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The Last Selchie Child by Jane Yolen

Selchie_cubiertas-2

 

My father's stories
were tightly held.
He was stingy
with the past,
coining what
he could not remember,
parceling out the rest
with the cautious philanthropy
of a miser.

From "Family Stories"


He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
            picking the weft threads,
            threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:

From "The Storyteller"

Magical transformations, enchanted mirrors, talking animals, familiar tales in unfamiliar guises, all these and more are found in the pages of The Last Selchie Child.

Retellings of archetypal myths and fairy tales and the nature of storytelling itself are explored in this new collection of poems by Jane Yolen.

 

Jane Yolen has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century.

She has published over 300 books, for children and adults, and her writing has won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award, among many others.

Her most recent poetry collections for adults include Things to Say to a Dead Man (Holy Cow Press), The Radiation Sonnets (Algonquin), and the forthcoming Ekaterinslav (Holy Cow Press). She divides her time between Massachussetts and Scotland.



THE LAST SELCHIE CHILD
by Jane Yolen

Fabula Rasa 04

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-9-4
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-9-X

Poetry/Fairy Tales
66 pages/perfect bound
Pub date: 15 May 2012

US: $14.95

FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS!

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Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry

Tiny milkhoney
 

In this land of Milk & Honey, poems flow. Contemporary Jewish, lesbian poets address an array of experiences – relationships between and among women, family relationships, politics, solitude, ethical responsibilities, history, solidarity, and community.

Milk & Honey features beloved poets like Ellen Bass, Robin Becker, Elana Dykewomon, Marilyn Hacker, Eleanor Lerman, Joan Nestle, Lesléa Newman and Ellen Orleans, as well as new and emerging voices.

With language and imagery that moves from the sensual and political to the tender and serene, Milk & Honey explores the vibrant, complicated, exhilarating experience of being Jewish and lesbian—or queer—in the world today.

Julie R. Enszer’s first book of poems is Handmade Love (A Midsummer Night’s Press). She has published also published the chapbook Sisterhood (Seven Kitchens Press). She has an MFA from the University of Maryland and is enrolled currently in the PhD program in Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland.


MILK AND HONEY: A CELEBRATION OF JEWISH LESBIAN POETRY
edited by Julie R. Enszer

Body Language 07

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-8-7
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-8-1

Poetry/Lesbian Studies/Jewish Studies
86 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 September 2011
US: $14.95
Europe: €11

FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS!

 

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Fairy Tales in Electri-City

the fairies came to her yellow house
with orchids and sparkling lemonade
they sat in her living room and wrote with her lightning
and though she was happy
she wept because something was still missing
            From "Fairy Tales in Electri-city"

Electri_cover001

Elves and centaurs, nymphs and fauns inhabit this new collection of magical, erotic poems about a girl yearning for and searching for love in present-day Los Angeles.

Francesca Lia Block has described her work as “contemporary fairy tales with an edge,” where the real world and its trouble find solace through the magic of creative expression and love.

She has received numerous honors, including the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award and the Phoenix Award, as well as citations from the American Library Association, The New York Times Book Review, and School Library Journal.

Her many previous titles include the bestselling Weetzie Bat series (HarperCollins), the erotic fairy tale collection Nymph (Circlet), poetry collections How to (Un) Cage a Girl (HarperCollins) and Open Letter to Quiet Light (Manic D), and the mythological dating guide Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur (Bloomsbury), among many others. She lives in Los Angeles.


FAIRY TALES IN ELECTRI-CITY
by Francesca Lia Block

Fabula Rasa 03

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-7-0
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-7-3

Poetry/Fairy Tales

80 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 March 2011
US: $13.95

FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS!

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CFS for 2 anthologies of Jewish gay and lesbian poetry

A Midsummer Night's Press
announces a call for submissions
for two anthologies celebrating queer Jewish poetry:

FLAMBOYANT:
A CELEBRATION OF JEWISH GAY POETRY
edited by Lawrence Schimel

and

MILK AND HONEY:
A CELEBRATION OF JEWISH LESBIAN POETRY
edited by Julie R. Enszer

to be published in Spring 2011.

We are looking for poems that celebrate and question, meditate and intimate, argue and reconcile contemporary queer Jewish identity. What is queer Jewish experience in the twenty-first century? What poetry expresses queer Jewishness today?

Whether you write about interfaith queer parenting, cruising in shul, how it feels to sign a ketubah in a country that won't recognize our same-sex marriages, fetishizing a sheggitz or being fetishized, we want to read about it and share it with others who want to read it as well.

What are our sacred texts for today? If they don't yet exist, write them. What are our queer Jewish blessings, curses and prayers.

While there is a rich tradition of queer Jewish writers who have made an indelible mark on our literature over the years, from Gertrude Stein and Adrienne Rich to Allen Ginsburg and Edward Field, we are looking for work that reflects queer Jewish identity in the new (secular) millennium. As such, we are open either to unpublished work, or work that was published since 2000 (this would include work originally published in a magazine or anthology before 2000, which was later collected in a book published after 2000).

We welcome voices from across the spectrum of Jewish identity, from observant to merely cultural, and their intersections with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender identities and experiences.

