Mason Goes Mushrooming Touring California!

The Primary 1 classroom at St. Helena Montessori School in Helena, California, had the pleasure to host Melany Kahn, the author of the children’s book, Mason Goes Mushrooming. The book offers an exploration of a young boy’s foraging adventures with his dog, Buddy, through four seasons and four woodland environments and is accompanied by kid-friendly recipes that take the foraged treasures from forest to frying pan. The book weaves simple science and education through playful, fungi-finding adventure. The children had the opportunity to smell and touch many different types of mushrooms and asked many questions. Parents, educators, bookstores, and librarians can find out more about Melany Kahn and the book on the author’s website.

News in 2023

GWP is starting the new year with an exciting slate of 2023 books coming out! We also have some staffing/freelance changes and a new intern (with more joining us this spring/summer).

INTERNS 2023

Livia Cohen is a student at Middlebury College where she is majoring in History and Religion. Her favorite go-to book genre is memoirs (especially when written by rock stars). Raised in Atlanta, she loves the heat but has been enjoying the change of pace in Vermont where she can snowboard, rock climb, and mountain bike in her free time.

 

 

New Freelance Editors 2023

Cassie Fancher (Editor) is a writer, reader, editor, and former teacher and tutor from New Haven, Vermont. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida. She first became involved with Green Writers Press when her short story collection, Street of Widows, was awarded GWP’s Howard Frank Mosher Book Prize in 2019. More recently, her short story, “By the Way, This Isn’t What I Look Like” was published in the Nashville Review. Cassie currently lives in Central Florida, where she enjoys long walks in the swamp.

Sharyn Skeeter (Editor) was fiction, poetry, book review editor at Essence magazine and editor in chief at Black Elegance magazine. She taught journalism, writing, and literature at colleges and universities. Her poetry and articles have been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies. Dancing with Langston, her debut novel received the 2019 Gold Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award (Multicultural Adult Fiction). She has given readings and participated in literary events in the United States, India, and Singapore. She’s on the boards of Hugo House and Earth Creative and is a former trustee at ACT Theatre in Seattle.

Maria Tane (Associate Fiction Editor) is a student at the University of Amsterdam where she is majoring in Literary and Cultural Analysis, with a focus on environmental humanities. She has a soft spot for fantasy and sci-fi stories because of their ability to nudge people to think beyond what seems possible, which she thinks is a skill we all need to practice more and more right now. When the sun decides to come out in her rainy city, she enjoys having picnics outside by the water. When it doesn’t, she pairs the smell of rain with lavender tea and with writing her stories of magic looming at the edges of the mundane.


Upcoming Titles in 2023

In 2023, we have some new titles coming out (or just released) that may be of interest, as follows:

The Ice Sings Back by M Jackson (Oregon resident)

The Coconut Crab by Peter Fong (Hartland, VT resident, part-time)

the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life, a YA novel by Alcy Leyva (NYC)

The Views from Mount Hunger by Marjorie Ryerson (VT author)

Altar to an Erupting Sun by Chuck Collins (VT author)

Midnight Water: A Psychedelic Memoir by Katherine Maclean, Ph.D. (VT author)

Sundog Poetry Book Award Winner: Fire Index by Bethany Breitland (VT poet).
https://sundogpoetry.org/book-award/2022

and last, but not least: Bernie’s Mitten Maker: A Memoir by Jen Ellis (VT author)


We are committed to publishing sustainably with care and respect for our authors and all our readers. Please join us in the new year to celebrate and be part of the journey! 

Our newest YA Fiction Signed

the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life

In the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life, we meet Imajin (his friends and family call him Maji), a sixteen-year-old African-American boy from the Bronx who, during one fateful summer, finds his world crumbling down around him. During his last class of the school year, he feels overwhelmed by the news of a young Internet celebrity taking his life in Brooklyn and another of a pregnant black woman held at gunpoint by cops. This is the same day that his favorite teacher and role model announces that he’s leaving the school before Maji’s senior year. Couple this with him internally dealing with the destruction of his family — his mother suffering from depression and his father slowly pulling away from his home — and Maji decides to run.

Run from everything.

Run from everyone.

Building a small raft out of materials from his neighborhood, and with nothing but the

Moby Dick book he stole from his teacher and a few printed maps, Maji sets sail down the Hudson River one night and out to the open sea hoping to find a miracle that would make his life special and worthwhile.  

the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life is part coming-of-age story, part social commentary piece, part reimagining of a common classic — all aimed at a Young Adult audience. It’s bold and surreal, with elements of magical realism, but maintains a firm grasp on the issues we are facing in the here-and-now. 

Green Writers Press senior editor Rose Alexandre-Leach notes, “the book combines everything that the current contemporary writers are creating in the realm of exposing young readers to race relations in America through amazing storytelling and characters with the grandeur and imagination of classical literature.”

About the Author

Alcy Leyva is a Bronx-born multi-genre writer whose first two books in the Shades of Hell series, And Then There Were Crows and And Then There Were Dragons, were published by Black Spot Books. His short stories have appeared in the award-winning anthologies A Midnight Clear and Dead of Winter. He currently lives and teaches in New York City.

 

 

 

About the Cover Artist

Photo by Tony Powell

Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977) is an African-American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: “Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture.” Wiley was included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2018.

Artwork Credit: Kehinde Wiley, The Herring Net (Zakary Antoine and Samedy Pierre Louisson), 2017. © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Pre-ordering info coming soon! 

Guest Post: Native American/Alaska Heritage Month

My life was informed by the brawls of a struggling family. It was shaped by the trees I climbed, and the trails I followed. It was molded by basic goodness and the poor food we scrapped for. My illiterate realities can be traced to a bone-tired mother who repeatedly fell asleep moments after laying down to read a nighttime story. My lack of understanding, in my child’s mind, about the sad and sorry secrets that were manifest in both parents but never really addressed, made the outdoors, with its mysteries and wonders, all the more my retreat. 

Six kids. Kittens flushed down the toilet . . . NO extra spent on cat food when we could hardly feed ourselves. Small balls of white iceberg lettuce storebought by a mother whose hands would never touch the soil to plant REAL lettuce. Such was her disdain caused by forced childhood farm work. A reality of the Great Depression. We, her six offspring, never knew a real honest vegetable due to both poverty and her contempt for the soil.

Neither had anything but shadowy memories of their Native parents and a stabbing pain in their beings, that some important part of their lives, had been ripped away. 

The Great Depression. That’s when they met. My father and his younger brother left the orphanage to toil in the fields of my mother’s family farm. Childhood drudgery meant fresh food on their table. Also, this built their bones and bonded them to each other. And too they shared a similar loss that further bonded them. My mom’s mom was Makah Native of Washington and my dad’s dad, Tlingit of NE Alaska. Neither had anything but shadowy memories of their Native parents and a stabbing pain in their beings, that some important part of their lives, had been ripped away. 

They brought their joined pain and longings along into their marriage to each other and tried as best, as their injured souls could, to make a home. They were not bad, just damaged and tired. The one most afforded the freedom of his sex, my father, was, as our family whittled down in numbers, able to literally “take wing” and fly off each summer to Alaska under the guise of finding work, which he did find as a mechanic in the oilfields. Also while north he searched for and found his alcoholic and bedridden Tlingit father. Finally, this brought closure, and coupled with his sorrow, he returned home.

My mom and Hilda Mae and my dad and me on the reunion day.

The success my father had, inspired my mother to search for her Makah mother. We lived less than 50 miles from the Makah and yet promising leads led to dead ends. I felt my mother’s pain when we would return empty-handed from her searches. It would not be until her mother finally came in search of her, that we all laid eyes on a woman so identical to our own mother and uncle and rejoiced but also not knowing that she would die shortly after her mission.

The visceral puzzles of pain and struggle I witnessed as a child, sensing my parent’s loss and longings as well as pride in having blood ties to this coast, took a toll on our family and also ultimately gave us understanding and pride. I have always felt at home on this wild, wet Washington coast and on my kayak travels along hundreds of miles of Alaska and Canadian shorelines and fiords. I have the DNA of the people married to this clash of sea and coast, it has nourished my senses and my heart. For this, I continue to give thanks to the Native lineages that forever bond me to this wild West Coast.


RED LIVES MATTER! 2014

Baby birthed from baby on the Pow! Wow!
Get ‘high’ way
Not the “way” it should’ve been
But the way it was

Girl-child of the Red People
Red Lives Matter!
But who knows or cares of your suffering?
Or your girl-child mother’s suffering?
Or her mother’s mother’s mother’s suffering?

Like shadows and ghosts flickering across
Their own lands
Barely seen
Hardly acknowledged
Flickering only for a moment
Never to REALLY shine
Just ghosts

Who gave up their lands and home?
Who forfeited their traditions and future?
Who gave up their virginity
For a bottle or a needle?
The Pow! Wow!! Get ‘high’ way
Is the lost highway
Too many Red ghosts drift
Along that endless road
Do Red Lives really matter?


A Washington native, Irene Skyriver was born in Port Townsend and raised in the country. She moved with her children and horses to Lopez Island, WA in 1980. Green Writers Press published her first nonfiction title, Paddling with Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey, in 2017. Inspired partly by her own spirit of adventure, and partly by the stories of her native coastal ancestors (Tlingit and Makah), the book interweaves the true account of her journey with generational stories handed down and vividly reimagined. Skyriver lives off-the-grid, and spends most of her time growing her garden; letting the outdoors and beaches be her sanctuary, inspiration, and teacher. A Woman’s Life on the Edge of the Sea: Four Decades of Poetry, her first poetry collection, is coming out in April 2023 from GWP.

Sundog Poetry Book Award Open for Submissions August 1

Starting Aug. 1, the Sundog Poetry Book Award will be open to submissions from all Vermont poets who have not published more than one full-length collection.

Final judge, Shanta Lee Gander of Brattleboro, will select the winning manuscript and write an introduction for the book. The winning poet will receive a cash prize of $500, 50 copies of the book, and assistance with promotion through a featured book launch and a handful of readings scheduled throughout the state.

Gander is the author of “GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak in Woke Tongues,” winner of the 2021 Vermont Book Award and the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize. Her forthcoming collection, “Black Metamorphoses” (Etruscan Press, 2023), is what Gander describes as a 2000+ year-old phone line opened to Ovid as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos while creating her own new language in this work. She was the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts as well as the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to the Vermont Humanities Council’s board of directors. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative non-fiction and poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford, and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College.

First-readers include Vermont poets Sue Burton, Lucas Farrell and Diana Whitney, as well as two members of the Sundog Poetry board. Sundog Poetry Center has a long-term partnership with Brattleboro publisher Green Writers Press, run by publisher and poet Dede Cummings. Green Writers Press will design, print and distribute the book nationwide. For more information, visit the Sundog Poetry website, sundogpoetry.org/sundog-book-award.

Manuscripts should be between 48 and 64 pages. Proof of Vermont residency will be requested along with a $20 application fee online via Submittable. Poets with demonstrated financial need can contact the managing director to request a fee waiver, at sundogpoetry@gmail.com. Submissions for this book award will close Sept. 30.

Parker Huber, Kindest GWP Author Dies at 82

J. Parker Huber, a Thoreau expert, lives a simple life in Brattleboro. Photo by Tom Slayton © VTDigger.

Parker Huber of Brattleboro died surrounded by silence in his home, just before daybreak on July 8, 2022. In his final weeks, he was surrounded by a few devoted friends and medical hospice nurses, who cared for him lovingly. He lost his capacity to bicycle in early 2020 due to Parkinson’s disease, but his love of walking enabled him to stay connected to his beloved outdoors and the people on the streets of Brattleboro. Parker was a contemplative, quiet man, yet paradoxically he connected with and touched the lives of many. He was true inspiration and a guiding light with his generous, supportive presence and his extraordinary capacity for deep listening. He commonly understated his unique accomplishments, attributes and gifts, and was likely unaware of the profound affect he had on others’ lives.

Parker was a weaver of connections through the many groups of which he was a member. Circle Dancing was a great love of his, and he danced joyfully in the Brattleboro Circle Dance community for thirty-five years. He was active in and well loved by the Putney Friends Meeting for almost thirty years, and more recently, with St. Michael’s Episcopal Church through their contemplative and centering prayer groups. He also had a significant influence on the community of nature writers, both locally and nationally, through his envisioning and founding the Glen Brook writers’ group and facilitating its meetings for thirty years, as well as the Crestone writers’ group in Colorado. Parker was an avid naturalist and writer and was known for his yearly pilgrimages to the top of Monadnock on Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps less well-known, he climbed mountains all over the country, and even in New Zealand, and served in his younger years as a wilderness guide.

Click the image to purchase a copy of Parker’s wonderful book.

He published a number of books based on his own adventures and those of the writers he admired most, Thoreau and Muir. The Wildest Country, in which he followed Thoreau’s journeys in Maine on foot and by canoe, was originally published in 1981 and reissued by popular demand in 2008. In Infinite Good: The Mountains of William James (Green Writers Press, 2018), author and naturalist, J. Parker Huber, follows the famed naturalist and philosopher William James’ sojourns in New England.

He was respected, admired and loved by many people across the continents, and will be greatly missed in our town of Brattleboro.

 

To honor Parker’s memory, and in lieu of a monetary donation in his name,
consider making your own dedication to a practice that contributes to peace
within and stretching your capacity for generosity and kindness toward all
people as well as to the diverse forms of life that support all of us everywhere.

GWP Authors Win Awards

Below is the list of GWP award-winning books for the 2021 publishing season!

It is always a good idea to submit to book awards for an author’s publishing season, though sometimes it can get expensive to do so. GWP is a member of the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association), so we offer our authors a discount through our membership. We always encourage authors to submit because winning an award, or becoming a finalist, brings on the accolades, ego-boosting, and overall recognition for all the hard work that went into making books!


We had a fantastic surprise for the 2021 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards: a debut novel we published entitled Faron Goss won GOLD in the very competitive category of General Fiction! GWP Honors Author Diane Lechleitner, the Foreword Reviews INDIES GOLD WINNER in General Fiction! Here is a snippet from Kirkus Reviews:

When the body of Alison Goss washes up on Menhaden Island, in the Gulf of Maine, the working-class fishing community of hard-hewn ways and salty perspectives is faced with handling the future of her unusual son, Faron.
They soon discover how different he is, in strange but endearing ways, including his fascination with moths and his stunning artistic talent.
Bound together by weather and sea, Menhaden neighbors with good hearts and blunt opinions overlook Faron’s peculiarities. But their nurturing embrace cannot completely erase his troubled past, which eventually morphs into a life-changing event and forces him to confront lingering memories.
Faron faces that which haunts him, works as a sternman on a lobster boat, and paints in his studio. When he meets a bird-watching woman who has returned to Menhaden to live in her grandparents’ house, his life takes another unexpected turn.

Faron Goss was also selected for a 2021 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie book!


GWP author Nancie Laird Young was a Finalist in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Memoir category for her beautiful Tea With Dad.

“Sit back and steep yourself in Young’s reflective recounting of family stories and secrets, misconceptions and discoveries, in what ultimately proves to be the grace-infused accommodation between an aging parent and adult child, between their past and their present.”

Jim Tomlinson, author of Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award)


Yet another GWP author, Keema Waterfield, won the Bookfest Award, in not one, but FOUR categories: Memoir, Humor, Travel, Outdoors! The awards honor authors who create outstanding works of fiction and nonfiction.

Keema Waterfield’s Inside Passage is a memoir chronicling her peripatetic childhood “chasing music with her twenty-year-old mother on the Alaskan folk festival circuit” while yearning for home.

Kirkus Reviews called it “a wild remembrance that will keep readers engaged” and the late Sherry Simpson enthused, “heartbreaking but never maudlin, funny without being flip, and always, always openhearted about what survival on The Last Frontier truly means.”


The Dreamcatcher Codes was named a Young Adult Fiction Honor Book by the Green Earth Book Awards, the nation’s first environmental stewardship award for children and young adults. GEBA promotes books that inspire youth to grow a deeper understanding, respect, and responsibility for the natural environment.

The Dreamcatcher Codes was also recently awarded a 2022 Nautilus Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction! The Nautilus mission is to celebrate and honor books that support conscious living & green values, high-level wellness, positive social change & social justice, and spiritual growth.

DCC also won a Skipping Stones Award and an International Impact Award in the Multicultural category!


Congrats to ALL our wonderful authors. We are so proud of the books we publish and the authors behind them. GWP is curating our 2023 books and putting together schedules for the season. We have a few more books coming out in 2022, so let’s hope we can post more awards for this year!

Summer Internship Begins

GWP is thrilled to welcome our Summer Interns and our Fellowship Recipient! Starting this week, we are reading submissions (of which there are multitudes!), and our team will bring some fresh energy to the mix and our mission. Here is a quote from GWPSI22, Maria Tane’s letter to GWP — and we couldn’t agree with her more:

During the last couple of months, the need to more actively get involved in the environmental movement has been increasing up to the point where it made me rethink what I want my future work to look like. And the first step towards being able to channel that energy into what I find to be the most meaningful pursuit I can undertake in my lifetime is by starting to do something about it right now. My belief in the power that stories have in reshaping behavior and in bringing about change is what led me to dedicate most of my life so far to creating, consuming, analyzing, and advocating for them. It is also what led me here and why I am writing you this message. I deeply resonate with the mission of Green Writers Press to provide authors with the resources they need in the stages leading up and going beyond their vital words connecting with readers, and it would be wonderful if you would consider me for an Editorial or Developmental position as an intern.

SUMMER INTERNS 2022

Maria Tane is a student at the University of Amsterdam where she is majoring in Literary and Cultural Analysis, with a focus on environmental humanities. She has a soft spot for fantasy and sci-fi stories because of their ability to nudge people to think beyond what seems possible, which she thinks is a skill we all need to practice more and more right now. When the sun decides to come out in her rainy city, she enjoys having picnics outside by the water. When it doesn’t, she pairs the smell of rain with lavender tea and with writing her stories of magic looming at the edges of the mundane.

Madelyn Whelan is a junior at Merrimack College, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing, and minoring in film studies. She helps run the school’s Film Club and Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Maddie was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and loves the beach, collecting records, and writing. In her spare time, she is either watching movies, hanging out with friends, or working at a restaurant in her hometown.

 


Post-Graduate Summer Fellowship Recipient

Connie McClugage is a graduate of Bennington College with a study in creative writing and linguistics. Hailing from Tampa, Florida, she’s still getting used to the cold weather but you can find her writing poetry, watching a Star Wars movie, or learning a new language. A former first-year Bennington Field Work Term intern, GWP is thrilled to have Connie “back at the office” ready to take on more editorial and management responsibilities.

Summer is Here & Some Farmy Reads!

The Summer Solstice is upon us—June 21st this year! For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, we are awaiting the longest day and the Earth tilting toward the Sun. GWP is thrilled to have the summer ahead of us. Our summer interns and fellowship recipient, Connie, are starting on Monday! We will take the summer to read our submissions on Submittable.

We love working with and publishing our farmer-writers. Here is a great summer reading list for when you find time, lolling around the barn, lying in the hammock after planting seedlings . . . so wash the sweat off your brow, change out of those Carharts, and take a break—especially on the longest day of the year!


