Category Archives: Book Release

Announcements for book releases by Accents Publishing, or anything we think you should know about.

Updates and Announcements from Accents Publishing

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Dear Friends and Fans of Accents Publishing,

Happy Spring! In Kentucky we’re starting to see new leaves on trees. We spent a busy and productive winter and can’t wait to tell you about our latest accomplishments, opportunities and announcements. Please, read on.

 

New Book

Novella Contest Results

Literary Accents Update

Poetry Class and Manuscript Analysis Workshop

 

New Book

We’re very excited to present Christopher McCurry’s first full-length poetry collection, Open Burning.  It’s a gorgeous hardcover volume, and the poems detail the fallout of a young couple’s divorce. Click on the title to read a sample poem and to learn more about the book and the author. To browse our catalog, please click here.

 

Novella Contest Results

Accents Publishing is proud to announce the results of its Inaugural Novella Competition!

The winning novella is Homegoing, by Toni Ann Johnson!

Toni Ann Johnson will receive the $500.00 award and publication of her manuscript in a separate book volume. Those who have purchased in advance a copy of the winning novella will receive it as soon as the book is out.

We read many wonderful submissions and selected the following manuscripts as finalists:

Under the Seal, by Carol Mauriello

A Hollow, Muscular Organ, by Meg Files

Cheeseburgers, by Dean Crawford

City of Foam, by Ryan Slater

Moonlit Landing, by Ari McKenna

Things Are Not So Ill as They Might Have Been, by Scott Winokur

Accents Publishing is offering publication to the first three of these finalists.

Tremendous gratitude to everyone who sent manuscripts for consideration. We appreciate your trust and support. Please keep in touch. We hope to read your work again in the future.

 

Literary Accents Call for submissions

We’re still finishing up Issue #3 of Literary Accents. We hope to be able to send it to the printer within weeks.

We’re still reading submissions for Issue #4. The theme of Issue #4 is “breakup and heartbreak”. Send 3 – 5 poems to accents.publishing@gmail.com by April 30th. We look forward to reading your work.

 

Poetry Class

Katerina Stoykova (Owner and Senior Editor of Accents Publishing) is seeking eight to ten committed poets for a fast-paced six-week writing class in person or online. In each session, the poets will workshop a poem, then listen to a craft lecture and/or participate in a writing exercise. March 26th to April 23rd. Thursdays, 6 – 8 pm at The Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center. Price for the six-week class: $120. To reserve your space in the class, write to accents.publishing@gmail.com. Deadline to apply: March 16th

 

Manuscript Analysis Workshop and a Poetry Class

Looking for 4 – 5 poets with nearly-ready book-length manuscripts for a weekend-long manuscript analysis workshop lead by Katerina Stoykova (Owner and Senior Editor of Accents). You can participate in person or remotely via Skype. Price: $250. For more information or to reserve your spot, please write to accents.publishing@gmail.com. Exact dates TBD based on participant availability.  Deadline to apply: March 31st

 

Thank you, everyone, for reading to the very end of this email. We appreciate you! Best wishes from the team at Accents Publishing.

 

Literary Accents

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a literary magazine from Accents Publishing

Accents Publishing is thrilled to announce the creation of a new literary magazine called Literary Accents !

Inspired by the theme of our best-selling book Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems, we decided to dedicate the first four issues of our new journal to the art of the very short poem.

Issues one to four will contain 50 poems of up to 50 words!

Long live the short poem! We are eager to start working on this exciting magazine and to bring it to your mailbox as soon as possible!

How to Subscribe

You can click here to pay by PayPal and subscribe to the first four issues of Literary Accents.

If you would like to receive printed copies, the cost is $40.00 ($28.00 for the books, $12.00 for shipping). Please make sure to provide an email address for contact and a mailing address to send the physical books.

If you would like to receive the issues electronically only (no paper copy), the cost is $28.00.

If you don’t wish to use Paypal, you can also pay by check. Make checks payable to “Accents Publishing” and send them to:

Accents Publishing
c/o Katerina Stoykova
P.O. Box 910456
Lexington, KY 40591-0456

Fountains for Orpheus by Audrey Rooney

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Fountains for Orpheus by Audrey RooneyThrough the poems in this brilliant debut collection, Audrey Rooney explores timeless concepts from love and loss to aging and nature. This book contains poems of diverse shapes, forms and sizes, as well as several translations of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, matched with Audrey’s poignant responses to Rilke’s work.

