Books published by Atmosphere Press

This book might disturb you. These are not poems meant to sooth you or sing you to sleep. This is a book about revolution.The Enemy of Everything is a poetic and visual assault on Reality itself. This radical collection of poems and illustrations forces the reader to evaluate shared life perceptions from an extreme and unusual—yet somehow familiar—point of view. On these pages are ideas that live at the innermost core of the human experience. These are the quintessential questions that we all ask, but ultimately turn away from, as we bury ourselves in the distractions of everyday survival.As a connected poetic journey, the collection plunges the reader deep into the mysterious facets of being, examining why we exist, what we all face as conscious beings, and what we can do to realize our own collective human power. Within the rhythm and rhyme of its language is embedded an exploration of all that should matter most. These are poems aimed at the greatest enemy humanity has ever known.The Enemy of Everything is who we all fight…from our first earthly gasp to our last dying breath.

Welcome to White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers, where author and ethnographer Jane P. Perry asks: What is a diary and why do we keep them? Why do diarists feel compelled to record life, to collect memories and reflections? What happens when snapshots found in a junk store not only spark childhood memories but drive the creation of a diary?White Snake Diary explores the diary as a literary genre: what it looks like and what it can tell us about life and self-inscribers. Uniquely, White Snake Diary is also a diary, offering a timely #MeToo profile of growing up female. White Snake Diary capitalizes on the fascination of diaries either as precursors to our social media culture or as mirrors of our intimate absorption.Perry pulls on the allure of the repurposed with found photos, childhood school assignments, diary entries, cereal box text, letters, a newspaper clipping, doodles, essays, and professional reports. Perry writes with humor and attention to the little moments most people miss.Jane P. Perry is a retired Researcher and Teacher from the University of California, Berkeley’s Harold E. Jones Child Study Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from U.C. Berkeley and has written on the importance of play in early childhood, Occupy Oakland, and familyhood. Take a journey with White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers.

Professor Slater has always held what he thought to be progressive beliefs – racial equality, gender equality, religious equality, and so on. How could he have expected that three decades of uninterrupted rule by the left-wing Progressive Party would make him feel so trapped? In the modern “Progressive World,” there is no tolerance for intolerant views. When intolerance is an arrestable offence, however, and society collectively assumes that people of a certain race, a certain gender, and a certain age are inherently intolerant, to what lengths will Professor Slater go to protect his right to free speech?Maika Perez-Okpik was born into the “Progressive World,” benefitting from all the rights afforded to young homosexual women of colour. When Maika is fired from her job due to a realignment of her company’s “Equality Quota,” however, she begins to question how free and progressive her society really is. Through her introduction to an underground network of deplorables, Maika is confronted by the reality that her entire livelihood might be challenged by revolutionaries threatening to topple the system.“A Cage Called Freedom” is a cautionary tale, warning against extremism and identity politics and advocating for responsible political discourse. It attempts to demonstrate how one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia, and how the corruptibility of power knows no ideology.

The Pretend Life channels the lure of the past and a sense of foreboding about the unknowable future. The poems document the mundane landscape of contemporary life -- a world in which Jimmy Carter speaks of a spiritual malaise, a landscape littered with dying retail stories, chain restaurants, and malls, one of trash-strewn streets lined with liquor stores and pawn shops. In this neon-lit darkness, the poems perform a peculiar alchemy that transforms the background noise of American life, one of billboards, advertising slogans, and the detritus of popular culture -- into a strange sort of beauty. They serve as a guide to what has been lost and the palimpsest that remains.The Pretend Life suggests that readers look closer by providing a variety of lenses that express the loneliness, isolation, loveliness, and the ways people preserver. A mash-up of the timeless juxtaposed with all that is fleeting, it challenges the reader to consider a variety of perspectives. Like candid photographs of strangers, these poems force you to stop and consider these glimpses into worlds that exist in memory and in objects from those worlds. They also serve as a mirror into our own lives as seen from the future -- an elegy for the living.