What a fabulous review of Peter Gould’s Horse-Drawn Yogurt, 2nd Edition, Revised by Peter Coyote:

“For years I thought that I’d written the best book on the communal, counter-culture reality. It’s called Sleeping Where I Fall and has been in print since 1999. Peter Gould has written a real contender, and perhaps even a better book. It turns out I met Peter one night about 47 years ago when my girlfriend, Nichole Wills, my daughter, Ariel, her son Jeremiah and my dog, Josephine, pulled down their long snowy road and were taken in. We were traveling from commune to commune from the Delaware Water Gap of Pennsylvania throughout New England, establishing a counter-cultural trade route; assessing surpluses and needs, publishing them, and sending the book back around. 47 years later Peter sent me the book for a blurb for the new edition and I fell into it as if it was a vat of honey. He really nailed the amount of labor, reclaiming of abandoned and abused shelters and machinery, and the diplomacy of making friends with the older farming generation which was on its way out. My family, the Diggers, did the same at every place we lived — Olema, Forest Knolls, Trinidad, Salmon Creek, Black-Bear Farm. His story could have been — and in many degrees is — our story. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Peter Gould must be my brother-by-another-mother. I urge you to read his book. It’s glorious! Peter’s tone-perfect narratives capture the back-to-the-land movement—the danger, the disappointments, the values, the joys of living a life of meaning in harmony with one’s deepest intentions, and the thrill of expanding the heart’s perimeter to include everyone you meet. He really nails the amount of labor, in salvaging thrown-away machines and lumber, forging bonds, in learning skills that would have passed away with the previous generation. Horse-Drawn Yogurt is a great read by a fine writer and an even better reminder of a time and season when many young people were fearlessly committed to living lives of meaning and ecstasy. You can’t beat that combo.”

Peter Coyote, actor, author, Zen Buddhist priest


Farm Girl by Megan Baxter is a memoir of urgent grace that crosses boundaries of genre and time. In her second year of college, Megan finds herself bonded to a lover spiraling into addiction and two thousand miles away from her heart’s home—a stretch of forty certified-organic acres along the banks of the Connecticut River separating Vermont and New Hampshire. In the crucible of a rainy Portland winter, Megan is forced to decide whether to embrace her future as a farm girl or to continue growing into the woman everyone hopes she’ll become. Farm Girl is about two love affairs that force a decision: the love between two people and the love between Megan and the landscape. With innovative prose and lush description, Farm Girl raises the earth up as a character and asks questions about the work we choose to sustain us—how careful attention and devotion to the earth transcends human tragedy.

“A startlingly lovely memoir . . .” —Jodi Picoult

“This is a book about groundedness, I think — about the soil into which one can sink one’s feet when the going is impossible. It’s a remarkable account.” —Bill McKibben


“. . . Crews has written [Bluebird], a book of love poems: to the Earth, to rural living, to his community, to his husband, and to each one of us.” –Shari Altman, Literary North

James Crews’ work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well as on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in Writing & Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is the author of four collections of award-winning poetry, including The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize and Foreword Book of the Year Citation, 2011), Telling My Father(Cowles Prize, 2017), Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of several anthologies of poetry: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection; and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He leads Mindfulness & Writing retreats online and throughout the country, and works as a creative coach with groups and individuals. He lives on an organic farm with his husband, Brad Peacock, in Shaftsbury, Vermont.


Lucas Farrell’s award-winning debut poetry collection entitled the blue-collar sun is the winner of the 2020 Sundog Poetry Book Award in Partnership with Green Writers Press and will be coming to bookstores and online in time for Earth Day, 2021.

“I love these poems. They’re both warmly familiar and also weird AF. They made my heart leap for the ordinary, fascinating world.”

Anais Mitchell

 

A wonderful review of the blue-collar sun by SevenDayspoetry critic Benjamin Aleshire

“That the recipient of Vermont’s newest poetry award is a farmer, equally comfortable shoveling manure and penning urgent existential verse, is an auspicious sign for literature in this corner of the world.”

About the Poet
Lucas Farrell lives in Townshend, Vermont, where he and his wife own and operate Big Picture Farm, a small hillside goat dairy and award-winning farmstead confectionery. His first book of poems, The Many Woods of Grief (University of Massachusetts Press), was awarded the Juniper Prize for Poetry. He has two daughters.

 


Enjoy the summer reads & shop at those farmer’s markets!
If you feel like supporting one of our favorite, local farms . . .

The SUSU commUNITY Farm is an Afro-Indigenous stewarded farm and land-based healing center in Southern Vermont that elevates Vermont’s land and foodways.

“There is no liberation without community.”

—Audre Lorde

Pride Month: Celebrate Our LGBTQ+ Authors!

More LOVE, less hate.

This is the theme we all can embrace. Since 1970, when the first Pride Parade was held in NYC to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, Pride has become a chorus of voices across all media, from books to films, and around the globe. There is more work to be done in the fight for dignity, freedom to live, and love without persecution.

Green Writers Press celebrates our LGBTQ+ authors—and not just during Pride Month—all the time! With Pride Month in swing, we wanted to take this opportunity to feature some of our books with Queer/Trans/LGBTQ themes for you.


GWP author, Sarina Prabasi wrote The Coffeehouse Resistance: Brewing Hope in Desperate Times as a call to community action during the Trump Years. As an immigrant from Nepal, she wanted to take action. She and her husband Elias Gurmu founded Buunni Coffee together in 2012, bringing Ethiopian hospitality and warmth to the United States via fabled, full-flavored coffee beans, and now they have a number of cafes in northern Manhattan.

Reclaiming the tradition of coffee houses throughout history, their coffeehouses become a hub for local organizing and action. Moving from despair to hope, this story is ultimately about building community, claiming home, and fighting for our dreams.

Photo by Carly Jara Photography

Elias is a serial entrepreneur. In Addis, he ran a traditional restaurant with long lines outside at lunchtime. Often called “Mr. Buunni” in their upper Manhattan neighborhood, Elias is frequently seen striding across Uptown to fix, deliver, and problem-solve.

Sarina Prabasi is the author of The Coffeehouse Resistance (GWP 2019) and was formerly the CEO of WaterAid America. Sarina serves on the Board of Directors of the Specialty Coffee Association and has been featured in Food & Wine (“Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink”), New York Business Journal (“Woman of Influence”), Fortune Magazine and elsewhere.

 


Clay might be best described as an unconventional coming-of-age story, based on character but with a narrative that opens out toward the larger society and with elements of comedy and satire. The story takes place in a semi-rural corner of New York City in the 1970s and centers on a six-month period in the life of a boy confronting changes in his family, his community, and himself at a time of social confusion and turmoil—including conflicts of identity. The main story centers on cultural and environmental threats to a historic African-American community situated next to a toxic landfill.

“[An] ambitious first novel. . . . Meola creates rich characters and a lived-in portrait of a corner of Staten Island. . . . Over the course of a summer, a 12-year-old boy becomes aware of the injustices in his own community. Set on Staten Island in the 1970s, [Clay] is narrated by a middle school student named Luke. He’s part of a Portuguese American family whose members are outliers in their neighborhood—which gives Luke a vantage point to observe both the local White establishment and a nearby Black community that is often the target of racist vitriol.” Kirkus Reviews

Frank Meola has published work in a variety of forms and places, including New England Review and the New York Times. His Times travel essay on Rachel Carson in Maine was published in the book Footsteps. He has written frequently on Emerson and Thoreau. His newest essay, in Michigan Quarterly Review, centers on the ambiguities of Hispanic identity in America, based partly on his own experience. Three of Meola’s stories have been finalists in fiction competitions. He has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches writing and humanities at NYU. Frank lives in Brooklyn, NY with his husband and their two cats.


In Parenting 4 Social Justice: Tips, Tools and Inspiration for Conversation & Action with Kids, authored by Angela Berkfield and 5 co-authors, social justice issues are presented through the lens of the authors’ personal experiences both growing up and as parents. The honest stories and ideas prepare caregivers to initiate age-appropriate and engaging conversations with kids about social justice. Dialogues between parents and children are illustrated with eye-catching comic strips by illustrator Brittney Washington. There are many ideas for taking action with kids: from making protest signs and attending a local march, to trying healing meditations and consciously connecting with people to make change. Stories from diverse parents across the US are woven into the chapters on race, class, gender, disability, and collective liberation.


Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection   This anthology features poems by Mark Doty, Ross Gay, Donald Hall, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye, and many others. These poets, from all walks of life, and from all over America, prove to us the possibility of creating in our lives what Dr. Martin Luther King called the “beloved community,” a place where we see each other as the neighbors we already are. Healing the Divide urges us, at this fraught political time, to move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days.

“My favorite book of the year so far. You can feel the loving intention of Vermonter James Crews behind every selection in this exquisite anthology—the hope for a better society and world for people to grow up and actually live in. . . .” —Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate

“. . . Crews has written [Bluebird], a book of love poems: to the Earth, to rural living, to his community, to his husband, and to each one of us.” –Shari Altman, Literary North

James Crews’ work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well as on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in Writing & Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is the author of four collections of award-winning poetry, including The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize and Foreword Book of the Year Citation, 2011), Telling My Father(Cowles Prize, 2017), Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of several anthologies of poetry: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection; and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He leads Mindfulness & Writing retreats online and throughout the country, and works as a creative coach with groups and individuals. He lives with his husband, Brad Peacock, in Shaftsbury, Vermont.


The Girl in the Yellow Pantsuit: Essays on Politics, History and Culture collects the best-loved of Becca Balint’s weekly columns on politics, history, and culture. Becca’s curiosity, humor, and deep affection for her subjects provide readers with new ways of examining trenchant problems. Her clear-eyed perspectives on subjects as wide-ranging as American politics, global affairs, education policy, and parenthood challenge us to think more deeply about our own place in the world and the impact we want to leave.

 

Becca Balint is a stateswoman, current candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and President Pro Tempore of the Vermont Senate. After two decades of teaching history and civics to middle-schoolers and community college students, Becca won her debut race for state senate in 2014. She has been elected four times despite primary challenges in every race. In 2018, she was elected by the Senate Democratic caucus to serve as majority leader and in 2020 she was unanimously elected by the entire Senate to serve as President Pro Tempore. Becca is an avid outdoorswoman and motorcyclist. She lives in Brattleboro Vermont, with her wife, two wise-cracking kids, and an incorrigible Labradoodle. 


Aesop Lake    Seventeen-year-old Leda Keogh witnesses a hate crime against a gay couple from her school and must make some tough choices. Two voices weave a coming-of-age story that confronts diversity and bullying in rural America.

This novel uses three of the fables to provide structure to a story about ethics and moral dilemma, in a political climate that is fraught with injustice and assault on the LGBTQ community and women’s rights.

Sarah Ward writes young adult fiction, poetry, and journal articles in the field of child welfare. Over a twenty-five-year career as a social worker, Sarah has worked with young adults and families with harrowing backgrounds. Her inspiration for writing Aesop Lake came from a local news story about a young man who was bullied for being gay. When her youngest child came out at the age of fourteen and experienced being bullied by peers in rural Vermont, Sarah knew that she had to tell this story. Her depth of professional training and experience with youth who have committed crimes and with victims struggling to recover, as well as her personal family experience, makes her the ideal author to tell this story.


Frost Heaves by T Stores

In this collection, an eclectic mix of characters interact, negotiate community, and encounter the natural world—bears, otters, moose, insects—in confrontations with the reality of their own individual strengths and weaknesses, the welling up of hard truths in the seasons of each life.

“T Stores writes with compassion and insight, finding the inescapable truths hiding in plain sight, layered over an ordinary life . . . a beautiful writer and I look forward to seeing her work for years to come.” —Tayari Jones, Kore Press, publishing women since 1993

Author photo by Anita Gratzer

T Stores is the author of three novels (Getting to the Point, SideTracks, and Backslide) and a collection of short fiction, Frost Heaves, forthcoming from Green Writers’ Press. Her work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Harrington Literary Quarterly, Rock & Sling, Cicada, Out Magazine, Blithe House, Oregon Literary Review, Bloom Magazine, Rock & Sling, Earth’s Daughters, Blueline, SawPalm, Kudzu, Fourth Genre and Minerva Rising, among others. Honors include grants from the Vermont Arts Council and Barbara Deming Fund, residencies at Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, and Shiro Oni, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A graduate of the M.F.A. program at Emerson College, she is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Hartford.

 


Transition and change are 21st-century lived experiences. We want to know “what’s next” in our relationships, environment, societies, politics, and everything else that touches our lives. What’s Next? Short Fiction in Time of Change is an anthology of short fiction that creatively explores these questions.

AUTHORS FEATURED IN THE ANTHOLOGY INCLUDE:

Claire Boyles, Joseph Bruchac, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Toiya Kristen Finley, Tom Gammarino, Amina Gautier, Anthony Lee Head, Charles Johnson, Pauline Kaldas, Vijay Lakshmi, Clarence Major, Donna Miscolta, Pamela Painter, Jane Pek, Brenda Peynado, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Shannon Sanders, George Saunders, Joanna Scott, Anna Sequoia, Asako Serizawa, Tiphanie Yanique, and Ye Chun.

Sharyn Skeeter (editor) was fiction, poetry, book review editor at Essence magazine and editor-in-chief at Black Elegance magazine. She taught journalism, writing, and literature at colleges and universities. Her poetry and articles have been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies.

Dancing with Langston (GWP), her debut novel received the 2019 Gold Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award (multicultural adult fiction). She has given readings and participated in literary events in the United States, India, and Singapore. She’s on the boards of ACT Theatre and Hugo House in Seattle.


Thanks to everyone who has read through this rather lengthy blog post!!! Happy Pride Month to all!

End-of-Year Giving

Green Writers Press’ mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout we will adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds will be donated to environmental- and social justice-activist groups. Green Writers Press gratefully acknowledges support from individual donors, friends, and readers to help support the environment and our publishing initiative.

This year, 2021, even with a tough financial situation for our small press, we are donating to the following organizations:

$250 — The Root Social Justice Center
“In memory of Angela Berkfield”

$250 — Brattleboro Literary Festival
“In honor of the 20th Year”

$250 — Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center
“In memory of Deb Smith”

$500 — 350 Vermont
“In honor of Abby Mnookin & All”

$500 — Vermont Land Trust

$250 — SUSU commUNITY FARM
In kind donation of books & online donation.

$50 — Living Proof Mentoring
Providing representation, advocacy, and affinity spaces for Black youth in rural communities.

$25 each — Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood Federation, Nature Conservancy, ACLU, and The Southern Poverty Law Foundation.

 

 

 

Summer 2021 ~ What’s New

We have some exciting new titles releasing this summer!  Plus, we have a new literary magazine, Whole Terrain, Antioch University New England’s nationally acclaimed journal of reflective environmental practice, is dedicated to the experience of those who have chosen the environment as the basis of their work. Whole Terrain cultivates reflective thought and mindful awareness in an effort to create a balance between humanity and the Earth. Former Whole Terrain contributors include Kathleen Dean Moore, John Elder, Terry Tempest Williams, and Gary Nabhan, to name just a few. Recent cover artists include Jason deCaires Taylor, Betty LaDuke, and J. Henry Fair. The result is a high-quality journal of professional reflection that brings a constellation of perspectives to bear on some of the most important issues facing the planet today.

We had a great group of interns this summer and our fellowship recipients are still with us until September. Our interns are always amazing and we are grateful for their passion and support. Read more about this group on our Interns page here. Jackson was a design intern and he created ads, website banners, and learned how to page and style interior designs.

Alicia Tebeau-Sherry joined us after graduating from UVM and she has been a great addition to our team as well!

Here is a shot from our ad in Blue Mountain Review showing some of our new books.

In other news, Madeleine Kunin’s debut poetry collection, Red Kite, Blue Sky, is a finalist in the annual New England Book Awards! The New England Book Awards are announced at the annual Fall Conference. Winners will receive a $250 donation to the literary charity of their choice.

 

 

 

Spring Books Launching & News

We are very happy to be moving along in the world of publishing as an indie press and trying our best to keep our voice alive and well during the pandemic. Many of our authors decided to delay their book launches during the onset of COVID-19 a year ago. We have a slew of books coming out this spring—and what a great list!  Click the link below to find out more!

Continue reading

International Women’s Day

At GWP, we celebrate International Women’s Day by sharing with you some photos of women authors, who are strong, resilient, and who are advocating their dreams, their freedom, and their place in the world. For so much that women have already achieved in terms of gender equality, there is so much more still to do.

Top, left to right: Cassie Fancher, Sharyn Skeeter, Sarina Prabasi and daughters from a few years ago), Irene Skyriver, Madeleine Kunin

Middle row, left to right: Shabnam Samuel, Dana Simson, Christine Marie Eberle, Leslie Rivver, Keema  Waterfield, Megan Baxter

Dr. M  Jackson in Nat. Geo photo, middle right

Botton row, left to right: T Stores, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Jaime Scanlon and Ellen Tumavicus, Ha Kiet Chau, and (top) Shifra Malk with (bottom) Charity Gingerich

We have some exciting books by women coming out this spring and early summer!
FARM GIRL by MEGAN BAXTER

ELEVEN MILES TO JUNE by HA KIET CHAU

INSIDE PASSAGE by KEEMA WATERFIELD

RED KITE, BLUE SKY poems by MADELEINE KUNIN

and more! 

Check our our Bookshop.org affiliate page to see more upcoming titles. . . 
Thanks for the support and  our amazing women writers!

Finding Environmental Unity in Simple Ways

Finding Environmental Unity in Simple Ways through Come Together: Handbook to Retool for the Future

Written By: Sydney Vincent   |  An Interview with GWP author Dana Simson

Sustainability.
This word has become a daily occurrence in many young people’s lives, including my own. Between keeping an active and healthy lifestyle and understanding that our own Earth is under attack, threatening our future, it can be hard to ignore this word. We are constantly bombarded by products and technology that ensure a longer life or encourage a new way to live. In a sense, sustainability has become a weaponized word in our society, a constant, looming idea many young people shy away from. We’ve seen it tear our nation apart. However, in her newest book Come Together: Handbook to Retool for the Future, Dana Simson does not shy away from this word. Instead, she looks at it with a new refreshing and positive lens. She offers easy and environmentally sustainable ways to live, eat, clean, and create with common items in your home. She encourages each reader to take this handbook seriously as it is not just another gimmick to spend more money on supposedly “organic” products, but promotes a change in lifestyle for the betterment of our earth. With her handbook, Simson redefines what it means to be sustainable and how, as members of humankind, each of us can understand that we are the problem, but we are also the solution.

I got the opportunity to sit down (socially distanced, of course) with Dana Simson and talk about the beautiful change this book could create, even asking for some tips of my own about how to navigate the secret to simple living as a college student.

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Author Dana Simson and her upcoming book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sydney: Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to speak with me, Dana. I have read through this book and could not believe the amount of simple yet effective methods and recipes for products that I would normally purchase off of a shelf without a bat of my eye. How did you come across these tips and tricks? Were they self-taught or have you learned them from others over the years?

Dana: As an artist, I am trained to observe things on a variety of levels. This makes the world incredibly interesting and full of possibilities. When I walk into a building or pick up a product, the first thing I see is its design. Is it beautiful? Does it work well? How might it be improved? Invention is part of creativity. I have always loved the game of seeing alternatives and finding better ways to do things.

This guidebook contains beautiful illustrations that differentiate it from other handbooks I have read. What was your thought process in including these drawings and talk about your own style of art and why that helps you write about the earth.

My goal with the book is that the content gets out to as many folks as possible to start a bottom up movement that hopefully will grow to speed awareness and action, to stop the harmful practices currently hurting our planet and living things. I began my art career doing a comic strip for the Baltimore Sun and a few other newspapers, the illustrations lightened the message and also helped to deliver it. A bit of humor always helps. I want to encourage and create an atmosphere of joyful doing.

As I read this guidebook, I felt that I was being spoken to, my college self being able to resonate and become inspired through a lot of your tips and tricks. Why have you decided to gear your work towards younger audiences and how do you think that will help our world change for the better? Why not target the older generation, the generation in power now?

