Able Muse BOOK AWARD: LAST CALL - Final 24 HOURS only to Entry Deadline, PLUS New Book Releases

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** LAST CALL: Final 24 HOURS Only before entry deadline in BOOK AWARD! **


X.J. Kennedy - final judge for the Book Award
ABLE MUSE BOOK AWARD (Poetry) - $1000 prize, plus book publication
Judge: X.J. Kennedy
Deadline:  March 31, 2013
Read the guidelines and ENTER now!



** NOW AVAILABLE from ABLE MUSE PRESS -- (January, 2013) *** (With Publisher Weekly Starred Review)

Strange Borderlands, Ben Berman's full-length debut collection of poetry from  Able Muse Press (January 31, 2013) and is now available for pre-order worldwide through AmazonBarnes & Nobles and most popular distribution and retail channels here (ISBN 978-1-927409-05-3). Or, just go to Ben's website, www.ben-berman.com, or the Able Muse Press website, www.ablemusepress.com. Besides the traditional print edition, digital reader editions for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Nobles NOOK, Kobo reader and Apple iTunes/iBooks are also forthcoming. 

". . . Reflective in nature, these poems use form--from slant-rhyming couplets to prose poems--to limn the tensions of readjustment, and mine memory for stories that keep the author rooted to a place that will forever and never be his. Throughout the collection, Berman's images sear the brain with their often-perplexing otherness, while his openness to new cultures and peoples help readers understand how beautiful the world's strangeness can be. . . . This is a must-have book for readers of poetry." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Strange Borderlands - Poems by Ben Berman 
Strange Borderlands - poems by Ben Berman
(with a Foreword by Fred Marchant): 
Praised in blurbs from Alan Shapiro, Dzvinia Orlowsky, and Gregory Djanikian--

Strange Borderlands, Ben Berman’s first full-length collection, counterpoises insights with uncertainties while chronicling the poet's immersion in a new culture. In compelling metrical, free verse and prose poems, Berman provides a vivid narrative of exotic adventures, especially his Peace Corps service in Zimbabwe—the people, the land, and his “struggling with the blurred lines of where things end” on his return home. This distinctive collection can go from humorous to heartbreaking, and is spellbinding from start to finish—a rare achievement.

"These are poems that weigh, consider, and restore some flesh-and-blood meaning to the experience of multiculturalism, a word so overused it is often flattened out to a platitude or piety. But not in this book." 
– Fred Marchant (from the Foreword)

Ben Berman’s lyric poems set in Zimbabwe dig deep into the casual and the casualty of daily life:  the hammer striking the sheep’s head, the sustenance that follows; disciplinary beatings that students, giggly and protesting, could count and count on to fade.  Unassuming but wise, compassionate yet wildly, unpredictably funny at times, Berman delivers to us escalating hardships that somehow elevated us toward the sacred; the pathetic harvest and sweetness that comes from the least likely of places. This least likely of places is where Berman thrives, calling on closely observed facts to chronicle the perimeters of tenderness and cruelty. I believe every word in this collection. This is an unforgettable debut by a powerful and humble voice.
                        —Dzvinia Orlowsky

. . . read more

 

 



** NOW AVAILABLE from ABLE MUSE PRESS -- ***

I'm pleased to announce that This Bed Our Bodies Shaped, a 2011 Able Muse Book Award finalist, and the second full-length collection from our very own April Lindner has been released byAble Muse Press and is immediately available worldwide through AmazonBarnes & Nobles and most popular distribution and retail channels here (ISBN 978-0-9878705-9-9). Or, just go to April's website, www.aprillindner.com, or the Able Muse Press website, www.ablemusepress.com. Besides the traditional print edition, an Amazon Kindle, and a Barnes & Nobles NOOK digital editions are also available now. A Kobo reader and Apple iTunes/iBooks digital edition should also be available within days. 

This Bed Our Bodies Shaped -  Poems by April Lindner 
This Bed Our Bodies Shaped - poems by April Lindner

Blurbs from Denise Duhamel, Molly Peacock, Thomas Lux and Mark Jarman--

This Bed Our Bodies Shaped from April Lindner is a finalist in the 2011 Able Muse Book Award. This collection is a celebration of the universal human experience—childhood, puberty, parenthood, aging—from a uniquely personal and sensual perspective. Lindner's craft, which finds masterful and original expression in metrical and free verse, enlivens each experience until we seem part of the scene. Eavesdropping on this engagingly narrated life gives us startling new insights into our own.
"April Lindner’s This Bed Our Bodies Shaped is a beautifully intimate and domestic book about the culture of family—what we bring to each other, boldly or tentatively, and what can never be known. Lindner pauses at the imprints we leave, what is buried under sand and snow, what returns to us again and again. Her poems are tender and fierce, startling in their excavations.." 
– Denise Duhamel
. . . read more


 

 


** NOW AVAILABLE from ABLE MUSE PRESS -- ***

I'm pleased to announce that Hollis Seamon's third book, Corporeality, a story collection from Able Muse Press (January 31, 2013), is now available for pre-order worldwide through AmazonBarnes & Nobles and most popular distribution and retail channels here (ISBN 978-1-927409-03-9). Or, just go to Hollis's website, www.hollisseamon.com, or the Able Muse Press website, www.ablemusepress.com. Besides the traditional print edition, digital reader editions for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Nobles NOOK, Kobo reader and Apple iTunes/iBooks are also forthcoming.

