Los Angeles Independent Publishing

Date: Apr 28th, 2013
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
357 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Come join us at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts to celebrate LA’s first Poet Laureate, Eloise Klein Healy! Poet Brendan Constantine will read from her collected works (including the recently released A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings). Additionally, there will be a closing reception for the exhibit Letters from Los Angeles.

Free!

Reception from 4:00 to 7:00pm.

Brendan Constantine will read at at 5:00pm.

Please join us for what will surely be a wonderful celebration!

RSVP to publicity@redhen.org or call 626-356-4760

Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, we’ve teamed up with a number of top-notch indie presses to help all you poetry lovers share that love with the folks in your life who don’t exactly go out of their way to read verse.

This month, when you buy a book of poetry from the website of participating publishers—which include Archipelago Books, BOA Editions, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Milkweed Editions, Sarabande Books, Tin House Books, YesYes Books, and us—that same publisher will send a second, FREE copy of the book to a recipient of the your choice. We hope you’ll choose the kind of person who doesn’t ordinarily read poetry but really should. Which is most people, really, so you can’t go wrong!

This collaboration grew out of a suggestion that Tin House magazine poetry editor Matthew Dickman made to a gathering of poetry lovers. Next came his blog post, “Poetry by Mail,” which went viral and was linked to on several sites and reposted on the Huffington Post. In the “Poetry by Mail” post, Matthew writes, “Over the next thirty days, let’s all buy a favorite book of poems and send it to someone who doesn’t usually read poems. This could be a family member, friend, your local representative, whomever! I believe poetry enriches our lives and our hearts. I believe that by sharing poetry with others we are taking part in humanizing our culture.”

Share the love!

For orders placed with Red Hen Press:

1. Buy a book of poetry for yourself.

2. After you’ve completed your purchase, you should receive an email order confirmation. Please forward that confirmation to marketingasst@redhen.org, along with the address of the person you’d like a book sent to, and we’ll mail one out with a note about National Poetry Month, the participating publishers, and why they are the recipient of this very special gift.

On April 23rd, poets John Barr and Katharine Coles will read from their newest Red Hen collections, and acclaimed artist Lita Albuquerque will give a visual arts presentation. Both Katharine and Lita will speak about their experiences in Antarctica as the result of separate National Science Foundation grants, and John Barr will read from his new collection, The Adventures of Ibn Opcit. Ms. Coles’ newest poetry collection (The Earth Is Not Flat) was the result of her Arctic excursion, and Ms. Albuquerque’s well-known installment “Stellar Axis: Antarctica” was chosen as the cover art for this book.

The event will be held on the rooftop patio of the Art Center College of Design’s South Campus in Pasadena, running from 7pm – 10pm. Tickets are available for $75 per person and $125 per couple. All proceeds from the event will go to support Red Hen’s operating expenses which in turn help our programs thrive.

Come say hello to us at the AWP conference in Boston next week! We will be at booth numbers 302, 304, and 306 and will have authors signing  all weekend. Please find our full signing schedule below.

We will be hosting Five from the Hen House: A Red Hen Press Reading at the Patricia Olson Stage, Exhibit Hall A on Thurdsay, March 7 at 1:30 p.m. Stop by to hear Peggy Shumaker, Katharine Coles, Eloise Klein Healy, John Barr, and Brynn Saito read from their new books!

Red Hen also organized two panels this year:

Micro Macro: Public and Private Poetic Histories featuring Kate Gale, Robert Casper, Tree Swenson, David Yezzi, Cornelius Eady on Thursday, March 7 at 3:00 in Room 306, Hynes Convention Center

Plays Well With Others: Nonprofit Arts Collaboration featuring Tess Taylor, Garrett Hongo, David Mason, Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, Hilda Raz on Friday, March 8 at 1:30 in Room 309, Hynes Convention Center

And finally, we’re up for the annual AWP Small Press Publisher Award! The award honors nonprofit presses and literary journals for their hard work, various achievements, and contributions to the literary community. And we’re in good company–other presses up for the award include Bellevue Literary Press, Coffee House Press, and Sarabande Books.

See you in Boston!

Today is the publication date of nine of our eleven Spring titles (or 82% for the mathematically inclined among you). We couldn’t be more excited about this season’s list. Among its many treasures: the career collection from LA’s first Poet Laureate; two debut works of fiction, both of them haunting and funny and sad in wildly different ways; two collections that make poetry of travelogue, or travelogue of poetry, from Costa Rica and Antarctica; and a mock epic by the first president of the Poetry Foundation, two volumes beautifully boxed. Read on to learn more!

Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam

This debut short story collection from award winning journalist and essayist Andrew Lam shimmers with humor and pathos as it chronicles the anguish and joy of those who fled Vietnam and re-made themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area.

(add to cart)

Parnucklian for Chocolate by B.H. James

This startling, stylish, hilarious debut novel explores what it means to grow up an alien in your own family and your own life.