I’m glad you felt engaged, and I do think the book may be especially potent as young people become the next wave of consumers and legislators. The book was written for all ages: older people that feel frustrated and want to change old habits, also families that can tackle the gaming aspect together (try to get groceries with no plastic, or think how to reuse packaging materials in other ways), or anyone really. We all can enjoy rethinking and retooling.

We all can save money and our environment.

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Sample illustration from the book

When did you first become inspired by sustainability and discover your voice in advocating for a cleaner earth? What advice would you give to those struggling to speak up about climate change?

Funny, as a kid, when other kids were playing cops and robbers or the like, I wanted to play environmental activist. In the seventies, when I was growing up, there was a famous commercial that showed an Indigenous man paddling his canoe through garbage and litter. At the end he turns to the camera and a tear rolls down his cheek. People have lived in harmony with ecosystems- it can be done. The pandemic shows us we can get by with less driving, flying, we can find the joy of baking bread and eating from a garden we planted together. The commercial with the Indigenous man was actually sponsored by the plastics industry to promote recycling as a movement had started against plastic use. The problem with recycling is that it is more a concept than a working solution; it was better to limit/stop use of plastic and find alternatives.

The beauty in adapting the practices suggested in the book is that you are speaking most eloquently and clearly with the actions you live by. In my rural community on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I am one of the few people that takes market bags into the grocery store. I also reuse the netbags onions or limes come in for loose produce rather than taking the filmy plastic single use bags provided. People note this and we start a dialogue. People want to do the right thing. Seeing others doing it is what inspires change.

Now that President Biden and Madam Vice President Harris are in office, what are your hopes for America’s role in climate change and our activism with it?

I believe President Biden and VP Harris, along with other mindful politicians, understand the gravity of the foolish setbacks and careless legislation of the Trump years. There are many hard working environmental groups, scientists, and educators working for swift, wise legislation and we may see some important steps forward here. But the point of Come Together is not to wait for others to tell us what we should do. Democracy takes time, years, and can experience counterproductive derailment, like the four wasted years of inaction and slipping backward as we have just experienced. We are the change.

Hypothetically, if the entire world were to read your book and take action, what do you envision would happen in five years? Ten years? Even fifty years?

This answer might surprise you. First off, we would be happier and healthier. I believe a feeling of being held-hostage by things we think are out of our control would be replaced by empowerment and clear direction. When people turn from toxic, over-processed, heavily packaged food or product, the companies producing such items will have to change to keep their market. If everyone today stopped buying/using plastic, the gushing faucet of manufacturing would turn off (plastic is fossil fuel’s Plan B). If people say we want to buy in bulk – we’d bring our own jars and bags – grocery stores would respond with this option. As consumers, we vote with our dollars. This is a numbers game; the more people that think about our future, the shorter the time frame to a smarter, safer one.

I can’t let you go without asking about some tips for young people like myself. Got any tricks for a college student wanting to make a change in their lives and environmentally?

So many of the things we buy over and over again in plastic can be made easily in a few moments. A few key items that are very inexpensive can take the place of a clutter of cleaning products (and their bulky containers): vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, Castile soap, etc.

When you buy hand soap sold in small plastic push bottles – and we need to wash our hands a lot these days – you are paying a lot for water and a teaspoon of Castile soap flakes with a drop or two of glycerin and 6 drops of Teatree essential oil. Why not reuse the containers and fill a bunch of them? They make great gifts for friends and for spreading a wise idea; even put the easy recipe on the bottle.

You can make your own cleaning and personal care products like conditioner, toothpaste, and mouthwash. Many of these are actually better for you than the commercial products, which can contain toxic ingredients that build up in your system and harm the water supply once it goes down the drain.

When I was just starting out with little money in my pocket, I used to make my own bread, yogurt, and other items that cost little in time and money to make. Making is grounding and strengthens your resolve that whatever it is you can do it. This mindset has served me well and led me to amazing experiences I might not have tackled, like using my skill set to write this book and do something positive for the future we all share.

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Packaging doesn’t have to be waste!

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Who needs a store when you can DIY?

Being environmentally conscious and still having fun don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But don’t take it from me, take it from Dana, who lives this life of simple sustainability everyday and has passed on her own tips to us in her book Come Together: Handbook to Retool for the Future. As a college student struggling to balance my own life, diet, the political climate, and my responsibility to Mother Earth, it can be difficult to find clarity in how to take care of myself and others. Fortunately, Dana was able to provide some guidance. With this knowledge, I now feel confident in my actions and hope to provide unity in this world through all facets of my life, no longer seeing sustainability as a weapon, but a tool for change.


Come Together: Handbook to Retool for the Future releases on February 23, 2021 through Green Writers Press in Brattleboro, Vermont. Please visit our website https://greenwriterspress.com/book/come-together/ for more details on the book and how to order.

OR CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO ORDER TODAY FROM OUR FEATURED WEEKLY INDIE BOOKSTORE, EVERYONE’S BOOKS IN BRATTLEBORO, VT!

 


Start with EASY BREAD RECIPE from Dana Simson:

You can put this together in the morning and let it rise all day—bake it as you make dinner and have fresh bread! Great for breakfast in the morning with almond butter and honey, or peanut butter and banana.

Ingredients:

  • 3.5 cups of flour or bread flour (I sometimes do 2 cup flour, 1 cup whole wheat, .5 cup (half) of flax meal)

  • 1 tsp sugar

  • 1tsp yeast

  • .5 tsp salt

  • 1.5 cup warm water

Steps:

  1. Mix it up in the bowl with a spoon till it forms a ball— flour your hands and knead the dough a minute or two

  2. Put a little cornmeal or flour in bottom of bowl so it doesn’t stick

  3. Cover with a damp clean dish towel and have your day (you can also cook bread in a few hours if you want)

  4. Around dinnertime….preheat the oven to 425 and put an empty metal bowl on the bottom rack.

  5. Tip the bread out onto a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan

  6. Push it into shape—lightly score top

  7. Put in oven

  8. Take a half glass of water and pour into the heated bowl below the bread pan for steam (this will make a nice crunchy crust, European style)

  9. Keep an eye on it—maybe 25 minutes— and test by pushing a silverware knife in- comes out clean

  10. All done. Super yummy and hot with butter—bon appetit!

2021 Winter Interns — The Best!

GWP Winter 2021 FWT Interns
This  year, 2021 is off to a great start with this stellar group of Bennington College Field Work Term interns and three other amazing interns. Dede is always impressed with working with these smart, motivated young people, who take their internships seriously and really help run the press!  

Daisy Billington is a first year student at Bennington College. She is interested in studying creative writing, the arts and education. In her free time, Daisy loves spending time outdoors, meeting new people, drawing, playing guitar and writing short stories. Lately, Daisy has enjoyed reading classic plays and poetry.

Iulia Butner is a Bennington College sophomore. “Being an English student, literature is a deep fascination of mine, and my ever-present love of reading and writing from a young age has lent to me an intrinsically keen eye for the fine details of spelling, grammar,  punctuation, and structure.”

Kat L’Esperance-Stokes is a current sophomore at Bennington College studying Literature and Anthropology. She has publications with Gathering Storms, Wingless Dreamer, and Newfound Magazine. You can find her on instagram and twitter @katlstokes

Bernie Frishberg is a freshman at Bennington, hailing from Brooklyn, NY. Her favorite books include One More Thing by BJ Novak and Room by Emma Donoghue; her favorite colors include #8500b5, #c787ff, and #ff69dd. In her free time, Bernie occasionally does things, such as sewing things onto her pants and writing weird prose.

Jasmine Groom is a second year at Bennington College, studying the cultural adaptation of mythology. She has a long-held interest in art, 19th century fiction and creative writing. From the suburbs of Chicago, in her spare time she likes to bake, take long walks and listen to music.

Emily Gutierrez is a first year student at Bennington, originally from Miami, Fl. She is a student of Philosophy with a love for writing. In her time left over, she loves music, meditation, and cooking.

Connie McClugage is a first year at Bennington College studying  creative writing and linguistics. Hailing from Tampa, Florida, she’s still getting used to the cold weather but you can find her writing poetry, watching a Star Wars movie, or learning a new language.

Sofia Titina Salusso is always looking for a good book to read. She is a sophomore at Bennington College where she dedicates her time to writing, literature, theater, media studies, playing the violin, conversations with friends that make her think or laugh, running on back roads, mending all the little tears that clothes grow with wear, and watching the seasons go by, only to find herself constantly astounded at time’s passing. She loves to be in the mountains and hopes to find, in her future, a balance between breadth of nature and the comfort of other curious souls.

Cassandra Taylor is a senior at Bennington college, studying literature and writing with a specific interest in using the medium of storytelling to help forge and strengthen communities. Raised by a family of avid storytellers herself, she loves to gather around family and friends to share tales old and new. In her spare time, Cassandra spends her time cozied up with her cats enjoying a nice cup of tea and working on her latest knitting project.


Dylan Walawender
is a freshman at Bennington College, studying literature/writing with supporting areas of media studies and psychology. He has an interest in Modernist literature and journalism, with a special affinity for contemporary essays, personal narratives, and poetry. Hailing from Cayuga, New York, in his free time Dylan enjoys hiking, writing, reading, and collecting plants.

Winter Interns outside of Bennington’s Field Work Term:

Sydney Vincent is currently a sophomore at Susquehanna University, studying Publishing/Editing and Creative Writing with a minor in International Studies. In her free time, she enjoys spending her days outside hiking, kayaking, and rock climbing in the Pocono Mountains, which she calls home. She hopes to open her own independent bookstore or press one day, hike the El Camino in its entirety before she turns thirty, and move to Colorado with her crazy cat, Shelby.

Post-Graduate Fellowships:

Aubergine Evans (O for short) is a recent alum of the late Marlboro College & an emerging poet out of Brattleboro, VT. They grew up in Louisiana, where they cultivated their passion for writing, asking questions, and spicy food. But this is where they choose to root themself—in the Vermont soil where poetry grows thick as moss & tall as mountains. They are interested in the plurality & movement in language & form; this interest has led them to the edges of genre, to hybrid forms & hybrid ways of imagining language. They completed a writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center for Vermont Artists’ Week & have volunteered for & attended various writing programs through Stockton University. Though writing is their primary craft, they also delight in various 2D  & 3D visual arts, learning new skills, gardening, & flow arts.

Rosie Rudavsky is an artist and writer living in New York City. She is a recent graduate from Oberlin College, where she studied History and Religion and first developed an interest in writing creative non-fiction. These days, Rosie works at a cheese shop, tutors and reports for a local newspaper. Rosie loves to read short stories, dance, cook and visit museums.

 

GWP signs Petition for COP26 Calling on Governments to Commit to Urgent Action on Climate

Calling on Governments to Commit to Urgent Action on Climate and Environmental Literacy at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, UKCombined with Civic Education, Climate Literacy will create jobs, build a green consumer market, and allow citizens to engage with their governments in a meaningful way to solve climate change

Dear Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa and Signatories to the Paris Agreement Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change:
We, the undersigned, call on governments to commit to taking bold action on climate and environmental literacy. The decades-long failure to provide quality and meaningful climate and environmental education and civic skills to primary and secondary students worldwide has undermined the effort to solve the climate crises and other critical environmental issues while hampering efforts to build a global green economy and to create the jobs of the future.

It has also impeded efforts to teach citizens the civic skills that they need to fully participate in their national, state, and local government decision-making process, undermining the rights of citizens to take action to protect themselves, their children, and the health of the planet.
Next year, governments will meet at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, UK to raise ambition under the UN’s Paris Climate Change Agreement. That stepped-up action must include climate and environmental literacy.

It is time for governments to show leadership by agreeing to ambitious plans that will equip primary and secondary students everywhere with the knowledge and the skills they need in a rapidly changing world.
• In doing so, a new generation will be able to make the best and most environmentally informed choices on the way they live, work and participate in government while providing a climate literate workforce needed to build the new, stronger and sustainable economy vital in the 21st century.
• In doing so, leaders can help ensure that the first generation of truly climate literate and civically active citizens will be able to hold governments, states, regions, cities, and businesses accountable for their actions.
We, the undersigned, urge governments at COP 26 to deliver an outcome that gives climate literacy the same importance as any other key subject by strengthening the aims, ambitions, and aspirations of Action for Climate Empowerment, Article 12 of the Paris Agreement.

Specifically,

• We, the undersigned, request governments to make climate education compulsory, assessed and linked to civic engagement. By civic engagement we mean students will be taught the necessary skills to take an active role in shaping the future of their communities and our planet.
• While every country must be free to choose their roadmap for implementing climate literacy, we believe that climate and environmental literacy requires that these subjects be fully integrated and embedded across all grade levels and disciplines.
• We also urge governments to find ways and means to advance climate literacy at home, and support poorer countries’ efforts to meet their climate education goals.

Green Writers Press, signed on January 5, 2021

Award News

The Quebec Writers’ Federation Awards are a series of Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the Quebec Writers’ Federation to the best works of literature in English by writers from Quebec. The A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry is one of seven categories in the annual awards.


CONGRATS to GWP poet, Sarah Wolfson!

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The poems in A Common Name for Everything build idiosyncratic worlds around the themes of nature, home, parenting, and naming—worlds that are at once poignant and absurd: a professional namer of lakes explains his standards; the rural gods are given names; a study of sheep results in loneliness. Steeped in sound play and borrowing academic language to create a specimen lens, these poems bask in the local as they seek to name even the commonest earthly things.

Advance Praise for A Common Name for Everything

In her stunning first book of poems, Sarah Wolfson drives a team of spirited horses into rural landscapes, many of which she interiorizes figuratively in ways that are wonderfully strange. In one keenly intelligent, musical poem after another, Wolfson instills her lyrical narratives about motherhood, environmental crisis, the inherent elegy of words, natural history, and poetry itself with chthonic imagery, risible asides, empirical logic, and academic nomenclature. For her, poetry itself is ‘the common name of everything,’ and from her ‘place’ she serves her reader ‘soup and small/ theories of holiness’ in evocatively specific, sublime ways. By writing from the ground and body up, Wolfson surprises herself first and then her reader with language that soars with verbal music . . . A Common Name for Everything marks the debut of an enormously talented, wise, and timely new voice. ”
Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate of Vermont

“In A Common Name for Everything Sarah Wolfson demonstrates, again and again, an entirely uncommon talent for precise and defamiliarizing observation. At times declarative and deceptively plain, and at others more fractured and gestural, the poems in this formidable first collection are informed by a lyric sensibility that is authentic, playful, and unflinchingly direct.”
Phillip Crymble, Poetry Editor at The Fiddlehead; author of Not Even Laughter 

“I can’t remember when I last read a book of poems that provided such varied pleasures . . . But the gorgeous surfaces of Sarah Wolfson’s work—the poet’s intelligence and curiosity and wit—are not ends in themselves, but a way to get at what seems essential in the self and the world. So we learn the poet is skeptical of god ‘though not of souls,’ become acquainted with a daughter’s ‘need to wonder,’ and waken with the poet to marvel at August ‘with its great star events.’ In short, A Common Name for Everything is anything but common. I’m already eager to hear more from this poet, to be swept away again.”
Clare Rossini, author of Lingo and Winter Morning with Crow

More Praise

“. . . Humane and full of wonder even as it resists all that is inflated by romanticism, A Common Name for Everything’s insistence on Earth’s ordinary orderings doesn’t efface the deep reverence the speaker has for the same. If there’s a divine in Wolfson’s world, it’s this world itself and all that’s passing through it. In her poems’ radical adjustment of scale back to something earthly and earthy, there’s more than enough.” —Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, review excerpt from Orion

 

About the Author
Sarah Wolfson’s poems have appeared in Canadian and American journals including The Fiddlehead, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, PRISM international, and TriQuarterly—and they have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally from Vermont, she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches at McGill University.

 

Sundog Poetry Center and Green Writers Press Announce New Book Award

Mary Ruefle
PHOTO COURTESY OF HANNAH ENSOR

Good news can be hard to come by these days, but if you’re an emerging poet — or eager to emerge — here’s a welcome opportunity: The Johnson-based Sundog Poetry Center has just announced a brand-new First or Second Book Award for poetry. And there’s a reason for that slightly awkward-sounding name.

“Sometimes a first book is heavily collaborative,” explains Neil Shepard, a veteran poet, the founder of Green Mountains Review and a Sundog board member. “The second is usually post-MFA — really the first book. That’s still relatively an emerging poet.”

In other words, writers who vie for this award might already have an extant book or chapbook, or they might just have a bursting-with-promise manuscript. Either way, the winning entry will be designed, printed and distributed by Sundog collaborator Green Writers Press in Brattleboro.

Tamra Higgins and Mary Jane Dickerson founded Sundog in 2014 with the mission to “promote poetry for the enrichment of our cultural lives,” according to its website. The nonprofit has fulfilled that promise with publications, workshops, retreats, readings and other events. For the most part, Shepard points out, these ventures have featured established poets. For example, when Sundog began collaborating with Green Writers Press, his own book Vermont Exit Ramps II was the first to be published.

But, after Sundog and the press released the 2019 volume Vermont Poets and Their Craft, edited by Shepard and Higgins, “we decided to do something for emerging poets,” Shepard says.

The competition is open only to Vermonters, defined as residents of the state a minimum of six months of the year. The submission deadline is October 31 and must include proof of residency and a $20 application fee. Manuscripts should be 48 to 64 pages long.

Shepard notes that he and other board members — Dickerson, former Vermont poet laureate Chard DeNiord, Rebecca Starks and Bill Drislane — and managing director Sarah Audsley will “each choose two or three manuscripts by the end of November and send them to our final judge, Mary Ruefle.” Vermont’s current poet laureate, Ruefle will make her decision by December 31. The winner will receive $500 and 50 copies of the published book.

Eyes on the prize, poets.

The final judge is Vermont Poet Laureate, and award-winning poet, Mary Ruefle. 

This contest is open to all Vermont-based poets. Submissions of manuscripts of a first or second book, by a Vermont poet, will open on September 1st and close on October 31st, 2020. A cash prize of $500 will be awarded along with 50 copies. Sundog Poetry will provide assistance with promotion through a featured book launch and readings scheduled throughout the state. Manuscripts should be between 48 and 64 pages. All submissions must be authored by a poet who resides in Vermont; proof of residency will be requested along with a $20 application fee online via Submittable.

Submissions open September 1, 2020 and close at midnight on October 31, 2020

In related news, Sundog/Green Writers Press-affiliated poet Stephen Cramer has launched the recently published Turn It Up! Music in Poetry From Jazz to Hip-Hop.

ORIGINALLY FROM SEVEN DAYS ARTICLE.

Earth Day 2020!

Earth Day 2020 is Wednesday, April 22! This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this day. Think about how to serve the planet this week—cleaning up some litter on your walk or around your house, planting a tree, or simply enjoying companionship with nature.

Every year the Earth Day Network, as organizers of the original Earth Day, selects an environmental priority to engage the global public.

The enormous challenges – but also the vast opportunities – of acting on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary year. At the end of 2020, nations will be expected to increase their national commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, so the time is now for citizens to call for greater global ambition to tackle our climate crisis.

Climate change represents the biggest challenge to the future of humanity and the life-support systems that make our world habitable. Unless every country in the world steps up – and steps up with urgency and ambition – we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.

Earth Day 2020 will be far more than a day. It must be an historic moment when citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that we need to meet our climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future.

Green Writers Press is celebrating Earth Day 2020 by releasing a brand new e-book called COME TOGETHER by Dana Simson (link to buy). This is an engaging handbook to launch a movement of individuals to tackle global warming by simply retooling our daily actions. Easy proactive steps develop a long term perspective based in civility, integrity and an invigorating love for our earth. Save money, lose clutter, live well, feel happy and healthier as you pull for the planet. Make smart changes through a bottoms up strategy for now where each of us is empowered to make a difference in little ways that trend to big solutions.The Movement of One is both the individual and all of us connected in this common goal. Pass this book on. We are the change.

