Bøger udgivet af Unsolicited Press

Grave Reading is the story of a widower surviving loneliness, spiritual isolation, and the tribulations and trivialities of daily life, a journey that starts with nothing more than mementos: his wife's nightgown, her hand-painted lacquer tray, some "seashells and fossils in a shoebox." As the years pass, he travels through realms of loss and emptiness-his own aging and illness, his inner ugliness and outward anger-but gradually rediscovers the love that "lights a memory of her face" and opens the possibility of finding her again in his own heart, where he "left her last / on a hilltop by the sea."

Great Divide is a novel about memory, the power of the past to shape and subsume the present, and the pressing, terrible need to escape the drowning force of history. The reader inhabits the conflicted and mercurial interior of Jane, a young woman fleeing from years of abuse in her Oregon seacoast home to an uncertain freedom with her boyfriend in the landlocked new world of the Kansas plains. As Jane travels, her progress is threatened by nostalgia and attachment, responsibility and ambivalence, and, finally, by a massive flood which threatens to overwhelm both her past and her future. Great Divide is a novel precariously afloat atop a sea of time, at once alluring and threatening, beckoning us to dive in.

James the octopus and his friends lived happily on Rainbow Reef. One day the friends woke up to find hundreds of fishing hooks hanging above their reef. Scared of getting hurt, they decided to leave the reef and find a new home. They began a long journey through the oceans to find the perfect place to live.

Attic Pieces is a debut collection of narrative poems covering a variety of themes set in rural towns as well as big cities, as seen through the eyes of the old and young alike. To a veteran astronaut unsure of home, to a soldier afraid to leave his, to a fishing town and farmer in their last days; each poem invites the reader into an intimate corner of everyday life.

THE WOMEN, a short story collection by Sommer Schafer, tests women in everyday situations in which the challenge requires a unique, and sometimes fantastical, approach.In 'Mary and the Machine,' the main character desperately usurps a comfort meant exclusively for her newborn. In 'My Little Pet,' the main character finds an unusual and mysterious creature on her doorstep one morning who initially seems to offer her the love she has always desired. In 'The Women,' a women-only book club takes a bloody turn, and in 'The Trappings,' a new mother finds herself and her toddler lost in a wild Alaskan forest until stumbling across a cabin hiding in the woods.

The Beginner's Guide to Minor Gods & Other Small Spirits reels from poetry to prose to mythical field guide in a matter of pages, leaping between genres and embracing the surreal. Kimberly Ramos finds minor gods across disciplines: meet the swirling black abyss that lives in internet question forums, or better yet, spend a moment with the humble hero of biology, the fruit fly. Fusing imagery from astrophysics and anatomy with symbols from folklore and pop culture, this "Frankenstein's monster" of a book is a delightful stitching of unusually harmonious odds and ends. Readers will enjoy journeying through this bestiary of oddness. Traverse lunar maria, tip toe past dolphin-man hybrids, and spelunk through the long-abandoned lead mines of Southern Missouri. From the "hazy shapes and staggered light" of minnows to the "jagged maw" of one's familial past, Ramos searches for the small theophanies present in the everyday. Even more, this journey is just as humorous as it is earnest: watch Socrates get blackout drunk at a house party, admire the secret love lives of face mites, and pity God, who cannot afford a phone plan but instead communicates using a simple tin can and string. Part spellbook, part Midwestern mythos, The Beginner's Guide to Minor Gods & Other Small Spirits is an ode to the interconnectedness of the sciences, the arts, and history. Have a seat and take part in this "dream blunt rotation" of cloud-obsessed scientists, monstrous philosophers, and strangers on the internet.

Cormorant is a work of contrition. The poems are political and personal. A response to the federal government's plan to kill thousands of cormorants in the name of salmon recovery and a tribute to the person who died from heartbreak because of it.

