute to Kerouac, whom  Kurt Landefeld brilliantly resurrects in this imaginative triumph. He gives  Kerouac a new lease on life (in more ways than one) in this finely executed novel.  It’s a 'must read' for anyone who values Kerouac, the Sixties, and the created worlds of those whose eyes see what might have been. Bravo.”  ~Dennis Baumwoll, professor emeritus Bucknell  University 

"Against all odds, Kurt Landefeld has located another fold within Jack Kerouac's watery heart. This road loa à gogo jolts us one more time toward a deep, intentional, and moral narrative, which is the perennial kernel speaking simultaneously through Landefeld and all the great American angels that memory honors". ~Kenneth Warren, author of Captain Poetry's Sucker Punch

290 pgs.  $20

Author Kurt Landefeld

Excellent  Youtube of author reading from Jack's Memoir: Off the Road

 Reviewed by Peter M. Fitzpatrick in US Review of Books

 Sept. 2014

The author has provided close to six hundred pages of an extended meditation on Kerouac, America in 1970, and the role and function of literature. This is in concert with Kerouac's own Buddhist leanings and methodologies. He has invented a patchwork of historical introspection, poetic flourish, and psychological investigation reminiscent of Dostoyevsky's "Underground Man." Both are sick men, first person interlocutors who ruthless analyze their moral failings. The character arc is long and engagingly ornate. The language ranges from prosaic to poetic in seductive evocation that drives the reader forward seeking redemption along with the novel's narrator. Like a Kerouac novel, the plot is secondary, but that does not mean drama and interest are absent. This Kerouac is perhaps more friendly, more honest, more accessible than the one so distant in time. The author clearly loves his subject, and his creative effort shows intelligence combined with a gentle handling that justifies the effort. It is courageous, not cavalier. US Review...complete review link



Larry Smith writes of life's constant and precious things--sunrises, birds, gardens, breakfasts, dogs, front porches and back yards. Teachers and poets. Parents and children. Those things that do not go away. Here is the conscious realization of all of them together as one in a personal matrix as simple and pure as the music of the moon.       - mark s. kuhar, author of mercury in retrograde

Seasoned poems by  veteran writer.

 218 pages   $18

(See also as Amazon Kindle Book)

Sandusky Register Article on Book

Author

 Larry Smith

 

 

Green-Silver and Silent: Poems

"Marc Harshman knows these people, these places, and he has the wisdom of someone who knows when to be quiet, when to watch, and listen, so that he can come to us and tell these heart-felt stories. These poems earn their keep, weaving together the physical and spiritual worlds in a landscape that can both sustain us and break our hearts."  -Jim Daniels, author of Show and Tell: Selected Poems

 *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize

                                             Author Marc Harshman