Books published by CLASH BOOKS

Cops on bikes, undercover security in the supermarket, TSA agents wondering why there appears to be a gun in his bag, Keith Lowell Jensen has a lot of run-ins with all manner of cops. Sometimes they arrest him. Sometimes they beat him up and arrest him. And sometimes he gets away scot free.In his second memoir collection Jensen tells the hilarious tales of his various arrests and other run-ins with the law. Getting his charges dropped after making the public defender and the judge laugh, performing an hour of jokes for his cell mates in the drunk tank, the comedian has used his sense of humor to get in and out of trouble, and that same sense of humor makes this a fun and engaging read.Storytelling comedian Keith Lowell Jensen has performed all over the world, including headlining the First International China Comedy Festival in Shanghai. He has recorded 8 comedy specials, including his latest Not For Rehire. This is his second memoir collection following 2018¿s Punching Nazis And Other Good Ideas.

Thomas Kemp, the Libertine, turned cruelty, torture and humiliation into works of art. It was said that he had given his soul to something inhuman to be part of artistic immortality. It was said that his very ashes were used to make a set of charcoals still imbued with his spirit. When Shannon Hernandez, a traumatized and repressed art student, is tasked to draw with them by her lecherous professor, she feels a change in herself and something menacing calling out to her. She is offered a chance to create work that breaks boundaries and hearts alike but comes bound with a connection to a legacy of immortal terrors.

Stories of women and monstrousness abound in Dalpe's debut short story collection. Visual, lush, and often haunting, Dalpe's work has a way of getting under your skin. Lovers of slow burns and new weird, Lovecraftian strangeness, gothic sensuality, and dark humor will all find something to connect with in Les Femmes Grotesques. Dalpe's prose seamlessly blends the ordinary with the strange, the gory with the gorgeous. Each story has an emotional core that will appeal to readers of all taste levels; Dalpe writes genre fiction that reaches readers who don't consider themselves "horror people." Lovers of urban fantasy, of literary short works, of contemporary women's fiction, and of classic Victorian gothic will all find something to enjoy in the works on show here. The collection provides a reader depths to explore as Dalpe deftly mines genres and styles for new and interesting narrative possibilities all while maintaining a strong thematic through-line.

With an original voice representing an Asian and LGBTQ millenial perspective, Michael Chang shows in their first full collection, they have a talent for connecting and entertaining readers. With a sardonic and artful style, that¿s part academia and part Grindr, whimsy and darkness meet in arresting contrast, creating a poetic innovation that will excite readers and critics alike.

In his debut collection, Marston Hefner brings a unique voice and playful style to meditations on self-acceptance, the folly of youth, and how love can lead to actualization and destruction. Through moments of family intimacy, work presentations, vacations, doomed relationships, or businessmen chasing the ephemeral, Hefner shows we are lovable and acceptable despite the shame we accumulate through the years. Sometimes it's only through stories that we can make sense of who we are and where we are going.

Dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publisher's WeeklyNudes on Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 and an SPD Best SellerThrough diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism.Drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder, indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager's quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, in her messy transition into adulthood in the midst of grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut Animals Eat Each Other, Nash shows she belongs in the same camp along with exciting feminist literary disrupters the likes of Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.It's 2005. Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she's alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her ?self? through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone's sick here, but at least they understand.

Between the Midwest & the delta. On the bank of the shore & the ice of the lake. Between love & nostalgia. Beside the toad & the squirrel. Between loss. Next to a stranger. In the scent of grapefruit vodka seltzer. Between the sunrise & high noon. In the shape of the bed in the shape of my former body. By the edge. All the places I wish I died.

Between these covers you will find haunting unconventional narratives that push the boundaries of genre & form in poetry, fiction & essays. This is our first transmission. Welcome to Black Telephone Magazine.CONTRIBUTORSShane AllisonAzia ArcherTara CalabyL ChanMichael ChangClay McLeod ChapmanKristin CleavelandJacques DebrotBryan EdenfieldCharlene ElsbyMaria GreerLisa GrgasHannah NealElliot HarperVictoria HunterJessie JaneshekCynthia PelayoDimitri ReyesRobin SinclairApril SopkinEmelia SteenekampCrystal StoneKailey TedescoStephanie ValenteStephanie Wytovich

The Paradox Twins is a copyright infringing biographical collage that exists on the Internet, pieced together by an unknown auteur. Named for the famous thought experiment, it concerns estranged twin brothers who reunite at their father's funeral to discover they no longer look alike. Haunted by the past (and possibly the future), they move into their father's house to settle his affairs, only to reignite old rivalries and uncover long-hidden secrets, most of which involve the young woman who lives next door. An epistolary work comprised of excerpts from various memoirs, novels, screenplay adaptations, and documents of public record, The Paradox Twins is an experimental, sci-fi ghost story about the scariest, most unknowable quantity there is-family.

