In Medias Res: Stories from the In-Between is a collection of stories put together by Writespace, a Houston-based literary center. These stories focus on characters who are thrown into or stuck between different cultures, communities, families, races, genders, self-images, dimensions, or continents. They explore the gray area—the uncomfortable, the undefined. These are characters in the middle of it all: middle children, mediators, people in the middle of their lives, in the middle of a mess—“in-between.”

In Medias Res: Stories from the In-Between

Literature & Fiction

Hostovsky, Paul

Morse, Jody T.

Dutterer, John

Kapral, Jennifer Stephan

Lara, L.C.

Martínez, Sylvia J.

Pérez-Lozano, Eloísa

Peach, M. Kelly

Phelps, Ty

Ruth, Barbara

Short Stories & Anthologies

Writespace

A politically-neutral collection of poetry, prose, and art inspired by the 2008 United States Presidential Election. Contributions from a Grammy award nominee, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship winner, Pushcart award nominees and winners, writers from various continents, university professors, professional artists, and some amateurs too.

A Dream in the Clouds

Crooker, Barbara

Joseph, Allison

Lifshin, Lyn

Brazaitis, Mark

Atuhaire, Grace

Humphrey, Ben

Lang, Susanna

Leary, Mary

Leland, Christopher

Poetry

Bobo Strategy

In his fourth full-length collection of poetry, Paul Hostovsky offers up the kind of fare that his readers keep coming back for--the humor mixed with poignancy, the heartbreak lined with a kind of palliative existential mischief--in poems that explore the nature of violence, illness, beauty, childhood, Deaf people and sign language, the art of love and the art of poetry.

Hurt Into Beauty

FutureCycle Press

Bending the Notes

Main Street Rag

Pitching for the Apostates

Kelsay Books

Paul Hostovsky: Selected Poems brings together 120 poems from this prolific, masterful, Pushcart Prize-winning poet’s previous five collections of poetry, Bending the Notes (2008), Dear Truth (2009), A Little in Love a Lot (2011), Hurt Into Beauty (2012), and Naming Names (2014). Of Hostovsky’s work the Georgia Review has written: “High-energy Paul Hostovsky, who makes his living as an interpreter for the Deaf, has been making a lot of noise in the poetry publishing world of late, with five full-length collections and six poetry chapbooks in the past eight years. He is best known for his use of humor in service of serious subject matter, his skill with narrative, and his unpretentiously strong commitment to craft. Joe Weil has written that ‘Paul Hostovsky negotiates a territory not far removed from the casual speaking style of Frank O’Hara and the humor and simplicity of Paul Zimmer, but he is not a mere hybrid of these two fine poets. He represents what is best about clarity in poetry.’ And Jeffrey Harrison, speaking of Hostovsky’s work, has said more succinctly, ‘This book kicks ass.’”

Paul Hostovsky: Selected Poems

Winner of the 2015 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize. Who are the bad guys, anyway? Which one is the good fight, anyway? In Paul Hostovsky’s eighth book of poetry, The Bad Guys, there are poems about suicide bombers and high school bullies, capricious exes and ecstatic bums, fastidious drug-dealers and contemplative alcoholics, evil stenches and spiritual moms; poems about the Republicans, the mega-hospitals, the brusque and bearded anesthesiologists, and the lady who gave out pencils on Halloween. Plus a host of other unlikely, often likable, always loveable, candidates. These poems are by turns funny and poignant, formal and free verse—a villanelle here, a pantoum there, and lots of loosey-goosey sonnets peppered throughout. Of Hostovsky’s poetry Thomas Lux has said: “Hostovsky’s poems strike me as kinds of non-religious prayers—of joy, of grief, of praise, of pain...but mostly prayers as a form of gratitude, a kind of thank you, thank you, Life!”

The Bad Guys

In his ninth full-length collection, Paul Hostovsky serves up his usual unusual fare of graceful, musical, accessible language sauced with humor and tenderness in poems about love and sex, exes and whys, lost socks, lost erections, lost youth, deaf people and dentists and kazoos—with lots of ars poeticas sprinkled throughout and a philosophical cavy hopping into more than a couple of poems. These poems consistently extract from the everyday and ordinary experiences of our lives a kind of Holy Instant of joy, of insight, of wonder, and a sort of redemptive humor that leaves us somehow sadder and wiser AND happier the morrow morn. George Bilgere says of this new collection: “Such a pleasure. These poems knocked my socks off. Those other reliable reporters from the battlefield of being middle-aged in America—the Hoaglands and Hallidays, the Collinses and Padgetts—should step aside and make way for Hostovsky!”

Is That What That Is

“In the end of days what you need is a good first line”––like that one, and the first lines in so many of these exuberant, confident poems in Paul Hostovsky’s tenth collection. It is tempting to quote many great lines from these poems, but they deserve to be discovered in the contexts of their own fine explorations, as Hostovsky’s ideas can turn on a dime, revealing perfect surprises. He both exhorts us not to miss the small miracles in our often quotidian lives and introduces us to lives most of us do not know well, such as his extraordinary insights gleaned from work as a sign language interpreter. In the end, here we are, “just standing here all alone like a verb/ of being,” eager to see where this terrific mind will take us next. 
Steve Straight, author of The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern)
A Paul Hostovsky poem has a way of welcoming you in, swinging the door wide open andmaking you comfortable, ready for anything. There will be surprises, some poems turning you gently one way and then another, others “bungee jumping boing-boing off the walls and ceiling... leaping singing windmilling right out the door.” Poets don’t have agents. But if I were an agent I’d represent Paul Hostovsky’s poems and sell the movie rights.
Sally Fisher, author of Good Question (Bright Hill Press)
Paul Hostovsky’s amiable voice, wry humor, and snappy wordplay are on full display in this new collection. But the humor and verbal gymnastics serve a larger purpose: poem after poem shows us that even the smallest events of everyday life are both (and often simultaneously) wondrous and absurd, beautiful and ugly, simple and complex. Above all, the poems remind us that life is a wide-angle “spectacular view” to be grateful for. And as the title poem vividly illustrates, it is never too late for gratitude, no matter how difficult or delayed it may be. When you read this book, you’ll be grateful for it, immediately.
Eric Nelson, author of Some Wonder (Gival Press)

Late for the Gratitude Meeting

Literary

MOSTLY is Paul Hostovsky’s twelfth book of poetry. Richard Jones has called it “exquisite storytelling by a first-rate raconteur, a book rich with poems that are funny, charming, and wise. Paul Hostovsky is so clever, so humorous—the reading is purest pleasure—that one must look again to savor and enjoy the formal delights of these well-wrought poems...a wonderful book to read, and then read again.”

Mostly

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Books by Hostovsky, Paul