This is the book we should all be reading right now to empower each of us in the movement for bottom-up change.
—Pamela South, facilitator of Green Engineers, middle school media specialist

Come Together goes beyond tackling climate change with a call to build respectful community to honor all living things and earth. It is truly a handbook for all of our futures.
—Heidi Thompson, Sacred Soul Gathering of Women founder

Great guide for those who are choosing to be mindful of choices affecting the environment!

Excellent information to help decrease your enviromental impact!

COVID-19 and National Poetry Month

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we are featuring a poem a day from the timely (and even more significant during this pandemic) anthology we published last year entitled Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection, edited by poet and educator James Crews. 

Today, on the first day of National Poetry Month, we will honor the work of James Crews, and here is a quote about how Healing the Divide came to be: 
Assembling this anthology of poems about kindness and connection was a work almost entirely of intuition. I somehow just knew that I wanted to arrange the poems alphabetically, and quite early on, I had a sense that I wanted to begin the book with Ellery Akers’s ‘The Word That Is a Prayer,’ about the use of the word Please, and that I wanted to end the anthology with Miller Williams’s shorter piece, ‘Compassion,’ which seemed to encompass exactly what Healing the Divide was trying to say—that it’s best to be kind and compassionate to others, since we have no idea what unseen battles they might still be fighting deep inside. Even though the poems were arranged alphabetically, however, I do feel there’s a rhythm to the book, and each poem feeds fairly logically into the next. As with my own creative work, I’m always trying to achieve a kind of narrative and flow, and how I go about this is not entirely explainable, but readers do seem to pick up on it.
— from an interview with James by Nicholas James
that appeared in our literary magazine The Hopper
 
Our literary magazine, The Hopper, is featuring poetry during the month of April. 
 
Thanks for helping to put this out there during these challenging times. 
 
Best to all and stay safe,
Dede
~~~~
April 3, 2020:
Today’s poem from the James Crews anthology Healing the Divide is Ellery Akers’s “The Word That Is a Prayer.” The sequence of poems in the book is done alphabetically, and Akers has the lead in so many ways . . .
Stay tuned each day as we feature a poem from the anthology on our socials:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenwriterspress/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenWritersPub

EARTH FIRST! 

GWP encourages our writers, artists, freelance staff, readers, and interns to send us their writing so we can put it out on our blog and publish it there for all the world to see (and our legions of followers!) Here is a powerful poem by GWP author, Irene Skyriver:

Irene Skyriver and her daughter Summer Moon at the kayactivism in Seattle.

 

EARTH FIRST!
(I named this poem after one of the few modern movements that made sense to me)

What will we do for the love of our Mother Earth?
I say it is not the time for silent retreats and meditations
Did, or do the victims of:
Climate change
Vietnam
Wounded Knee
The Klu Klux Klan
Did they have time to meditate on ensuing chaos or demise?
Did they have time to understand
Just before they were swinging from the limb of a tree?
Or just before their children were gunned-down or forced to cross barren deserts
Did they have time to contemplate
those “leaders”, or soldiers, or white supremacists
as perhaps being their miss-guided but lovable brothers?
Our Earth Mother is Black, she is Wounded Knee, she is a child gunned down in Viet Nam
She is a rape victim
Now is not the time to tread gently or to tippy toe
Now is not the time to try to understand the Hitler’s or the orange ones of our species
We need to be as unapologetic and powerful as the Earth herself
We need to be as relentless as the grind of a glacier
We need to be an earthquake to tumble the fortresses of greed
We need hurricane force winds of change
We need to be flooded with purpose
We need to be like the blaze of an incoming comet to turn this tide of suicide
We will recharge in the serenity of the Sun’s dip and rise
We will carry on with the knowing that others are dying for rhinos, elephants, butterflies, trees…
And by knowing there is too little time for meditation and silent retreats  

~~~

Irene Skyriver, Pacific NW Coast author/grandmother/farmer/activist
Because of the good life I live on my farm in the San Juan Islands, I must convince myself as much as anyone, to leave the comforts of our homes, families and life as we know it, to RIZE UP and fight for the Earth and Sky. Even our children know, we humans have our heads in the sand, as we blithely carry on in our consumptive, unsustainable lifestyles, leaving them to the wreckage of our defeatist inaction.
Although I am not a hardcore activist, I’ve taken action at important events and I’m readying myself for deeper involvement in our local environmental issues (which are profound) as we prepare to fight huge increases of Canadian tar-sand tanker shipments through our already decimated Salish Seas. With our local Orca whale population on the brink of extinction and salmon runs failing catastrophically, I see my life as a grandmother, best spent fighting, and dying if needed, for the dream that perhaps a sea swelling of hearts and minds will awaken and turn the tide. We need to step out of our comfort zones and fight for the environmental health of every biome of this planet and sky. •

You can order Irene’s book at your favorite, local independent bookstore, or here at Indieboud!

 

GWP’s Poem-a-Day from Greg Delanty

For our series “A Poem a Day,” we are honored to publish a sequence of poems from the editor of our climate change anthology, So Little Time: Words and Images for a World in Climate Crisis, Greg Delanty. About his upcoming poetry collection No More Time (due from LSU Press next August/September) where this sequence is taken from:

 No More Time as a whole, is showing, at the start of the 21st century, how we are all connected in so many ways.  The sequence ‘The Field Guide to People’ is arranged alphabetically and is a kind of integrated earthly heaven (thriving flora and fauna), purgatory (declining flora and fauna) and hell (extinct flora and fauna). The decline of the creatures and plants of the latter two is due in every case mainly to humans. The form of the poems in this sequence is the terza rimasonnet, both poems of the underworld and love poems to the natural world, connecting the past with the present in form and content. Since one of the greatest poems to portray humans in the Christian world is Dante’s underworld, Delanty has created a representative underworld for plants and creatures, rectifying the general centuries-old western attitude that humans are not apart, but part of the environment.

Chimpanzee

As a chimp, usually the adult male,

approaches and the roar of the

water booms louder, you see him,

without fail,

 

speed up. His demeanor starts to

alter, hair bristling. Arriving at the

fall,

he stands, sways from one foot to the other,

 

bows, genuflects. Answering some call,

he dips his hand as if in holy water, splashes

himself along the tassel border of the silk

wall,

 

climbs the bell ropes of draping vines,

lashes his body to several, takes flight

over the deafening water as it crashes.

 

He swings like a thurible above that veil of

white; the spray is the incense of the

monkey’s water rite.

 

Elephant

Sometimes you see something so

dreadful that the mind  snaps a shot

or shoots a video of the scenario,

 

lasers it into your retina on  the spot, 

impaled in you for as long as you live:

 a teacher thrashing a pupil — a crying tot —

or the elephant Dan and I saw given a

sedative so she could rest, sleep, that time

in Dublin Zoo. The aged female was

trapped in a repetitive

 

back and forth on her haunches,

unable to stop herself, a tormented

beast of Orcus.

Her attendant explained, feeding her bamboo,

 

“Twas her one way to move, trapped in the van of a circus

so long. Rescuing her was our onus and bittersweet bonus.”

 

Falls-of-the-Ohio Scurfpea

I feel like a student in my Environment

101, crushed by daily news: creatures

going or gone, the changing climate, the

planet under the gun.

 

In teacher mode I tell them: “For yourselves you

press on, your own wellbeing. You’re entitled to be

happy.

Action makes life fun. Good news: the Café Marron

 

and sage grouse are saved”. I say nothing of the scurfpea,

Orbexilum stipulatum? Its modest flower

blending with white-bearded cascades. A

century

 

or more and not a single sighting along the

river at Rock Island. It relied too much on

the bison. You know how one thing depends

on another,

 

with the jowled ones diminished, so went this

‘un; finally condemned with the building of US

Dam 21.

 

Ibex

In January 2000, the Pyrenean ibex (Spanish common name ‘bucardo’)
became extinct. Scientists cloned DNA from a last female.

In the end, no cliff or impossible

crag could save them from

plantation or gun. Their heads hang

on walls. Hunters brag.

 

Many were taken down for sheer fun.

The king pucks — their antler plumes

rising magisterially — plugged one by none.

 

Gone the clash of horn scimitars,

grooms battling to mate, the

bucardo of lore.

White-coated gods in lab rooms

 

summoned one back from the dark shore

of the underworld. They should have

known from the ancient myths what was

in store.

 

She returned after seven minutes, lone

clone, relieved to be back among the herds

of her own.

 

  Jellyfish Tree

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Kāmaʻo

Imagine a place, a zone, an

underworld which includes more

than our own kind:

the green and moving ones: ferns with curled

 

violin necks, gloaming players who

grind their wings together. And listen,

the music, the strain of this bird

lingers in the wind.

 

What flute-like notes, what warbling, what

a lick of trills and whistles. Can you hear

its song?

Heard melodies are sometimes sweeter. A trick

 

of the breeze, zephyr? Things went

wrong with land clearing. Hurricane

season intensified, uprooted trees, and

before long

 

mosquitoes multiplied in rain-storm

stagnation. The song: a figment of my

birdbrained imagination.

 

Northern Gastric Frog

This creature’s extinction is attributable to the human introduction
of pathogenic fungi into their native
range.

This one was a bit of an artist,

especially the female, so oddly

fecund.

At home in backwater rocky

 

cascades and riffles. Hard to

find, to spot even when

plentiful.

Its stone-hued skin and sepia behind

 

blending in. After the female

laid eggs, in vitro fertilized by her

groom, she swallowed them whole,

 

turned her stomach into a burgeoning

womb. Six weeks later she gave birth

within

and out of her own mouth. No more room

 

for lungs, she breathed through her own skin, 

spewed up her mites, each wearing a clown-

sad grin.

 

Oryza sativa

Something to behold, how this crop

succeeds in such diverse moraine. Best

of all, see row after row descend

gradually from the gods

 

down mountainsides to the valleys

below, tiers of a great amphitheater,

their heads craning to watch the show:

 

the traffic, rickshaws, the general

theater of our priceless world. On the

slow train to Kandy I was a passing

spectator,

 

watched locals kneeling to the god of

rain, lay offerings to the assisting

oxen and ant, petition the god of rice

for healthy grain.

 

I wanted to join them, genuflect, pray, chant

praise to the plant that’s half the world’s

constant.

 

Quagga

This chimeric beast, part zebra, part donkey,

—its name the phantom sound

of its supposed call—enjoyed the society

 

of ostrich and gnu, foraged remote grassland.

So comically mythical: the striped head

a kind of convict’s shirt, each band

 

fading until mid-body it bled

into a rufus rear, and on to a white tail.

(the last sad male to be found was bred

 

with a flummoxed horse, producing a female

striped in reverse, from waist to rear).

It’s as if a circus clown ran out of a final pail

 

of white paint. The only photo’d quagga, a mare, 

stares back from behind bars with an accusing glare.

 

Rafflesia arnoldii

The corpse flower, a flower straight out of hell

on earth, not one to give your wife or mother

come Valentine’s Day, or wear on your lapel.

 

Though the sight of this particular

flower’s measled, fleshy-skinned,

monstrous petal wouldn’t help you

any, what overpowers

 

is the stench of rotting flesh and organs:

Chanel de Cadaver, Bouquet Putrid,

Carrion Mystique,

Essence de Carcass, Versense Pew, Allure Impossible,

 

luring every bug in the vicinity to the

reek, unable to resist entering the

rank volcano

of this hotty, and presto, another sprouts in a week.

 

Meanwhile, the forests of Sumatra and

Borneo are being cleared. Ergo the corpse

flower also.

 

Saint Helena’s Olive

Far-fetched that plants feel pain,

but there’s evidence, the experts

say they can learn, process and

retain;

 

that they’ve intelligence in some

way. This one’s had it: St.

Helena’s Olive.

As soon as people settled to stay,

 

spread, this plant gave up the will to  survive.

Natural. But natural also that planters cut

all before them, needing somewhere to live,

 

to settle themselves. Too late 

by the time anybody got it together, 

grappled to keep the native alive, bust a

gut.

 

The seeds of this tree refused to flower,

their act of civil disobedience, flower

power.

 

Tarantula Hawk Wasp

Give us a break, man, you with your

inventory of whales crooning to one

another,

the society of bees, the scratched history

 

of bears, elephants mourning a dead

mother, the varying duet of the

babakoto,

the Saint Helena olives’ flower power.

 

You elect them denizens of a kind of

Paradiso. But consider the likes of a

particular wasp,

the Tarantula Hawk, straight out of the Inferno.

 

This one would make Hannibal Lecter gasp.

The wasp’s sting turns the tarantula into a

zombie, drugs and drags the spider off in its

relentless grasp,

 

lays an egg in the spider’s belly; the larva

methodically eats the host alive; more nature’s

norm than oddity.

 

Umbrellabird

You never saw anything like this

bird, black from coif to claw, with

looks to kill

(though ungainly in flight). But, what’s absurd

 

isn’t so much the unusual

hairstyle, which is less like a

man’s umbrella than an Elvis

quiff, driving many a girl

 

out of her tree, screeching for her fella,

nor is it his Elvis song, the testosterone

bass crooning longingly for his Priscilla.

 

But the instrument, and not just that, but the

place it arises from, his throat, a back-to-f

ront tail,

that opens into a feather duster when he plays

 

his well-endowed come-on, larger in the male,

a kind of didgeridoo, moaning, enticing the female.

 

The Voilá Grouse

“I’m pleased that we collectively continue to make great progress
on addressing threats to this bird, conserving
the sagebrush habitat
and providing a path forward for sustainable economic development.”
—US Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, Sep 21st, 2016

You should see their fancy

costumes: white ruffs, spectacular

fanned tails. And o-la-la, watch the

gallant grooms

 

strut their stuff, the puffed-up lek males

performing their version of a pole dance,

tucking in their bills, vying for the

females,

 

eyeing up their prospects, their chance

of a future. The future has some hope

now, thanks to Secretary Jewell taking

a stance.

 

The grouse is saved, the end of a protracted

row. The whole sage-swaying sea is singing

Hallelujah, along with the elk, pronghorn,

mule deer, sparrow.

 

Good news for all sheltered under this

umbrella, been blown inside out. Folks

spoke up and voilà!

 

Wheat

The old gods are defunct, but not the old

necessity to give thanks. This god spread

from the Levant forgotten religions ago,

bestowing prosperity.

 

He is goodness incarnate, the Midas

plant without the Midas curse, t

urning a field

into plains of swaying gold. He is our constant

 

from dawn to dawn, strength

concealed within burnished stalks

of energy, grounded goodness

variously revealed.

 

This great shape-changer: the deity

of cereal, pasta, bread, the English

taco has more lives than Buddha. We

 

become him, where he grows we

grow, rising each morning,

leavened dough.

 

X 

Surely there are others in your life who

make you feel worthwhile, are a safe

haven. I am lucky enough to have a

staple few.

 

And now this other, a befriending

dolphin I swam out deep again to

meet. I can’t tell

even myself what I felt when I first saw the fin

 

slice through the surface, the swell,

then to see this undine, stock-still at my feet.

We looked each other in the eyes for well

 

over ten seconds (nay, millennia). Such a

sweet, kind gaze. I wonder what he made

of me

in only my pelt and goggles. What a treat

 

to be allowed kiss his grinning forehead before he

undulated back across Dingle Bay, the channel’s

Lethe.

 

Y

is the divining stick, wishbone, question 

why one y rather than another why:

the yak, the y tree, the yellow-eyed penguin

 

or the myriad y insects who crawl

and fly we know nothing of, nor will

ever know? The links break from

alpha, beyond why.

 

You mention the Yaque chub, a

minnow, or Yaque catfish sporting

Chinese whiskers, both Yaques

depending on the slow flow

 

of Yaque River. According to Surem elders

–the last to speak Yaque, Yoeme Niki,

Hiaki

(And where do languages go when they die, others

 

on the brink?)– the Surem’s goddess, Yumululi,

speaks for The Great Tree, divines our future

history.

Zanzibar Leopard

The descriptions of the leopard and its habits are characterized by the widespread notion that wavyale (witches) sent them to harm villagers and were thus killed on sight. After the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 there was a leopard-cleansing campaign which sealed the leopard’s extinction. 

Kill Evil incatinate. Kill kill kill

the Zanzibar Leopard, this island devil,

this vampire vermin, obeying witch-will,

 

dispatched by the wavyale  to bedevil

villages. You know the old strategy:

demonize and the demonizer will revel

 

in playing God, the paw of the Almighty.

This leopard survived since the ice age,

slowly shrunk itself into dwarf-cat royalty,

 

even changed its spots, but couldn’t manage

to outwit human categorizing. Yes, it is daft,

but this cat’s hardly likely to be found in cage

 

or ruling the night-forest now. When statecraft

bands with religion there’s no better witchcraft.

 

Zayante

There’s something off about talk of the land

as a person. It’s more a moody personality

that you insecurely sense, project,

understand

 

via the osmosis of yourself, your

ability 

to shape change, the abracadabra

matching outside to within. Take Zayante,

 

home of the slender gilia, Bonny Doon mazanita, 

coast-horned lizard, band-winged grasshopper,

Ben Lomond spine flower, June beetle, ponderosa,

 

everlasting, kangaroo rat, all going without a

whimper. 

Folks’ needs, comforts, fears up the ante.

The development night by day grows grimmer.

 

Which ciao —hi or bye– will it be on Planet

Zayante?

Enough Gregorian cant. We are done. Adelante.

~~~~~~~~

Happy Mother’s Day from GWP Moms . . .

Happy Mother’s Day from all of the women and mothers at Green Writers Press, Green Place Books, Green Sprouts, and our literary magazine, The Hopper! Here are some books, for moms of all ages, that will make perfect gifts for the mother in your life . . . Enjoy!

~~~

A perfect Mother’s Day gift . . . 
A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Magical Life
Written for the overwhelmed Mom who’s looking for more joy, playfulness, and serenity in her life, A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Magical Life is like a GPS for your soul. This book is full of simple, easy-to-use tools to help you feel more grounded within yourself, and more patient and present with your family and everyone else you meet throughout your days. It’s also an invitation to come back home to yourself and remember all the things you used to love before becoming so busy taking care of everyone else. Beyond a manicure, pedicure, or even a massage, A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Magical Life encourages self-care for the soul, teaching and empowering Moms to learn and know that we really do have the ability to create the life of our dreams.

GWP author Kasey Mathews and her two children . . . about 18 years ago! Watch the trailer and learn about Andi’s birth.

There were uncertain, gloomy days when I thought they might be right—that maybe we were cursed. Inevitably, though, I’d step back and look with clearer eyes, allowing myself to see all the incredible gifts that had emerged as a result of what we’d been through. I came to see, know, and understand that in the midst of times of ease or diffi culty, there is so much opportunity to allow in the magic that is available to us all.

KASEY MATHEWS lives in Wilton, New Hampshire, with husband, two children and their rescue dog, Ed. She is a coach, speaker, workshop leader and author of A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Magical Life: 8 Steps to Feel Happier, Inspired and More Relaxed and Preemie: Lessons in Love, Life and Motherhood, which won the New Hampshire Writer’s Project Reader’s Choice award and was a featured book on the Random House book site Bibliophile.

