Accepted/Forthcoming as of May 1, 2021

Our current listing of forthcoming titles, including delayed (pandemic), scheduled, and freshly accepted manuscripts, both chapbooks and micro chapbooks:

POETRY

Go Wolf Hunter by Khadijah Lacina

Brown Boy by Nishat Ahmed

FICTION

Girl Detectives by Emily Capettini

CREATIVE NONFICTION

The Closeted Diaries by grace (ge) gilbert

The above chapbooks and following micro chaps are forthcoming:

POETRY

Eppur Si Muove by Stacey Balkun

Tissue Memory by Michelle Ortega

like everything else we loved by Sarah A. Chavez

FICTION

Into the Woods We Must Go by Jordan McNeil

Pre-orders, when available, are linked in our forthcoming titles. Release dates for all books are in the works as we discuss cover art.

Pushcart Prize Nominations 2018

We’re pleased to nominate the following poems, from our 2018 line of chapbooks, for the Pushcart Prize & anthology. Congratulations to all the nominees!

“Filthy Woman Writes a Letter”
by Noor Hindi
from Diary of a Filthy Woman

“Omen”
by Maggie Woodward
from FOUND FOOTAGE

“Disarticulated” & “Extinct”
by Sara Ryan
from Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned

“How Darkness Enters a Body”
by Sarah Nichols
from How Darkness Enters a Body

“I Tell What Kind of Girl”
by Sally Rosen Kindred
from Says the Forest to the Girl

Diary of a Filthy Woman

$9.00

by Noor Hindi

DIARY OF A FILTHY WOMAN is shot through with desire, standing firm in its ground as protest, as prayer, as command. Hindi masterfully weaves vulnerability and strength, pain with sharp determination—she is tempered steel, she is flame, she is fierce in her direction: “Make a bonfire out of want. // Jump into it.” (Porkbelly Press, 2018)

16 pages
inkjet cover
open edition

Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned

$13.00

by Sara Ryan

Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press, 2018) is an investigation of the history and practice of taxidermy via hybrid text of poetry and micro-essay endnotes. In blood, bone, feather, Ryan weaves a spell to enchant the taxidermy enthusiast, museum explorer, poet—the curious. These pieces are a combination of tender & strange, delightful in their approach to the combination of grotesque & beautiful & trophy-keeping that makes up taxidermy—this practice of preservation. Ryan’s hybrid form is a deepening of the subject, the stitching of memory & curiosity & invention.

40 pages
inkjet cover
open edition

Found Footage

$13.00

by Maggie Woodward

Found Footage is visceral little book of freckled skin, fox-bellies, and sparrow blood. There are erasures scribbled out in pen and secrets released into the night—girl stories, horror stories, love stories, a little bit of each one ominous.: “this is how the story goes: there was a girl & / there was a river.” They feel like confessions pulled from a diary stained around the edges in blood and darker things, each one “fanged  (but lovely).” (Porkbelly Press, 2018)

44 pages
letterpress covers
numbered editions of 50

How Darkness Enters a Body

$9.00

by Sarah Nichols

“In this darkness, desire is safe,” begins the title poem for Sarah Nichols’ How Darkness Enters a Body. In this darkness, desire is safe. There are secrets here, confessions. The poet brings us to the photos of Diane Arbus, inspecting contact sheets and images, mining poems from silver embedded in emulsion. Black and white photographs transformed into ekphrastic lines, light and shadow, poet leading reader to artist to begin a conversation. The speaker’s voice is sure, whispering to us in the way Arbus’ images do, pools of darkness unexpected and edged, like shadows thrown under an eclipse. Confront her or take her hand—these and more choices are yours:  “Here is your tongue, sister. / Let me share it.”  (Porkbelly Press, 2018)

16 pages
inkjet cover
open edition

Says the Forest to the Girl

$13.00

by Sally Rosen Kindred

Kindred offers an invitation to join the wolf & the girl in the forest, to walk in this fairy tale land of Rapunzel, Little Red, and Sleeping Beauty. Here, the forest speaks. “Drink the world / you won’t admit you want—” it says, “This / is the story; to wake // you must claim it, crow-close in the telling. Climb / in.” She empowers these women, crow-touched and sharp as a tempered blade, realizing a “story where / the hard-skinned woman / carries thunder and bread / through the wood.” This is a chapbook of poems full of dandelion, ash, and bone—she asks each woman or girl to make a choice, to realize a choice is possible: “What is it that waits / inside her, a nest / or a knife, a huntsman / or an open door?” (Porkbelly Press, 2018)

40 pages
inkjet cover
open edition

Sally Rosen Kindred's SAYS THE FOREST TO THE GIRL

This week we released Sally Rosen Kindred's Says the Forest to the Girl, a chapbook of modern fairy tale poems. I've been in love with her poetry since I purchased a copy of her Hyacinth Girl Press title Darling Hands, Darling Tongue (2013). You might also enjoy our anthology Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017), which includes another of Kindred's poems which was nominated for a Rhysling Award. 

Kindred offers an invitation to join the wolf & the girl in the forest, to walk in this fairy tale land of Rapunzel, Little Red, and Sleeping Beauty. Here, the forest speaks. “Drink the world / you won’t admit you want—” it says, “This / is the story; to wake // you must claim it, crow-close in the telling. Climb / in.” She empowers these women, crow-touched and sharp as a tempered blade, realizing a “story where / the hard-skinned woman / carries thunder and bread / through the wood.” This is a chapbook of poems full of dandelion, ash, and bone—she asks each woman or girl to make a choice, to realize a choice is possible: “What is it that waits / inside her, a nest / or a knife, a huntsman / or an open door?” (Porkbelly Press, 2018)

Says the Forest's mixed media cover painting is "Subtle Bodywork" by Alexandra Eldridge. Each copy of the chapbook is trimmed down by hand and bound with linen thread, lightly waxed (beeswax).

RECOMMENDATIONS

You might also enjoy our anthology Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017), which includes another of Kindred's poems which was nominated for a Rhysling Award. 

Other chapbooks to pair with this one: Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Lindsay Lusby & Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017) by M. Brett Gaffney & Love Me Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Minadora Macheret.

We offer book bundle specials, where you can order any 3 titles or any 5 titles at a pretty sweet discount.

ELSEWHERE

Also this week, one of Sally's poems is up at Kenyon Review Online: "When You Call My Body An Odd Thing."