In this collage of critical reflections, written in the tradition of the short essay running through Francis Bacon and Roland Barthes, the novelist, philosopher, and former New York Times Opinion staffer Mark de Silva looks into matters of both common curiosity and special concern in America today: technological evolution, virtuality, terrorism, the future of the self, the individual's place in a globalized society, the species' place in the natural world, the state of the arts, and the animadversions of the sciences. Above all, Points of Attack is a handbook of the ways of the good life in bad times, and an inoculation against presumption in an era when the axioms of liberal democratic life have come undone and the end of history once again appears a long way off.

On the outskirts of London, 1855, mortician and funeral director Helena Morrigan struggles with her limited finances and the heavy burdens of her past. Desperate to secure herself, she takes up residence in an aged house closer to the graveyard, closer to the lost souls that sense her torment and are determined to take her place in the mortal world. As she tries to tame and free the ghostly figures around her, she becomes acquainted with the owners of the home, the recently orphaned siblings, Eric, Audrey and Christian Tarter. Yet, the souls she wants to save are on edge as a horrific serial killer runs rampant, giving Helena a boost in business and suspicion. Against her best efforts, Helena is suddenly thrown into a bloody mystery where new and old friendships are tested, innocents are maimed and a horrific family secret that threatens her chance at a peaceful existence and her existence itself.

Murder plots. Drugs. A cult forming in the shadows of Hollywood. At the center of it all, Charles Manson and his devoted followers. No Name Atkins gives voice to the Manson family's most notorious member, chronicling in verse her descent into violence.How does someone like Susan Atkins become a killer? These poems unfurl the bizarre, hallucinatory, and terrifying moments that led to one of America's most reviled stories of devotion and death.

Silverfish is a syncretic tour-de-force that recombines elements of Afrofuturism, sci-fi, and wartime fiction with linguistic and literary theories to issue a dire warning about what happens when we choose to pretend our past never happened, thereby ensuring that we stumble blindly into a future we've already lived. Part prophecy, part literary collage, and part social justice remix, it's a wholly immersive, intertextual sojourn. More than just a damning indictment of our contemporary moment, Silverfish is fiction written both for and after the end of history.

What is buried can return. Those who are dead can still speak. A witch can be burned, but not silenced. When the abattoir is opened, the dead will rise. Burials is the narrative of those whose voices have been taken away-murdered women, witches, ghosts. It''s about speaking one''s truth, and using magic to heal or to banish, even from beyond the grave."Jessica Drake-Thomas has a wealth of knowledge of things you''ve only tasted in shadows. In this collection of gothic poetry, she opens her palms to let some of these dark whispers free into the night -the freedom of a shared language etching itself into the history of the world, to become legend. As things do when they die and are buried. If you''ve ever heard the begging of the blood moon, pulling you from slumber to tiptoe through the darkness...if you''ve ever gnashed your teeth at a lover''s neck...you will find wisps of your own darkness among these pages. With dark, romantic language, vengeful love spells, and the ghosts of old Salem wandering lost among the brittle paper, Burials is a haunting your soul won''t soon forget."- Mela Blust, author of Skeleton Parade"Burials is at times fierce and at others keening, but most often it is both at once. Jessica Drake-Thomas writes macabre love poems with the dazzlingly morbid whimsy of a young Morticia Addams driving her "hearse in seafoam green," seeking her Gomez in this sad, lonely world. "I have learned that / love is cheap here, / and something is important / about the idea of // a nice girl," she tells us. But for the witch-hearted girl, Drake-Thomas gives us love spells that offer a kind of healing for the haunted, for the many ways love so often fails us."- Lindsay Lusby, author of Catechesis, A Postpastoral "This collection is a mass grave teeming with lovers as executioners, and the bodies left like corpses in their wake."- Kristin Garth, author of Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream and Candy Cigarette: Womanchild Noir