Visit the author’s website to order: www.kaseymathews.com
Watch the author’s beautiful book trailer here . . . (her first book was agented by Dede!):

~~~

The Coffeehouse Resistance: Brewing Hope in Desperate Times
by Sarina Prabasi
Reviewed by Rachael Peretic

‘What a difference we can make, understanding our neighborhoods as we do, and having a real relationship with people in our communities. What could we accomplish if we could make the coffeehouse politically relevant again? Not partisan, but politically engaged and active.’ – Sarina Prabasi,  The Coffeehouse Resistance

No stranger to immigration, Sarina Prabasi was born in the Netherlands, raised in Nepal, and educated in Massachusetts before settling for years in Ethiopia, where she fell in love with the culture of coffee, the community surrounding it, and a man who would later become her husband and business partner. When political unrest brought her back to America with her husband and young daughter, the relief was short-lived. In the wake of the 2016 presidential elections, they and much of the nation were left shocked, bereft, and seemingly powerless in a situation that few had prepared for. Suddenly, the future of the nation and of her family was undefined.

Through small acts, her mindset shifted from that post-electoral fog to that of an active citizen. She started using her voice, her vote, and even her dining room table, where she and her children wrote to their local representatives, to better embody her ideals. After getting her feet wet by phone banking for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s campaign, she was struck by her ability to promote change both at the government level and right within her own community. It wasn’t long before this passion flowed over into Buunni, the coffeehouse founded by Prabasi and her husband, Elias. With the government officials, she wrote postcards, made phone calls, and attended rallies. With her customer, she shared a love of coffee, a safe space for their voices to be heard, and connections with friends and strangers alike. Eventually, she found a balance, dismantling the isolating issues she saw—racism, gun violence, and corporate greed—from both ends of the spectrum.

Sarina and her two girls (a few years ago).

In an effort to bring the coffeehouse back to its original status of communal hub and a place of enlightenment, free thinking, and debate, Prabasi has written a book detailing her experiences as a New York immigrant-turned-U.S. citizen, a small business owner, a mother, and a political activist pining for representation in Trump’s America.

The Coffeehouse Resistance is a forward-thinking memoir, told in an empathetic voice, that shines light not only on the harsh realities of recent years but, more importantly, onto the bright future which is made possible when one acts in accordance with their ethics toward a true democracy. Despite such divisive times as these, the book’s power to resonate is palpable; its ability to motivate as pervasive as the morning’s first cup of coffee. This book is for everyone, but especially for those who have felt themselves unrepresented, unaccepted, or even unwelcome in the place that they themselves call home, this is a must read.

Visit the author’s website here: https://www.sarinaprabasi.net
Watch the book trailer here and help us spread the word! #thecoffeehouseresistance

~~~

Breakfast Memories: A Dementia Love Story (Coming Fall 2019!)
by Kate Hanley

For anyone caring for someone with dementia, this book is a bridge of hope. Kate Hanley takes us on a journey where we witness her caring for her aging parents, while trying to balance the demands of her own busy work and family life. At times, full of frustration and despair, Kate wanted to give up, but knew that was never a choice. As her story progressed, along with her mother’s dementia, Kate discovered a cache of daily love devotionals her dad had penned to her mother every morning on a paper napkin.

Kate Hanley and her mom.

The discovery of these love sonnets was the key to unlocking the window into her mother’s soul, and gave Kate glimpses back into the world of who her mother once was. A beautiful story full of love, laughter, and possibility, Kate inspires others walking this path to know and believe that even in the darkest times of despair, there is reason to hope and remember that love is never forgotten.

Kate Hanley’s discovery of her parent’s unique love language set her on a path she never anticipated—writing a book. Yet these beautiful “paper napkin sonnets,” and the story that surrounds them, were too precious and inspiring not to share, as they offer hope for anyone in the throes of caring for someone with dementia. Kate lives in Old Forge, New York, with her husband and two dogs. Her two grown sons come home as often as possible to enjoy the peace and beauty of the Adirondack Mountains.

Visit the author’s website and to preorder this special book: http://breakfastmemories.com

~~~ Other Mother’s Day books, newly released just in time for Mother’s Day! ~~~

How to Survive a Brazilian Betrayal: A Mother-Daughter Memoir
By Ehris Urban and Velya Janez-Urban

A kooky, gregarious mother and perceptive, poised daughter introduce readers to their offbeat Connecticut family, who follow their hearts to rural Brazil. Broke and broken, they’re forced to return to the United States, and navigate their rebirth in a foreclosed 1770 New England farmhouse. Hilariously honest and heart-wrenching.

“Beautifully written and full of love, honesty, and humor. Almost all daughters adore their mothers and make fun of them at the same time! There is no more powerful (or fraught) relationship in the world than this one. I love this relationship. Brava, you two!” ~Christiane Northrup, M.D., New York Times bestselling author, Women’s Bodies,Women’s Wisdom and Goddesses Never Age

Ehris Urban is an herbalist, holistic nutritionist, and flower essence practitioner. Velya Jancz-Urban is a zany teacher, history nut, and expert on “herstory unsanitized.” As Grounded Goodwife (groundedgoodwife.com),this funny and frank mother/daughter duo believe in taking inner responsibility for one’s wellness, and share their “recipe” for wholeness through holistic workshops and “gal power” presentations.

Visit the authors’ website here: groundedgoodwife.com

~~~

Today My Name is Billie, a novel
By Neile Parisi

Coming out just in time for Mother’s Day, this page-turning novel is about a dedicated teacher who loses her job due to a student covering up getting into a fight by saying she punched him (he got his friends who where there to lie on his behalf)…. Every Year thousands of educators are accused of physical abuse. Some are guilty and are prosecuted, but hundreds who are innocent are forced to surrender their licenses. This is what happened to Billie. Deceit and betrayal threatened her survival, extinguished  her life’s dream, and  erased her sense of self worth. She wondered if she could ever trust again. Rejected by family and friends, she was forced to reinvent every aspect of her entire life. When a catastrophic fire crippled her community, and individuals grappled with personal tragedy, she gained a deeper understanding of the gift of forgiveness and the power of hope. Her brave struggles saved not only her life but also the lives of others. At times brutally painful, at other times hugely positive, Today My Name Is Billie  reveals how a single lie can spread like fire and destroy all that it touches.

Neile Parisi taught for 18 glorious years in public schools. She experienced both joy and tragedy in her classroom, but continually loved her students. Today My Name Is Billie is based upon an incident in her life as an eighth grade teacher, where she lost her job and her career. Following this, she became a Registered Sanitarian. Having a Masters Degree in Health Education, she was able to use her teaching skills to help educate workers in the restaurant world, teaching proper food-handling skills; provide knowledge about radon, asbestos, and lead poisoning to home owners; investigate food poisoning; test beach water and pools for bacteria levels; inspect restaurants, day cares, schools, and hospitals; and at times even trap rats and other rodents. Currently she is a Realtor, who by the way won Second Place in The Woman’s Arm Wrestling competition in Las Vegas, and promises she won’t let anyone “twist your arm.” She is also a stand-up comic on the weekends, drawing from her varied background of jobs. This is her first novel.

Order at the author’s “adopted local bookstore” RJ JULIA!
https://www.rjjulia.com/book/9781732743496

~~~

Paddling With Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey
by Irene Skyriver

Inspired partly by her own spirit of adventure, and partly by the stories of her native coastal ancestors, Irene Skyriver celebrated her fortieth year of life with a solo kayak voyage, paddling from Alaska to her home in Washington State’s San Juan Islands. Paddling with Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey interweaves the true account of her journey with generational stories handed down and vividly reimagined. Beginning with her great-grandmother’s seduction of an Indian fighter turned trader, and following her ancestors on both sides through oil booms, orphanages, wartime romances, dance halls and cattle ranches, Paddling with Spirits dips like a paddle itself between the stories of those who inspired her, and Irene’s own journey down a lonely coast. As she encounters harsh weather, wolves, bears, whales, and the wild beauty of the coastal waters, she reflects upon her own life and the lives of the many people she meets along the way before her final, triumphant return home. Paddling with Spirits is a wild, brave, and thrillingly original adventure.

“In this book the long, restless boundary between ocean and land becomes a road of discovery for an intrepid paddler traversing the liminal space between present and past, between the visible world and the unseen resonance of her ancestry. With “every stroke of the paddle away from shore,” Skyriver plunges deeper into telling the legacy of her familial links to this coast. Her account alternates between stages in her pilgrimage through the water, and fictionalized stories from her kin. In prose that sparkles with bold strokes, this story is told as the journey is taken: with every splash of Skyriver’s muscular observation, story, and thought, the reader glides forward over glittering waters.” —Kim Stafford, author of Having Everything Right: Essays of Place

A Washington native, Irene Skyriver was born in Port Townsend and raised in the country. She moved with her children and horses to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands, thirty-eight years ago. On the island she lived off-the-grid and as a single parent, spending most of her early years growing a garden and letting the outdoors and beaches be her family’s sanctuary, inspiration and teacher. Skyriver organized parades for Earth Days, International Women’s Days, and was one of the early founders and shapers of the Summer and Winter Solstice celebrations, as well as Passage Rites ceremonies for the youth. A poet, dancer, and a singer of traditional “Earth Circle Songs,” writing came later for her, mostly because one has to sit down to do it! Irene received a full fellowship to Fishtrap Writers Conference based on a submission from Paddling With Spirits. This was followed by a grant to finish the work. In between involvement in community, her market garden, and milking goats, she plans to sit down and accomplish these new writing endeavors and is at work on a novel.

Visit the author’s website: https://www.ireneskyriver.com
Watch the wonderful book trailer (starring her daughter, Summer!):

~~~

Clothesline Religion, poems 
by Megan Buchanan

Clothesline Religion chronicles twenty years worth of adventures in the life of an artist as young single mother.

Megan Buchanan, a poet and professional dancer, gave birth to a daughter at 22, lived abroad in Ireland and France, and came back home again to Southern California and the mountains of the Southwest. This debut poetry collection spans wild open roads, backyard vegetable gardens, Irish pubs, country dance halls, Vermont screen-porches, midnight river valleys, artist studios, and the world of waking dreams. Buchanan’s poems offer fierce evidence of what she calls “ordinary magic” ―and what others might call mindfulness―discovering gratitude, the path of recovery, and a mother’s deep joy.

Megan Buchanan is a teaching artist, performer, and dancemaker. A graduate of Occidental College, Megan studied urban and environmental policy before earning her graduate degree in English at Northern Arizona University. Born in California in 1973, she has lived for long stretches in Ireland, the mountains of the southwest, and New England. Her work has been supported the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poems have been published in The Sun Magazine, A Woman’s Thing, make/shift, Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space (Secretary Press), Eating Her Wedding Dress: An Anthology of Poems About Clothing (Ragged Sky Press), and other journals. She lives in southern Vermont with her two children.

Visit the author’s website at www.meganbuchanan.net

And a BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR OTHER AUTHOR/MOMS!!! Last, but not least, an homage to our Mother Earth . . . here is a photo of GWP poet, Megan Buchanan, in a dance performance (I call this “Blessing the Earth/Water is Life”).

Thanks for supporting our small and growing press! 

The Pond: Meet our Artist/Poet Collaborators!

A wonderful review by Sophfronia Scott in Goodreads:

The Pond
by Richard Jarrette with Susan Solomon (Illustrations)

6007384

Sophfronia Scott‘s review

Apr 23, 2019

 

In my review of Jarrette’s 2015 poetry collection, A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances, I noted: “Jarrette brings to bear an observant eye, an open heart and a spirituality that seems to meld both eastern and western philosophies. I savored his lines, marveled over his sense of imagery and felt very much how I would be happy to take this walk with him again.”

The Pond gives me the opportunity to do just that. Joining Jarrette on this lovely amble is the Minneapolis artist Susan Solomon. Her exquisite and striking portraits of nature display an intriguing play of light and dark, of sun and moon, of air and water. I wouldn’t say the paintings illustrate the book. Rather, they act as Solomon’s side of the conversation as she and Jarrette take in the grace and mystical beauty all around us.

One of my favorite paintings features a full moon reflected in water. Jarrette’s light and playful lines:

“The moon is on the moon
unaware of its light.”

Another favorite has Jarrette musing on a cow swishing away flies with her tail. Again, delightful, and reminiscent of Hafiz.

“I almost remember my tail.
I miss it–
I might hang from a limb
while reading a book;
drape it over my shoulders
in a dignified manner
like Hanuman;
manage the wine glass
and buffet plates with ease.”

This jewel of a book is a keeper, one you’ll want to peruse again and again.

To order the book . . . click here,
or contact your local, independent bookstore!

GWP a Finalist in AWP’s 2019 Small Press Publisher Award!

AWP’s Small Press Publisher Award is an annual prize for nonprofit presses and literary journals that recognizes the important role such organizations play in publishing creative works and introducing new authors to the reading public. The award acknowledges the hard work, creativity, and innovation of these presses and journals, and honors their contributions to the literary landscape through their publication of consistently excellent work.

The award includes a $2,000 honorarium and a complimentary exhibit booth, including two complimentary conference registrations, at the AWP Conference & Bookfair in the year following the recipient’s recognition. In even years, the award is given to a journal, and, in odd years, to a press.

Finalists for the 2019 AWP Small Press Publisher Award

Winner to be announced at the #AWP19 Conference & Bookfair at the awards celebration followed by the Braver Together gala

 

Green Writers Press, an independent, Vermont-based publishing company is dedicated to spreading environmental awareness and social justice by publishing authors who promulgate messages of hope and renewal through place-based writing and environmental activism. In five years, Green Writers Press has expanded, publishing such authors as Julia Alvarez, John Elder, Dr. M Jackson, Madeleine Kunin, and Clarence Major. Our mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds will be donated to environmental activist groups and social justice organizations. The Hopper is our literary magazine.

Split Lip Press brings a punk rock sensibility to small press publishing, producing high quality, beautifully designed books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. We print on demand, have a short draft-to-release window, and have worked almost entirely on authors’ first books. We run a guest-judged chapbook contest and put out four full-length books in varying genres yearly. We also collaborate with our authors as much as possible in terms of design and promotion. We think of our press as a literary family, with care and support of emerging writers being our top priority.

Zephyr Press, founded in 1980, is recognized as a leading translation press of international poetry and prose. From our landmark bilingual edition of The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova in 1990, to our unique contemporary Chinese line, featuring work from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, we strive to bring exceptional international writers to English-speaking readers, and to foster a deeper understanding of other cultures and languages. Our catalog includes books from more than a dozen languages (and counting). Zephyr Press is run by Jim Kates, Christopher Mattison, and Leora Zeitlin.

Judges
Erika Meitner, Virginia Tech
Paolo Javier, Poets House
J.D. Wilson, Northwestern University Press

~~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~~~

Needless to say all of us here at gwp are thrilled and honored to be in such good company with these other awesome presses . . . heading to #AWP19 on March 27th! Stop by our Table #9022 for celebration & free coffee from Sarina Prabasi’s Bunnii Coffee Co!

Here is a flyer about the event, who is signing books, and our off-site partai . . .

 

Creative Writing from Our Winter Interns

GWP Winter-Spring Interns, left to right top: Rachel Rosa Canales, Tyler Esparza, Sabrina Lessley. Bottom row, left to right: Rachel Nolan, Rachael Peretic, David Hakas

We ran a wonderful Field Work Term for Bennington College and hosted three fabulous interns: David Hakas, Sabrina Lesley, and Tyler Esparza. We also hosted Rosa Canales, an intern from Dennison University who is heading to Germany to study abroad next semester. Our University of Arizona intern, Rachael Peretic is staying on through the spring and we are hoping she will run our “New York Office” when she and her husband move down there!

Rosa and Tyler submitted some of their own environmental writing and we are delighted to publish their work here on our blog which will also be featured in our upcoming newsletter. It is so great that these young people are using their voices and we are grateful for their hard work and dedication!

Rosa Canalas’s Poem:

The Last Love Poem

It is 2050, and I sit at your bedside, your weak hands grasping for my arm, pulling me down into an abyss where birds huddle together, their feet shackled and their feathers stripped bare, and I listen closer than I ever have before to the sweetness you trickle into my ear, the gurgles of drying streams and the million reasons why I should have loved you when I didn’t. 

I raise my mouth to capture this honey and I greedily lick my lips around the edges, still craving artificial sugar, corn syrup, plastic, my mouth always wandering in a search for sweetness, wanting to kiss the plumped silence of those with money stuffed in their ears, whose lips they had carved to fit only their own.

But now my lips are still, they yearn for your cool breath to calm the inferno I have stoked from coal and desire and your discarded offerings, my hands coming to rest atop your fingers laced across your chest, across a cavern covered by disintegrating moss and lichen, a shelter for the hibernating black bear and her cubs, silently asleep, their snouts and paws stained bloody from berries.

And it is too late for me to wash out these stains, so I hold your hand as you gasp, your lungs punctured with every crumbled piece of bony color in their dark blue waters, and now I am selfish again because I once more want to follow my father into the sturdy green stillness, a palette accented by the yellow of watchful eyes from higher than I could ever climb on shaking limbs. 

I want to hear your heartbeat in my ears instead of only my own and chase this steady compass through your jungled veins and arteries, an immortal heart we thought could withstand the neglect of wishful prayers shot into the heavens rather than gratitude distilled into our roots, could withstand our destruction and our insatiable avarice, but now we have found that we are not so different after all, neither of us is immortal and neither of us can withstand a life without love. 

 

~~~~~~~

Tyler Esparza’s short story:

In a Burning Room

“Oh, come on Sara,” I said, “Really, what’s the point in fighting it? It’s over now.”

She paced back and forth around the room as the flames licked up the walls, the smoke slowly constricting my throat like a rope around my neck, filling the holes we cut into the walls in our feeble attempts to escape.

“No, no there has to be something, we can’t give up. There must be something we can do. Maybe we can try the walls agai-” She stopped and clutched at her chest as a violent fit of coughing racked her body.

“You definitely can’t do anything in that state,” I said, slowly getting up and putting my hand on her back, “I told you already, it’s too late. Maybe when the heat started we should have run. When we saw the first flame make its way under the door we should have stamped it out. We  didn’t try hard enough then, and now even our hardest won’t be enough.”

Her eyes were filled with tears, whether from the fire or from despair, I wasn’t sure. She had never cared for this room before, why should she care now that the end was in sight?

I was the one who kept this room neat, cleaned up the messes of her drunken wine spills and cleared out the trash she left wherever she wanted. Yet suddenly, in the face of impending doom, our roles were reversed. I knew there was nothing left to do, but she wouldn’t give up.

Between coughs, she sputtered words of hate that couldn’t hurt me any more. She was blaming me for not helping, for not warning her sooner. What good would it do to argue now? Remind her of all the times I’d warned her that some day she’d lose this room if she didn’t stop treating it like her personal trash can. I guess she didn’t think she’d be trapped here while it burned. Over time her breathing grew more and more labored as I brought her over to the bed and laid her down for the last time. She hit my arms feebly as I stood up. She begged me not to give up. I just sat on the floor, leaned my back against the bed, and tried to remember what this room was like when there was still life here. When we could have saved it.

~~~~~~~~

 

Our Basin of Relations: The Art and Science of Living with Water

Vermonter Mike Sipe began photographing the pristine waters of the Lake Champlain region about fifteen years ago. His initial vision was a coffee-table book, sharing the beauty with the world with one hundred, sharing-quality images. He captured thousands of images, with thirty-five images to be included in OUR BASIN OF RELATIONS, The Art and Science of Living with Water, coming in early fall from GWP.

About five years ago a weightier purpose for the book, hit Mike like a brick—WATER QUALITY—the lake water quality is deteriorating with dangerously high levels of phosphorous, toxic enough to close swim areas, threaten drinking water, and maybe even harmful to breathe! Blue Green algae is not that good to look at, either. This algae bloom problem is not unique to Lake Champlain.

