Flannelwood

How could a wintry heart possess so much summer?

Spontaneous combustion occurs when Bill, a forty-year-old barista and a failed poet, meets James, a disabled factory worker and a daddy hunk, at an OctoBear Dance. For six months they share weekends of incredible passion at James’s house up north in the country. Winter has never seemed hotter in their flannel sheets. But on the first day of spring James abruptly informs Bill over the phone that it’s not going to work out and hangs up. No further explanation: just the static of silence. Feeling haunted like Djuna Barnes while she wrote her novel Nightwood in the 1930s, Bill searches for answers in his recollections of James and others who’d departed too early from his life. When he does discover why James left, the answer comes from a mysterious stranger with secrets of his own.

HONORABLE MENTION

2017 Quill Editor’s Choice

 ADVANCE PRAISE

“Luczak has masterfully done what so many writers have only attempted—he’s not just paid homage to a favorite book, in this case Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, but he’s also learned enough from it to rescue his protagonist from the echo of its fate. This is a wise and poetic book, with a breadth of thematic content ranging from disability and intimacy to profound questions about masculinity, alienation, and healing. Luczak has written a serious recounting of a profound love so rare these days—why, not since Djuna Barnes!” —Trebor Healey, author of Faun and A Horse Named Sorrow

“Lyrical and erotic, Flannelwood deftly melds an aching tale of romantic loss with prose poetry and depictions of disability that transcend clichés. Particularly fascinating is the way this love letter of a novel parallels Djuna Barnes’s classic Nightwood, both in its search for answers and its achievement of an elegant revenge.” —Jeff Mann, author of Country and Insatiable

“Raymond Luczak’s sexy new novel speaks to the profound struggles of making our way into and fighting our way out of the intricate love webs of the heart—every battle scar and stretchmark, every bite and kiss, every trauma and triumph, shines a strange yet beautiful light on our queer unstoppable lives.” —Rigoberto González, author of What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth

A black and white photograph of a bearded man with a green patch of foods at the bottom and white script that reads Flannelwood by Raymond Luczak.

Raymond Luczak ( Author Website )

Publication Date: June 6, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Fiction, Quill

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ISBN: 978-1-59709-897-7

Exuberance

These dazzling poems are set in the earliest years of American aviation when daredevil pilots—woman and men—thrilled spectators who had never seen an airplane.

Lincoln Beachey, Betty Scott, Harriet Quimby, Ruth Law, Ormer Locklear, Bessie Coleman, and Clyde Pangborn fly at carnival altitudes. In a lyrical sequence of persona poems, the pilots in Exuberance wonder how the experience of moving through the air will transform life on the ground. They learn to name the clouds, size up the winds, mix an Aviation Cocktail, perform a strange field landing, and make an emergency jump.

AWARDS
Finalist – 2020 Connecticut Book Awards, Poetry

Finalist – 2019 Foreword Indies Book Awards, Poetry (Adult Nonfiction)

 ADVANCE PRAISE

“Intoxicated with the history of aviation, Dolores Hayden has written a work of historical imagination that is vocally energetic, psychologically acute, and musically sophisticated. In their love of physical risk and in their daredevil elan, the speakers in these poems keep faith with the mundane facts of flight as well as its spiritual intimations. The movement between lyrical speech and historical reflection gives us not only a portrait of the early years of the twentieth century, but a book in which technological advance is given a profoundly human voice.” —Tom Sleigh, poet, dramatist, essayist, author of House of Fact, House of Ruin

“Exuberance is the word for this expansive and exciting collection, and also the word for the vanished earliest days of aviation it evokes, when flying was entertainment and adventure, not everyday transportation. Hayden brings to life a rollicking cast of birdmen and birdwomen, showmen and stunt pilots, producers and profiteers—and their entranced audiences and riders too. “I have the air intoxication,” says Harriet Quimby, a journalist who was the first American woman to get a pilot’s license and the first woman pilot to fly the English Channel. “Only a flier knows what that means.” Hayden’s lush and energetic poems give us earthbound readers, used to shuttling from airport to airport, a sense of what that intoxication must have felt like.”—Katha Pollitt, poet and columnist, author of The Mind-Body Problem

An old photograph of a crowd wearing clothes from the 1900’s and an industrial plane flying at the top with white script that reads Exuberance poems by Dolores Hayden.

Dolores Hayden ( Author Website )

Publication Date: May 14, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Red Hen Press

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ISBN: 978-1-59709-604-1

deciduous qween

Trees are queer magic; just look at those queens.

Through the creaking of bedazzled branches and the soft rustle of jeweled leaves, deciduous qween explores the queer world all around us—how we, like our environment, wear and shed different identities in our performance as human, as drag queen, as ancient tree. This collection reveals in the natural world those ephemeral moments which reflect our own truths and confront our fear of death, of loneliness, and of failure. With an air of Southern Gothic mysticism, the poet reflects on a childhood spent in Houston’s bayous, an adolescence rife with curiosity and shame, and a young adulthood marred by the loss of his mother. How do our bodies and minds find equilibrium as we learn to let go, yet long to remember? The title poem, “deciduous qween, I–V,” binds the collection in a five-part sequence, pondering those things that are lost in the seasons of our lives: teeth, antlers, body, shape, and leaf. And it’s those sharp edges of loss and the scars they leave behind that linger here, like bark stripped from a swaying willow, or a family bereft of its matriarch.