Roy Robbins is an award-winning playwright with four plays and, more recently, a book of poems to his credit. North is his debut novel. Robbins studied poetry with James Dickey at the University of South Carolina, theater in New York, and literature at the University of Virginia. His most recent work, a book of poetry entitled Poster Art Nights, was published in 2015. Robbins lives in rural Virginia with his wife, the author Susan Pepper Robbins, who writes novels about the South and teaches writing at Hampden-Sydney College.

How to Monetize Despair is a captivating exploration of a wide range of subjects and ideas, from traumatic loss and the sorrows of human relationships to the natural but absurd world of neurotic caterpillars and philosophical cockroaches. With a unique blend of imagery, self-help inspired titles, and Mottolo's peculiar brand of humor, this collection takes readers on a one-of-a-kind journey through human experience. This collection is a must-read for anyone seeking to explore the complexities of trauma and struggle, and to encounter a sea creature or butterfly along the way.

No ecological system is without conflict. Uncomfortable Ecologies is an exploration of relationships and their tenuous nature. Levinson explores the domestic and wild, the macro and the micro, the familiar and the other, the objective and the confessional. These poems seek to uncover vulnerabilities within ecologies as a bridge to a new level of understanding and intimacy. The speaker parallels the irreparable losses faced in our environment due to habitat destruction and climate change with the challenges of families facing poverty and addiction. Trees shatter in extreme weather, oceans rinse a family of their dreams, wolves protect one another by inflicting pain. But the pain is punctuated by moments of visceral tenderness, a bird in a hand, the velvet of a bee. Difficult choices made for the sake of love. The very heart of this book is the belief that our disconnection from nature is a disconnection from each other. The heart of this book is grief and loss, but the hope of this book is healing.

What if we "Fast forward a hundred years?" as the first poem in The Book of Leavening asks. Would our "voices turn votives: every hour/ candling from windowsill to sea"? Would we "find fortune in last casts of light?" These poems are deeply concerned with imagining a future far beyond our current lives. Through free verse poems mixed with ghazals, the poet considers not simply the joys and storms of our current lives, but also how those joys and storms will ripple into future generations. Wrestling with questions of how the personal affects the universal, these poems interrogate milestones and rituals--marriage, childbirth, the loss of friends and relatives--to explore how these common passages feel from the inside. They also question the vows we make, personally, and as a civilization: "What can I do to love/ the way I promised?" What happens, when our world seems to make it ever more difficult to define and live out one's values? What does one hear, when one listens deeply to what the landscape tells us? This narrator finds hope and even salvation in that deep listening; as she states, "I listen at times to backs of bread,/ backs of books, fronts of hands. Listen/ so long, I question if anyone courts/ noise anymore." There may be no simple solutions--but, through the act of paying close attention, and directing compassion at what she sees, the poet shines a light on a hopeful path forward.

In the Bodies is a collection of poetry for shapeshifting. The poems investigate possibilities of mutual transformation, as our relational encounters with others co-create meaning, poetry, environment, and even our bodies. What might we co-create when we press against the taught borders of body, of place, of time, of what is accepted as possible and holy? These poems press, inviting readers to get in the bodies of other creatures, people, and places-to taste what melts their tongues, feel their bone breaks, scry through their eyes, sense the world rotating through their dirt and updrafts, shift shape, and maybe sprout new growth together in shared gardens.

In Take the Lively Air, a minor traffic collision escalates into a confrontation between two families haunted by their pasts and apprehensive of their futures. Rage and regret butt heads against the background of America's toxic cultural climate. But saner voices discover that human frailties are best viewed through the microscope of compassion, and our common humanity must be acknowledged to make way for our futures.