Constructed of words, artwork, photos and personal artifacts, Marginalia is an intimate and unconventional account of what it means to be a hybrid. It seamlessly interweaves experience with elements of sociology and psychology, exploring how one cultivates an identity containing multitudes - queer, trans, mixed-race, other."Morrow''s work speaks to anyone who has felt themselves to be other - which in today''s world, in one form or another, is nearly everyone. A common thread of alienation runs through her various platforms, including her first book, "Marginalia."" wickedlocal.com  "Marginalia may be one person''s search for identity and understanding, but it is applicable to so many people who struggle with figuring out their identity, whether it is as an LGBTQ+ individual, a person of color, or someone who is both. Morrow''s succinct style and creative eye for book design makes it highly recommended for readers of modern queer memoirs." Lambda Literary  "There is a push and pull as Juno searches for the identity that fits both in accordance with herself and the way society perceives her. In the end, she embraces the idea that "we shouldn''t be afraid to claim multitudes." Life is often complex and messy, so why should we be any different? Marginalia is a call to be unafraid of your journey to self-discovery and a powerful first-person account of someone who finds themselves in the margins of our society. These are the stories we need right now, and I hope to see many more, especially from Juno Morrow." The Big Smoke∩╗┐∩╗┐Juno Morrow is a multidisciplinary artist, independent game designer, photographer and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Game Design and Unit Coordinator at the City University of New York''s Eugenio Mar├¡a de Hostos Community College. At Hostos, she has been developing the game design program, the first public degree program of its kind in New York City, since 2015. Prior to that, Morrow earned an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. As an internationally exhibiting artist and designer, Morrow has presented games and spoken at sites such as SXSW, GDC, MAGFest and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. With over 10 years of experience as an award-winning photographer, she''s had work featured in The Guardian, Dwell magazine and released 3 monographs of urban photography. Her unusual games, often infused with dark humor, feature distinctive aesthetics and novel premises. Examples include Oral Perspectives, a VR game taking place inside the player''s mouth, and Mastering Tedium, an existentialist laundry simulator played inside a text terminal. Recent work includes Pruuds vs. Sloots, a "dumb versus game," and Blood Broker, a consent-based human sacrifice management simulator. junomorrow.com

Sylvia Plath once said, “I want someone to mouth me.” La Belle Ajar is a collection of poems inspired by Plath’s 1963 novel that reimagines the journey of Esther Greenwood within the empowering odyssey of these 20 scintillating cento poems that honor the voice and legacy of America’s most influential modern poet and author: Sylvia Plath.La Belle Ajar was selected in Luna Luna Magazine's ‘Top 5 Books to watch out for in 2020’"La Belle Ajar is a beautiful collaboration between the dead and the living, the muse and the inspired, and a reminder to continue the conversations with the poets who came before us; Cepeda finds the magic of Plath and delicately constructs her enchantment, an enlivening book of poems you will return to reread again and again." —Kelli Russell Agodon, Editor at Two Sylvias Press and author of Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press)"Adrian Ernesto Cepeda’s new book La Belle Ajar opens up Sylvia Plath’s words and gives them new life, Lovers of Plath and those looking for a book to captivate in the thick honey of self-discovery don’t want to miss this release from CLASH Books." —Tianna G. Hansen, Editor-in-Chief of Rhythm & Bones Press"Plath’s eternal essence — her poetry of confessions, rife with details and darknesses — is woven throughout this La Belle Ajar. The drama, the particulars, and an unlimited glimmering of language oozes in each and every poem. The ghost of Plath seems to be conjured, to find reanimation, in Cepeda’s many inspirations. And while Plath is the muse here, of course, the work stands entirely on its own — unexpected, surreal, and alight. A true tribute, emerging into its own new shape." —Lisa Marie Basile, poet, editor of Luna Luna, and author of The Magical Writing Grimoire"Adrian Ernesto Cepeda’s sensual, electric internal rhythms provoke external, communal ones too. And La Belle Ajar is not just an exercise in homage but a choreographed remix, a translation, a correspondence between words and worlds. Cepeda leaves the door open, in pursuit of readerly access and inspiration. This work vibrates." —Chris Campanioni, Editor PANK Magazine and author of The Internet is for Real"Adrian Ernesto Cepeda’s LA BELLE AJAR is delightful, thought-provoking, and compelling. The lines are both conversational and fierce, lulling us into submission, and then chilling us to the bone at the same time: “she burst /out, I never said, I’m not/godlike.” Cepeda takes Plath, and digs in deep to her life, her struggles, her being, while inhabiting the world as it is now, while conveying the very strangeness of being at all: “I looked empty and subdued,/among the Gillett blades/paper scraps it occurred to/me, I must be idly dead.” This book is meant to be read and loved, with all its complexities, much like a human.”" —Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea, #Survivor, and editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault 

The Elvis Machine is a book of poems inspired by living, loving, and hate-fucking in Memphis, Tennessee—a city still kissed with the 1950s. Forged in a dumpster fire of toxic Elvises, these poems are pornographic bad romances, psychedelic love dirges, and threnodies for sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. They’ll make you laugh off the pain as much as you'll cry, cringe, and feel exposed in this 'No Boys Allowed' clubhouse of feminine rage and healing."Kim Vodicka is the sexier Stephen Wright of poetry, with incisive one-liners so sharp and mind-blowingly funny that you forget how hard you were laughing before you started crying, then started laughing again."–John Skipp, author of The Art of Horrible People“Vodicka’s poetry is a seasick-sweet treasure trove of marvel. Her verses leave you yearning for the kind of love and life you know is bad for you, but you can’t stop reading.”–Elle Nash, author of Animals Eat Each Other“Here is the uncanny valley girl, the B-movie queen, Kim Vodicka, delivering a prize fight of the sexes in poetry where every line is a punch line. This book is the seminal display of misogyny’s trauma, an unflinching exposé of toxic relationships, and an exquisitely honest portrayal of a woman’s most intimate bits. Vodicka peels us to the core. This is what raw feels like.”–Jeanette Powers, author of Dandylion Riot and founder of Stubborn Mule Press“The Elvis Machine is foaming at the mouth all over your pillow. Vodicka takes our balls and wears them like a teething necklace. Her wordplay is as bloody as it is brilliant. This is a love story dissected and displayed of its most vulnerable parts. Once again, she has managed to rock all my sensibilities.”–Kelsey Marie Harris, author of The Jolly Queef 