(add to cart)

A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings by Eloise Klein Healy

“A Wild Surmise shows Healy to be a disciplined, polished poet with a vision that’s unfailingly open and generous.” –The Los Angeles Times

(add to cart)

The Adventures of Ibn Opcit by John Barr

“Barr imbues his characters with such distinct voices and is so incredibly comfortable with wordplay and truly gifted at turns of phrase that the result is a (nearly guilty) pleasure to read.” –Booklist

(add to cart)

The Earth Is Not Flat by Katharine Coles

“Katharine Coles sails to Antarctica and takes a fresh and startled look at a world that seems first hand in these lucid, well-made, scientifically alert, precise, and bedazzled poems.”  –Edward Hirsch

(add to cart)

Toucan Nest by Peggy Shumaker

In her eighth book, the former Alaska State Writer Laureate records her first vivid encounters with the rainforests of Costa Rica with a startlingly beautiful mindfulness.

(add to cart)

Speaking Wiri Wiri by Dan Vera

Winner of the inaugural Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, Dan Vera’s Speaking Wiri Wiri is a work of historical insight and wry wit, unexpectedly delightful and full of surprises.

(add to cart)

The Palace of Contemplating Departure by Brynn Saito

A debut collection by the winner of Red Hen Press’s 2011 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award.

(add to cart)

All of You on the Good Earth by Ernest Hilbert

“What makes All of You on the Good Earth such a rare collection is the way Hilbert unites that raw energy with elegant and original language, creating a style that sounds like no one else’s.”  –Adam Kirsch

(add to cart)

Burn This House by Kelly Davio

In her debut poetry collection, Kelly Davio invites the reader into a world where sin is virtue and virtue is vice, where the ominous lingers just beneath the surface, and the everyday is imbued with the fantastic.

(add to cart)

Pause, Traveler by Erin Coughlin Hollowell

Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s Pause, Traveler is a brave book, full of poems that find not much to hang onto in this shaky and often dark world, but they hang on anyway, with a fierce joy.  –Fleda Brown

(add to cart)

Presidents Day started as a celebration of George Washington's birthday but somewhere along the line Americans decided they liked long weekends better than celebrating on our forefather's actual birthday.  We here at Red Hen LOVE long weekends because we get to spent an extra day READING!!  So whether you celebrate Washington's birth on the 22nd or the 11th (as it fell on the Julian calendar)--or are more of a Lincoln fan altogether--join us the third Monday of February and take some time to enjoy some political nonfiction.

For the entire month of February, we're selling select counter-cultural titles for 44% off--one percent for each of the Presidents. Simply enter discount code PRES13 to receive your discount. Full list below:

44% OFF THE FOLLOWING

Imagine No Religion by Blase Bonpane
The autobiography of a vanguard practitioner of liberation theology and a former Maryknoll priest
(add to cart)

Who The Hell Is Stew Albert? by Stew Albert
A memoir about reinvention and life in the sixties
(add to cart)

Guerrillas of Peace on the Air by Blase Bonpane
An examination of the ideology of peace
(add to cart)

Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960's by Tom Hayden
A memoir documenting a period in U.S. history of major social and political change
(add to cart)

Letters from the Underground by america Hoffman
A compilation of letters written by Abbie Hoffman of the Chicago Seven and his wife, Anita
(add to cart)

Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century by Blase Bonpane
A collection of commentaries designed to make us conscious of the power we have to make change
(add to cart)

Civilization Is Possible by Blase Bonpane
A collection of commentaries and interviews concerned principally with the George W. Bush Administration
(add to cart)

Two Americas, Two Educations by Paul Cummins
A work of nonfiction presenting the case for superb schools in America
(add to cart)

Red Hen Press is pleased to announce the winners of its 2012 awards series. The Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, the RHP Short Story Award, and the RHP Poetry Award are given each year for, respectively, an unpublished original poetry collection, short story, and individual poem. Winners receive publication and an honorarium.

2012 Benjamin Saltman winner Frannie Lindsay

The winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award is Frannie Lindsay. Her collection, Our Vanishing, was selected by final judge Katharine Coles from 514 entries, and will be published in the spring of 2014. She is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Mayweed (Word Works, 2010; winner of the 2009 Washington Prize). Her poems have been published in outlets including The Atlantic Monthly, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. Lindsay will receive a $3,000 honorarium. Recent winners of the Benjamin Saltman Award include Brynn Saito (The Palace of Contemplating Departure), Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise), and Steve Kistulentz (The Luckless Age).

The winner of the Red Hen Press Short Story Award is Peter Ingersoll. His story, “Toy Boat,” was selected by final judge Mary Guterson from 352 entries, and will be published in a future issue of The Los Angeles Review. He has been published by the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Messenger, and is a columnist for The Register Real Estate Journal and Institutional Real Estate. Ingersoll will receive a $1,000 honorarium.