In her debut essay collection, Sarah K. Lenz explores the question: How do you live knowing you're going to die? Lenz touches on moments when death brushed near, including a house fire, a car accident, and a police shooting, but in each case, the violent and tragic are interwoven with curiosity and insight. With clarity and grace, Lenz takes on a wide-range of topics. From the discovery of a post-mortem photograph of her great-uncles who were killed by lightning to the quotidian pancake-making days with her preschooler son while the COVID-19 pandemic raged, Lenz confronts the complexities of being sandwiched between aging parents and a young child, while also navigating her own thyroid cancer diagnosis. In the midst of this, Lenz finds herself comforting her father, who's fixated with where to spread his ashes in "Driving the Section Line, " and imagining all the ways her baby can die when suffering postpartum depression in "So Many Ways." Though the subjects are serious, often life or death matters, Lenz tells these stories with warmth and wisdom. The narrative is buoyed by breathtaking honesty-and a bit of the grotesque-like a misguided attempt to cook a whole hog's head from her beloved, late grandmother's recipe. This book is a moving, heartfelt meditation on how to face mortality, how to grieve, but most importantly, how to awaken to the ephemeral beauty of the world. This book is a powerful reminder that what will outlast us is those we love.

Traversing American landscapes both outer and inner, these poems veer from the personal to the political and back as they try to make sense of a senseless age. Dreams and distance, shootings and storms, viruses and violence. These poems confront all the forces that mark our troubled present and point the way to an uncertain future.

I'm Jayme is a story by the acclaimed author Susan Pepper Robbins. I'm Jayme is a touching and heartfelt story that touches on themes from family to dealing with trauma. Susan Pepper Robbins lives in rural Virginia where she grew up. Her first novel was published when she was fifty ("One Way Home," Random House, 1993). Her fiction has won prizes (the Deep South Prize, the Virginia Prize) and has been published in journals. Her collection of stories is "Nothing But the Weather" and was published by the indie press Unsolicited Press, as was the novel "Local Speed." "There Is Nothing Strange," a novel was published in England in 2016, (Holland House Books). Her stories focus on the drama of ordinary lives. She retired from teaching writing at Hampden-Sydney College and wrote a dissertation on Jane Austen at the University of Virginia.

Mary's growing dementia not only ends her teaching career, but also leads to her losing the family dog. The patience that has kept their marriage afloat for 39 years gives way to the stress as her husband suffers a heart attack.Their adult children attempt to help out but it's difficult to accept that your parents will die one day-and that day might be soon.Mary finds herself drawn to a specific place. And as strangers inexplicably tell her, she just needs to figure out where that is while she still can.The family must choose between finding a new way to support themselves and helping Mary make one last salient memory while it's still possible. And they must do this while the sun burns out, flocks of birds fall dead from the sky, and buildings full of people disappear in an instant.

MISTLETOE MAGIC AND OTHER HOLIDAY TALES is about the wonder and excitement of the holiday season, as shown through the experiences of the characters in these eight stories.Stories include:Lucinda and the Christmas List - A young woman needs a dose of elf-magic to regain her Christmas spirit. (Originally published in Peripheral Visions and Other Stories)The Snow Globe - An elderly woman, through a gift from her late husband, finds a way to fill her empty house and life. (Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)The Little Red Sock - Despite past disappointments, a little boy still believes that Santa will come.Twelve Days Before Christmas - A harried mother of three learns that, despite a series of mishaps, the season is always better when shared with family. (Originally published in Bethlehem Writers Roundtable)Christmas Present - A middle-aged woman is reminded that the best Christmas presents are those we give to others.Charley Catches the Christmas Spirit - A seemingly straightforward case of credit card fraud leads to a surprising and heartwarming conclusion for the thief, the victim, and the team from Adams Investigation Service.Holiday Reunion - A young woman realizes that even unexpected (and somewhat irritating) houseguests can make the holiday special.Mistletoe Magic - The characters in these four interlinked vignettes find that a simple mistletoe decoration can lead to an outcome that is more than what was expected or hoped for.

