Gaylord Brewer and Katerina Stoykova had a wonderful conversation on the Accents podcast about is new book, GOODBYE, BABY. If you have 41 free minutes, give this episode a listen!
https://www.wuky.org/podcast/accents/2026-08-19/gaylord-brewer
LeTonia Jones
Black Girl at the Intersection
Accents Publishing, 2023
https://www.accents-publishing.com/blackgirlattheintersection.html
Image design by Wendy Jett
Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, The Compost Reader.
The first iteration of this manuscript was my MFA thesis, with the working title In This Light. I sent it out to a round of contests, and later exchanged manuscripts with some poets I admire. Barbara Sabol, such a generous and astute reader, noted that the “I”; in the manuscript made shifts that were disorienting. I re-edited the collection, rewriting some poems in 3rd person. Where characters recur, I arranged poems in chronological order and infilled with non-biographical poems.
Meanwhile, my concept chapbook manuscript I Left My Wings on a Chair won the Wick Poetry Center chapbook prize, and that led me to believe that surreal prose poems were a strong suit. Left to my own devices, my poems are oh so earnest, very sigh, and I think it was a memetic workshop in grad school that led me to the joy of trying out many voices, getting at an idea by building a weird world around it. I love the work of Mark Levine, Nin Andrews, Mathias Svalina, so many. I rearranged the manuscript again and centered those poems. For example the title poem, “The Compost Reader”; imagines a professional seer you can hire who will open your compost bin and tell you deep truths about yourself. Gah, so fun to write.
I sent the manuscript out again and was finalist at presses I wildly admire like The Word Works and Two Sylvias Press, what a thrill. Meanwhile, I reconnected with Katerina, whom I met some years ago at AWP, and she asked me what I was working on. I sent the manuscript to her and was over the moon when she said yes. I love Accents Publishing and the important work Katerina is doing in contemporary letters.
Surreally, the book came out during the pandemic lockdown, and that led me to realize there was a need for an online reading series for new books that were coming out in that moment. So with Nin Andrews, Lit Youngstown ran the New Book News series, readings that are archived on Lit Youngstown’s YouTube channel. What an honor, and I have since been able to invite some of those amazing authors to Youngstown.
What do you like most about it?
What I like most, from this vantage, is that the manuscript was not accepted until it had a more completed shape and narrative arc. I don’t remember who calls this editing in public, something like that. Not my intention. Each time I sent it out, it seemed finished, but somehow, when an editor doesn’t select a poem or manuscript, I can see it in a fresh way. Katerina as an editor has a sharp eye and made terrific suggestions, and I also found a few sloshy spots and she was generous about allowing me to continue making changes right up to the final final final. That was what I was really hoping for with my first book, that I’d find an editor who really cared about the work.
And allowing me to select my cover artwork was absolute joyful gravy. I had been in residence at the Vermont Studio Center with the stunningly talented printmaker Mary Gordon McFall, and Mary graciously said yes to her artwork on the cover. I love the rich ground of the image, and it’s no surprise Mary lives on the Kansas prairie and brings an eye to the depth of growth and regrowth.
What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?
The years I spent editing and submitting I was teaching as an adjunct and then working in cafés while building Lit Youngstown, so a submission fee represented a substantial expense. I would budget one submission fee per paycheck. And the around-the-clock nature of teaching and non-profit administration makes it hard to set aside quiet head space for the work of writing.
What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?
Life is such a wild ride, I hope someone reading my book spends a moment in their own wild ride stories, and in that way of fellow travelers, we connect.
What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?
I was invited onto an AWP panel of first book publishing over the age of 50. I was floored when, after the panel, there was a line of people waiting to talk to me, and they bought all of the books I brought. I love that inclusive nature of writing, the way experience and perspective serve us, rather than sideline us, those who are lucky enough to have more years to live and write.
What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of The Compost Reader.
I am working with some artists on a new initiative, LOOP Youngstown Arts + Culture, and we are under contract for a building! In addition to dozens of artist studios and support for artists, there will be space for arts nonprofits like Lit Youngstown to work and grow in an arts-rich environment. These kinds of centers are happening everywhere, but this will be Youngstown’s first, and I’m chuffed.
Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?
Occasionally I’ll hear someone say that no one reads any more and wow, that’s not what I see. In 10 years, Lit Youngstown has hosted thousands of writers and people who may not consider themselves writers, who spent time with us engaged in and sharing creative work. I love this literary community, how expansive the curiosity. We’re wired to feel heard, and I’m here for it.
Unsilencing: Using Poetry to Set the Record Straight with Melissa Jørgenrud Helton!
Online – Wednesdays, Aug 12- Sep 16 6:00-8:00pm EST
Six weeks
$275
In this class, we will look at ways poetry can be used to ask the things we were told we should ignore, bring forth the truths we were told to hide, and open our voices to sing and shout and say all the things we have been hesitant to. To help clear our throats, we will read poets who dared to be honest and then we’ll take our turn unsilencing ourselves by generating new work in a safe and supportive environment. We will look at form and craft and discuss the potential peril and liberation of publishing honest work.
Melissa Jørgenrud Helton is the author of A Middle-Aged Woman Rages(Accents Publishing, 2026). She serves as the Literary Arts Director of Hindman Settlement School, a cultural nonprofit in Knott County, Kentucky. She is editor of the anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky (University Press of Kentucky) and Untelling, the literary and arts magazine of Hindman Settlement School.
Register at this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/l8UJJZ7gRNa6SBXmJRyOsA
“3 & 5” from The Gospel of God Boy by Christopher McCurry
Accents Publishing, 2025
What do you like most about MOTHER, LOOSE?
I like its cohesion—the combination of poems inspired Mother Goose rhymes with poems about the death of my mother.
What did you have to overcome to publish it?
The poems in Mother, Loose were part of a larger manuscript that ultimately did not cohere. I, consequently, decided to pare down the full-length manuscript and turn it into a chapbook. While it was hard to let go of so many poems, I saw that there were two kinds of poems that needed to be brought to the fore and that could complement one another. Once I made the decision to focus on “mother” in its two forms, I wrote additional poems toward that theme. Some of these newer poems ended up being distillations from essays I’d written.
What do you hope people learn/experience from the book?
I hope that Mother, Loose helps people see some of their most primal fears in a new light. Nursery rhymes, Mother Goose rhymes, and fairy tales help elucidate, normalize and lighten the burden of those fears, at times making light of them. Humor is a form of intelligence, and dark humor shows us how to live with death.
Favorite interaction with a fan or reader?
I think my favorite interaction with a reader was with a reviewer, the writer, Hannah Rodabaugh. She wrote a wonderful review of Mother, Loose in Pank that made me feel seen—as though my poems had truly landed.
What are you working on now?
My second full-length book, Locomotive Cathedral, came out last year (March 2025). It was selected in the Backwaters Press contest and published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. It had been ten years since Mother, Loose, so I had a blast doing readings and am pleased with the book’s reception. Right now, I’m finalizing a new collection of poems titled Fade Away & Radiate, which address or write toward what Buddhists call “the five remembrances” (e.g. this body is of the nature to age; I cannot escape aging). I’m still adding and removing poems and working on the order but I expect to be sending it out by the spring of 2026.
“Smoke” from SMOKE by Kevin Nance
Accents Publishing, 2025
Image design by Wendy Jett
“A Middle-Aged Woman Rages will help readers to ponder rage as it shares memorable poems from one author’s persona in a uniquely qualified voice.” — Felicia Mitchell, Appalachian Journal
Read the entire review here.
Accents Publishing is proud to bring to you a new poetry book by Eric Scott Sutherland!
Awkward Scrapes is a collection of poems that celebrates love, family, fatherhood, and the natural world while confronting grief, violence, memory, and healing. Rooted in Appalachia and Kentucky landscapes, Eric Scott Sutherland’s lyrical, music-infused poems seek beauty, tenderness, and hope amid the awkward scrapes of being human.
What Others Say About Awkward Scrapes
Awkward Scrapes is its own equinox. Distributing love evenly. Ascribing “sacred” status to domesticity, centering fatherhood, and appreciating the beauty in everything that lives between the coral and the trees … what higher, more honest work could a poet ever do?
