Every society and every generation has its version of the apocalypse: swine flu, genetic mutation, global warming, nuclear fallout, the second coming, peak oil, mass extinction, giant irradiated ants, zombies... Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days is the first anthology of its kind to bring together the poetry and prose of some of America's finest (though not always most well-known) literary voices with an eye for the literary and the popular, for story and lyric, for the past and the future, for the psychological and the physical, for the real and the fantastic.

Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days

Literature & Fiction

Joyce Carol Oates

PAOLO BACIGALUPI

T. R. Hummer

Seth Fried

Kevin Prufer

Kelly Link

Nicky Beer

David J. Daniels

Margaret, Atwood

pinckney-benedict

Contemporary

Upper Rubber Boot Books

How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens explores the immigrant experience in a science fiction setting, with exciting fiction and poetry from some of the genre’s best writers. In these pages, you’ll find Sturgeon winner Sarah Pinsker’s robot grandmother, James Tiptree, Jr., Award winner Nisi Shawl’s prison planet and Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award winner Ken Liu’s space- and time-spanning story of different kinds of ghosts. You’ll find Bryan Thao Worra’s Cthulhic poetry, and Pinckney Benedict’s sad, whimsical tale of genocide. You’ll travel to Frankfurt, to the moon, to Mars, to the underworld, to unnamed alien planets, under the ocean, through clusters of asteroids. You’ll land on the fourth planet from the star Deneb, and an alternate universe version of Earth, and a world of Jesuses. This is not a textbook. You will not find here polemics on immigration policy or colonialism. The most compelling fiction articulates the unsaid, the unbearable, and the incomprehensible; these stories say things about the immigration experience that a lecture never could. The purpose of this book is, first and foremost, to entertain the casual and the sophisticated reader, but its genesis is a response to the question: Who do we become when we live with the unfamiliar?

How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Merriam, Joanne

Science Fiction

Containing poetry by Kallie Falandays, Aaron Jorgensen-Briggs, and Judy Jordan, this is the second volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, an annual series of books collecting three chapbooks by three poets in a single volume, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century. The series is in the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals, and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s. Kallie Falandays‘ debut collection of poetry, Tiny Openings Everywhere, distorts reality and the many ways we perceive it with a raucous, almost violent brand of play in poems more interested in questioning reality than nailing it down. At times breathtaking, others delightfully perplexing, these verses are as quixotic and witty as they are essential and damning. Score for a Burning Bridge, Aaron Jorgensen-Briggs‘ debut collection of poems, examines politics, loneliness, and doubt in poems that startle the intellect and imagination. In these intimate meditations, Jorgensen-Briggs explores the modern world and searches (as so many of us do) for his place in it with a singular voice and vision. Judy Jordan‘s Hunger chronicles Jordan’s time living in a greenhouse in Virginia that continues (and nearly concludes) the story she started in her first two books, Carolina Ghost Woods and 60¢ Coffee and a Quarter to Dance. Hunger cements Jordan’s status as an expert of the vertical narrative in lyrical style and is the first collection she’s published in eleven years.

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 2: Three Chapbooks by Three Poets in a Single Volume

Jordan, Judy

Falandays, Kallie

Jorgensen-Briggs, Aaron

Poetry

Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good is a feminist anthology of dark fiction, co-edited by H. L. Nelson and Joanne Merriam. Containing 35 stories of bad women, and "good" women who just haven't been caught yet, it features the writing of Joyce Carol Oates, Aimee Bender, Diane Cook, and more. Table of Contents: Janet Shell Anderson, “Every Purpose Under Heaven” Sidney Archer, “Woman Enough” Alisha M. Attella, “Rise” Gwen Beatty, “Angel Thinks She Will Die Very Soon” Aimee Bender, “Broke” Tina Connolly, “Hard Choices” Diane Cook, “Moving On” Kathy Fish, “The Hollow” Amina Gautier, “A Cup of My Time” Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter, “Sisters” Tina May Hall, “Vampire” Rebecca Jones-Howe, “Better Places” Andrea Kneeland, “Imagination” Molly Laich, “Kristen Doesn’t Like Surprise Parties” Heather Lindsley, “The Angel of Death Has a Business Plan” Holly Lopez, “The Head” Kelly Luce, “Rooey” Mesha Maren, “Eminent Domain” Jessica McHugh, “In the Silt” Mary Miller, “This Boy I Loved a Rock” Ellen Birkett Morris, “After the Fall” Joyce Carol Oates, “Spotted Hyenas: A Romance” Jennifer Pelland, “The Kennel Club” Cat Rambo, “Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut” Joani Reese, “Good Neighbors” Marytza K. Rubio, “Clap If You Believe” Nisi Shawl, “Looking for Lilith” Quill Shiv, “The Bitter Sea” Emily Slaney, “Bear Traps” Amber Sparks, “We Dressed Up Like Other People” Rachel Swirsky, “The Sea of Trees” Meg Tuite, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Damien Angelica Walters, “Girl, With Coin” xTx, “Today I Am A Wife” Bonnie ZoBell, “Tricking the Moon”

Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good

Short Stories & Anthologies

Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good is a feminist anthology of dark fiction, co-edited by H. L. Nelson and Joanne Merriam. Containing 35 stories of bad women, and "good" women who just haven't been caught yet, it features the writing of Joyce Carol Oates, Aimee Bender, Diane Cook, and more.  "Composed of 35 gleefully dark short stories by and about women, this anthology is a welcome antidote to the conventional world of women’s fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Alice Monroe and agree that the minutely observed world of everyday life is just as viable a form of literature as the more adventurous fiction dominated by men, but, still, there’s something so energizing about girls who kill, or chase ghosts, or bide their time in strange worlds of the future. If there’s a mother daughter story in here, it’s likely to involve a little serial kidnapping as well. If dad was a sexual predator, then his little girl is going to be one too. Super heroes, with costumes, terrifying weapons, and all too human foibles abound... I don’t know how anyone can read this book and not feel energized." - Vickie Fang, Best New Fiction, 5 May 2015  "Inside are a number of writers I downright worship. . . a stellar collection of high caliber writing." - David S. Atkinson, InDigest, 30 April 2015  Table of Contents:  Janet Shell Anderson, “Every Purpose Under Heaven” Sidney Archer, “Woman Enough” Alisha M. Attella, “Rise” Gwen Beatty, “Angel Thinks She Will Die Very Soon” Aimee Bender, “Broke” Tina Connolly, “Hard Choices” Diane Cook, “Moving On” Kathy Fish, “The Hollow” Amina Gautier, “A Cup of My Time” Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter, “Sisters” Tina May Hall, “Vampire” Rebecca Jones-Howe, “Better Places” Andrea Kneeland, “Imagination” Molly Laich, “Kristen Doesn’t Like Surprise Parties” Heather Lindsley, “The Angel of Death Has a Business Plan” Holly Lopez, “The Head” Kelly Luce, “Rooey” Mesha Maren, “Eminent Domain” Jessica McHugh, “In the Silt” Mary Miller, “This Boy I Loved a Rock” Ellen Birkett Morris, “After the Fall” Joyce Carol Oates, “Spotted Hyenas: A Romance” Jennifer Pelland, “The Kennel Club” Cat Rambo, “Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut” Joani Reese, “Good Neighbors” Marytza K. Rubio, “Clap If You Believe” Nisi Shawl, “Looking for Lilith” Quill Shiv, “The Bitter Sea” Emily Slaney, “Bear Traps” Amber Sparks, “We Dressed Up Like Other People” Rachel Swirsky, “The Sea of Trees” Meg Tuite, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Damien Angelica Walters, “Girl, With Coin” xTx, “Today I Am A Wife” Bonnie ZoBell, “Tricking the Moon”

Cook, Diane

Edited by Joanne Merriam, The Museum of All Things Awesome and That Go Boom is an anthology of science fiction featuring blunt force trauma, explosions, adventure, derring-do, tigers, Martians, zombies, fanged monsters, dinosaurs (alien and domestic), ray guns, rocket ships, and anthropomorphized marshmallows.