Accents will be hosting a premiere for Fountains for Orpheus at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky on August 18th. Details available here.

Fountains for Orpheus is available at the Accents store.

What Others Say About Fountains for Orpheus

In Fountains for Orpheus, Audrey Rooney invites us to bring our artist eyes to the beauty-filled and bewildering scenes of her well-lived life. “Come, Gardener,” she writes, and we are introduced to a world of violet skies, river deaths, and small talk. She’s a keen writer, wise and intelligent. Emotionally, she never strays far from her music or her man. Congratulations to Audrey for this delightful debut collection!

—Neil Chethik

Audrey Rooney’s painterly poems reveal our ordinary world for the fresh miracle it is—charged and shining in the carnelian flash of flagstones, in the tulip poplar’s “egg-cup” blooms, green as luna moths. Lovely as their images are, however, these poems are no mere surfaces. In Fountains for Orpheus, Rooney’s poems pursue loss, change, and imperfection—hers, ours. Often quirky, never somber (though they circle death) these poems reward reading and rereading. They probe the uncertain edges where winter passes into spring, where death invades life and “creatures given to our care make no promises not to break our hearts one day.” What are the dead to the living or the living to the dead? Rooney asks, as Rilke did. And as Rilke’s did, Audrey Rooney’s poems find a way to “love the in-betweens.”

—Leatha Kendrick

Meticulously observed and elegantly composed, Rooney’s poems celebrate and mourn the beauty of nature, the transcendence of art, and the death of the beloved. They write back to Rilke, examine a childhood relic from her lost brother, embrace grandchildren, and everywhere render the music of this world with learning and longing. Fountains for Orpheus is a volume to savor.

—George Ella Lyon

LexPoMo 2016 Writing Challenge Sign Ups Are Open, plus 2015 Book Release

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Dear Lexington poets,

The signups for the Lexington Poetry Month 2016 Writing Challenge are currently open!

Please click here to sign up. If you signed up last year, then you will have the option to send yourself an email to register for this year.

& Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015Also, everyone is invited to our release party for & Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015, which will be tonight at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky next to Gratz Park. (If you will need parking, you may come early and get a pass from the front desk to park at a neighboring Transylvania lot).

If you are coming to the event and you participated in last year’s event, then you are invited to come and read your piece in front of a live audience. Refreshments will be served.

We hope you join us for this year’s challenge, and please come celebrate with us tonight!

& Grace Book Release Party

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& Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015We will be selling & Grace: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015 at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 6pm.

If you are one of the featured reader (please click here to see the complete list), then you are welcome to come and read your poem.

This book could not have happened without the commitment and dedication from the Lexington Poetry Month poets and the amazing community that has been supporting the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge for so long. Once again, thank you so much.

Click the Facebook Event page for more details.

When: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 @ 6PM
Where: The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 W. Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507
(859) 254-4175

Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry

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Edited by Bianca Spriggs and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer

Circe’s Lament is an exciting new anthology of poetry about wild women. Poets from around the world have contributed narratives and given voices to an amazingly diverse female cast—women who neither flinch nor apologize, and who mesmerize us generation after generation with their strength. We invite you to welcome the wild into your home with this anthology.

What others say about Circe’s Lament

Circe’s Lament collects work by some of the best poets writing today—from Ellen Bass to Frank X Walker—in celebration of the wild feminine: the fierce, the furious, the bruised and battered, the hilarious, the mythical, the stereotypical, the fairytale turned inside out. Here you’ll find Miss America and Janis Joplin, Barbie and Medusa, along with—in Nickole Brown’s stunning and tender homage—a grandmother who can cuss up a storm and uses “fucker” as a term of endearment. The women in these poems behave in the most unladylike ways—swearing, sexing, drinking, dancing, hitting back, running away, bleeding, broke and broken. But just when you might start to think this celebration of “the bad girl” is veering toward romanticizing her, comes a poem like “The Girl,” by Linda Casebeer—as heart-breaking and frank and true a poem about being young and female and vulnerable and tough as I’ve ever read anywhere. Read it and weep. And be grateful for the work these editors have done to bring these voices to us.