A few years ago, Mike got involved with the Vermont Clean Water Network, realizing that most of us aren’t aware of the issue, and he was eager to learn how to help preserve the Lake Champlain’s watershed ecosystem.

I believe we want to help protect what we love…. and we love…. and value, water. Knowledge and inspiration empowers us, producing resolve. —Mike Sipe

Editor Trevien Stanger on the shoreline of Lake Champlain.

A couple of years ago, after Mike joined the Vermont Clean Water Network, he became aware of an article in the Burlington Free Press, called Thinking like a Watershed. The article was written by environmental teacher, writer and poet, Trevien Stanger. According to Mike, he loved the article and knew he had to marry his photos with Trevien’s word wizardry—and do his part for clean water—albeit small. When Mike and Trevien came to GWP publisher Dede Cummings, she immediately jumped at the chance to publish the book but explained to the intrepid team of environmentalists that there was no budget for such an expensive book. After much discussion, the publisher came on board and will also donate the design and layout fee of $2,000 to the project. The book will be available in the late summer of 2019 if the fundraising goal of $10,000 is met.

Trevien Stanger is the curator of nearly fifteen articles by water quality advocates in OUR BASIN OF RELATIONS, The Art and Science of Living with Water. Trevien wrote the introduction to the book and it is reproduced on Mike’s website, www.MikeSipe.com, under the tab OUR BASIN OF RELATIONS.

Please help clean water
We invite you to read Trevien’s introduction, be inspired, consider some level of sponsorship to help publish OUR BASIN OF RELATIONS and have proceeds from the sale of the book go to clean water projects. Book sponsorship details are at the end of this article and there will be a list of sponsors in the book (and logos of organizations). GWP is a LC3 which means we can partner with nonprofits with no tax. Individuals wishing to send a tax-free donation, can contact us and we have an umbrella nonprofit/fiscal agent for this project.

OBOR COVER.jpg

If you wish to help us fundraise for printing this gorgeous book, we will mail you a 16-page BLAD (Basic Layout And Design) of OUR BASIN OF RELATIONS to help you decide about sponsorship of the book. you can also view the BLAD by clicking this link: Our Basin BLAD inside Dec21 lo res and downloading/viewing the PDF on your computer.

Thank you,

Dede, Mike & Trevien

Holiday Sales for the Spiritually Inclined

It’s that time of year . . . the first days of Hanukkah are here and the Christmas and Kwanzaa holidays are coming right up . . .

As a spiritually inclined publisher, we just love our books that have a spiritual and healing focus, from caregiving our elders to daily meditations in our busy lives. What better time to celebrate the holidays and we want to offer a few special sales for our readers!

Here is a special holiday list from Green Writers Press, Green Place Books, and Green Sprouts:

 

 

A bit about the book:

Take a wide-eyed look at your life—the commonplace, joyful, and even heartbreaking events—and discover the presence of God, hidden in plain sight. This is the invitation of Christine Eberle’s Finding God in Ordinary Time. Each daily reflection contains a true story and a nugget of spiritual insight, accompanied by thought-provoking questions and a memorable Scripture quote. Together they guide readers across four terrains where the divine presence may be hidden in plain sight. Warm, accessible, and surprisingly funny, Christine offers spiritual nourishment to people skeptical or weary of religion, while still giving the faithful something to chew on.

“From a woman experienced in Jesuit spirituality, in work, in relationships, and in life, comes this sensitive book about finding God in the real world.” —James Martin, SJ, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life

“This is the perfect book for any adult in search of an adult relationship with an adult God. Filled with deep insight and humor, it will gently enliven the hearts of those who are spiritual but not religious as well as those who are religious but not spiritual. No matter the stage in your prayer journey, this lovely book will speak to you.” —Bro. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, artist, author and storyteller

~~~

 

 

 

A bit about the book:

This is not a book on meditation or Buddhism, though it has certainly been influenced by both. It is a book of encouragements for all those who are interested in using the unit of a single day to develop good qualities in their minds and hearts. It is a book about teaching yourself “from the middle”—the middle of frustration or joy or boredom or wherever else you find yourself. It is a book with a single thesis: that there is always something you can do, moment by moment, to rediscover the brightness of your own life.

~~~

Two gift ideas from all of us at GWP/GPB!

 

Our Small Press Poetry Future

(This is an excerpt, modified for this post, from GWP poetry editors, Dede Cummings and James Crews’ interview with Dante Di Stefano over at Best American Poetry)

Green Writers Press is proud to offer some stunning poetry books in our catalog. We are looking for new and emerging poets that write about the earth and our place in nature and the built environment, poets who give voice to those who are marginalized in our society, and established poets who want to publish with us and enjoy the benefits of working collaboratively. 

Green Writers signed the new poetry collection by Robert Pack, entitled All One Breath, and we are thrilled to work with such a notable American poet as Pack. We also recently published Dirt and Honey, by Rachel Vasquez Gilliland, an emerging Mexican-American poet and feminist. Another upcoming book is titled Time Inside, by Vermont poet Gary Margolis, about his work with maximum security prison inmates. Last, but not least, GWP just published A Bouquet of Daisies, by seventeen-year-old poet, Megan Alice, with proceeds benefitting the Planned Parenthood Federation. 

We strive for a diverse chorus of poetic voices and our literary magazine, The Hopper, is doing just that. Founded in 2015 by Dede Cummings and Sierra Dickey, the Hopper also awards a poetry prize, now in its third year. Winners include John Saad in 2016, Ralph Black in 2017, and our 2018 winner, Charity Gingerich. Our poetry editors are James Crews, Anna Mullen, Ellie Rogers, Emma Irving, Dede Cummings, and Caroline Shea.

We have a bias for poetry that is accessible to as large an audience as possible, and because we are an independent press run almost entirely by women, we also believe that more female and transgender voices are needed in American poetry to give voice to those who have been kept quiet for too long. But as an environmentally-minded publisher, we hold close to Robert Bly’s idea of “shared consciousness” with the natural world — an outlook long held by Native Americans before us. This idea puts forth that elements of the natural world are just as intelligent and conscious as humans (if not more so), and perhaps the current environmental crisis would not be so dire if more people saw the world in this way. We need more American poetry that acknowledges our essential interconnectedness as a planet and as a human species. To paraphrase the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, we’d like to see more poetry that awakens us from the illusion of our separateness.

What the future holds for Green Writers Press’ poetry program: our publisher is an award-winning poet in her own right, so we give a lot of attention to publishing and promoting our poetry catalog. To that end, you can expect to see several new collections which showcase diverse American voices, and which unflinchingly tackle the environmental crisis. Upcoming 2019 poetry collections in addition to the Hopper Prize winner, Charity Gingerich’s After June (spring 2019), we will also be publishing Ha Kiet Chau’s collection Eleven Miles to June (fall 2019) and Sarah Wolfson’s A Common Name for Everything (fall 2019).

You can also look for anthologies that are in and of themselves forms of resistance against the prevailing fear and outrage infecting our politics and our country as a whole. For instance, we’ll be publishing an anthology edited by our poetry editor, James Crews, called Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, with a lovely preface by former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.

Interview with GWP author Irene Skyriver

This interview was conducted by GWP associate editor, Evelyn Yielding, a student at Eastern Washington State University, formerly at Bennington College (where she was a GWP intern).

1.   Paddling with Spirits is your very first book. Was there a turning point in your life that made you want to write down this story?

A 2018 Nautilus Book Award Silver Winner.

Well, I’d never planned to write about my kayak journey, but then I decided it would be a nice thing for me to write down for my children’s sake. And doing so, I thought it would also be a good time to tell them as much as I knew about our family. Because my family and ancestors had so much to do with my journey in terms of how I was thinking of them as I paddled, the two stories went well together— that’s when I decided to do it. 

I started writing as my mother was dying, and that was also when I got my first computer. She was bedridden, but I was there in vigil and so I had the time to work on my ideas of my book then. This was a number of years after my actual journey.

 

2. When did you first start to write things down? 

Well, I kept a journal on my solo paddle but as for the book, 

I like to say, it has been a “dozen years of Januaries” because January is the only time of the year I’m not too busy with outdoor things.

3. What did you do to prepare for you kayaking journey? 

Well, because I live on an island, I’ve always thought it would be best to have a kayak, because, then I knew I could get away on an adventure at any time, without gasoline, without a car— just pull my boat into the water and have an adventure! So, a kayak was one of my earliest purchases, even though I was without a car at that time.

And then, as a result of having my kayak, I did get to explore the islands in our archipelago. Later, I got together with my husband, and we paddled up into the wild areas of Vancouver Island, on the west side, and that prepared me for the kinds of seas that I knew I would encounter in Alaska.

But, I couldn’t plan this solo journey until my children were grown up. I had been a single parent for almost twelve years, and I had a strong impulse to be sure, that if I died, they’d get along okay without me. So, that’s why I had to wait.

4. Do you still kayak today?

Yes.

5. Do you plan on going on any more kayaking journeys? 

Yes, we are planning a big journey next summer. We have a family paddle that we’re going to do on the west side of Vancouver Island. My second grandson is doing a Rites of Passage out there. We’re going to isolate him somewhere for three days, then reconnect and celebrate his Coming of Age on a wild beach out there.

6. What are the challenges of living on Lopez Island? 

I guess the tourists and the loss of waterfront areas to roam and enjoy. Decades ago it was quieter. The land now, is all bought up and so there are now challenges being able to be in the wild places we use to visit, without someone owning and fencing-off the property. 

Washington State doesn’t even allow its citizens access to beaches, most other states like Oregon, California and Alaska allow the beaches for everyone as a public domain, but in Washington, the wealthy can and do own them. All the places we used to go on Lopez for picnics, or walks are all privately owned now. There’s very few places left. And so, in the summer months when there are lots of tourists, the parks are always jam-packed with people. We locals don’t go to the beaches in the summertime. This is another reason why the kayak is important because I can get away from the shore and head off somewhere else.

Irene Skyriver on the state of Washington ferry to Lopez Island, her home. Photo by GWP editor, Evelyn Yielding.

7. How did you research your ancestors’ stories? 

Well, first of all, I had a lot of stories handed down to me from my family. I also traveled to the locations where my ancestors had lived to get a feel and understanding of them in their environment and so I did fly to Alaska to visit relatives in Cordova and also to the historic Native village-site of Katalla. It is completely wild in that location now, not a trace of the former village. I also stayed for a summer with the Tlingit’s of Yakatat, Alaska, where I lived among elders and learned more about my Tlingit culture.

Also, there were the National Archives at Sand Point area of North Seattle, where I obtained a lot of the archival information about the Indian school where my dad’s dad was sent, as well as all of his siblings. There were also letters in those archives where my grandfather as a child corresponded between his father and the Indian school through the years.

8. What have you learned journeying from Alaska to Washington? Is there anything you wish you’d done differently?

  No, I felt like it was perfect. I wouldn’t have done anything differently— everything went amazingly well. I felt like I had been well-prepared. I mailed myself packages of food along the way. I didn’t even need some of those— the kayak can carry a lot, plus I took a fishing pole. I was able to catch a lot of fish for my meals!  

In those days, I had no cellphone, or any form of communication at all, with the exception, that I occasionally got on a fishing boat and used their marine radio to call home. But, I didn’t miss any of that either— I was totally happy. The whole reason of getting away is “getting away”! I didn’t want anything more than reaching out to my family occasionally to let them know that I was okay and checking to see if they were okay.

9. You’ve obviously discovered some amazing family history. Is there anything that surprised you that you feel comfortable sharing? 

 What I was delighted and surprised about was the information I gathered from the National Archives, which, through letters, transportation receipts and other items, really gave me the actual words of some of my ancestors’. To see their words and understand their situation—these children being in an Indian school in Oregon after their Native mother died— those were real tangible bits of information that helped me understand more deeply. Also, travelling to different locations (where my ancestors lived)—such as Alaska and Alberta. Alberta being the place my mother’s mother was taken to from Neah Bay WA., as a child and just to imagine growing up in the evergreens of this state and suddenly being taken to the grasslands of Alberta, where it was incredibly different, I could better understand the difficulty of that for her.

And, some little tidbits of information about my great grandfather who manned the trading post up in Alaska. I found his military records and so it showed his service under George Custer and Nelson Miles during the Indian Wars because there was his payroll, before my very eyes! Also, there were some old magazine articles of his oil discovery days in Alaska.

10. What were the Indian schools? 

When the white people took over North America, of course, there were all sorts of injustices done to the Native people. They wanted the Indian children to go Indian schools to learn English and taught trades. They were forbidden to speak their languages. 

And in my Grandfather’s case, they were sent there by their father, because he couldn’t take care of all the children on his own after their Native mother died. Because my grandfather had a white father and a native mother, he and his siblings could speak English, so it wasn’t quite as traumatic for them as for most of the native kids that were forced to attend. 

There was a lot of pressure to send Indian children to boarding schools. They wanted to break the Indian and turn them into people that wouldn’t resist the white culture.

11. In Paddling with Spirits, you remark on the kindness of fisherman and other strangers. Have these positive experiences changed the way you think about people?

As I said in the book, my solo journey re-affirmed my love of people. I always liked people— I grew up in the small town of Port Townsend, Washington. You waved and smiled at everyone who walked past. That’s how Lopez has been too. But as time has gone by, populations have grown like crazy in these places, and things are going all sour in the world. So, the opportunity to put myself in a vulnerable solo kayaking situation actually was a re-affirming of the goodness of people. People are generally kind and want to help. 

I just also want to say that in having published my book, I’m experiencing that same thing again. Lots of years have gone by since my journey, I’ve been very blessed by the kindness of strangers, just sharing with me, sweet compliments about my book. I’m really shy— I’ve never really written before. And so I was insecure about my offering as a writer. To have people positively embrace it, was like a second reawakening to my love of people again. You know, I live a kind of cloistered life. I have a big family and I’m pretty content with just growing my garden and having my family near. So, to be thrust out into the public again and just seeing how wonderful people are— I’ve always known that, but you can get kind of caught up on modern society’s troubles and anguish.

12. You’ve been a part of different kinds of protests, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Kayaktivist, irene Skyriver at the Bay of Seattle flotilla in 2015 protesting Shell.

Since I’ve been involved with writing Paddling with Spirits, I really haven’t had the time to sink into other kinds of issues, but my heart is in the place of wanting to protect the Earth— I don’t care as much about any other issue. The Earth is our Mother, and if She doesn’t survive, nothing will! So, I think that’s of primary importance.

So, I’ve been involved in some kayaking protests in Anacortes (oil refinery town and our ferry terminal town) as well as down in Seattle to oppose the Shell Oil exploration platform’s plan for drilling in the Arctic. Also, I have gone to Standing Rock, which was the ginormous Native gathering aimed at preventing construction of the oil pipeline coming through their land in North Dakota. That was a deeply emotional and beautiful experience and I was so grateful to be a part of it. 

I would go again to stand with Native communities, because their heart and mine, are the same with regards to saving our Earth. We really need to be focusing our attention on producing less oil and more sustainability. I’m committed to that fight but not able to be very politically active as I promote my book.

13. What advice would you have for someone who is researching their family history? 

Most importantly, talk to their parents before they die. I tell that to everybody— ask every question you think of, because once they’re gone you can’t ask those questions anymore. And so, talk to all your relatives. Everyone has a different take on things— the more information you get, the better off you’ll be before they pass away. 

I’ve noticed from my own experience, even in my own large family, we all had different experiences. It’s said, you can never step into the same river twice and the same is true for families. Each child is born into a different and changing circumstance. So, it’s also good to speak with your siblings, because they may have had experiences or information that you never even imagined. 

There are also resources accessible online. I think it’s also important to go to the places where your family originated, so you really know what you’re talking about from a visual and visceral standpoint.

14. I’ve noticed that throughout your book, songs are often sang in times of adversity. This may not be intentional, but why do you think people through Paddling with Spirits go back to music in difficult times? 

Songs have always carried cultures and helped people through troubling times, such as the Civil Rights movement, and the songs we share as a nation through the ages— such as Pete Singer’s “This Land is your Land,” or the Vietnam War era songs of resistance.

We are moving away from the unifying experience of being held in a society by the sharing of songs. We’re more fragmented now. We’re not held by the common theme of certain songs that unify us as a people. Tribes had that. Songs told the stories and struggles of their people, particularly their mythological and origin songs. This was handed down generation by generation. As long as I’ve lived on Lopez, we’ve done Rites of Passage for young teens, which is one of the times we share our Circle Songs. The children know these songs from their toddler days. We sing these circle songs for birthdays, weddings, deaths, whatever. There are circle songs for every occasion!

It helps to live in one place and share traditions. As a society, we’re going off in different directions and we don’t stay where we’re born. People are starting to search for that— they’re beginning to understand that they want a community where everyone has known each other since they were babies. Sharing in struggles and sadness in good times and bad times as a group: a tribe. Songs can be powerful and bonding, a shared inspiration. You know, that’s something people innately want.

15. In your 700 mile solo paddle from Alaska, what was your most challenging stretch of water? 

So, it would be where I decided, after finishing the narrow confines of the Granville Channel—and it opens up into an intersection of waterways called Right Sound, I could have continued down a nearly identical waterway called Princess Royal Channel. However, at that point I decided instead to paddle where it was wilder, and so I struck out for the outer exposed coast. It was about a three or four-day part of my journey—and those days were probably my most physically challenging. That’s when I also failed to find a passage, which meant I had to spend more days in these very wild conditions. There were other points that were wild and really called on me to be very attentive, but that was probably the most challenging. But, as far as wildlife, I did not fear the bears, wolves or whales I encountered along the way. They were not threatening.

GWP associate editor, Evelyn Yielding, on the ferry to tiny Lopez Island with the author.

16. One thing that I was incredibly impressed by was the amount of fish you caught in Alaska. It’s half-impossible to catch anything in Puget Sound.  There’s nothing there! 

See, it’s the same here now. These waters look beautiful, but they’re empty. It’s really sad. Everything’s been overfished and mismanaged. It’s like a marine desert out here. Everything is just gone— it’s why the whales are dying: they need salmon, and there’s no feeder-fish for the salmon. Up there in Alaska, it’s still relatively wild and there’s still more fish. I wasn’t fishing for salmon, per say— I was happy enough with bottom fish.

Evelyn: At my high school, we had a fishing class: twenty-two kids out for a month on the water, and they never caught a single fish! 

Irene: Yeah, I know that’s sad for me, too. I take my grandkids out and obviously, there’s fun in just the act of fishing, but it’s a lot better if you catch stuff.

My eighteen-year-old grandson caught those Atlantic salmon that got loose from the farmed salmon pens. He started seeing all these salmon at the water’s surface and he ran home and grabbed his fishing pole and caught a bunch but that was before any of us heard about the disaster of the farmed salmon pen collapse.

18. So, your kids have obviously inspired you to write down your journey? 

Well, yes, my initial desire was to write this for them, but as I got further into the writing, it was suggested that it “could be a book.”  People are always curious about the journey when they hear about it, so it was fun for me to put it down in writing, but it was something I didn’t even know I was going to do for a long time, I just never really thought of it.

19. How do you get up in the morning? 

Well, morning is not my easiest. Not that I dislike the mornings— I get up fairly early. I milk the goats in the morning and that’s how I basically wake myself up and every morning as I milk, I sing to my goats— circle songs and any other songs that cross my mind. But I’m not the sort of person that gets up bright and bushy tailed and ready to run around and meet people and do things. I like to have a quiet morning— but once that part of my day is done, I’m ready for anything!

20. So, you have goats. Do you have any other animals? 

Irene with some of her baby goats on Lopez Island, Washington.