"True to its title, Seamon's winning collection of short stories returns again and again to the question of how we reconcile ourselves to our bodies. Whether they're discovering their capabilities, accepting their eventual breakdown, or reveling in the twilight of their sexuality, the bodies in Seamon's stories show just how undependable they actually are. . . . [T]o her credit, Seamon offers enough thematic and narrative variation to keep each story in this collection fresh."  -- Publishers Weekly

Corporeality - Stories by Hollis Seamon 
Corporeality - stories by Hollis Seamon

Praised in blurbs by Alan Davis, Dave King, Edward Schwarzschild, Eugenia Kim, Nalini Jones

In Corporeality, Hollis Seamon’s latest fiction collection, we meet the cat lady, the professor dealing with a plagiarist while coping with personal hardships, sibling rivalry of the unnaturally cursed kind, the dog that goes beyond everyday dog sense and scent to protect its owners. These are some of the eclectic characters and settings that make Corporeality irresistible and difficult to put down once you’ve started reading. Like her preceding collection Body Work and mystery novel Flesh, this book is a testament to Seamon’s ample gifts as a storyteller..

"Hollis Seamon’s Corporeality is a wonderful collection of stories, dazzling and unsentimental, full of everyday tragedies, fairy-tale motifs, and rambunctious, life-affirming characters who stand up to bullies and to fate, whether in a hospice, a flophouse, or a university classroom. It’s a feast of language that you won’t soon forget."
                                —Alan Davis, author of So Bravely Vegetative and Alone with the Owl

"These stories have grace, wit, adventure, danger, humor, compassion, magic, and rage. Hollis Seamon casts full and dazzling light on those who are often overlooked—teenaged lovebirds in hospice, flood victims before the flood, plagiarists, arsonists, old ladies, fat dogs. She brings them to life so tenderly and powerfully that they stay with you, long after the last page."
                                —Nalini Jones, author of What You Call Winter

. . . read more


 

 


** NEW from  Able Muse Press: New collection from Wendy Videlock - The Dark Gnu and Other Poems***

The Dark Gnu and Other Poems, the second full-length from Wendy Videlock, with her own full-color illustrations - for children of all ages - has been released by Able Muse Press and is immediately available worldwide through AmazonBarnes & Nobles and most popular distribution and retail channels here  ISBN 978-1-927409-09-1 (paperback) / ISBN 978-1-927409-13-8 (Deluxe, hardcover Edition). Or, just go to Wendy's website, www.wendyvidelock.com, or the Able Muse Press website, www.ablemusepress.com. Besides the traditional print edition, an Amazon Kindle and a Barnes & Nobles NOOK digital editions are also available now. An Apple iTunes/iBooks digital edition should also be available soon. 

The Dark Gnu and Other Poems - Poems by Wendy Videlock 
The Dark Gnu and Other Poems - poems by Wendy Videlock
with blurbs from Sherman Alexie and Jeremy Telman--

Reminiscent in some ways of Shel Silverstein’s classic collections, Videlock’s new book,The Dark Gnu and Other Poems, supplements sly whimsy with mystery and a hint of tragedy. These poems remind readers “of all inconceivable ages” that not all problems have solutions and that some narratives end in mystery rather than in resolution. 
     The Dark Gnu is enhanced by the author’s illustrations that deepen the allure of the poems. 
     The voice is unmistakably Videlock’s, but in this new collection we hear the echoes of Lewis Carroll and Edward Gorey. 
     These are the sorts of poems that children will demand to hear again and again and that parents will want to recite to each other and to their friends. 
– Jeremy Telman
. . . read more

 

 


The new issue of Able Muse: Winter 2012

The new issue of Able Muse, Print Editon (Number 14) - Winter 2012, has just been released, with order/subscription information (for print & Kindle, NOOK, Kobo & iBooks editions), with online excerpts and the subscribers' online edition at: www.AbleMuse.com

Able Muse, Number 14 - Winter 2012with Able Muse WRITE PRIZE for Poetry & Fiction —
Includes the 2012 winning story & poems from contest winners and finalists.

editorial:
Alexander Pepple • featured artist: Nicolas Evariste • spotlight poet: Ted Kooser • featured poet: Catherine Tufariello (interviewed by Uche Ogbuji) • fiction: Carole Rosenthal, Lewis Buzbee, Evelyn Somers, Gigi Mark, Adrianne Aron • essays: Gregory Dowling, Derek Furr, Michael Cohen, Peter Byrne • book reviews: Aaron Poochigian, Ryan Wilson, Jennifer Reeser • poetry: Richard Wakefield, Catharine Savage Brosman, Timothy Murphy, Lorna Knowles Blake, Wendy Videlock, Thomas Carper, Tony Barnstone, Leonard Kress, Elise Hempel, Stephen Harvey, Victor Hugo, Catullus, Len Krisak, Rose Kelleher, Kathryn Locey, Annabelle Moseley, Ted Mc Carthy, Peter Kline, John Beaton, Sarah White, Susan McLean, Susan Cohen, Jeanne Wagner, Bruce Berger, Richard Meyer.
----
With special thanks for an outstanding new issue to -- Jonathan Scott (Assistant Poetry Editor), Gregory Dowling (Nonfiction Editor),  Nina Schuyler (Fiction Editor), Janice D. Soderling, Tim Love & John Riley (Assistant Fiction Editors).

Alex Pepple, Editor
www.AbleMuse.com



All applicable links are at the Able Muse homepage
 - www.ablemuse.com
Or, at the Able Muse Press website - www.ablemusepress.com

Cheers,
...Alex

  

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