Months after World War II officially ends, a 15-year-old boy still hides in a potato field. The horror of the Holocaust is followed by the horror of survival. The question "Why me?" haunts survivors for the rest of our lives. For some of us, life is only possible under the anesthesia of silence. After 63 years, Leon Rubinstein has broken his silence with this book. As I Am Presently Known is a remarkable story of life's victory over death and about one generation passing the torch to another. Marian Marzynski Holocaust survivor, documentary filmmaker, author of acclaimed film "Shtetl"

As I Am Presently Known

Biographies & Memoirs

Emily Rubin

Leon Rubinstein

Community & Culture

Plain View Press

In Spring Hunger, Keith Liles "arms his thirst" with the outrages of our era and writes a searing poetry that refuses to behave as if the word is more important than the world. Earnest, insightful, and razor-sharp, these poems arise from a sensibility in which ethics and aesthetics are never at odds. What an exciting, skillful, and substantial debut! Richard Hoffman, poet, author of Half the House: a Memoir, and the poetry collections, Without Paradise and Gold Star Road Wait-person poetry! Sentient wait-person! Wait-person informed and engage. But stop, this is the U.S., not Europe, isn't it? In fact, it's Alaska, Vatican of American myth-making. Where then is the McPoetry, Creative Writing's contribution to U.S. mindlessness and ticket into its market? Nowhere in sight. Instead, poems daring enough to write about "dweebiness" and risk being dweeby to do so, that make use of "the prose virtues" as well as the forms and experiments poetry invites, a young man's poems of navigating the disappointments and seductions of male identity in 21st century workaday Anchorage. Anything but cool, Liles unruly intelligence makes us laugh, look again, rethink, and finally remember why poetry has a long, loved populist history in the U.S. Linda McCarriston, poet, author of Little River - Poems Selected &amp; New, Eva-Mary and Talking Soft Dutch

Spring Hunger

Literature & Fiction

KP Liles

Poetry

The Other Sister is a passionate, startling and, wonderfully readable novel about generations of an immigrant family during the first half of the twentieth century. Its momentum shimmers with the presence and evanescence of life’s everyday and extraordinary moments. While Patricia Valdata illuminates the ways that history affects individual lives, the real star of the story is the individual. Brimming with unforgettable characters, The Other Sister is to be treasured. Kate Evans, author of Like All We Love and For the May Queen Hats off to this fascinating American story--a tribute to Hungarian immigrant women and their families, who arrived in America during the early 20th century. Buffeted on the sea of life, yet their faith and culture anchors them in their new home. Dr. August J. Molnar, President, American Hungarian Foundation The Other Sister is a vivid and richly detailed story of the immigrant experience in America. Pat Valdata follows three generations of sisters through poverty and prosperity, and lets us share their triumphs and heartbreak. It is beautiful, funny, sad and very readable. Mary Lee Bragg, author of Shooting Angels

The Other Sister

Valdata, Pat

Literary

In the Disappearing Water is a fascinating story, dark and deep, yet full of hope and longing. There is much in life that is beyond rational comprehension. Mystery resounds in silence like a solitary snow angel, the displacement of water in a bathtub, a still life image and life that refuses to be stilledócannot be packed away, domesticated or slaughtered. Love, perhaps the greatest mystery, with its comings and goings on, is carried like a bucket of stones, close to the chest, and passed along. Caroline Sulzer takes her readers to captivating places that may be hauntingly familiar, yet surprisingly other. Geraldine Cannon, author of Glad Wilderness (Plain View Press, 2008), professor, University of Maine at Fort Kent  The language of In the Disappearing Water is like a precise and piercing needle. The story's hypnotic pacing, and the tentative, growing alliance of its main characters, draws a reader deeper into the meat industry and the damage done to animals and to the people who work slaughtering them. That violence inhabits the personal histories of the characters. For some, detachment is both a solution and another devastation, as in the story of a man who cannot bend to the task of love, but ultimately nothing can undercut the strength of the love shared by the book's newfound family. Nancy English, freelance writer, restaurant reviewer, and author of Maine and Maritimes Guidebooks, (Countryman Press) Caroline Sulzer writes like a dream. She's that rarity, a true wordsmith, in whose hands language takes on magical and transforming power, no matter what the subject, reminiscent of Alice Hoffman. In the Disappearing Water focuses on the inhumanity of slaughterhouses, so the images and overall effect are both lyrical and devastating. This theme weaves through the story of two young women, their friendship and childhood memories, evoked with elegant understatement. Sulzer's heroines emerge as humans we know, and the animals we encounter are spared sentimentality. This captivating novel is both a warm-hearted portrait and a hard, 21st-century look at our relationship with the animals we eat.   Kitty Beer, author of What Love Can't Do (Plain View Press, 2008)  