—Cecilia Woloch

Circe’s Lament is a collection of powerhouse poems by women that make you want to get down and growl. These aren’t poems for the faint of heart or the bashful. These are poems for the she-wolves. These are poems for the brazen hussies. These are poems for the wicked, the loud-mouthed, the ballsy, and the big-hearted. Lean in and listen closely. They’ll teach you how to bite.

—Ada Limón

Authors

tina andry, Britt Ashley, Stacey Balkun, Makalani Bandele, Bianca Bargo, Ellen Bass, Roberta Beary, Elizabeth Beck, Lauren Boisvert, Roger Bonair-Agard, Nickole Brown, Elizabeth Burton, Greg Candela, Linda Casebeer, Sherry Chandler, Sharon L. Charde, Lucia Cherciu, Elizabeth Cohen, Star Coulbrooke, Barbara Crooker, Lucille Lang Day, Nancy Diedrichs, Joanie DiMartino, Laurel Dixon, Teneice Durrant, Meg Eden, Lynnell Edwards, Marta Ferguson, Ruth Foley, Sarah Freligh, Karen L. George, Kate Hadfield, Ellen Hagan, Gwen Hart, Lisa Hartz, Sheryl Holmberg, Karen Paul Holmes, Hope Johnson, Julia Johnson, Susan Johnson, Amanda Johnston, Marilyn Kallet, Penelope Karageorge, Diane Kendig, Karen Kovacik, Shayla Lawson, Emily Leider, Marsha Mathews, Andrew Merton, Teresa Milbrodt, Pamela Miller, Holly Mitchell, Maria Nazos, Sheryl Nelms, Jeremy Paden, Julia Paganelli, Tina Parker, Catherine Perkins, Kiki Petrosino, Sosha Pinson, Carol Quinn, Hila Ratzabi, Nicholas Samaras, Leona Sevick, Hilary Sheers, Dan Sicoli, Joan Jobe Smith, Bianca Spriggs, Alison Stone, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Victoria Sullivan, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Sheree Renée Thomas, Jessica D. Thompson, Alison Townsend, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Elsa Valmidiano, Frank X Walker, Amy Watkins, Patricia Wellingham-Jones, July Westhale, K. Nicole Wilson, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Debra Woolley, Jessica Wright, Katy Yocom

From the Preface

Women who break stereotypes and societal expectations continue to thrill our imaginations with how they did it. How did these women manage to balance their gender, sexuality, and power? Where did they find the strength to shoulder the consequences of rejecting the expectation of how women should behave? What do we continue to learn from the stories we tell one another of these icons, characters, and legends? What does a woman sacrifice in order to come into her own power? What does she mourn? What does she celebrate? This anthology seeks to answer these questions by highlighting the legendary, the local, the familial, and the self. It also explores the bigger question: Why do audiences continue over the ages to be spellbound by women who challenge and complicate convention?

Circe’s Lament should certainly not be read as comprehensive in terms of the narratives we chose to highlight, but rather treated as a summoning, as a kind of welcome table. We hope that as you read through this host of poetry about wild women—from the classic to the contemporary, from the legendary to the little-known—you’ll get the sense from their collective narrative that no woman ever needs to feel alone or exiled. It is our hope that you will read and celebrate, not just those highlighted in this collection, but all of the bold, bright, wild women in your own life.

—The Editors

Cover photo by Nadezda Nikolova-Kratzer

The Occupation by Jay McCoy

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The Occupation by Jay McCoy, cover image from CSIRO

We are proud to announce The Occupation by Jay McCoy!

“These are brave and hard-won poems, full of poignant witness and startling affirmation in the face of life’s most heartbreaking challenges. Jay McCoy is a keen craftsman, constructing lyrics that whisper and sting and celebrate at once. Here is a poet who truly understands the full expressive potential of his forms, and who mines those forms to maximum effect. But be warned: this is not the typical bland stuff of mild-mannered chapbooks. McCoy’s delicately crafted but harrowing poems will make your hair stand on end.”