Selected as one of PopMatters 2023 Best Books, WINDOW EYES is a must-read. Jennifer Vega wrote, "The depth and complexity of Philip Jason's Window Eyes become fully apparent when we step back and think about the many stories he has folded into one, the laminated, exponential layers of storytelling created by his frame structure and secondary narrator. In the outermost layer of Window Eyes, we are reading a novel about a man telling us about his friend's book. Go in one layer, and we are reading that re-telling. In still a third layer, the unnamed protagonist of Kellan's book tells his golem the story of the hero Window Eyes, who has vanished and is being forever sought by Glassman, who loves her."In the wake of a tragedy, eccentric comic book artist and writer Kellan Savoy created one final work and then disappeared. That work, a series about a man who tries to make a golem to replace his dead lover, is presented here for the first time: Window Eyes is a collection of annotated issue summaries summoned from the memories of the only person to read the work before it vanished with Kellan, Kellan's best friend Thomas Levi, who hopes that in sharing it, he might be able to shed some light on the mystery of its creation and disappearance.

As Timothy Dugan makes his way through life, he is beset by a growing list of problems.His girlfriend, a full-time college student, wants to have a baby, he hates his job, and his mother announces that she and his father, long divorced, plan to remarry. He copes by drinking too much. When his mother suggests it's time for another round of therapy, Timothy loudly resists. He knows his outlook is sour and vows to do better. Then Harcourt, a former fraternity brother, presents him with an attractive business opportunity to get in on a home-building business, and things start to look up. Timothy happily resigns his position as manager of the local GAP store. Harcourt, however, has a bad habit of cutting corners to save money and things fall apart. Timothy feels the best way to get his feet back under him is to nail things down with Sam, so he buys her an insanely expensive engagement ring she says is all wrong. She comes around to the idea of marriage after meeting Melissa, Timothy's former girlfriend, who has a son Timothy didn't know about. Timothy's feelings are stirred up by Melissa's presence, and he goes into a slow-motion train wreck. Promise after promise is broken until Sam reaches a breaking point. She's committed to Timothy, but their future is dark. Will her love light the way again? Or has she finally had enough?

Sequence Dancing: a different type of ballroom dancing where couples dance to a named and well-practised sequence of steps to sixteen bars of music. Repeating that sequence five or six times. Moving around the dance floor in the same direction and at the same tempo. Together. But really, she adds, you need to see it, to properly understand.THE SEQUENCE DANCE is another riveting short story collection from Nova Scotia author, S.B. Borgersen.

NIGHT HAG speaks of femininity through the eternal mouth of Lilith, the first woman.¿¿Subterfugestained cloth gusset lined with cotton traces of lace grace the front face and flowers so many flowers purple and pink concealed by the flow no- the flood of an unexpected collapse of uterine lining early or late its timing had slipped off the calendar gone unnoticed now the search for supplies begins the furtive quest the bleeding heroine's journey to escape the attentions of every major and minor player in this chapter of her story the dispenser appears loaded but she has no spare change in her pockets no will to ask for a loan because lending grants permission to ask questions gain answers and access to classified intelligence so plan b is to ascertain the degree of the leak and the damage done from the blackish burgundy endometrial tide that reeks of dead fish washed up on a sultry June beach fold and wad one-ply toilet paper into a makeshift pad remove sweatshirt and tie sleeves securely around waist ward off the urge to slink back to trig unnoticed they will see through attempts at stealth coldly calculate that strutting in late reeking of Marlboro Reds provides the necessary smokescreen to remain undetected.

A rust belt city in decline retains the solace of romance, which often proves to be an empty promise or even a curse. With a wry perspective and unflappable determination, Curt embodies all the town's ills, including his own problems with drinking, work, and relationships, as he tries to save himself and rescue his friends in his own unconventional and unlawful ways. In The Bridge on Beer River, a novel-in-stories set in Reagan-era Binghamton, New York, characters scramble for subsistence while hoping for love and a better life.

At the center of The Ballad of Two Sisters are Stella and Helen, two sisters who die on the same day. One fragile and one strong, the sisters confront the troubles of the past and the uncertainty of the future as they seek connection, joy, and completion. Though at times circuitous, the paths the sisters travel ultimately lead them back to each other, until finally, they can never be parted.