In the Disappearing Water

Sulzer, Caroline

"This collaborative, experimental poetry project uses threaded polymetaphoric images by eight Austin poets . . . Peggy Lynch is a well-known Austin poet whose work is admired by every serious poet in town. Lyman Grant edited the late, great men's movement magazine Man! Much of his work is simultaneously classic and deeply personal. Phillip T. Stephens is a longtime local poetry activist gone quiet of late, but his poetry, political and punchy, still burns. The others I know less about, but we know that Susan Bright, who directed this project, is one of the most well-respected poets in Austin, not to mention the rest of the planet, so expect something special." (Ric Williams, Austin Chronicle) Beautiful myth and music poems by Alyce Guynn, urban America through the eyes of a young Chicana poet, Jennifer Cardenas, songs of a Texas woman coming of age by Carlyn Luke Reding, jewel-like image and lyrical poems from Jill Wiggins, a crow poem by guest poet, Jose Flores Peregrino and an introduction by Susan Bright. "'Feeding the Crow" ... is a poetic wonderland filled with imagistic and metaphoric delights. The anthology ... stands head and shoulders above any that I have read recently. Crows have an eye for things that shine.... Shine is exactly what this anthology does, like a galaxy of poetic supernovas. And I'll certainly never look at crows ... without thinking of this wonderful collection of contemporary poetry." James Darrell Skaggs, Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico San Juan "'Feeding the Crow' delights ... What a richness! The range of forms, styles, themes, attitudes could occupy serious students for years, and beginning or recalcitrant students could certainly be won to poetry by the feast--offering of 'Feeding the Crow.'" Terry Everett, Poet and Instructor, Delta State University, Cleveland, Mississippi "These 'crow' poets do more than caw (although they certainly caw forthrightly for justice). They sing with lyric voices about the rich complexity of life when borders are crossed, cultures are blended, and the soul is exposed." Betty Youngkin, Associate Professor of English, The University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio "What happens when eight people get together ... to write and share their work under the sign of the crow, that figure of lingering wildness in the modern city? The human village reconvenes in these pages, and by the time you're done reading this abundant collection, you'll feel as if you have been spending the weekend with relatives you didn't even know were family. 'Feeding the Crow' is good entertainment and a useful introduction to how to write the modern lyric poem in all its variations." Paul Christensen, Professor of English, Texas A&amp;M University, College Station, Texas "Welcome to 'Feeding the Crow,' where the local and the colloquial are more than colorful. This collection braids together personal narratives and poems vivid with courageous detail, as each writer challenges us to sing our own "serious songs" in our many voices and languages. Excellent models for students of writing everywhere." Marty Williams, Teacher and Writer, San Francisco Unified School District and Bay Area Writing Project

Feeding the Crow

Robin Britton

Jill Wiggins

Caryln Luke Reding

Peggy Lynch

Jennifer Cardenas

Phillip T. Stephens

Contemporary

At the core of this collection, which travels the globe and the neighborhood, is a deep knowledge and respect for both the physical world and the world of the heart. The poems use language, beautifully crafted and finely tuned, to create a space for them to come together.Compassion and craftsmanship come together in that beautiful way that keeps us all crawling back to poetry to learn the truth.  Lisa Starr, Rhode Island Poet Laureate The work is clear, spare and moves rhythmically through recognizable grief and celebrates the sweetness of love returned, while acknowledging the real losses of this time. The unanswerable questions become the contradictions we face in reading his work, and Faber’s poems guide us to new arrivals of meaning, both ironically and iconically altered, with “everything in its place” anew. Beatrix Gates, poet, teacher, author of several poetry collections, including Ten Minutes There’s a whimsical, deep sweetness in Lou Faber’s work, mingled with the toughness of mind required to take a long look at the human predicament. Absences both personal and collective haunt the poems as their speaker mourns the multinational victims of violent injustice. Next you’ll find a lyric voice set dizzily free from the laws of Newtonian physics, or Buddha and Hillel stepping out to enjoy a convivial nosh. It’s the honesty with which Faber depicts a self fully entangled in the fabric of the world that renders convincing these flickers of canny celebration.  Jan Clausen, poet, novelist and teacher,  author of several books, inclucing From a Glass House. In this substantial collection of poems, I have come to admire Louis Faber’s range, wit, and sensibilities. I’ve had the pleasure of publishing Louis Faber’s poetry but the real pleasure comes in reading these poems and the unexpected ways of knowing that they make possible. These poems are motivated not by the desire to dazzle the reader so much as to simply get us to see again what we know must exist. James Elkins, editor,  Legal Studies Forum

