Bücher veröffentlicht von Press 53

Two-time winner of the American Fiction Prize, Clint McCown offers up Music for Hard Time: New & Selected Stories. Short fiction master David Jauss says, "[McCown] writes stories that are consistently moving, wise, and funny."

Kathleen McGookey's "latest collection, Instructions for My Imposter, is an irresistible read: sixty-three resonant and lovingly polished works that sing their stories with only a few well-chosen details and images. The prose poem is an overnight bag which the writer must pack carefully, given there's room only for essentials. Most of McGookey's prose poems run fewer than two hundred words." (Clare MacQueen) "In these stunning prose poems-full of family and beautiful birds, loss and quiet observation, color and so much light-McGookey has written lines that will blind you with a luminescence that springs from precision and tender attention to detail. Her explorations of daily life are by turns yearning, metaphorical, and grounded in the holy ordinary." (Anne-Marie Oomen)

The twin subjects of love and death run through Ray Morrison's book like a freight train rumbling slowly late at night across a countryside overcome with sadness and loss. I Hear the Human Noise is a masterful collection of short stories, and Morrison is proof that, even in these narcissistic, technologically driven times we're living in, there are still people out there who care deeply about what it means to just be human. -Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table

Bully Love, Patricia Colleen Murphy's second book, won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry, selected by Poetry Series Editor Tom Lombardo. Bully Love follows the poet from Ohio to Arizona, from cows and cornfields to the Sonoran Desert, from youth to middle age, from daughter to orphan, from child to childfree, from loneliness to love. As the poet leaves a broken home to build a new life for herself, she struggles to adapt to a land teaming with dangers. Against a searing sunny backdrop, the poems describe how she makes peace with an inhospitable life and landscape as she overcomes hardships such as madness, death, depression, fear, anger, loneliness, heat, and hills. She ultimately finds beauty in the desert Edward Abbey called, "not the most suitable of environments for human habitation." The poems in Bully Love examine the long-term effects of displacement: a mother displaced from her home by mental illness, a women displaced from the Midwest to the Southwest, a girl scout camp displaced by a Uranium processing plant, desert wildlife displaced by urban sprawl and mining, wilderness displaced by careless tourists, ranches displaced by freeways, solitude displaced by companionship, fear displaced by joy. The collection examines how humans form relationships with both landscapes and lovers, all through the eyes of a woman who leaves a forlorn home, suffers relentless loss, and falls in love in and with one of the world's harshest ecosystems.

Hunger to Share might be called narrative poetry, but Bresnahan thinks and observes lyrically. She is full of a hungry love-for music, art, nature, and for disparate places and cultures (Woodworth). These arresting, compelling, and moving poems take us on journeys in Asian locales, in Appalachian landscapes, and in the arena of relationships (Barr). Bresnahan...takes the reader...on an unforgettable journey to destinations as placid as a Northern Wisconsin lake, to the complex panorama of present-day Southeast Asia, and to the interior realms of grief, courage, and love (Taylor).

An engrossing, fanciful collection of stories, written with insight, wisdom, and humor, O Monstrous World! is full of cinematic plot twists and literary miracles. These are stories about lawmakers, karate teachers, antique dealers, monster hunters, and even professors told with authority and humor. Josh Woods skillfully melds fantasy with reality, putting his characters to the test, determined to find their moral compass. In the end, he finds their hearts. There are monsters among us, but, more often, there are unlikely heroes. A joy to read from start to finish. -Margaret McMullan

To Be the Difference by Willie James King is filled with ". . .bare-boned, scalpel-edged verse [that] reverses and heals the mad maladies of our time" (Michael Martone); it is "Musical, passionate, and compassionate, without any airs or mask" (LaWanda Walters), and "The poems celebrate the courage of loved ones and petition for human rights not yet fully realized and still at risk. King's words are always hopeful and outlined with wisdom, clarity, and light" (Beth Copeland).

The Dictionary of Unspeakable Noise: New & Selected Poems 1975-2018 shows how Clint McCown ". . .keeps a wry eye on the universe and thereby keeps his sanity and ours." And why "He is asking all or most of the big questions, which are still the right questions," according to Roger Mitchell. Matthew Dickman says that McCown's poetry ". . .delves into the unruly world of nature, not as a guide or simply as scenery, but with the steady gaze of the late John Haines. Here nature, family, and selfhood are not just talked about but explored and questioned." Open this book to any page and you'll find Clint McCown turning the universe over and over in his mind to find the answers to his sometimes unusual and always perceptive questions.