BSA winner Brynn Saito’s collection, The Palace of Contemplating Departure

The winner of the Red Hen Press Poetry Award is Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow. Her poem, “Super Dan Comics Question Box Series #18,” was selected by final judge Cynthia Hogue from 418 entries, and will be published in a future issue of The Los Angeles Review. She is the author of the poetry collection The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor (Salmon Poetry, 2012), and has had work appear in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, American Literary Review, and Smartish Pace. Edlow will receive a $1,000 honorarium.

The final judges for the 2013 awards will be Mark Doty, Ron Carlson, and Hilda Raz. Guidelines for the 2013 Red Hen Press awards can be found at redhen.org. Previous judges include Claduia Rankine, B.H. Fairchild, Nick Flynn, Wanda Coleman, Philip Levine, Eloise Klein Healy, David St. John, Dorianne Laux, Thomas Lux, and Alicia Ostriker.

Red Hen is delighted to bring these worthy voices to a wider audience. All three award winners have done wonderfully captivating work. It is an honor to be publishing them.

At the Boston Court performance on November 27, Douglas Kearney read poetry from his book Fear, Some, and Nicelle Davis read selections from her book Becoming Judas, forthcoming from Red Hen Press in Fall 2013.

To watch Douglas Kearney’s reading, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-QpWa35cTM&feature=plcp

To watch Nicelle Davis’ reading, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cihb1mxCzkY&feature=plcp

The Red Hen Press Spring 2013 Catalog is now available for your viewing pleasure. We’ve got a lot in store for the new year, including the New & Selected Poems of Los Angeles’s first Poet Laureate, an award-winning journalist and essayist’s fiction debut, and a gorgeously produced two-volume mock epic by the first president of the Poetry Foundation. You can check it all out here, or by clicking on the big blue balls below.

Happy reading!

On November 18th we held our 1st Annual Chili Cook-Off at the Ruskin Art Club.  This saucy afternoon of chili and poetry included readings by Eric Moraga, Laurel Ann Bogen, Charles Harper Webb, and Jessica Patapoff (making her Red Hen reading debut)!   A great time was had by all and hopefully this will be a new tradition for years to come.

And the winner is…?

Awarding-winning chili chef Ashley Ellis. She’s got a secret and she’s not telling!

Red Hen staffer Ashley triumphed with her mother’s super secret pork sausage chili recipe.  We tried to get her to spill the beans, but apparently this one is staying in the vault!  Let’s just say her concoction is the perfect antidote to the fall weather and reason enough to mark next year’s event on your calendar. Her prize? Two tickets to the Rose Parade.

While the winning recipe remains lost to history, we have recipes from two of the three other contestants. First up is Red Hen alum Christina Kharbertyan‘s vegan chili recipe, followed by Red Hen Publisher Mark E. Cull’s “darn good chili” recipe. Enjoy!

Christina’s Vegan Chili Recipe

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
1 green bell pepper
1 package of baby portobello mushrooms
½ medium onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons taco seasoning (McCormick is preferred)
4 cups vegetable stock
2 cups tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 chipotle peppers from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
2 cans black beans
2 cans great northern beans
1 can corn
½ cup corn meal

Directions:

1. Chop carrots, celery, onions, bell pepper, and mushrooms into a small dice. In a large, heavy pot,
heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add veggies and cook for 4 minutes. Then add the minced
garlic and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the seasoning and stir for 30 seconds, until fragrant.
2. Add the tomato sauce, vegetable stock, and tomato paste and stir until combined. Remove
chipotle peppers from the can, cut down the middle, and remove seeds. For a spicier chili, leave
seeds in. Chop peppers until a paste is formed. Add peppers to the pot along with the beans and
corn. Bring chili to a boil.
3. To thicken the chili, pour 1/2 cup of the chili liquid in a bowl. Whisk in 2 teaspoons of cornmeal.
When the cornmeal is integrated, the water will appear cloudy. Stir the cornmeal mixture back
into the chili. Simmer the chili for 5 minutes. If the chili is still not adequately thickened, repeat
the process of adding cornmeal and simmer for 5 more minutes. You will probably not have to
use the entire ½ cup of cornmeal suggested in the ingredients list.
4. Bring the chili to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 20-30 minutes,
stirring occasionally.
5. Serve with crackers, avocado, cheese or sour cream.

Feel like making something a little more free-form?  Impressionistic perhaps?  Here is Publisher Mark Cull’s recipe for darn good chili:

 Darn Good Chili

Ingredients:
6 cups red kidney beans
2 cups black beans
8 cups crushed Roma tomatoes
2 cups chopped and roasted pasilla chiles
1 cup chopped Anaheim chiles
2 cups red chili powder
2 cups chopped brown onion, sauteed in olive oil
1/4 cup minced garlic
1 tablespoon coriander
2 tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon powdered sage
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 cup molasses

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a large stock pot and simmer until tasty.
2. Enjoy!