The Museum of All Things Awesome and that Go Boom

Billy Sooner made it big. Mickey and Al were left behind. In a bid to recapture the past, they hope to reunite on stage at Madison Square Gardens, before Mickey’s shady past and bingo dauber heroin send them on a trip they can’t come back from. Flight 505 is bloody, bleak, meditative, funny, and, on one level or another, all about music, musicians, and the glory and damage of their world. "Flight 505 pays dark homage to the Southern California post-punk music scene. Through the story of three band-mates drawn to Los Angeles during its rock club heyday, Les Bohem skillfully deconstructs the adolescent male’s archetypal dream of rock and roll stardom. Bohem’s prose carries the cautionary weight of his having been there. The problem with most rock and roll fiction is that it invariably falls prey to its own self-importance. Flight 505 begs to differ." —Rodney Crowell "I’m not one for reading rock and roll writing. I find it either terribly clichéd or over-fantasized. Having definitely been there and definitely done that, I was immediately familiar with and felt real affection for Les’ dysfunctional family of characters. Every dirty club floor, cheap beer and chronic loser truly lives and breathes in this story, and Les’ amazing recollection of and attention to detail are so impeccable if you weren’t in L.A. back in the ’80s, you’ll certainly feel as if you are… and if you weren’t in a band, well, this is what it was like. A great read." —Johnette Napolitano

Flight 505: a novella

Bohem, Leslie

Literary

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A new genre for the 21st Century, solarpunk is a revolution against despair. Focusing on solutions to environmental disasters, solarpunk envisions a future of green, sustainable energy used by societies that value inclusiveness, cooperation, and personal freedom. Edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Sunvault focuses on the stories of those inhabiting the crucial moments when great change can be made by people with the right tools; stories of people living during tipping points, and the spaces before and after them; and stories of those who fight to effect change and seek solutions to ecological disruption. Contributors include Elgin Award nominee Kristine Ong Muslim, New York Times bestselling author Daniel José Older, James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner Nisi Shawl, World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar, and Lambda Literary Awards finalist A.C. Wise, as well as Jess Barber, Santiago Belluco, Lisa M. Bradley, Chloe N. Clark, Brandon Crilly, Yilun Fan and translator S. Qiouyi Lu, Jaymee Goh, José M. Jimenez, Maura Lydon, Camille Meyers, Lev Mirov, joel nathanael, Clara Ng, Sara Norja, Brandon O’Brien, Jack Pevyhouse, Bethany Powell, C. Samuel Rees, Iona Sharma, Karyn L. Stecyk, Bogi Takács, Aleksei Valentín, T.X. Watson, Nick Wood, and Tyler Young.

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Wise, A.C.

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3 collects three chapbooks in a single volume: brothers Anders and Kai Carlson-Wee’s Northern Corn invites us on a trip across an America of dust, trains, poverty, dignity, and dreams; Begotten, co-written by Cave Canem fellows F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis, bravely and tenderly explores fatherhood in the era of Black Lives Matter; and Enid Shomer’s Driving through the Animal lovingly moves between unflinching witness of destruction and hope for the future. It’s the third volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century. The series is in the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals, and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s.

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3: Three Chapbooks in a Single Volume

Shomer, Enid

Davis, Geffrey

Carlson-Wee, Anders

Carlson-Wee, Kai

Brown, F. Douglas

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 4 collects three chapbooks in a single volume: Regina DiPerna's A Map of Veins, Ryan Teitman's Jesuits, and Paisley Rekdal's Philomela. Regina DiPerna's first collection of poems, A Map of Veins, tells the story of the death of a lover and her healing process. In these elegies, DiPerna faces the guilt of finding new love, death taunts her years after the fact with postcards and gifts, and memory haunts her dreams. Jesuits, Ryan Teitman's second collection, explores childhood, fatherhood, and the holy spirit in rich lyrical verse and prose. In often surreal poetry and prose, Teitman's mother appears as a curtain in the window, he wears a shadow for a suit, and plays on the train tracks with a child version of his father. Paisley Rekdal's fourth collection of poetry, Philomela, unabashedly parallels the myth of Philomela with her own experience with violent sexual assault in a combination of verse and lyric essay. In these brave, somewhat experimental verses, Rekdal challenges the definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape as she parses out her own experiences with them. This is the fourth volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century. The series is in the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals, and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s. Praise for this book: "Holy moly are these poems dreamy, healing." - Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer and Maybe the Saddest Thing "I'll go back to these poems again and again." - Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 4

McFadyen-Ketchum, Andrew

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

Books by Upper Rubber Boot Books