—Frank X Walker, Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2013–15
“The cycle of pain is forever—” but there are places “where tender things are named,” and in that naming—even in our current “unholy country”— Eric Scott Sutherland finds a commitment to annotating and preserving family, place, and the rhythms of the natural world. “I am fierce / in my defense / of home” the poet declares, and his defense is making for us the most memorable “lyrical tapestries.” Awkward Scrapes is an arresting poetry driven by the poet’s signature short-lines, favorite music, sonic play, spoken-word energy, and a dogged search for inspiration and joy.
—Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer
The poems in Awkward Scrapes are the best kinds of love songs, never sentimental and always powerful. They are meditations on romantic love, on the profound connections we have with our children and the natural world, even on life itself. This book is a celebration of all that makes us human: the awfulness and the beauty, sometimes tangled. Sutherland is one of my favorite poets and I loved every carefully chosen yet organic word.
—Silas House, Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2023–25
To read a sample poem or to order the book, visit the book’s page on the Accents’ website.
Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, SIRENS AND RAIN.
Sirens and Rain is a book of haiku and senryu (haiku-like poems focusing on human nature) about life in and around Philadelphia. People, animals, trees, fountains, statues, trains, life in all forms as it reveals itself in quintessential moments. With its unique variety of human and (other) natural phenomena, I have found this city to be an ideal place to write these “sketches from life.” The poems in this book came to me over a number of years—as I walked to work, taught my classes, rode my bicycle around the Schuylkill River, and otherwise encountered city life. (Note: the word “haiku” is both singular and plural; the same is true for “senryu.”)
What do you like most about it?
I like how the book is a history, in poetry, of what life was like for my wife, my cats, and me during the years we lived near the corner of 20th and Chestnut Streets. This is the intersection shown in the photograph I took for the cover. A few of the poems were written after we moved from there to another place just around the corner.
What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?
By the time I began working on the manuscript that became Sirens and Rain, I had plenty of haiku and senryu that could have conceivably been included. So the challenge was to select and arrange the best poems, or the best combination of poems, for the effect I wanted. Organizing by seasons helped; that way I could break the poems into five separate sequences (the four seasons plus a fifth chapter for late summer through early fall). In arranging the poems, I tried to juxtapose nature poems and people poems that played off one another in interesting ways. This entailed many rounds of revisions. You might say that the actual composing of the book was a matter of moving 3 X 5 cards around over and over again.
What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?
As with haiku and senryu generally, I hope the poems in this book make readers more keenly, and in most cases more pleasurably, aware of what they encounter moment by moment in life. One of the best effects poems like these can have is to evoke for the reader a thought-feeling like, “Oh, I’ve had that experience—or seen that sight—a hundred times, but before never noticed it in all its beauty and wonder.” Or humor and charm, as the case might be.
What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?
Because haiku and senryu can appeal so readily not only to poets and poetry enthusiasts but to folks who don’t often read poetry, I am always gratified when I learn that my brother-in-law, neighbor, landlord’s son, or high school Facebook friend “gets” and likes my poems. As for a specific interaction, I had an especially fulfilling one last fall when I visited a class that was reading Sirens and Rain as an assigned text for their Community College of Philadelphia literature course. Owing probably in no small part to how well their professor had guided their week-long study of my book, I found the students extremely engaged in and curious about writing haiku. They asked incisive questions. Then, in a kind of workshop format, I went around the room helping them with the short collections they were assigned to write. Almost to a person, perhaps TO a person, they were writing original haiku about subjects that mattered to them. As I left the classroom, literally, I felt a chill go down my spine. We had given a lot to one another.
What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of SIRENS AND RAIN.
The most significant recent event in my writing life is that I just finished the manuscript that is the successor to Sirens and Rain. Entitled “Unofficial Portraits,” it consists of haiku and senryu that portray people by focusing on a moment or detail that is especially revealing about each person’s character. As with Sirens and Rain, the subjects span a range of settings, including work, education, neighbors, law and politics, sports, and family.
Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?
Why aren’t haiku about sports (other than baseball) more widely appreciated? Not a particularly pressing question but a pet peeve of mine?