THERE’S WEIRD! THERE’S WILD!AND THEN THERE’S THE QUINTESSENTS!Get ready for the ride of your life! And all of your other lives – Past, Parallel, and Future.This story defies description. Fast-paced, tightly written, genre-jumping, gender-bending, lexicon-enhancing and rife with puns, prayers, poetry, vulgarity, ethereal somersaults, a relentless demon, and large dollops of romantic and Spiritual questing, this offbeat smorgasbord of character-driven angst and quirky subplots boondoggles into an over-the-top climax and a hopelessly romantic epilogue.Brought to you by author Clem Fiorentino, a career journalist and lifetime Seeker, this raucous tweak-fest is aimed – lovingly – at today’s “New” New Agers. This uproarious saga has “someone for everyone,” including five of the most formidable female protagonists in all of American Literature, and one of the most outrageous casts of characters ever assembled.And that’s your algorithm for a hilarious – yet poignant – rocket ride to the outer reaches of the “Soular” System. So, kick back and quest with the characters as they test their belief systems, purge their demons, and achieve Soular Solidarity.

Hans Krichels came to Maine almost fifty years ago. He once asked an oldtimer if he’d lived here all his life. “Not yet,” the oldtimer had drawled. When Hans asked him if his own kids, born in Bangor, Maine, might be considered real Mainers, the oldtimer pointed out, “Iff’n my cat has kittens in the oven, that don’t make them muffins, now, do it?”Up there in Maine (and elsewhere, no doubt), a distinct outback way of life persists, a certain do-it-yourself approach, a certain caginess around the code enforcers from town. Over the years, Hans has scribbled down random notes – glimpses and snatches of that life as he has witnessed it.In this book, Hans has gathered together a small collection of stories, many of them tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at himself and his neighbors. In later chapters, he shares more serious material, some tributes to the folks out back, even some story-poems, as he likes to call them, written from the vantage point of a little hideaway he’s built for himself, looking out over the rivers and valleys of Maine – and the people with their neverending stories.A conservationist and holder of advanced degrees in literature and linguistics, Hans Krichels is a former jouranalist and field worker for The Dictionary of American Regional English. He currently lives with his partner Nancy in Bucksport, Maine.

Evelio’s Garden is a lyrical meditation on cultural values, friendship, aging, loss, and, ultimately, the healing power of the natural world.“The conversational prose is rich in detail about the wide variety of trees, flowers, fruits, and vegetables that blanket the area, and there are some wonderful stories about various wildlife that Homer has encountered. . . .A remembrance that effectively captures one woman’s connection with nature in Central America”-- Kirkus ReviewsIn the enchanting world of the of Costa Rican highlands, the author begins a memoir, tracing the seasons and closely observing the natural riches around her. But Evelio, who helped build their house, interrupts with an idea to plant an organic garden on their property. Over the course of a challenging year full of unpredictable weather, wild animals and toxic chemicals, their friendship grows as Evelio teaches her about the rural sustainability of Costa Rica in decades past. Pulling her into the daily ups and downs of his project, he creates an often funny, always frustrating, and ultimately rewarding counterpoint to her own work, such that the two intertwine on the page...and lead her to confront a difficult past and open up to profound personal change.Sandra Shaw Homer has lived in Costa Rica for 29 years, where she has taught languages and worked as an interpreter/translator and environmental activist. In addition to a column in the local press, her creative nonfiction, fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of print and online literary and travel journals, as well as on her own blog, writingfromtheheart.net. Her travel memoir, Letters from the Pacific: 49 Days on a Cargo Ship, received excellent Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews. Go tohttps://www.facebook.com/writingfromtheheart.net/?ref=bookmarks for more information. 