The Right to Depart

Faber, Louis

Sheela Free's voice - totally original and authentic, which is a major accomplishment today - manages anger with energy humor and pathos that avoids the trap of self pity, a funny pathos. The beauty of this new voice is that it deals with disasters by shining small mercies on them.  Sheela Free's verse pops and stings, reverberates and soothes. Borrowing from pop culture, politics, and family recipes, so that "the aroma of heaven itself descends / and grabs me by the throat," Free's private struggles with identity and loss are framed and amplified by the struggles of a community fighting natural and man-made disasters, poverty and apathy. Here is a writer with an authentic voice and vision, whose words cross oceans to trace a history that is exotic yet familiar, landing squarely in a barren Southern California landscape that is as welcoming as it is disconcerting, a place we can all call home. Cati Porter, editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry, and author of Seven Floors Up and small fruit songs  In her poem, "And so the Stupid Critic Said," Sheela Free exhorts us to "Write 'till the marrow in your bones /sucks its way into your words." It is clear that this is how Free herself writes - each poem in this collection buzzes with the stuff of life in all its pain and joy, each word extracted from the very center of her being. These poems are deeply personal and political, honest and visionary, all at once - poems that stand up and say "I STILL AM" even after the most unimaginable loss. Sheela Free reminds us of the courage that's needed if we want to call ourselves truly free. Gayle Brandeis, author of Self Storage, The Book of Dead Birds, and Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write  Powerful. Deep. Incisive. Courageous. Illuminating Shonali Bose, award winning film maker, author of Amu  

OF Fractured Clocks, Bones and Windshields

Free, Sheela Sitaram

A television screen is a place to warm a child's hands....the barrel of a gun tunnels through history...a puppet's frown is a life lived wrong...time shifts, and global warming becomes long weather. With this book, such acts of poetry map new alliances: the lyric word whispering in the office, singing in the family, charting policy for the land. Scot Siegel makes individual epiphany the key to social discovery. History, planning, and public understanding all feel the touch of his poetry-the right words placed well. His readers will experience a giddy readiness, will lose the ability to separate poetry from the jolt of discovery in daily life.  Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft. Scot Siegel's Some Weather is a guide, a rally for consciousness to sanctify the details of "how we legend our selves." Even "after the crack of last gavel wobbles into starlight," Siegel, steadfast, assures that integrity is timeless, changeability of voice may offer transcendence, and that each generation is held to the "arched lid of the world" by a tenderness, not simply human, but "thinner and sweeter than ether." Maureen Alsop, author of Apparition Wren Some Weather brims with poems ready to look "...down the long barrel of some/ unknown history," poems unafraid to confront "...the unbound pages of a book called our inheritance." In this first collection, Scot Siegel - urban planner and lyric ponderer - emerges as a voice grateful to discover "What a child knows/ without our saying:/ blossoms/ under ashes!" His readers will be grateful for each of his discoveries, for all of his delights and affirmations. Paulann Petersen, author of Bride of Narrow Escape and Kindle Scot Siegel's poems are unafraid of joyous things. Some poets steer away from nostalgia and sentimental love, but Siegel is so full of gratitude that he makes everyday pleasures - family memories, bright words from his children, the promise of marriage - shine. And because he is so humane and generous toward life, his poems about struggles and griefs feel both finer and truer. Here's a poet who is comfortable with reporting out the range of human experience. His poems are both the songs and the weather of a full, interior life.  David Biespiel, author of Wild Civility,  editor of Poetry Northwest

Some Weather

Scot Siegel

There are 2,600 hospitals in Asia, Africa and South America which could  be classified as "Mission Hospitals" - far off the beaten path,  providing basic medical service to the poorest people of the world. The  Hospital at the End of the World tells the story of a nurse from the  USA and his first experience as a teaching nurse in Nepal.  Joe Niemczura brings to life the day-to-day realities of life in a  rural teaching hospital, literally at the "end of the road." The harsh  realities of a lack of modern medical equipment when mixed with the  humanness of endurances demonstrates that above all, it is the  individual who matters; both patient and caregiver. All else pales in  comparison. The strength of this story is in relationships with  students, physicians, other nurses, patients, families and most  importantly with Nepal itself. There is a sense of community  connectedness which the author brings alive as the reader becomes one  with the story. The heartbreak and grief of death to the celebrations  of life will elicit those same emotions. The thread through it all is  the author's own journey as he discovers himself and renews his  spirituality. The reader is immediately pulled into the drama and  nakedness, and the beauty and mystery of this incredible part of the  world.        Ellen L. Bridge, RN, BS, MTS       Public Health Nursing Consultant

The Hospital at the End of the World

Travel

Niemczura, Joe

Asia

Fairy Tales are Real

Sikes, Carole

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