Well, I’ve had horses most of my life, but I don’t right now. I’ve always had a dog ever since I was a little child, but my last dog died a couple years ago. We’re kind of on a really fixed income, so even just the idea of buying dog food for a new dog— and I really don’t believe in junk animal food— I believe in organic food for myself and family as well for our animals. I buy or grow organic feed for my goats, cats, pigs and chickens and we sell our organic eggs. That’s a part of our income.

 

 

21. What do you garden? 

I grow about eighty percent of the food we eat— we have a freezer, and we usually raise a pig, too. So, we have a freezer with pork, chicken and venison. And I buy fish from our local fishermen when he brings it ashore and I smoke a lot of that.

The author at her garden on Lopez Island.

So, we have fresh and smoked fish. Aside from that— I have a really big garden and I sell produce all summer to the local gas station store. I’ve been doing that for decades. I make my own wine and cider— I grow my own grapes, we have a big apple orchard and I make hard cider from my apples. We put-up a lot of pears and apples and squash and potatoes, garlic— you know, things that keep through the winter. In the garden itself, here in the PNW, things tend to survive through the winter, like I have a garden right now full of greens like parsley, kale and chard. Nice, edible greens! I grow gunnysacks full of onions that keep through the winter until the next crop through the winter. Our land was bought in the 1960’s when it was very cheap, so we are land-rich but low income.

Mostly, what we spend our money on luxury items like coffee, and because I don’t have to buy any dairy, I make my own kefir and we have fresh goat milk. I don’t make cheese, but my neighbor does. We buy nuts and coffee and sugar and flour, butter, toilet paper— I always try to imagine what would happen if we were ever to be completely cut off, financially or otherwise. I would feel fairly comfortable, although I would certainly miss some things but, I’d still be able to kayak!

Watch the gorgeous book trailer by clicking on the photo above.

Welcome GWP Summer 2018 Interns!

GWP is thrilled to welcome our 2018 summer interns hailing from as far away as Finland! These young women are excited to work hard all summer to edit, market and publicize our growing list of titles from GWP, Green Place Books, and Green Sprouts!

Emma Irving is a recent graduate of Widener University with a BA in English. Her time in college was spent leading staff meetings at The Blue Route undergraduate literary journal, engaging in research on textual scholarship around the country and the world in Grasmere, England, and sitting on the quad between the library and humanities building, reading in the sun. Now out of college, she plans to travel and immerse herself in editorial roles on art projects that will make the world a more empathetic place. 

 

Ferne Johansson recently graduated from Bennington College this past month with a focus on biological science and dance. She grew up in Marlboro, Vermont, and has spent her life consistently inspired and excited by the beauty and possibilities of the natural world. She feels strongly about writing and environmental/ecological studies which are passions of hers. She is so excited to be spending this summer working with GWP, while also working on an organic farm in Western Vermont.

 

Heather McCabe is a junior English major at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. She’s interested in creative nonfiction, memoir, and rural narratives. She’s interested in pursuing book production, web design, or journalism. At Kenyon she works as a Writing Consultant, meeting with students to plan essays and creative pieces for course submission. In her free time, she enjoys swimming, painting, and baking. Heather grew up in South Burlington, VT.

Katri Nykänen is an English major minoring in marketing at the University of Turku in Southwest Finland. She is currently working toward her MA degree and hopes to graduate by the end of 2018. Katri has loved reading from an early age and these days she reads everything from non-fiction to classics and young adult dystopia. Katri has previously studied tourism and in her future career she hopes to combine her English and marketing skills with books and traveling. She considers working at Green Writers Press an amazing opportunity to develop her professional skills and explore the beautiful state of Vermont at the same time. When Katri is not studying or working, she is either at the gym or at home sorting out her doll collection, experimenting with new vegetarian recipes and learning new languages. 

Caroline Shea is a poet and recent graduate of the University of Vermont where she studied English Literature and Film. During her time there, she worked as a writing mentor and tutor specializing in classes exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and poetic voice. She is the former Co-Editor-in-Chief of Vantage Point Magazine and her work can be found in COG Magazine, Bad Pony Magazine, Souvenir Journal, and others. Caroline plans to pursue a career in publishing and editing while continuing to write and freelance.In addition to her love for writing, Caroline is also passionate about progressive politics and public access to education, literature, and art.  She currently lives, writes, and avoids hypothermia in Burlington, VT. This summer, in addition to working with Green Writers Press, she is excited to attend the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.

Michaela Shea-Gander was born and raised in Brattleboro, Vermont. She is currently a rising senior at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she studies Communication and Narrative Journalism. She spent the last semester in New Zealand studying environmental policy and indigenous perspectives while interning at an organization called Conscious Consumers. In her free time she loves activities such as hiking, skiing, reading and writing, and photography. She is looking forward to working with Green Writers Press and learning more about how the publishing world intersects with sustainability efforts.

 

Evelyn Yielding is a sophomore at Western Washington University who studies aquarium science. She grew up exploring bits and pieces of the Pacific Northwest and is particularly fond of Point Defiance Park and the Puget Sound. In her free time, she enjoys designing video games and caring for her betta fish. Her favorite books are The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.

GWP Featured at AWP18 Reading!

Our Saturday (March 10th) morning AWP Reading at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel was so nice! Here are a few photos of some of our fabulous authors who read: poet Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, fiction author T Stores (who brought her whole family!), nature writer Jim Krosschell, poet and 2017 Hopper Literary Magazine Poetry Prize Winner, Ralph Black, and South Florida poet Ellene Glenn Moore.

The AWP Conference & Book Fair pix was a wonderful time for our GWP team. Here are some more photos to share from the three-day event. Our authors took advantage of the workshops and panels, too, and we look forward to presenting at AWP-19 in Portland, Oregon!

Top row, left to right: GWP poet Ralph Black chillin’ at our table, our backyard at GWP’s Airbnb in St. Pete, editor Jenna Gersie and publisher Dede Cummings relaxing on the deck of the Tampa Convention Center (after drinks & getting some sun while our friends deal with a Nor’easter), the new cover art for Issue #3 of our literary magazine The Hopper, GWP novelist Andrew Furman with some fans, Dede with our debut Green Place Books (our newest imprint!) Melanie P. Merriman and her fabulous book on caregiving.

Bottom row, left to right: Andrew Furman celebrates his galley giveaway for his environmental novel Goldens Are Here, Dede and poet Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Ralph and debut novelist James Hornor, Dede and HarperCollins author Sophronia Scott celebrate the poetry of GWP poet (in absentia) Richard Jarrette, GWP novelist Christine Davis Merriman (her novel At the Far End of Nowhere will be out in the fall), and last, but not least, GWP’s short fiction author, T Stores, with galleys for her collection Frost Heaves.

 

The Foreign Language Market & Exciting News

Exciting News: Green Writers Press/Green Place Books, & Green Sprouts for Kids has just accepted an offer from a German foreign rights agent for our Adult and Children’s titles exclusively for the German language market. They will also handle other international licensing deals like our current Chinese deal for an exclusive on our children’s titles.

Here is their website and they have offices in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich!
Link: http://agentur-brauer.de
We will definitely save up for a table in Frankfurt at the International Book Fair in October this year!

Other publishers they represent include the following: Crossroads Press, Melville House, Two Dollar Radio, and more!

~~~~~~~~~ Please note: Our Cuba Trip has been postponed to early November! ~~~~~~~~~

Congrats to our Vermont Book Award Nominees from Green Writers Press!

Continue reading

News from 3 Degrees Vermont

Dear GWP Community (and welcome new authors & readers!),

It has been quite a year for our Press. As we look toward a new year, I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the latest news from our growing press—Happy New Year to you all! Let’s hope we can persevere in the face of the Mad Tweeter. 

We have lots of exciting news . . .

M Jackson, Geographer and Glaciologist. Photo by Randall Scott.

We are extremely excited to announce that one of authors, M Jackson has been named a 2018 TED GLOBAL FELLOW!

Green Writers Press author to take the stage at TED2018, joining newest class of 20 young innovators from four continents.

NEW YORK, NY, JANUARY 9, 2018—Geographer and glaciologist Dr. M Jackson of Eugene, Oregon has been selected as a TED Fellow, joining a class of 20 change-makers from around the world who will deliver a talk on the TED stage this April in Vancouver. Members of the new Fellows class include a journalist who fights fake news in her native Ukraine; a Thai architect designing buildings and spaces with climate change in mind in order to protect vulnerable communities; and a pediatrician who helps families file their taxes in the doctor’s waiting room. A full list of the new TED Fellows and Senior Fellows is available at ted.com/fellows.

Dr. M Jackson is a geographer, glaciologist, environmental educator, and an Explorer for the National Geographic Society who researches and writes about glaciers and climate change worldwide. M earned a doctorate from the Geography Department at the University of Oregon, where she examined how climate change transformed people and ice communities in Iceland. A veteran three time U.S. Fulbright Scholar in both Turkey and Iceland, M currently serves as a U.S. Fulbright Ambassador. M works as an Arctic Expert for the National Geographic Society, holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Montana, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. She’s worked for over a decade in the Arctic chronicling climate change and communities, guiding backcountry trips and exploring glacial systems. Her 2015 book While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change weaves together the parallel stories of what happens when the climates of a family and a planet change. Her 2018 book coming from Green Writers Press, The Secret Lives of Icelandic Glaciers, explores the stories of Icelandic people and glaciers through the lens of climatic changes. She is currently working on In Tangible Ice, a multi-year Arctic project examining the socio-physical dimensions of glacier retreat in near-glacier communities across all eight circumpolar nations.

 

In her own words ….

“Being named a 2018 TED Fellow feels extraordinary and validating. I grew up rural and poor, and told over and over I was neither smart nor strong enough. The idea of being a scientist was not even in my realm of possible. But my parents kept encouraging me. And when they died, I nearly gave in. Nevertheless, I drew on the strength they gave me, and I kept going further. And even today, when I am told over and over that my work is not “science” enough, or that my Ph.D. does not qualify me to be an expert on climate change (it’s real), or when being a female scientist is seen as sufficient grounds to harass & attack, I keep going, energized by validation from the TED Fellows Program and so many others. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here’s to inspiring and encouraging the next generation of female scientists, and working each day to make our world better.”

~~~~~
We are thrilled to announce the first of our 2018 interns!

EVELYN YIELDING
Evelyn Yielding is a rising first-year student at Bennington College who hopes to study marine biology and sociology. She grew up exploring bits and pieces of the Pacific Northwest and is particularly fond of Point Defiance Park and the Puget Sound. Her favorite books are Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. She wouldn’t mind becoming an aquarist.

HANNAH WOOD
Hannah Wood was raised in New Hampshire. She attends Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont as a graphic design student. Currently she is a senior looking to get into publication and book design after graduation. She works with her school’s Center for Publishing, designing two different semi-annual magazines, ‘Weathervane’ and ‘Willard and Maple’, and other miscellaneous works.  As part of her study abroad to Dublin, Ireland last year she completed an internship with a local design firm called Snap. During her four month stay she completed many projects including a photo book, a business folder, and a variety of business cards and letter heads.  In her free time, Hannah enjoys hiking, gardening, and playing board games.

More exciting news!

  • GWP is working on our first-ever print catalog (with the help of our two college interns, Hannah Wood/Champlain and Evelyn Yielding/Bennington) to send out with all our reps to leave behind with the bookseller.
  • GWP has hired Sarah Ellis part-time as a publicity associate and editorial assistant and we have two wonderful partnerships with Sundog Poetry and a Vermont writing retreat and book coaching company called When Words Count founded by marketing whiz Steve Eisner, where we also work with a freelance marketing consultant Ben Tanzer (http://tanzerben.com). We are thrilled to have Steve’s guidance and Ben’s energy and expertise.
  • I am delighted to introduce the newest member of the Midpoint team, Annette Hughes. Annette has worked for over 30 years in trade publishing, primarily in sales, most recently as the Director of National Accounts at Scholastic. At Scholastic she managed many blockbuster successes, including Harry Potter, Minecraft, The Hunger Games, and Bob Books. Prior to that Annette spent 9 years at HarperCollins, and before that, Little, Brown and Company. Having worked with almost every account in the trade business, she understands how to maximize sales by working with publishers, sales reps and their accounts. Her experience building authors and shaping titles to best fit particular markets will be invaluable to aligning production with marketing and publicity plans; determining and presenting targeted title positioning; and utilizing business analysis to focus on best opportunities for both front and backlist growth. As the Director of National Accounts, Annette will be managing the Midpoint Sales Group working out of the New York office. Her account responsibilities will include Barnes & Noble and Baker & Taylor. Annette will also be working closely with me developing our titles to maximize sales results. As a passionate book champion and avid reader, Annette will be instrumental building new authors, nurturing continuing series and imprints, and championing our backlist—bringing each to the highest level of successful publishing.

 

We are growing—that’s for sure, but most of all we are a community and we support and appreciate all the talents of each and every one of you.

As we approach the anniversary of the passing of Howard Frank Mosher (he literally helped me launch the press & drove me to practically every bookstore in Vermont!), I know he would be so pleased at our growth and sense of community. 

Blessings and much gratitude, The GWP Team

Thinking ahead to the new year!

Greetings to our stalwart readers & authors, friends of our growing press! We can all agree that 2017 was a year of setbacks under the Misogynist-in-the-White-House — yet, we are hopeful and galvanized for 2018.

This recent article in the regional New Hampshire paper, The Keene Sentinel, written by GWP former Bennington College intern, Cheyenne Vaughn, is really hopeful! Happy Holidays to our friends!

Here is a sneak peek at an upcoming children’s pitcture book that is getting environmental-award accolades! Enjoy and thank you for your continued support and buying and reading our books!

by Katy Farber          illustrated by Meg Sodano
Every spring in the eastern region of the United States, warmer nights with steady rain bring the migration of thousands of spotted salamanders to ponds and pools, often across busy roads. These crossings are magical, and secretive—most people don’t even know they happen. Salamander Sky features a mother and daughter who go out on a rainy night to help the salamanders cross the road safely. This picture book introduces readers to the elusive spotted salamander and the perilous nighttime journey they take each spring. Amphibians worldwide desperately need protection. Salamander Sky is a valuable tool for getting children engaged in conservation.

“Salamander Sky has within its pages the power to ignite curiosity in the unexplored backyard while at the same time respecting and not disrupting nature’s hand in the survival of a species. And what could be better than that?”   —Matthew C. Winner, Co-Founder of All the Wonders

View the Advanced Reader’s Copy (pdf)

CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOK
Age range: 4-8 years        Grade level: Preschool – 2
32 pages • 8  x 10 oblong, casebound • $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-9990766-4-4  |  Publication date: March 2, 2018 
Distributor: Midpoint Trade Books. Rights sold: None
Rights contact: Dede Cummings, Green Writers Press, info@greenwriterspress.com • 802-380-1121

 Salamander Sky – Watch the book trailer
About the Author

Katy Farber is a writer, researcher and teacher coach from Vermont. She has loved and defended salamanders since standing in a Pennsylvania creek at the age of ten. Her other book for children is a middle grade novel called The Order of the Trees, which won Green Earth Honor book award in 2015. Visit her webpage at katyfarber.com.

 


Ab
out the Illustrator

Meg Sodano grew up in Connecticut, exploring the woodlands and seashore, and drawing her favorite animals. She studied natural science illustration at Rhode Island School of Design and Animal Science at the University of Vermont. While making the pictures for this book, she wandered rain-soaked nature preserves, sketched tree roots and vernal pools, and of course, looked for amphibians. Visit her webpage at msodanoillustration.com.

For Educators/Parents/Guardians/Librarians/Booksellers, Salamander Sky

  • targets many of the Next Generation Science Standards for elementary school students, including life cycles, wetland habitats, diversity, adaptations and human impact
  • communicates a strong conservation message
  • geared toward preschool through elementary school aged students
  • models first hand exploration and investigation in nature
  • addresses human impact on the environment and encourages active participation in solutions
  • provides a resource for science teachers, environmental educators and parents to introduce inquiry to students
  • inspires engagement and curiosity
  • focuses on a vulnerable and often unnoticed species of amphibians that inhabits much of the Eastern United States
  • embraces diversity and promotes women in science
  • Contact the distributor to order –  Midpoint Trade Books
    Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved.

We Are Vermont! An Activist Calendar for 2018 is Here!

Our Calendar is a 100% donation to 350-Vermont! Thanks to all our photographers who donated their work! Conceived by Nancy Braus, GWP advisory board and owner of Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro. Our paper is Reincarnation, made from 100% recycled content waste, bleached without the use of chlorine compounds and printed locally in Vermont by Springfield Printing Company, using soy-based ink.

We are Vermont! is a calendar created to benefit 350Vermont. Our goal is to share the creativity, passion,  diversity, and progressive activism of Vermonters through beautiful color images donated by talented photographers. We will feature images of organic farms, farmers’ gardens, protests for climate and migrant justice, renewable energy, our outspoken and brave progressive elected officials, the women’s march, the 2016 pipeline protests, and more. Continue reading

Ambassadors, Advocates, and Librarians

What I took from my 5 Days at ALA Chicago Conference
by Lydia Golitz, GWP Summer Intern

Thanks to the incredible Dede Cummings, I was able attend the American Library Association’s annual conference from June 22 to June 27. This summer, it was held in Chicago, where I live and intern remotely for GWP. I was sent to do many things, among them: to learn how to be in conversation with libraries and educators, to spread the word about one of GWP’s upcoming release, Salamander Sky, and explore all the fun things ALA has to offer. I had a blast, all while gathering information and inspiration left and right.

Of all the incredible people I encountered at ALA, two really, genuinely, impacted me. One was Gene Luen Yang, and the other was Hillary Clinton. They were both featured speakers who really encapsulated what I feel is so important about what—and how!—we read. Continue reading

Urban Gardening Blog: Backyard Bounty

Hello, Jessica here! I am one of the interns for Green Writers Press this summer, and I bring to you all my family’s small farm in our backyard in Brooklyn, New York.

Our cat, called Sour Veggies, amongst the squash vines and spinach.

As a student of environmentalism and as a city-dweller, urban farming is a phrase I am very familiar with. At times though, I have found that the urban farming conversation presented in New York is often lost in the larger folds of “green” living trends: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, farmer’s markets, co-ops, heirloom tomatoes, and such. People are more likely to depend on markets to provide them local, fresh foods, than to plant and grow produce themselves, this being because of a lack of time and space, motivation, and of knowledge and/or experience.

If you look up “New York urban farming” on a search engine (Yahoo and Google for me) today, there is only a handful of fresh results. There are about two media posts written about community urban agriculture in New York for 2017 and they are mostly lists that account the projects going on. (See the bottom of this post for some of these links.) It seems to be a quiet but promising start, with indoor and hydroponic projects going on, and even aquaponic farms that grow plants in a closed system with fish, using the fish poop as plant fertilizer and the plants as water filterers.

A community urban farming project can only be successful if there is solid support and demand from the community. Not only would it need a community to give it material resources, but also people willing to put in the effort to grow and manage produce. Take America’s victory gardens of World War II or even Cuba’s urban agriculture conversion in the 1990s as examples of large scale urban growing projects. Though both those scenarios were formed in times of dire need, they act as models of potential community based pathways; nothing, really, is stopping us from creating our own local, fresh produce or of demanding that there be public space provided for it.

But enough about big projects, let’s return to my family’s backyard. By showing how my family manages a no-frills kind of backyard farm, I want to contribute to the demystification of the difficulty of growing food, something not just urban dwellers, but anyone who relies on outside food resources seems to be under.  We are very fortunate to have this plot of land and though this is not an example of growing produce in extreme urban spaces without access to land, I hope our narrative will add to the slow but steadily growing landscape of New York urban farming and expose people to how it is nourishing our life at home.

