Spring/Summer 2024 Catalogue

The poems in To Leave for Our Own Country offer a new approach to place-based writing and thought in an often uprooted age. Ranging from the shores of Lake Michigan to the small towns of Iowa and Indiana, and finally landing in the heart of New York City, they follow the course of the American small-town diaspora across three decades of a life, from childhood to the cusp of parenthood, asking what it means to belong to a landscape or community that one is constantly destined to leave. Bringing together the personal, political, historical, and spiritual, and filtering them all through the particularities of place and of his neighbors, human and nonhuman, author John Linstrom celebrates the grace of quiet moments and comings-together as he mourns the dislocations and inhuman rendings of a postmodern world. In attending to each place and stage in life with care and listening for new wisdom everywhere, some leavings take on the character of a return, and some returns have the power to release old pains. In our moment of climate crisis and amid cynical challenges to democracy, each rooted in systems of oppression and inequality, such a departure seems both urgent and necessary to turn the world toward healing.

"A gutsy, grungy collection centering troubled souls...Brimming with pure Americana, not unlike the movies Wild at Heart or Thelma and Louise, Tobias’ stories pull no punches...A strong collection" - Kirkus

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. Monarch was originally selected for publication by Nomadic.

MONARCH: Stories subverts the reader's common perceptions about how love can heal, how loss and suffering can transform, and how every character deserves a second chance. America's city scars, sewers, alleyways, and bars are landscape to their wars, as characters heal and transform under wind turbines and on open roads, in golden cornfields and with the wails of Chicago blues. Heroes in this collection are the marginalized, the sufferers, the down-trodden, the misfits, the wanderers, and the wounded, shaped by grief but not defined by their scars.

Honoring the human capacity for change, characters drive the collection, turning up the dial to raise the volume of voice for those who live on the fringe and are often ignored. In collection, MONARCH is an exploration of the human condition through a lens of damaged survivors as they learn to love through small acts of kindness, given and received. Characters bear traumas with their bodies, and often, they transgress. They break in, break down, and ultimately, break open.

An inclusive invitation, MONARCH aims at an intimate portrayal of scarred characters on American streets beating the drum of current culture against the fierce rhythm of critical social justice issues. With this at its heart, the collection Includes a reading guide written by the author with prompts intended to inspire discourse between readers, writers, and students, making the work of special interest to librarians, teachers, book clubs, and beyond.

Foreword by Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas.

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. Las Piedrecitas was originally selected for publication by Nomadic.

Set in the fictional California town of San Encanto – a place where suburban angst coexists with the astonishing – a lonely wife finds her oppressive husband has become a dirigible who follows her from the sky, a neglected boy spends his summer unwinding a parasitic Guinea worm from his little sister's belly, and an aspiring life coach attends a self-actualization seminar that goes wildly off the rails. In Things I Want Back From You, Elizabeth Stix’s hilarious and poignant debut of 20 linked stories, hopelessly flawed characters flail against their own insecurities, seeking one true moment of connection, and if they’re lucky, winning that rarest of gifts – a second chance.

Known for their lyrical intensity and thematic range, David Rigsbee’s poems have appeared prominently in literary magazines for five decades, as well as in a dozen full-length collections. Watchman in the Knife Factory: New and Selected Poems features the key works of his career, gathering poems from volumes long out of print, as well as presenting a generous selection of work from the new millennium. As Peter Makuck noted, “Few other poets so powerfully capture both the ignorant cruelty and profound love we bear one another.”

Earthwhere was written under the sign of disaster–a house fire, a global pandemic, the health crisis of a spouse, the stillbirth of my niece. In many of the poems, I address a “you,” a regular feature of lyric poetry, partly because it powerfully conjures a singular other, the “to whom” of address, our most precious loved ones. It made writing the poems feel like receiving the gift of their attention, like they were with me. Also, it made the act of writing an act of preservation, for poems enact and elicit emotion, connection. They’re all love letters, really.

TAKE ME INSTEAD

       For Dobie
       A Golden Shovel From Ada Limon’s “The Last Thing”

After E left, you and L & L went upstairs to your room while I

stayed downstairs to babysit H and the puppy (who I can’t

get to stop barking at every little thing). I think it would help

if the curtains were up. I brought home pizza and wings. It

was 47 degrees this morning, and I was feeling smug, so I

looked up how hot it was going to be in Texas today (98). Will

you need me to take your friend’s home later? That’s fine. I never

heard back from you about what you want me to tell people to get

you for your birthday. Do you remember that summer fighting over

Nerf guns with your little cousins? They were hoarding darts and making

you upset. I said, they’re just kids, and you said, But I’m a kid! Everything

feels so all at once. The night the house burned down. So much smoke. Such

intensity. When H & I made it to the neighbor’s yard, there were a

few seconds I thought you were still in the house & I was yelling as big

as I could make my voice. I was calling God. I was making a deal.

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. Tectonic Tongues/Lenguas Tetonicas was originally selected for publication by Nomadic.

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. Evaporating Rage is one of the forthcoming Nomadic Press titles that we acquired.

Caulbearer by Luisa A. Igloria is the third selection for the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series.

In many cultures, a caul is considered talismanic; and a child born with it, possessing luck or protection. Luisa A. Igloria invokes this metaphor to weave poems exploring the veiled intervals of transition experienced by those in the diaspora—or by anyone who has felt a severing from their origins. The poems in Caulbearer enter spaces not only of nostalgia, loss, and impossible return. They also offer opportunities for glimpsing pleasure in the re-imagining and telling of our own stories, for as long and as many times as we need, in a world still full of beauty and mystery.

In June of 2023, Black Lawrence Press welcomed numerous existing and forthcoming Nomadic Press titles to our catalogue. Phosphene was originally selected for publication by Nomadic.

From inside the glass, visible breath rises against the pane. A hand unseen carves the moist fog into words, like ghostly messages from the other side: points to consider, mappings gesturing towards escape, a puncture to mull over or anchor the body back down to Earth. Phosphene is a cyclical underworld journey, where light is both pressure and maze. The poetic voice meanders in the inbetween, a porous vessel, negotiating what it means to survive, be perceived, and the conundrum of escape between these densities of alienation.