Fiction. The eight stories in THE TOPLESS WIDOW OF HERKIMER STREET are smart, funny, and humane. In "Bioethics for Dunces," which takes its name from the title of a college course its main character Leonard teaches, Leonard suddenly finds that academic and abstract issues are all too real when his own daughter goes on life support. He and his wife disagree about what to do. A quote from this story speaks to the philosophical quandary that many of these stories explore: "The underlying problem was that Leonard's situation lacked a governing social convention." Many of Appel's stories feature characters grappling with moral, ethical, and philosophical situations that lack governing social conventions. His stories show how ethics--something that sounds like an academic abstraction--can be concrete, visceral, and immediate. With compassion, wit, humor, and intelligence, these stories explore the gray areas of our lives. Echoes of myth, fairy tale, and fable flavor them, underscoring the eternal nature of both the human condition and storytelling itself. In a starred review Kirkus Reviews described Jacob Appel's THE TOPLESS WIDOW OF HERKIMER STREET as a collection of "well- constructed stories that sharply but compassionately observe people trying to make sense of life's disruptions" and that "come to...thoughtful, often wrenching conclusions."

The Topless Widow of Herkimer Street

Literature & Fiction

Appel, Jacob M.

United States

Howling Bird Press

Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Winner of The Howling Bird Press 2017 Nonfiction Prize. Through the lens of her relationship with a beloved horse, STILL LIFE WITH HORSES chronicles the quest to live ethically while navigating a changing personal and professional landscape. The book explores how animal relationships can keep us grounded when human relationships fail. A New Englander by birth and an Indiana transplant, Harper examines the process of embracing and understanding America's rural heartland as home. "STILL LIFE WITH HORSES will make you fall in love...with the strength and silence of horses and learn to believe in the healing power of giving oneself fully to the care and pleasures of another living being. Honest, unflinching, it shimmers with the light of life unfolding."—Barb Shoup

Still Life with Horses

Harper, Jean

Parenting & Relationships

Poetry. Women's Studies. "With SIMPLES, KateLynn Hibbard has created a medicine chest of poems, a book that transports us back in time to search out the remedies and inner strength necessary to survive a hardscrabble life on the frontier plains. It is a sweeping portrait of a time and a region, one that offers an especially keen insight into the lives of women and children--bringing historical erasures and overlooked history into a brighter relief. SIMPLES recognizes that the intricate patterns of the past are woven into our contemporary lives, though it may be 'pummeled as the wheat / Is by the rain' and that's why it makes 'good sense to attempt a revolution.'"--Brian Turner "SIMPLES is inflected by the Bible as well as by personal accounts of settling the Midwest (with the shocking erasures of witness). KateLynn Hibbard tells us that at the frontier, women were workers and visionaries, makers, namers, travelers; they embodied knowledge, experienced violence and lust, gave birth. They were indifferent, wise, sensual. Women who helped, learned to weave, make lace, were immigrants from Germany and elsewhere, were Native American, without names, made baskets, lost their families and language, were called 'primitive.' Most women buried their children, their friends, their sisters; they suffered and, sometimes, they thrived. I loved Hibbard's unflinching book!"--Hilda Raz "KateLynn Hibbard has written a book of remedy and release on the prairies of old. Poems in the voices of women who survive the requirements of their lives as subservient wives, daughters, laborers reveal another life of the settler colonial era. These women code their communications to liberate one another from despair, abuse, unwanted pregnancy, and the heartbreak of lovelessness or longing for love that cannot be. This is not the pioneer woman claiming the prairie, but the prairie claiming the women it teaches to survive."--Heid Erdrich "In SIMPLES, KateLynn Hibbard--part Willa Cather, part Laura Ingalls Wilder, part Edgar Lee Masters, part Amy Clampitt--delivers a book-length sequence of poems set in the nineteenth-century plains. Comprehensive in perspective, masterful in method, SIMPLES focuses on the experiences of women, both settlers and displaced tribal people, peaking perhaps in the stunning crown of sonnets 'The Prairie of Her Body,' but everywhere providing answers to a question another poem magically invokes: 'What window to look through, if not through me?'"--T.R. Hummer

