Books published by Unsolicited Press

At once delicate and visceral, the poems in To Drown a Man chronicle the long gauntlet from a life of secrets to a life of intimacy. "The only difference between imprisonment and hiding," Russell writes, "is who shuts the door." Exploring the meaning of redemption and shame as related to the personal, the marital, and the spiritual, these are the poems of a soul at war with itself. They read like chunks of ore being burned of their dross.

 When Story Stops, the Leak Begins is the story of accidental pilgrims on a journey through eerie, uncharted territory, having only each other as foils and resources, while they search for the key to their ultimate destination.  Along the way, they meet a grifter, an archetypal character and a spooky digital presence, who might possibly be an ally. In Hollywood parlance, this tale could be described as a spiritual adventure story in which Six Characters in Search of an Author jump headlong with no net into a Canterbury Tales style quest across a dreamscape merging scenography from Waiting for Godot with digital shards of Bladerunner in a rowdy and irreverent Voyage to Arcturus.   The key to meaning, style and emotional resonances in When Story Stops, the Leak Begins, is the poem-script, a hybrid form that combines poetic dialogue, a performance script format and a narrator – imbedded in what would normally be called stage directions – who speculates, comments and reports on feelings and thought processes in each character’s head. This storytelling format grew from the author’s experiences making non-traditional theatre where speech conveys its usual content but also works as a form of gestural action.  A series of routines weave through the poems-scripts and serve as armatures for developing character relationships. These routines also animate the pulse and cadences of the text. The dialogue derives from skaz, a Russian literary technique using singular dialect and speech rhythms to reveal motivations, intentions, even reliability as a narrator.  

Stages of Blue is a nonfiction collection that deals with the harrowing effects of mental illness. Jeswald digs deep. Through poetry, short stories, and flash fiction, Jeswald opens a window so readers can witness the struggle of living with anxiety, bipolar disorder and severe depression. The collection is emotional and riveting.

Annette, soon to turn thirty, has been transplanted from New York City to a small college town where her husband has been hired to teach rich girls "the basic tenets of History and Culture." The girls have arrived from all over the country with their horses, and Annette wonders how the seemingly spoiled girls manage their busy daily schedules, but they do, they seem to thrive in the fresh air of intellectual and physical pursuits, while Annette, not much older than the girls, feels she has become something she never imagined was possible. One morning, reaching for the notebook where she writes down emergency numbers and To Do lists, Annette, as if compelled, begins to write two diaries, one she titles Squabble Diary, and the other, Love Diary, or, more precisely, Sex Diary, in which she will dutifully record the times her husband (whom she names "Monsieur") deigns to acknowledge her and her needs. At some point, the two diaries become one, and what began as an exercise in futility, and as an uncertainty-will she keep at it-becomes a habit, and "this notebook is filled with words, feelings, stories, historical events, and me." Back in New York and on her own, Annette, adjusting to her new situation, summons the Arabic proverb: yom asal, yom basal-one day honey, one day onion-telling herself she must be strong and keep in mind E. Graham Howe's wise advice: "It is better, if we can, to stand alone and to feel quite normal about our abnormality."

GRAVY is a multi-genre collection covering life after seventy. Divided into five sections, Ron Singer writes on the preoccupations of the elderly: accountancy, books, activism, and family (surrogate and real). 

Amy Shimshon-Santo's EVEN THE MILKY WAY IS UNDOCUMENTED is a testament to the lost, the loved, the courageous. Each poem is the past and the future. Each page turns for those built by families that span political borders -- families that see borders as nothing more than lines drawn by an invisible hand that's long forgotten that we belong to the earth and not the other way around.

Brook the Divide is the result of the poet's creative meddling in the life of Vincent van Gogh. Her speaker is fascinated not only with Van Gogh's art, but she is also enamored with him as a man, and a human. In her imaginary friendship, she discovers how difficult it can be to "brook the divide" between everyday life and the creative life.