Fearing the future laid out for him by his father, recent college grad Jacob Constantine accepts an offer to work in Germany for a year. When his ex-girlfriend Diedre suddenly attempts to rekindle their relationship, the unexpected presence of the past castsa shadow over everything. With the help of a new environment and some new friends, Jake tries to navigate his emotions in Germany. But as he speeds toward his predetermined future, it seems that nothing can keep the dark secrets from the past from being stirred up in Diedre's wake.

What is the love poem's function? Does it eternally preserve the beloved as they actually are, or does it warp and suffocate them, locking them inside stanzas and lines from which they will never escape? In Ventric(L)e, Jerrod E. Bohn dissects the heart's labyrinthine structure. The organ is an intricate house, full of delight, surprise, and possibility; however, its chambers are also walled, barred. The heart is equally a cage. What began as a series of love poems took a turn with the relationship's erosion. Are the poems themselves at fault? Did the page become the prison from which the beloved struggled to break free, and when they couldn't, did it hasten the physical act of leaving? And what remains behind when the beloved is gone? Are they still entrapped even when another comes along? Through meditations dense with sorrow and hope, the sacred and the profane, Bohn explores the love poem's power to both create and destroy.

In this stunning abecedarian poetry collection by Susanna Lang, the words come to comfort, to exhilirate, and to ignite. Lang's e-chapbook, Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, was released by Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics in June 2021, and her translation of Baalbek by Nohad Salameh was published in October 2021 by Atelier du Grand Tétras. Her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published in 2017 by Terrapin Books. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, december magazine, Delos, New Poetry in Translation, American Life in Poetry and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language by Yves Bonnefoy, and she is now working with Souad Labbize and Hélène Dorion on new translations.

Queen Anne Cowboy is like rain on a windshield, breaking up the dust. The rain is a singer-songwriter named Terrell Jamestone, telling the story of his kid brother, Ethan, a seventh grader who scored high enough on the SATs to skip ahead to college, but cuts himself with a razor blade late at night. The dust is the kind of trouble that hides in good neighborhoods. Maybe you know something about that. Guiding Ethan from self-harm towards compassion, Terrell still succumbs to his own inner demons, abandoning his dreams to alcohol. The daughter he leaves behind, Belinda, grows up to be wild and strong, an aspiring teenage poet hurting from his absence. Crossing into adulthood, Ethan tries to repay his brother's kindness by looking after her. Ten years pass-ten years of rainforests and meditation, bad romances and road trips, public schools and gentrification, alternative colleges and mass incarceration, polyamory and drug addiction, house shows and red wine-before Terrell comes home again.

The fictional Sunset Inn is a seedy motel with a storied past on a neglected block of Hollywood Boulevard. In twenty linked tales, Motel Stories takes an empathetic deep dive into the eccentricities and troubled lives of the diverse guests who check in to this refuge of last resort-for either pleasure or escape, and always an interrupted night's sleep. Edward, the motel's cynical but occasionally accommodating manager, confronts a daily cast of ever-changing characters. A man who dances with dolls. Central American immigrants from civil war celebrating their honeymoon. The addict mother of a newborn infant facing a fateful reunion with her long-lost brother. A disgraced politician forced into hiding. A Vietnamese mama's boy waiting to meet his foreign bride. An elderly couple checking in to the same room where they first met sixty years earlier.¿Four interrelated stories complete the collection. A Filipina internet bride struggles to maintain her autonomy in suburban America. A teenage boy flees his hometown to escape persecution. A female impersonator replaces her glamorous mentor on stage. A gay, middle-aged gallery owner confronts his own errant past when his troubled teenage nephew visits. William Torphy portrays these characters with both empathy and wry humor, revealing their universal desire for love and connection, recognition and security. Sometimes raw, and often humorous, this timely debut collection pierces through both the loneliness and the humanity of distressed outliers temporarily set adrift by circumstance in the American underbelly.