We are open to all styles of poetry, from formal to free verse.

We welcome queer Jewish voices from outside the US, and are willing to consider translations into English. (It is the translator's responsibility to secure permission to reprint the poem in English.)

Both anthologies are open to previously published work, but it is the poet's responsibility to secure permission to reprint the poem.

We welcome work from Jewish trans poets, so long as the content of the work is relevant to either gay or lesbian experience.

There is no limit to the number of poems which may be submitted, so long as the Jewish and queer content are both relevant.

Submission instructions:

1) Title file with the initials of the anthology and author's last name: F-Surname.doc or MH-Surname.doc
2) Include your name, your mailing address, your email address, and a bio WITHIN the .doc file with your essay, as submissions will be separated from emails to be read.
3) Submit your work by email, as an attachment in .doc or .rtf format, to queerjewishpoetry@gmail.com

Deadline: November 30, 2010.

Payment will be three copies of the anthology per contributor.

About the editors:

Lawrence Schimel is the author or anthologist of over 100 books, including FOUND TRIBE: JEWISH COMING OUT STORIES, KOSHER MEAT, BEST GAY POETRY 2008, FIRST PERSON QUEER, PoMoSEXUALS: CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT GENDER AND SEXUALITY, TWO BOYS IN LOVE, THE FUTURE IS QUEER, etc. He has won the Lambda Literary Award (twice), an Independent Publisher Book Award, the Spectrum Award, and other honors. He writes in both English and Spanish, and his work has been translated into 27 languages.

Julie R. Enszer is the author of the poetry collection HANDMADE LOVE (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2010) and the chapbook SISTERHOOD (Seven Kitchens Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in numerous Jewish, feminist and queer publications, including BRIDGES, JEWISH WOMEN'S LITERARY ANNUAL, SINISTER WISDOM, CALYX, WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS, FEMINIST STUDIES, WASHINGTON BLADE, LAMBDA BOOK REPORT, etc. She is also the founder of the Lesbian Poetry Archive.

About the publisher:
A Midsummer Night's Press is an independent poetry publisher, publishing primarily in two imprints: 1) Fabula Rasa, dedicated to work inspired by myth and fairy tale, which has published FORTUNE'S LOVER: A BOOK OF TAROT POEMS by Rachel Pollack and FAIRY TALES FOR WRITERS by Lawrence Schimel, and 2) Body Language, devoted to queer poetry, which has published THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED IN OUR OTHER LIFE by Achy Obejas; BANALITIES by Brane Mozetic, translated by Elizabeti Zargi; HANDMADE LOVE by Julie R. Enszer; and MUTE by Raymond Luczak. http://www.amidsummernightspress.com

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Mute

Do not be afraid of your face.
Move into a beam of light
in the bar.  Smile openly.
Watch his hands move
quicker than strobe lights
as he surveys the crowd with his friends.
Do not think of how hard
it might be to have a casual
conversation.

From “How to Fall for a Deaf Man”

MUTE_portada baja
 

Silence is always a powerful statement, but even more so in the hands of Raymond Luczak, who demonstrates in his third collection what it’s like to navigate between the warring languages of confusion and clarity. 

As a deaf gay man in the hearing world, he lends an unforgettable voice to his reality of ache and loss beyond the inadequate translation of sound.

Raymond Luczak is the author or editor of more than ten books, including Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life (RID Press) and Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader (Handtype Press).  His novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit 2006 Contest.  A playwright and filmmaker, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

MUTE
by Raymond Luczak

Body Language 06

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-6-3
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-6-5

Poetry/Deaf Studies/Gay Studies

64 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 April 2010

US: $11.95

FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS!

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Handmade Love

I believe that there are two kinds of love in this world:

inherited and handmade. Yes, we inherit love
but my people, my people make love by hand.

                  From “Handmade Love”

Handmade_portada baja

In her first collection, Julie R. Enszer offers poems that are as unabashedly erotic as they are unabashedly feminist. Whether responding to queer cultural icons, fantasizing about sex, or mourning illness and loss, these poems are sweet and sultry, fierce and tender.

From demonstrations on the streets to bedroom romps, these smart and sexy poems interweave narrative and lyrical moments with the political and the sensuous.

Handmade Love renders a world that delights in the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and tells queer life stories sublimely and generously.

Julie R. Enszer has published poems in Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, Feminist Studies, Bridges, So to Speak, Suspect Thoughts, Windy City Times, and many other journals. She has a MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and is working on her PhD in Women’s Studies.

HANDMADE LOVE
by Julie R. Enszer

Body Language 05

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-5-6
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-5-7

Poetry/Lesbian Studies
64 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 April 2010

$11.95

FREE SHIPPING ON U.S. ORDERS!

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Fortune's Lover: A Book of Tarot Poems

 Sometimes she imagines she's somewhere else,
on a camel, traveling by pricks of light--
or regurgitating webs from a swollen belly--
or hanging from a hook
in her sister's meat locker,
on the other side of seven doors.
        From "High Priestess"

Fortune_cubiertas-2The Early Renaissance game of Tarot inspired poetry centuries before it was used for fortune telling. The poems in Fortune's Lover do not explain the Tarot so much as spin off from it.

