Jason L. Ammerman lives in Indianapolis with his beautiful wife, Shanna and their dog, Teddy. He is looking forward to the addition of future artist, Jude Leslie Ammerman, this fall. A poet for over two decades, he has two books published previous to this one. All Grown Up and Microphone or Bust! are the first chapters in Jason’s growth as a writer and poet. Battle Scarred exhibits the pains and joys of life that we all come in contact with. Jason is a part of the Indiana based poetry group, The Reservoir Dogwoods. He has read and performed his poetry all over the Midwest. Most of all, Jason the poet bleeds himself for the craft that he has loved for so many years. It is all over this book. It is full of the pain, the joy, the blood and the rebirth of a man who has faced down his demons.

Battle Scarred

Literature & Fiction

Ammerman, Jason L

Poetry

Chatter House Press

Okantah: A Guardian of Eloquence Every time I see Okantah, I want to go to Africa. Something about his spirit, the energy-vibe he gives off just by being and standing in a space, makes me lonely for a place I have never been but feel in parts of me I’ve yet to write about. I have known of Okantah for a long time and though I don’t recall exactly when we met for the first time, I remember every time we’ve been in the same place together for a gig. We’ve been on the same program but doing different things, we’ve been featured as poets together more than once and what strikes me each time is how unequivocally African he is, how he lives and breathes what I call Griotivism, meaning to be actively a griot, not remember them, not talk about being one, being Black, and oral, and story and voice and people all at the same time so effortlessly it comes as easy as opening and closing the eyes. The title of this collection lets the reader know that these poems are a mixture of what Okantah wrote a while back and what he’s created more recently, but for me the whole piece is one continuous African river, “singing word-sounds” that take me away on riffs that often stop unexpectedly on lines I want to pluck from the page and put in my pocket so I can read them over and over until they are part of memory. Dr. Mary Weems, Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama & Anthology

Muntu Kuntu Energy: New and Selected Poetry

Okantah, Mwatabu S

Three women, who work together as poets, present a collection of their work. These poems are insightful, frank, and humorous.  "'Traveling through this collection is like having three sisters, three daughters, three mothers whispering their most treasured secrets to you. You emerge at the end softer, wiser and replete with hope.' -- David Shumate, author of High Water Mark and The Floating Bridge."  “'Welcome to a delicious, heady blend of music and personal experience.  Throughout, the lines are luxurious and yet disciplined, like that well-made bed of ear and eye that Auden recommended to us.  Never has it been so easy to love poetry, to enter the poem and explore its spacious rooms, to take in complex blends of joys and losses.  Sensory notes are everywhere packed into these poems––our poems now, as the reader takes them in. It's heartening to remind ourselves that the company of women poets is thriving, that these embodied voices are generous, elegant, and fierce.' -- Marilyn Kallet, Director, Creative Writing Program, University of Tennessee, author of The Love That Moves Me."  “'It’s fate, these three, spinning insightful insights—lyrical narratives—from the holy cloth, pricking at the threads of time. Company of Women is the company that you keep, that keeps you coming, that keeps you company. These poems tailor and weave. They clew, and they clue. They dart, and they skirt. They hem, and they awe.' -- Michael Martone author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter."

Company of Women: New and Selected Poems

Marek, Jayne

Musselman, Lylanne

Sexson, Mary

Hot Type Cold Read

Brewer, Tony

Todd Outcalt's first book of poetry touches deep inside the human spirit with a universal pen. When you read this collection of poems you will believe that Todd watched you for the inspiration.