AWARD

WINNER – 2017 Benjamin Saltman Award

ADVANCE PRAISE

The Texas of Matty Layne Glasgow’s deciduous qween is big, teased out, and sequined, but it is also parched, prickly with violence and grief, and fire-gutted, its aspens “all char-soaked & done up with ash.” In poems as deft as they are refreshingly unguarded, Glasgow queers nature itself, revealing the possibilities in the landscape to be as complex and limitless as those of the self: “There’s a buzz in the air. / It’s the world unzipping.”—Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones

“Rooted in ache and wonderment, deciduous qween by Matty Layne Glasgow is a dazzling queer catalog of loss and gain. The death of a singular mother kindles the empathic imagination of the speaker. Trees, like drag queens, preen and sparkle. Those marginalized by society are seen and heard. Pop culture clarifies desire. Glasgow’s command of craft is impressive. The images are precise and sensual, the lines are musical, and he pours language into eye-catching forms. The dexterity with language is matched by emotional acuity. Vulnerability, brashness, grief, and astonishment leap off the page. deciduous qween is a marvelous and inventive debut.”—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning

An intricate design of a red haired woman with an orange fish on her head and green leaves covering her body with red script that reads deciduous qween poems by Matty Layne Glasgow.

Matty Layne Glasgow ( Author Website )

Publication Date: June 4, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Red Hen Press

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ISBN: 978-1-59709-258-6

Bright Stain

Unapologetically sensual and forthright, Bright Stain explores desire, loss, faith, doubt, tenderness, and violence; and sex as experience, metaphor, and magnifying lens for relationships.

Bright Stain may or may not become the Sex and the City of poetry, but this knock-your-socks-off debut will likely inspire debate—perhaps controversy—as it inhabits some startling points of view, including pedophile priests’, serial killers’ and prison inmates’. Those who miss reading these breathtaking, visceral poems won’t know what their friends are raving about.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Francesca Bell’s poems are fierce and tender, passionate, compassionate, disturbing and delightful. Wide-ranging, finely-honed, smart and surprising, Bright Stain is a compelling debut collection!”—Ellen Bass

“How deeply gratifying to see Francesca Bell’s electric, erotic, and completely ravishing debut collection, Bright Stain, at last in the world. For the past ten years she has been writing some of the most charged, subtle, and yet devastating poems in American poetry. Many of these dramatic vignettes are laced with a rare sexual candor and a whip-smart emotional intelligence. Bright Stain is one of the most darkly elegant and luminous books of recent years; it is, in all ways, truly a wonder.”—David St. John

A woman dancing at the center mid air and white script that reads Bright Stain poems by Francesca Bell.

Francesca Bell ( Author Website )

Publication Date: May 7, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Red Hen Press

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ISBN: 978-1-59709-861-8

Adamantine

Moving between cameo portraits to filmic narratives, the opening section Adamantine explores the lives of historical figures ranging from Mohawk writer and performer Tekahionwake and iconic Canadian painter Emily Carr to Anglo-Irish revolutionaries Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz, setting these ghosts in conversation with the memories of lesser-known women including Foyle’s high school friend, the prematurely deceased writer Emily Givner; the mothers and orators of the Falls Road, West Belfast; and Pamela George, a murdered young Aboriginal woman. But the luster of feminist commitment can mask an inner fragility, and the collection takes a personal turn with Grave Goods, a short sequence of poems exploring the mother-daughter relationship, disappointment, and depression. Emotional resolution comes in a surprising form, with a breast cancer diagnosis, and the book’s final moving sequence The Cancer Breakthrough is a tribute not just to Foyle’s own resilience, but the loving power of community.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“This collection is a paradox of be/longing, where lamentation is upturned to celebration. Warrior spirits of women call and dance throughout time. The pain of chemotherapy is buffeted by the love of friends. Foyle’s Canadian childhood spills through her recollections of her travels, from First Peoples’ words to Palestine, London, and beyond. This collection sees our life as it is now, a fragile veil hanging in front of what was lost. Foyle’s Adamantine is a lithographic stone, fixing patterns of brutality, innocence, and pain onto the veil. But there is hope here too, as it shows us the joy of what we can become, if only we have the courage to tear through that thin shroud.”—Fawzia Muradali Kane

A black and white photograph of a woman in a white gown with long hair holding an hour glass and white and red script on top that reads Adamantine poems by Naomi Foyle.

Naomi Foyle ( Author Website )

Publication Date: July 11, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Pighog Press, Poetry

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ISBN: 978-1-90630-941-1

The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated from the Library of John C. Calhoun

WINNER OF THE 2020 IPPY AWARD IN MOST ORIGINAL CONCEPT

Percival Everett’s The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated From the Library of John C. Calhoun, is poetry within the harsh confines of a mock historical document, a guidebook for the American slave owner. The collection features lists of instructions for buying, training, and punishing, equations for calculating present and future profits, and handwritten annotations affirming the brutal contents. The Book of Training lays bare the mechanics of the peculiar institution of slavery and challenges readers to place themselves in the uncomfortable vantage point of those who have bought and enslaved human beings.

“. . . Artful and literate, Everett explores the philosophical, the metaphysical, the physical and the psychological boundaries of human life . . .”
Terry D Auray

“. . . Everett achieves a primal sense of dislocation, forcing us to question how we determine the limits of the human . . .”
Sven Birkets, The New York Times

“. . . The audacious, uncategorizable Everett. He mixes genre and tone with absolute abandon, never does the same song twice. Brilliant . . .”
The Boston Globe

“. . . An author who dances with language as effortlessly as Fred Astaire.”
Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael

A cream background with black script that reads The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson.

Percival Everett ( Author Website )

Publication Date: January 15, 2019

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Red Hen Press

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ISBN: 978-1-59709-628-7