—Young Smith

“The Occupation marks the arrival of a brave new voice in American poetry”

—Garth Greenwell

Calling

Your voice through
the phone line cracked
on the other end before
you said the first word,

so I knew

what you needed/wanted
to say, but could not yet
wrap your mind around all
possibilities, positive/negative,

so I just waited.

You may order a copy at the Accents store; orders will begin shipping on or before November 30, 2015.

Lost and Found by Andrew Merton

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lost and found by andrew mertonWe are proud to announce Lost and Found by Andrew Merton. It is currently available at the Accents store.

Merton’s first book, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs (Accents Publishing, was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013-2014 by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. Lost and Found continues the poignant, personable humor from this first work, but adds a confessional flavor that gives his new work a more nonfictional feel.

 

Praise for Andrew Merton’s poetry

Almost every one of his poems has a surprise waiting for the reader, either some astonishing figure of speech or a witty observation we are not likely to forget anytime soon.

—Charles Simic

Andrew Merton has masterfully condensed his life into potent, brilliantly composed, minimalist snapshots. Chronologically arranged, delicately layered, and driven by savage honesty and subtle tenderness, Lost and Found is an intense injection of love, loss, loneliness, and above all, the unrelenting question of one’s existence. I’ll slot this on my shelf next to Raymond Carver.

—Jessica Bell

This poet pinpoints the extraordinary in the day to day; he makes the reader see things anew, and even when they appear tawdry and tough, they are rich and sweet. The calm and gentle voice of these poems is nevertheless fierce in its focus on life, aging,disappointment and death, and that makes for the tremendous tension that keeps each poem taut with drama, inviting from the very first line, and powerfully moving until its conclusion.

—John Skoyles

This marvelous book—ruefully charming on one page, charmingly rueful on the next—goes cradle to grave in its coverage of a lifetime’s worth of erratic heartbeats. I love Merton’s poems for how they completely dissolve the thin line between bafflement and amazement. Their story is the story of a most companionable endurance, with no pun left unspoken. A deeply humane, entertaining, wise book.

—David Rivard

 

Fifth Grade Air Raid Drill, 1955

I tell Mr. Carter there’s a crack in the ant farm,
but he has more important things to talk about today:

After the bomb, trees will wither, milk will glow.
You might live a year before the insects get you

but first you have to survive the blast.
Duck under your desks

and stick your heads between your knees.
I pretend to do as I’m told.

When he turns his back I crawl away
on six legs, triumphant.

–Andrew Merton,
Lost and Found
(Accents Publishing)

andrew merton from lost and found store pageAndrew Merton is a journalist, essayist, and poet. Publications in which his nonfiction has appeared include Esquire, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe. His book Enemies of Choice: The Right-To-Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion, was published by Beacon Press in 1980. His poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto (U.K.), Comstock Review, Louisville Review, Vine Leaves, the American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. His book of poetry, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs?, with a foreword by Charles Simic (Accents Publishing, 2012) was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013–2014 by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. His website is available here.

About Flight by Frank X. Walker

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about flight thumbnailAccents Publishing is proud to announce About Flight, a poetry chapbook by Frank X. Walker.

“Up until this point in American history, no poet has written an honest and believable lament about the crippling effects from the tornado swirl of a crack pipe, how a little rock being melted between thin mesh screen creates pallid smoke: a monster, a slave to the white lady that is cocaine. In About Flight, Frank X Walker gives us the beautiful ugly narrative of a brother who is wrestling with chemical dependency, and losing. The high, in all of its beautiful contradictions takes on the metaphor of flight, and so we soar through the terrible highs and lows of a protagonist who carries his family with him into the den of iniquity.”

—Randall Horton,
author of Pitch Dark Anarchy & Hook: A Memoir

dr. frank x walker thumbnailMultidisciplinary artist and Danville, Kentucky native, Frank X Walker, is the former Poet Laureate of Kentucky, and Professor in the department of English and the African American and Africana Studies Program at the University of Kentucky. The founding editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture is a Cave Canem Fellow, co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, and the author of seven collections of poetry including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for best poetry collection. The Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient is the originator of the word, Affrilachia, and wholly committed to deconstructing and forging a new definition of a pluralistic Appalachia.