Where in the World We Meet: Poems

Outcalt, Todd

In an age when personal poetry struggles to be heard over the noise of its narcissistic imposters, Liza Hyatt's voice cuts through clean and clear at a frequency that delights the listener with discovery. These poems, each a step in her endless journey under a 50-pound backpack of rattling love, are the priceless property of the writer and her late, difficult, captivating mother. Yet they demonstrate once again the power of Hyatt's mind and music to extend intimacy to all of us. 
--Dan Carpenter, editorial page columnist, poet, author of "More Than I Could See" and "Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter's Indiana"\nLiza Hyatt is lucky to have learned from her mother the word "memory" and the sweet fruit of pear at an early age. Her mother taught her the "imagination is essential, healing and ancient," and that is exactly what Hyatt does for us as we voyage in her boat with white sails to her world of childhood, vivid with bright and dark gems, fed by a strong mother love, nurturing her (as the pear) and sometimes not. Hyatt reveals to us how she accepts their relationship and moves forward, as we all must do to be fully on our own. This brave and honest collection urges us toward compassion for that wild and varied dance of all children and their mothers. 
--Bonnie Maurer, MFA, author of "The Reconfigured Goddess: Poems of a Breast Cancer Survivor" and "Reconfigured"

The Mother Poems: A Memoir: The Warrior Queen Novelist and Her Poet Daughter

Hyatt, Liza

In mapping our coming and going, Jo Taylor gives us a nuanced portrait of a place, the rural Midwest, shows a fiction writer's feeling for people and character, and creates a music that lodges her imagery in our memory. Her explorations of place open into a vision of "the ruins of time," the advances of change, and the coming darkness of death, yet she has the poet's eye and ear to sing that "the wind whispers alleluia through the reeds, / wild geese whine an alto chorus." Norbert Krapf former Indiana Poet Laureate In How to Come and Go, Jo Barbara Taylor illuminates lessons learned from a life weighed carefully through astute observation. With an artisan's hand, she skillfully crafts lyrical and memorable poems that sing of the Midwest, from the scent of baled hay to a day's ritual of training horses in a stable. Reflecting on childhood mistakes, she reenacts school episodes that opened her eyes to a human being's obligation to strive for a dignified existence. Taylor offers her readers an abundance of wisdom in this tightly woven collection of poems, rich in sculpted images and metaphors. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita, 2006 -2008

How to Come and Go: Poems Written By Jo Barbara Taylor

Taylor, Jo Barbara

The Prowess of Immodest Emptiness: New and Select Poems

Dugan, Peter V.

Tragic and farcical, melancholy and exuberant, Peter Barlow’s first collection of short stories display a unique versatility and a willingness to shine a new light on corners of ourselves that are difficult to capture. They cover everything from a personal gravestone shopper going back to his ancestral home, to a depressed businessman recovering in the solitude of a lakeside cabin, to a photographer who finds himself caring for a sea lion pup, to three tales of the misfortunes of a small Indiana town. Sharp, insightful, and wicked in turns, Barlow’s stories will have you wishing you knew what came next.

Little Black Dots: A Short Story Collection

Barlow, Peter

Short Stories & Anthologies

This is the story of a boy who grew up with an alcoholic father in Cabrini-Green, one of the poorest communities in the country, and then became the superintendent of Bannockburn School in one of the wealthiest communities in the country. Housing Projects, Mansions, and Schools: An Educator’s Odyssey, is a luminously written memoir that shows how a boy moved from living in the worst public housing project in the country, Cabrini-Green in Chicago, to becoming the superintendent of a school in one of the wealthiest communities in the country, Bannockburn School. It looks at issues he faced growing up as a poor kid in a bad neighborhood and how as an educator he worked with children facing some of the same issues he had faced. The book looks at what he learned in the process about the power of friendship to annul racial divisions, the importance of family in fostering—or harming —children’s ability to thrive, the role of education in helping kids transcend poverty and also, sometimes, in keeping kids in their place. He’s been asked many times what it was like growing up in Cabrini-Green in the 1960s, when his family was one of the only white families there, this memoir answers that question. It illustrates the inequities in schools, but at its heart it’s a book about race, poverty, resilience, education, and the power of fitting in, and how these things are all woven together in life in general and one person’s life.

Housing Projects, Mansions & Schools: An Educator's Odyssey

Prosise, Roger

Biographies & Memoirs

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