"The only thing lonelier than being alone is loving the wrong person. Bell’s collection taps into that space, that lack of space, the power of love to spay. When it turns to hate, we might wonder whether or not it was really love in the first place, and we might die wondering. But Regret or Something More Animal gives us hope for the wounded dove, all swan songs aside, and the opportunity to reclaim our hearts and minds. “I am reminded that women writers can eat you alive,” says Bell, and I, too, am reminded."—Kim Vodicka, author of The Elvis Machine"Heather Bell’s Regret or Something More Animal devastates the reader with a field guide to the dissolution of marriage and new life in its shadow. Her poems trace the boundaries of maternal guilt, sexual violence, and love, tenderly exposing their bones in fresh metaphors and bright images. Airy and organic, Bell’s phrases invite the reader into a world haunted by birds, frogs and willows, and punctuated with cigarettes, suicide and real trauma. All the while, Bell sings us through the pain of failure and fear in romance and wings us toward survival’s questions about what it takes to love the shattered self before it is mended."—Daphne Maysonet, Co-Founder of The Corner Club Press"The contemplation of Regret or Something More Animal creates a liminal space, where the speaker becomes more aware of the horror the heart endures, specifically theirs, in an attempt to re-define what love is & re-mend that which has been contorted by years of abuse. The very first line opens the entire premise of this book with, “What’s interesting about the / human heart is the horror of it,” examining the wearing lacerations the heart endures, while preparing us [readers] for a metaphorical surgery that must remove the heart & disembowel it, in order to place the pieces back together. But, no matter what, it will never be the same as it was. Love will never be the same (each time). In Regret or Something More Animal Heather journeys through the heart’s many ventricles, analyzing the architecture of the effects of abusive love & blissful love, & everything in between. The speaker says, “A wound can’t close itself…” & so they attempt to find some suture through experience & re-definition, with the journey itself becoming the true destination."—Courtney Leigh, author of the unrequited <3<3 of red riding hood & her lycan lover (Dancing Girl Press, 2016)“Bell’s poems not only connect they leave teeth marks and you will savor each line that she tattoos around your skin.”—Adrian Ernesto Cepeda,  author, of La Belle Ajar“Heather Bell takes out the wedding dress and feeds it to the wood chipper, with grace and without any traces of mascara running down her face. Bell asks the question we all weep over: how will I ever love again? and then takes us from the breakdown to the breakthrough. “I step back quickly as you do when a caged thing moves,” Bell writes; be ready to stay quick on your feet.”—Jeanette Powers, author of Dandylion Riot

A parasite from Proto Space, summoning memory eaters, funeral machines eating teenagers, space rides to Pleroma, and a frog baby that transcends time and space. These are just some of the stories that will warp your sense of reality until you''re living in Brett Petersen''s mind and you won''t want to leave. PRAISE FOR PARASITE FROM PROTO SPACE "A Confusion Wave beaming in from the farthest-out Far Out, scrambling up to unscramble our partially-scrambled minds." -Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying "If George Bataille and Ray Bradbury had a baby, and that baby was GG Allin, and that GG Allin baby read Ursula Le Guin and Charles Bukowski in equal measure, and that now grown-up baby watched Beavis and Butt-Head reruns on summer afternoons, then we might approach describing the phantasmagoric mise-en-sc├¿nes Brett Peterson has put together here in this collection. The contact high one gets is contagious." -Daniel Nester, author of How to Be Inappropriate  "Petersen''s stories are an acid-drenched, kaleidoscopic blend of genres reminiscent of Dick and Burroughs, but with their own unique breed of genius. The experience of reading The Parasite from Proto-Space and Other Stories is not unlike ingesting a powerful psychedelic-one that will leave a lasting impression of your psyche." -Brendan Vidito, author of Nightmares in Ecstasy "Reading The Parasite from Proto Space feels like you''re on a footchase pursued by Mad Mr. Petersen himself. He''s got a messenger bag full of creatures he spliced together in his basement workshop, and every time you think you''re getting ahead, you turn around to check if he''s still behind you and get smacked in the face by a 50-pound alien memory worm that needs you to validate its childhood trauma." -Charlene Elsby, author of Hexis