Paula Anderson doesn't know where she's going or why. What she does know is that she's going to have one helluva time getting there. Blood Tender was culled from a series of online journal entries and, as far as we know, is the first literary blog to be published. (Her current journal is available here.) Blood Tender documents her nineteenth year of life. She reluctantly returns to her mother's house after failing out of college and an unsuccessful attempt at living on her own. But Paula doesn't need conventions - she'll make her own way through life. Told with lyrical beauty and punk rock passion, Blood Tender is a beat memoir for the digital age.

Blood Tender

Anderson, Paula

Word Riot Press

Sins of the Flesh is a work 12 years in the making by critically-acclaimed writer David-Matthew Barnes. The brutal, beautiful honesty of his words washes over the reader, seducing us. David-Matthew's poetry is raw, real, and now.   Sins is divided into four parts: "Star F*ckers," "Forgive Me, I'm Young," "Latin Men and Other Sins," and "Rising from Troy." Every section is distinctive in theme, but intertwined in the contribution each makes to the narrative progression of the collection.   The insight into the human condition that David-Matthew consistently brings to his prose also winds its way through his poetry. Quite simply, David-Matthew Barnes and Sins of the Flesh refuse to be ignored.

Sins of the Flesh

Barnes, David-Matthew

Stephen Oliver makes a turn in language in his latest release, Deadly Pollen, a collection of new and recently published poems full of both original and mystical references. Conversation, myth, image, symbol - all are mined for their poetic point, all wrung out to dry. Perhaps the most approachable book of Oliver's to date, Deadly Pollen is full of poems that are complete in and of themselves, yet woven together with spirituality, a sense of the magic of science.  The author says his book "represents an ongoing exploration of damage to our larger cultural environment" and uses his work to "pay homage to historical memory." If, as Auden suggests, "poems make nothing happen," then Oliver's poetry is vital, classic, the literary equivalent of Dorothea Lange's photography. Oliver calls poetry "an exercise of loss and preservation." In Deadly Pollen, he submits his evidence to the world.

Deadly Pollen

Oliver, Stephen

Barringer's third fiction collection includes 15 stories, a seven-page intro by Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal, and cover art and 8 illustrations by Eduardo Recife. Stories are thematically linked, as suggested by the title. We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things . . . out of Wood, out of Pigs, out of Stairs, out of Somersaults, out of Brass, out of Magic, etc. The stories explore, with gentle humor and intelligence, the desires to create, build, salvage, and improve. Several stories are loosely connected by the same character, a young boy growing up who, in one story, imagines he can fly above the staircase and does, with fearsome results. In another story, he creates worlds in his basement from the junk accumulated by his unhappy parents. As a fourth-grader, he helps a geeky kid overcome his isolation and fear on the soccer field. And, finally, as a young man, he interviews for a job that promises what it cant deliver, and he confronts his own future, his own dreams, in a single moment. Barringer weaves a bit of autobiographical material into several of these pieces, but his focus remains art, language, and the beautifugly human comedy.

We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things

David Barringer

What is the LiveWire Literary Salon? Ultimately, it is a forum for local writers to be "verbally published" before an eager audience. Unlike its cousin the open-mike, the Literary Salon attempts to engage and entertain an audience with a theme and a luxurious venue. The Literary Salon takes its cue from French traditions in which writers, artists and philosophers once gathered in the salons (parlors) and rues (streets) to discuss and express ideas and trade points of view.  The LiveWire Literary Salon occurred spontaneously as a furious spark, a constellation of timing and a voracious outpouring of interest in August of 2002. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, Zebulon Nights: An Anthology of LiveWire Readers contains a sampling of the pieces that were read at LiveWire. Most of these pieces have not been altered or revised much from the way they were read live to an audience. The focus here is not on perfection but on power. Covering non-fiction, fiction and poetry, this Anthology contains poignant, breathtaking snatches of life and imagination.

Zebulon Nights: An Anthology of LiveWire Readers

Rosenfeld, Jordan

When your computer screen turns into a vortex and pulls your brain through a cream rainbow swirl, you'll see the world that floats under the world of normal things. The short stories in Ryan Robert Mullen's Naughty Sweet Boy capture the extraordinary in the ordinary. In ?Business End? and ?Please Desist in Using My Skull As a Cup to Defecate In,? Mullen takes the soul-sucking monotony of the workplace and reveals the primal spirit in every one of us anaesthetized paper-pushers. Ambitious childhood imagination comes alive in ?Electric Gordon? and ?A Little Shinier.' The unaffected tenderness of ?Actual Size? and ?Passing Timebomb? shows Mullen's capacity to peel away layers of wounds and stare directly into the fragility of human emotion.Naughty Sweet Boy is a work of vivid craftsmanship and startlingly honesty.

Naughty Sweet Boy

Ryan Robert Mullen

Eighty-Sixed

Brian Ames

Kevin Sampsell likes secrets. In the short story collection Beautiful Blemish, Sampsell dives deep into the human psyche to reveal the layers of secret desire, loneliness and hope buried in our hearts. The stories in Beautiful Blemish display an American voice that mixes humor, experimentation, and unflinching pathos to full effect.

Beautiful Blemish

Kevin Sampsell

Johnny Red is an epic and tragicomic love story, a modern picaresque novel about the adventures of Johnny and Ruth as they are imprisoned, survive their imprisonment, escape to the open road, make their way across America, and try to make something of their lives. Oh, and Johnny is a Rock Red rooster; Ruth, a Leghorn hen.

Johnny Red

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Mashing up pop culture with cultural neuroses in a single-panel one-two punch, Scott Bateman's self-involved characters address their aphoristic confessions directly to the reader. Time and again, Bateman delivers understated wit with maximum impact. Painfully personal and furiously funny, Bateman's Sketchbook reveals all the shameful secrets one nation can handle.

Scott Bateman's Sketchbook of Secrets & Shame: Includes 14 Essays from Shamefully Famous Folks

Humor & Entertainment

Bateman, Scott

Humor

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