Emily meanders through everyday experiences as a slightly detached witness to the acknowledged beauty of her world and also to its huge disillusionments, misunderstandings, and betrayals. At times even desire fades in the face of tiredness of trying to understand. Wanting to be noble and often wanting to please those around her through compliance with their wishes, she constantly runs into snags. Too early for anyone's taste she begins to question God and her own role in the world, as well as the role of others, especially women, around her. She is troubled by uneasy relationships with other people, notably men. They seem to not just be on different wavelengths, but as though swimming in different oceans altogether, and the connections appear to be elusive. Nothing is ever quite as she expected or hoped for or planned. Fundamentally, however, she is not given to despair, but instead to gratitude for the irrevocable and undeniable beauty of the world.

Dwellers is a love letter to a girlhood that is often overlooked: the girlhood that occurs in poor, rural America, where ghosts are seemingly everywhere and family is fleeting. Dwellers is a collection of poems about finding one's own version of femininity while being reminded that Hell is real.

Ain't Long Fore Day are poems that carry on in the spirit of the blues. With music and enigma, James Sallis delivers lyrical and narrative poems steeped in the beauty of the every day.

"Girl," my mama had said to me the minute she entered my hospital room, "on the highway of life, you're always traveling left of center."Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories details the experiences of characters in life situations for which they are emotionally or mentally unprepared. Unable or unwilling to seize control over their lives, they allow fate to dictate the path they take, while their methods of coping range from the passive and the aggressive to humorous and hopeful.In each of these eighteen stories, the characters' choices--or non-choices--are their own. But the outcomes may not be what they anticipated or desired.Will they have time to correct their course or will they crash?

Elena Summerfield is taking stock of her life. Originally from the Gulf coast of Florida, now working in New York as a psychologist, she wonders if the choices she's made and the people she's allowed into her inner circle have mattered to her. Are her children important to her? And what about the affair with the statesman, or the passionate trysts with a Cuban-American man she's known since she was a girl? The Men in My Life is a woman's struggle to understand who she was, is, and will become.

The year is 1972, and Randy Walls is fresh out of the foster care system. Haunted by memories of sexual abuse, he hitchhikes from Pittsburgh to rural Georgia in search of a blood relation. His quest for family is fulfilled in unexpected ways after he makes a deal with Ben Stempton, a grizzled old pulp-wooder. Through events that follow, Randy experiences culture shock, hard labor, funerals, friendship, extramarital sex, and jealousy. When old man Stempton dies in a gruesome accident, Randy shoulders the burden of the man's business for the sake of his wife and daughter. Episodes unfold, and Randy finds himself holding a baby. Little Benji's mother is Ben Stempton's daughter, Stacy. Unfortunately, she is married to Randy's rival, an abusive redneck named Ty. More tragedy follows, resulting in Stacy's emotional breakdown.By this time Randy has grown close to his work partner Buster, a light-skinned black youth of uncertain parentage who anchors and guides him. These two plus Benji form an unlikely trio, struggling against vines from the past and present that are as constricting as kudzu-twisted stalks sprouting from society's soil, Ben Stempton's grave, and their own personal histories. Breaking free will require drastic measures and the formation of new bonds rooted in love.

Paradox. In everyday American life, it is a thing to be avoided. Truly difficult intellectual tasks, such as attempting to understand and reconcile hypocrisy, contradiction, equivocation, moral relativism and the like seems altogether too taxing or pointless to those participating in mainstream culture today. Instant gratification has replaced true engagement. Self-centeredness has replaced self-awareness. Technology has replaced meaningful interaction. The poems in this collection attempt to confront the paradoxes of our age. In a voice full of both awe and anguish, the speaker searches through the physical and spiritual worlds for solid ground on which to stake a claim on meaning. In a world where everyone's attention is being pulled in hundreds of dispirit directions, this collection searches for what binds us, what exists in the space between space, and a way to name the truth found there.

In a remote village in Post-World War II Italy, Liliana is the best baker in town and life is looking up until the love her life, Raffaele, leaves seeking economic opportunity elsewhere. She promises to wait for him, but after years of waiting and not hearing from him, Liliana marries Domenico, a strong and accomplished soldier. Mere months after they marry, Domenico leaves Liliana in Gildone their small village for better opportunities in Venezuela. He promises to return soon, but quickly after he leaves, Liliana learns she is pregnant. Liliana must confront the challenge of navigating her husband's absence, the gossip, and raising a baby with the help of her mother and sister who hide a life-altering secret from Liliana. With All My Love, I Wait, follows three generations of women as their lives are forged, nurtured, and shattered.