My family farms on a six by three yard plot of upraised soil, and have built a nine foot tall overhanging trellis for the squash. This trellis spans the length of our backyard overhead and come July, the squash vines completely cover the trellis to create a sort of shadow-speckled retreat underneath. The vines will leave the soil, climbing the tied up poles and nets to bask in the sunlight, and the squash, as they ripen, will dangle underneath the trellis like green chandeliers. This kind of farming that allows plants to transcend the ground is called vertical farming. Vertical farming is an efficient kind of farming for small plots of land: above, vines can grow and below, on the open, but shaded soil herbs and other shade-tolerant plants can grow. Vertical farming is becoming a practical alternative in cramped urban spaces like New York City, where many projects are using vertically stacked layers to grow herbs and vegetables indoors.

Our backyard farm. Note the overhanging trellis built for the vines.

For my parents, who both grew up farming rice patties in southern China, growing their own produce is not simply an optional green alternative; it is inseparable from their way of living. It is a source of pride for them that they can provide for the home in another way besides having full time jobs.

Young cucumbers climbing on the vine. @urbanveggies6x3

We grow cucumbers, winter melon, bitter gourd, spinach, ginger, yam leaves, tomatoes, and other vegetables. What growing a small farm has taught us is that there is always more than enough, and our bounty is shared amongst family and friends. Nothing is sold for commercial purposes and my family uses only one kind of insecticide, a slug and snail killer, in our practice.

Links on New York urban farming:

http://www.amny.com/lifestyle/brooklyn/brooklyn-farms-urban-agriculture-is-booming-1.9354334

http://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/11-nyc-urban-agriculture-organizations-follow-social-media-right-now/

http://www.okofarms.com/

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/15/11937882/verticulture-aquaponic-farm-brooklyn-fish-poop-fertilizer

 

Follow us on Instagram @urbanveggies6x3 to see how our kind of urban farming can be done, and follow us @greenwriterspress to see how an environmentally conscious publishing house works.

Jessica is a student at Bennington College and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

 

JOURNEY TO ZERO WASTE, Part 2

By Maya London-Southern

Register for Plastic-Free July here!

Bulk in the Brattleboro Food Co-op.

BULK! It’s so important that I’m writing my entire second blog post about it. Even if everything you need isn’t available in bulk where you live, chances are this is where you can find a lot of things you do need or want.

When it comes to shopping sustainably, bulk is the ultimate lifesaver. While items bought in bulk likely still came in disposable packaging, the customer’s choice to buy in bulk as opposed to individually wrapped products reduces the amount of packaging used. The truth is, unless you’re growing all of your own food, it’s practically impossible to buy food without someone producing some type of trash along the way. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and by refusing this unnecessary packaging in everyday shopping, a consumer is voting for change.

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JOURNEY TO ZERO WASTE

By Maya London-Southern

Though the United States ranks third in the world for highest population, it generates by far the most trash. The nation produces over 250 million tons of waste annually, with the average American throwing out about 4.5 pounds of garbage each day (China, with a population four times that of the US, generates about 190 million tons per year). But for thousands of years, humans did not produce any trash, and people have proven that even in this era of consumerism, it is possible to live without generating garbage.

Source: Armaud Martinez. www.istockphoto.com Continue reading

Welcome GWP’s Summer Interns

GWP is a proud participant in the Bennington College Field Work internship program, which we have been doing since our inception in 2014. We also work with interns from other colleges who are all extremely motivated young people and care about the fate of the earth and want to do everything they can to foster a sustainable environment. We welcome this summer’s stellar group!

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2017 Green Earth Book Award “Long List” Announced

2017 Green Earth Book Award “Long List” Announced — Brattleboro, Vermont
indie publisher has 3 titles on the list!

Geen Writers Press has recently been notified that three of our children’s books from the Sprouts for Kids Children’s Book line have been long listed for a national award for environmental stewardship in publishing, the 2017 Green Earth Book Award. The Nature Generation created the Green Earth Book Award to promote books that inspire children to grow a deeper appreciation, respect, and responsibility for their natural environment. This is an annual award for books that best raise awareness of the beauty of our natural world and the responsibility we have to protect it.

The Green Earth Book Award recognizes books in five categories – Picture Book, Children’s Fiction, Children’s Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Young Adult Nonfiction. In each category, the author/illustrator are awarded $1,500.  The winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2017.

1. Broken Wing

Green Writers Press has recently published Broken Wing posthumously by celebrated Vermont poet David Budbill. Broken Wing is the story of one man’s love for birds and efforts to save a rusty blackbird that can’t fly south for the winter. The author worked closely with publisher Dede Cummings in order to finish the book before he died in late September of this year. The publisher enlisted local artist Donald Saaf, who illustrated the pages with stunning black and white collages that bring the book to life. The book is appropriate for young adult readers and adults. In Broken Wing, David Budbill has composed a monumental love letter to the natural world, an astute and minutely observed portrait of the avian inhabitants of a mysterious hillside orchard. The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains, a reclusive keeper of the earth whose soul is devoted to one injured rusty blackbird, embodies a narrative voice compelled to witness, in the rhythm and brutality of the seasons, the intimate patterns of the wild creatures surrounding his home. Budbill’s lyrical storytelling effortlessly transports the reader into his realm with a rare and poetic beauty.

2. KABOOM!

KABOOM! is the candidly comical and dynamic story of Cyndie and Ashley, two spunky and spirited teens from coal country West Virginia, who become activists overnight when their beloved mountain is threatened by Big Coal. This expertly crafted coming of age and rise to activism novel tracks the girls’ experience as they start their own club, Kids Against Blowing Off Our Mountaintops, as they explore the power of grassroots activism, and even as they both begin to fall in love for the first time.  KABOOM!, published on Earth Day (April 22, 2016) by Green Writers Press, utilizes humorous narration and the lively dialogue of impassioned characters to make serious environmental issues more accessible for adolescents. This Young Adult novel can be categorized as a Romantic Comedy “Cli-Fi” (Climate Fiction), one sure to inspire teens to evoke positive change in the world around them.

 The author, Brian Adams, is a recently retired professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at Greenfield Community College in western Massachusetts. His first novel, Love in the Time of Climate Change, was a Foreword Reviews IndieFAB Gold Medal Winner for Humor. He is active in the environmental movement and now devotes his time to writing romantic comedies centered on environmental activism. Brian lives with his wife in Northampton, Massachusetts.

2. Did Tiger Take the Rain?

Charles Norris-Brown was born in the small town of Warren, Pennsylvania. He completed a PhD degree in Social Anthropology and Sociology at Lund University, Sweden, in 1984, based on fieldwork in the inner hills of Uttarakhand, India. His other research his took him from India to the rainforest of Borneo, and to forest communities in eastern Canada and the Appalachian region of the USA. While visiting the Corbett National Park in India, he decided to combine his art, anthropology, and concern for the environment to focus on writing and illustrating children’s books. In time, he would visit western Nepal in 2011 and 2012, and develop what would become his first children’s book, Did Tiger Take the Rain?, an exquisitely told and illustrated tale of a Himalayan land without rain, of frightened farmers, and of courageous girls who go into the forest seeking an answer from the tiger they believe has stopped the rain out of anger. As one of the girls, Anjali, learns, ‘We all live under the same sky.’ The combination of gorgeous watercolors, a forest adventure, and the notion that children can act to make life better, creates a vibrant emotional message that welcomes multiple readings.

Review copies available upon request by contacting the publisher or distributor.  Authors and artists are available for interviews (David Budbill’s daughter, Nadine Budbill, is the spokesperson for her father).

Upcoming spring titles include: Horse-Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm by Vermont legend and communard, Peter Gould; One Man’s Maine by environmental essayist, Jim Kroschell; A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing by fiction writer Tim Weed; Walking Through the Seasons: Observations and Reflections by Marilyn Neagley; Learning to See in Three Dimensions by Pamela Spiro Wagner; Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry edited by Chard deNiord and Sydney Lea with an introduction by Dan Chiasson; Last Correspondence poems by Leland Kinsey, edited by Howard Frank Mosher; Clothesline Religion poetry by Megan Buchana; and for Children: Josie Meets a Jaguar, Book 2 in the Josie Goes Green Series by Beth Handman and the Bruno family of Brooklyn, NY. 

April 7th, at Next Stage Arts in Putney, Vermont, the press will be featured at the annual Earth Day celebration and reading.

OF NOTE: Our children’s picture book, Ralph Flies the Coop, will be “flying” to the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair this spring.

All titles are distributed by Midpoint Trade Books, New York and Tennessee and available wherever books are sold.

Green Writers Press is a Vermont-based, global publisher whose mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal. Read more at http://www.greenwriterspress.com.

Thank you for helping us spread the word!

Our 2017 Bennington Interns are Here!

GWP is a proud participant in the Bennington College Field Work internship program, which we have been doing since our inception in 2014. Our Bennington College interns are all extremely motivated young people who care about the fate of the earth and want to do everything they can to foster a sustainable environment. Our newest interns just started this January and will be with us until mid-February. Please join us in welcoming Ruby, Rachel, and Liana!

Here is a recent photo taken at their first meeting with GWP author, Tim Weed (A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, due out April 2017), at our favorite Brattleboro hangout, Mocha Joe’s.

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GWP SPRING BOOKS 2017

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GWP SPRING BOOKS 2017 … a few great covers to share/sneak previews …
Nonfiction:
One Man’s Maine, Essays on a Love Affair by Jim Kroschell
Walking Through the Seasons, nature essays by Marilyn Webb Neagley
Why I Ride: Because a Bike Pedal Lasts Longer Than a Gas Tank by Holly McNish and Inja 
Wild Play by David Sobel 

Fiction:
A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing, stories by Tim Weed
Horse Drawn Yogurt, Stories from Total Loss Farm by Peter Gould

Poetry (with Sundog):
Learning to See, poetry by Pamela Spiro Wagner
Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry, edited by Sydney Lea and Chard deNiord with a Foreword by New Yorker staff writer, Dan Chaisson
Clothesline Religion, poems by Megan Buchanan

The Hopper Poetry Prize Winners with chapbooks to be published:
LongLeaf by John Saad
The Dark Edge of the Bluff by Ellene Glenn Moore

For Children:
Josie Meets a Jaguar, by B.K.A.B. Bruno, illustrated by Janet Pedersen

Fall books, 2017 are being assigned right now…
They include a picture book for children entitled Salamander Sky written by Katy Farber with illustrations by Meg Sodano …. another picture book called Janey Monarch Seed by Julie Dunlap … We are also publishing a new book of poetry entitled The Long Correspondence by the late Vermont poet, Leland Kinsey, a novel entitled Wild Mountain by Nancy Kilgore, a collection of short stories by Teresa Stores called Frost Heaves, and more!

Our “Poet’s Poet” Leland Kinsey, a Tribute

Our “Poet’s Poet” Leland Kinsey, a Tribute

BY HOWARD FRANK MOSHER

14355008_10154135421804682_3038776183872002142_nEarlier this month I lost a dear personal friend and Vermont lost its best poet since Robert Frost. Leland Kinsey of Barton, a seventh-generation Vermonter and gifted writer, teacher, naturalist, woodsman and storyteller, passed away after a long, courageous battle with cancer. Here is my tribute to Lee, who was also my fishing partner of 50 years.
Belonging
For Leland Kinsey
May 2, 1950 – September 14, 2016

Leland Kinsey and I loved to fish for brook trout in the Northeast Kingdom. Not just trout. And not just anywhere. Brook trout in the Kingdom.
I suppose that there are good, trouty brooks in Orleans, Essex, and Caledonia counties that Lee and I never discovered. Not many, though. At least once a week during fishing season, for nearly half a century, Lee and I would strike out early in the morning and follow a brook miles up through cedar bogs, upland meadows, hardwoods and softwoods, to its source at an icy spring high on some Kingdom mountain.
Lee was a poet’s poet. By that I mean that he did not care one bit about renown. He cared about results, about writing powerful and beautiful poems, often about the Kingdom, where he was born and raised and lived all his adult life. Vermont State Poet Sydney Lea said it best. Leland’s poetry “chronicles the profoundest Vermont anyone might possibly know.”
It’s hard to tell for sure, but my guess is that several dozen of Lee’s poems, or major sections of them, were inspired by those fishing treks we made to the wildest and most remote corners of the Kingdom. In his sixth collection – perhaps my favorite – The Immigrant’s Contract, he recounts the life and times of a French Canadian who, as a small boy, comes to the Kingdom with his folks in a horse-drawn wagon containing all their worldly possessions. Over the next seventy-some years he worked as a horse trader, logger, timber cruiser, whiskey runner, log driver on the Vermont tributaries of the upper Connecticut River, dairy farmer, dam builder – the list goes on. On our fishing excursions we explored many of the places Lee brought to life in The Immigrant’s Contract. The Upper Jay Branch, where Lee’s Quebecois jack-of-all-trades helped build the first road over Jay Peak. The Upper Black Branch of the Nulhegan in the wilderness northeast of Island Pond.
Not to mention the wildlife we encountered, the goshawks and pileated woodpeckers, the twenty varieties of warblers and scores of woods flowers – Lee knew them all by name – the great glacial boulders brought down from the Far North 10,000 years ago, every species of tree that grows in northern Vermont. Along with family history and local work – farming, blacksmithing, lumbering, sugaring, cedar-oil distilling, welding – the natural world that we immersed ourselves in on our quests for brook trout was a constantly recurring theme of Lee’s poems.
Early on in our fishing partnership, Lee and I made a deal. If either of us ever caught a 20-inch brook trout, the other would have it mounted for him. We both figured this was a safe arrangement. One June afternoon on a swampy brook in the Victory Bog, miles from the nearest road, Lee caught a 16-inch two pounder. That was the closest either of us had come until last fall.
It was late October, after most of the leaves were down, and raining lightly. The only color along the stream we were fishing – never mind what stream or exactly where – was the rusty yellow of the tamarack trees. At the time, Lee was in between grueling treatments at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, but still very strong. Still as good in the woods as any man in the Kingdom. I couldn’t see him but somehow I always knew about where he was on a trout brook we were fishing. He knew where I was, too. From upstream, around a bend, maybe a hundred yards away, I heard him say, not loudly, “Good one.” That’s all he said but if you knew Lee, that was enough. Net in hand, I thrashed my way through the bankside alders and hurried around the bend.
There he was in the misting afternoon, standing in the water with the fly rod he’d built himself bent almost double. The hooked trout was about midway between us when it exploded from the dark water, leaping up and up and twisting like a salmon. Its fiery red belly and green back and pink side-speckles with violet halos, its big square tail, its crimson fins edged with white stood out against the low, gray sky even brighter than on a sunny day. It hit the water like a beaver smashing the surface with its tail.
I never knew a man better at playing a fish than Leland Kinsey. It was a battle royal but ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, I slipped my landing net under the big brookie and held it up, shimmering, gorgeous, for Lee to see. “You win,” I said. Who do you want to mount it for you?”
“No one,” Lee said. “Put it back in the brook where it belongs.”
I cannot say that I was greatly surprised. I removed the hook and turned the net inside out, releasing the trout. For a moment the fish hung in the tea-colored water. Then it shot off into the depths of the stream where it belonged, and Lee and I fished on into the wild heart of the Kingdom to which he belonged and of which he was, and will be for all time to come, the truest poet laureate.

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Some photos of Lee for our memories . . . but his poems live on and we are honored to have been his publisher! If you want, you can listen to an interview Dede and Howard did on VPR here.

Green Writers Press in Cuba: Writing, Culture, & Place

cubaphoto2Our vibrant and growing publishing company, located in Brattleboro, Vermont, will be co-leading a trip to Cuba in March with Green Writers Press author, long-time Cuba expert, and co-founder of the Cuba Writers Program, Tim Weed. This exciting new program combines a generative writing program focused on place with a dynamic off-the-beaten-track exploration of the “real” Cuba, with its unique cultural, artistic, and environmental legacy.

Cuban poet,  Dulce María Loynaz, wrote:
“Cuando vayamos al mar yo te diré mi secreto”
—When we go to the sea, I will tell you my secret.”

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ABOUT THE TRIP: Green Writers Press in Cuba: Writing, Culture, & Place
cubaphoto3We begin in the magical time capsule city of Havana, with an itinerary that focuses on experiences that are unavailable to regularly scheduled tour groups. We’ll explore Cuba’s inspiring cultural scene, dropping in on artists’ studios and galleries, attending dynamic music & dance performances, and visiting many of the country’s fascinating and lesser-known cultural hot-spots, including synagogues, neighborhood markets, Santería temples, and small and quirky museums. We’ll visit several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Caribbean’s largest colonial fortress, one of the world’s greatest cemeteries, a cigar factory, and legendary Finca Vigía, where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote for more than two decades.cubaphoto5

cubaphoto1img_1807We’ll also explore Cuba’s unique environmental and conservation legacy, with a visit to an urban organic farm, a hike through a shade-grown coffee plantation in the midst of a neotropical rainforest, a refreshing swim beneath cool waterfalls, snorkeling in azure coves filled with healthy coral heads and a diversity of marine species, and an expedition to a national park that encompasses the Caribbean’s largest protected mangrove area, a major destination and breeding ground for migratory wildfowl.cubaphoto4

 

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GWP guides, Dede Cummings and Tim Weed, at the home of Ernest Hemingway outside of Havana.

GWP guides, Dede Cummings and Tim Weed, at the home of Ernest Hemingway outside of Havana.

Our staff of Green Writers Press writers and editors will lead a series of field-based, generative writing exercises designed to help you document your experience in Cuba while incorporating an immersive sense of place into your prose or poetry.This program is ideal for aspiring and established writers in any genre, but you don’t need to be a writer to participate—as long as you’re excited about exploring, having fun, and sharing your impressions.

img_2152There will be time built into the itinerary for individual explorations as well. Because the group is limited in size, we will have the flexibility to take advantage of participants’ particular interests, with the spontaneity to take adimg_2153vantage of the sort of last minute happening that makes Cuba such a fun place to travel. In addition to a full daily schedule of people-to-people cultural exploration, we’ll have the opportunity to sample the cuisine in many of Cuba’s famous paladares (officially sanctioned restaurants located in private homes), and, of course, to experience Cuba’s justly renowned music scene.img_2022

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Dates: March 10-19, 2017

Price per person: $3,750 for double occupancy (single supplement: $400), includes round-trip airfare to Havana from Miami, visa, lodgings, all meals except 2-3 independent lunches or dinners, ground transportation, writing activities, cultural activities, a lecture series on Cuban history and culture, local guides and experts, and museum and park entrance fees. A few independent meals give participants the chance to get a break from the group and sample Cuba’s famous paladares on their own.

img_1831To register: Non-refundable deposit of $800 due by December 1, 2016; balance due by January 15, 2016.

Space is limited to preserve the intimacy and flexibility of the experience, so we encourage you to reserve your place early. Please note that our itinerary in Cuba entails extensive walking. Participants should be in reasonably good physical condition.

img_2099A note on lodgings: We will stay in well-located privately run casas particulares (bed-and-breakfasts) that get us off the main tourist track allowing unparalleled access to real Cuban neighborhoods, as well as providing a comfortable, hospitable base for daily cultural immersion and travel activities. Lodgings are well located, simple, and very clean, with excellent breakfasts served by our warm and welcoming Cuban hosts.

GWP is planning similar programs in Iceland and Ireland. Send us a note if you’re interested and we’ll be in touch!

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IMP. NOTE: If you are interested or think some of your students might be interested in this March 10 to the 19th trip, send me an email and I will give you more details. Our numbers are limited so we are encouraging people to reserve by the end of September.  dede@greenwriterspress.com

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