Simples

Hibbard, Katelynn

Poetry

Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. Brimming with wit and heart, IRREVERSIBLE THINGS follows three decades in the life of author-qua-narrator Lisa and her charismatic Mormon family, from childhood to puberty to adulthood. From a young girl grappling with early friendships, first crushes, and a beloved neighbor's shocking murder, to a young woman beginning her own family, dealing with infertility, and caring for a father with Alzheimer's, this work expands our understanding of the novel form, weaving together memoir, fiction, and the fiction of remembering. "In Lisa Van Orman Hadley's novel-through-stories IRREVERSIBLE THINGS, a family moves from a Florida beach town to a Utah mountain town, trading in a dark situation next door for life with their Mormon family and transitioning from surfing to skiing. Lisa Van Orman is also the lead character's name; she narrates all of these changes. Her family's stories are tight and composed, delivered with such gravity that they can stand on their own, though together they form a heartbreaking tale about growing up and growing into an understanding of your family...Thoughtful and funny, IRREVERSIBLE THINGS plays with the forms of short stories, novels, and memoirs, resulting in hybrid text that articulates change across a lifetime."--Camille-Yvette Welsch, Foreword Reviews "This hybrid approach is integral to the content--Van Orman Hadley's implicit and explicit interrogation of memory--as well as to the overall structure. Fans of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, and Justin Torres' We Are the Animals will also appreciate IRREVERSIBLE THINGS. But a fair warning: don't be fooled by the ease of this read or by the sheer joy of following this narrator into adulthood. The heartbreak catches you off guard with such force that you drop even your loudest, most intrusive questions."--Rachel Rueckert, Columbia Journal

Irreversible Things

Biographies & Memoirs

Hadley, Lisa Van Orman

Community & Culture

Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. In 1995 John Medeiros and his identical twin brother participated in a gene therapy study in which the HIV-positive twin was infused with billions of genes from the HIV-negative twin. This memoir details, from a firsthand perspective, a time in our recent history when the world had to reckon with the emergence of a seemingly undefeatable virus. SELF, DIVIDED explores the dysfunctional yet enduring relationships that surround this pivotal moment in Medeiros's life and family, brilliantly capturing how we all are connected, in one way or another, to those around us.

Self, Divided

Medeiros, John

John Medeiros

"THE SECOND LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR offers us a poetic landscape that is easily entered but not lightly forgotten. Jean Prokott's writing is agile. It moves gracefully from a stark wittiness and conversational observations to unforgettable imagery evoking the true palpability of grief. You'll find yourself pausing between pages to reflect and revel; to mourn or query; to grow and keep going."--Sierra DeMulder Poetry. Women's Studies.

The Second Longest Day of the Year

Self-Help

Prokott, Jean

Death & Grief

About the Author\nCarrie Grinstead grew up in central Wisconsin and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Daniel, and their dogs. Her horse lives nearby. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, The Masters Review Anthology, Joyland, and elsewhere. This is her first book.\nDebut story collection explores the intersections of medicine, treatment, and human behavior. 
I HAVE HER MEMORIES NOW is a collection of short stories that touch on the topic of misguided hope and frustrated desire. Some dreams evaporate on contact for the characters in this volume, while others explode, and the dreamers try to live on inside the blast radius. A child makes history as the first recipient of a double-organ transplant. A young woman's progress toward adulthood stalls following the loss of a beloved relative. An old man finds an unexpected connection at his sibling's wake. Author Carrie Grinstead states, "I wanted to build a collection of stories that all touch, at least loosely, on health and medicine, death and the body." Provocative and original, these stories explore our vulnerability and fallibility. 
"I Have Her Memories Now is a dark and beautiful collection of stories about girls and women, daughters and mothers, friendship and loneliness. The prose is exquisite, and the narratives have a way of plunging into the characters that is breathtaking. Carrie Grinstead is an amazingly talented young writer. Her stories are utterly hers; they sound like no one else. I really love this book"--Robert Boswell 
Fiction. Women's Studies.\nBook Description\nDebut story collection explores the intersections of medicine, treatment, and human behavior.

I Have Her Memories Now

Grinstead, Carrie

Literary

Powerful and Lyrical Essays from a New and Noteworthy Poet and Fiction Writer Morgan Christie's book is in conversation with various themes including race, gender inequity, socioeconomic disparities, and others as questions regarding how experiences define us are viewed through a BOOLEAN LOGIC lens, where sums do not always equal their parts. These essays intertwine sport, family, and community and other aspects that assist in shaping identities through lineage and the lessons we take from them. Literary Nonfiction. Essay. Family & Relationships. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies.

Boolean Logic

Christie, Morgan

History & Criticism

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Books by Howling Bird Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Howling Bird Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Topless Widow of Herkimer Street

Still Life with Horses

Simples

Irreversible Things

Self, Divided

Self, Divided

The Second Longest Day of the Year

I Have Her Memories Now

Boolean Logic