From accounts of a master class on the Fool that led to the author inadvertently putting into practice the grace they'd just learned about to an insane Merlin predicting three forms of death for the same boy, from a princess who learns never to look to any man to protect or fight for her to a High Priestess locked in her temple of silence, these poems are infused with a wisdom based not so much in finding the right answers as in asking the right questions.

Rachel Pollack is the author of thirty books of fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in fourteen languages, including: 78 Degrees of Wisdom, The Body of the Goddess, and Tarot Of Perfection.  Her books have won the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the COVR Award. She is also a visual artist, the creator of The Shining Tribe Tarot. She teaches in the MFA program at Goddard College.


FORTUNE'S LOVER: A BOOK OF TAROT POEMS
by Rachel Pollack

Fabula Rasa 02

48 pages

Pub date: May 2009.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-4-9
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-4-9

US: $9.95
Europe: €7
UK: £6


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Banalities

Banalities_portadaOKbaja2 Fifty powerful and unsettling untitled poems make up this mesmerizing collection by distinguished Slovenian writer Brane Mozetic. In these poems, Mozetic confronts meaninglessness and pleasure, melancholy and excitement, often focusing on the pain we inflict on one another and especially on the pain we inflict on ourselves.

Born in Ljubljana, Mozetic has published twelve volumes of poetry, two novels, and a short story collection. He has also edited three anthologies, and has translated numerous authors from the French including Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Guibert, Dustan, Cliff, and Brossard. For many years he has been active in civil social movements and leader of the gay movement in Slovenia; he directs two literary collections (Aleph and Lambda) and is director of the Center for Slovenian Literature.  His books in English include Butterflies (Spuyten Duyvil) and Passion (Talisman House) and the forthcoming novel Lost Story (Talisman House). English translations of his poems have been published in Poetry International, Another Chicago Magazine, Transcript, Verse, Prague Literary Revue, Chroma, and elsewhere.

BANALITIES
by Brane Mozetic
translated by Elizabeta Zargi and Timothy Liu

ISBN-13: 978-0-979208-3-2  
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-3-0

Poetry/Eastern Europe/Gay & Lesbian

32 pages/perfect bound
Pub Date: 1 December 2008

Price: $10.95

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This Is What Happened in Our Other Life

Obejas_cover

The first time I was inside a woman,
I was confused.
I didn't recognize her, or myself.
I thought I was swimming, but in air.
Maybe flying, underwater.

    From "Legacies"

At last, the first collection of poems from the Pulitzer Prize and Lambda Literary Award winning Cuban-American author Achy Obejas! 

The poems in This Is What Happened In Our Other Life form a handbook of desire, navigating a course through the often-rocky landscapes of loving and living, while also charting the complexities of identity as the author explores her relationship to her lovers, her roots, her history, herself. 

As in her novels, Obejas' poems are often concerned with memory--the physical memories of the body, the ache of wanting--and of finding a way home again.

Achy Obejas is the author of the novels Days of Awe (Ballantine) and Memory Mambo (Cleis) and the short story collection We Came All the Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This? (Cleis.).  She is also the editor and translator of Havana Noir (Akashic).  She received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 1986.

This Is What Happened in Our Other Life
Achy Obejas
ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-2-5
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-2-2

Poetry/Latina Studies/Lesbian Studies

32 pages, perfect bound
Pub Date: November 2007

U.S.: $6.95
Canada: $7.95
Europe: €4.95
UK: £3.50
Aus: $8.50

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The Good-Neighbor Policy

GoodneighborcoverHiggledy-Piggledy,
Murder and innocence,
Edgar Award-winner
    Ardai disturbs
Readers of mysteries
Double-dactylicly
With this new story of
    Death in the 'burbs.


Charles Ardai, author of Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence and founder of the celebrated Hard Case Crime imprint, brings new meaning to "poetic justice" in his latest foray into crime writing.

For crippled octogenarian Perseus Algernon, his binoculars let him escape from his own home--and thrust him into a deadly game of lust and greed.

When a violent murder takes place next door, only Algernon's word can confirm the innocence of a beautiful young woman. Reliable authorities corroborate the details, but Deputy Hennessy has his doubts about the story this Good Samaritan tells. Does being neighborly extend to covering up the truth about murder?

The Good-Neighbor Policy:
A Double-Cross in Double Dactyls
by Charles Ardai
ISBN-13: 978-0-9794208-1-1
ISBN-10: 0-9794208-1-4

Mystery/Poetry/Humor

32 pages, perfect bound
Pub Date: September 2007

U.S.: $6.95
Canada: $7.95
Europe: €4.95
UK: £3.50
Aus: $8.50

A Midsummer Night's Press offers free shipping for U.S. customers on pre-orders!

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»

Fairy Tale links

  • The Journal of Mythic Arts
  • SurLaLune Fairy Tales
  • Fairy Tale Review

Poetry links

  • Verse Daily
  • The Poetry Society of America
  • The Academy of American Poets
  • Poetry Daily
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