Nelson expresses the emotions of a man who travels far from home without losing the tug of his roots. Carefully centered on the page, these poems mold memories into graceful figurines, as they share pivotal moments in train stations, war zones, and foreign cities. Enhanced by illustration, this collection offers observations on life from many angles, including the family pet, in the delightful poem, “To Dogs From a Human.”–Jacqueline Jules, author of Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String.Dan’s spare poems leave you searching for the rest of the story: context, history, and future. His poetry provides an eagle’s view of what seems like a Minnesota winter landscape, but on further examination often draws you in with observations of the fullness of living never quite realized, or intimacy lost. His cool eye highlights the random and ludicrous aspects of a life which we often take for granted. His eye for details is sharp, as in, “a family of four in military camouflage chewing in unison.” Intriguing are his poems about assignments in foreign places, where he and other people pass through a landscape of temporary agency. His are poems that, once read, do not let go of you easily.–Eric Forsbergh, author of Imagine MorningMinnesota and Other Poems begins, ends and is interspersed with thoughts about the Upper Midwest – its people, culture, and environment – and filled with trenchant observations of experiences thereafter. In this eclectic collection, Nelson builds a vision of life lived strenuously and globally; one deeply etched by that which he has encountered and endured. Here we meet many individuals both named and anonymous who have made existence worthy, intriguing, frightening, sorrowful. We also see the situations that bring elements of love, absurdity and humor to one experiencing them.This collection builds upon Nelson’s monograph of verse, Performance (Wolfville, Nova Scotia: Wombat Press, 1993), and includes work drawn from the past twenty years. Cover art and illustrations are by the artist Jarett Walen. 

Ivory Tower is a campus thriller about Margolis Santos, a charismatic film professor in her prime, who risks her career and life to uncover sexual corruption inside her university’s football program where rich boosters pay sorority girls to have sex with star recruits. When we find Margolis, she’s embroiled in a sex scandal of her own that sends her life into a tailspin. She unthinkingly sleeps with a student from another school, and when the parents find out, they threaten to sue her university. To protect its reputation, the ambitious university president, Art ‘Lightning’ Lane, decides to fire her. As she fights for her job, Margolis slowly learns from her 17-year-old daughter, Brie, and crackerjack senior, Emma Barnes, what is happening in the Theta sorority house. Billionaire football donor, Chet Orchard, is orchestrating there a new recruiting scheme where Theta sisters ‘date’ potential players with the expectation of sexual favors. Margolis is desperate to put a stop to the sexual exploitation and violence. The trouble is, her husband, Frank Sinoro, is the head football coach, while her daughter loves the sorority, so she has to make a choice. Margolis has to find a way to protect her family, while also saving the women on campus and, eventually, her own soul.

Can Adroegen save his friends, the only family he has left?Adroegen was but a lonely drifter in a world of dragons, wizards, fairies, and countless other creatures. He had lost all of his family as a child, under the evil lord Vyroun and his servant, the goblin chief. Thus, Adroegen did not believe that a higher power named Enilundar, the world’s creator, watched over him. Among his discoveries while drifting about was a hidden village that Adroegen found by chance some years back, where he made some friends there that were alike to him, also without their true families.However, one day when he visits, Adroegen is followed by the goblin chief and his pack, who raze the village and leave none alive except for his friends. Adroegen learns that Vyroun, after a mysterious decade long absence in the north, has returned and seeks his head. First, however, the goblin chief orders Adroegen to return the Night’s Jewel to him, a jewel said to rally foul creatures of the night to Vyroun, which Adroegen took from the goblin chief years ago. If Adroegen does not return it, the goblin chief will hunt and slay his friends… 

The Yoga Sutras through a Child's Eyes…Mind is a monster! Just ask Young Yogi, who knows that a troubled mind can keep you up at night and haunt you all day long. But thanks to the wisdom of Patanjali and his Yoga Sutras, there is a way to end the turmoil. Join the adventures of Young Yogi as he learns to tame the Mind Monsters, and find the peace available to us all. Disguised as a whimsical story, Young Yogi and the Mind Monsters is a gift for readers looking to understand the rich, ancient, and mind-bending philosophy of Patanjali.