Sid Miller explores seven routes from the coast to the mountains, from inner-city Portland to the Idaho border. Dot-to-Dot, Oregon, a collection of fifty poems, travels through the cities, towns, and monuments of Oregon. Using these locales as a background, three voices narrate the author’s loving but critical relationship with the state he calls home.
In The Survival League, Gordon Nuhanović delves past Croatia’s post-war politics and focuses on its people struggling to heal old wounds and create new lives. With edgy, evocative prose, Nuhanović weaves darkly optimistic tales where nothing ever works out quite right: English lawns grow daisies instead of grass, and a romantic weekend in the mountains turns into a near-death experience. While war casts a shadow over all the characters, Nuhanović’s use of everyday events and occurrences makes The Survival League ring true in any culture.
Love, death, fantasy, and foreign lands, told with brevity and style by the best writers in the short-short fiction genre. You Have Time for This satiates your craving for fine literature without making a dent in your schedule. This collection takes the modern reader on fifty-three literary rides, each one only five hundred words or fewer. Mark Budman and Tom Hazuka, two of the top names in the genre, have compiled an anthology of mini-worlds that are as diverse as the authors who created them. Contributing writers include Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candy-freak; Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt; Robert Boswell, author of five novels including Century’s Son; Alex Irvine, author of A Scattering of Jades; L. E. Leone who writes a weekly humorous column about food and life for the San Francisco Bay Guardian; Justine Musk, author of dark-fantasy novels including Blood Angel; Susan O’Neill, writer of nonfiction and fiction with a book of short stories Don’t Mean Nothing; Short Stories of Vietnam; Katharine Weber author of several novels, the most recent of which is Triangle.
Zagreb, Exit South is a deep, melancholy book about the resignation of the 40 year old, about people who have given up on life, who can only exist on the street or in bars because they fear and dread going home to their high-rise caverns in New Zagreb where the rules of an allegedly organized world reign. But Popovic’s characters have no patience with the lies of this world. They have no patience because they have neither homes nor a homeland: they have lost all their illusions.
What does poetry mean to today’s teenagers? We Belong In History: Writing with William Stafford brings together middle and high school students from around Oregon to answer this question. This unique anthology mixes beloved Poet Laureate William Stafford’s poems with verses by young writers inspired by his work, his passions, and his legacy. Both an anthology for readers and a toolkit for teachers, this book also includes lesson plans to help instructors nurture a passion for poetry, for William Stafford, and for writing in the next generation.
The women’s suffrage movement is in full swing in 1912 Portland, Oregon—the last holdout state on the West Coast. Miriam desperately wants to work at her father’s printing shop, but when he refuses she decides to dedicate herself to the suffrage movement, demanding rights for women and a different life for herself. Amidst the uncertainty of her future, Miriam’s attention is diverted by the mysterious Serakh, whose sudden, unexplained appearances and insistent questions lead Miriam to her great-grandmother’s Jewish prayer shawl—and to her destiny. With this shawl, Miriam is taken back in time to inspire the Daughters of Zelophehad, the first women in Biblical history to own land. Miriam brings the strength and courage of these women with her forward in time, emboldening her own struggles and illuminating what it means to be an independent woman.
Up Nights, Daniel Kine’s second book, is a classic road novel for a new generation. In raw, unrelenting prose, Kine tells the story of the complexities of human relationships when four friends embark on an existential journey through the underbelly of society. As they drift from city to city, they each struggle to connect with the disenchanted people they encounter along the way. Up Nights speaks to the reality of the human condition: the unequivocal impermanence of life.
Seventeen-year-old Lovisa King comes of age on the Oregon Trail as her family travels from Missouri to the Oregon Territory. Based on the history of a company of real pioneers, A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845 tells the story of the King family, whose careful plans are challenged by the harsh, unforeseen realities of overland travel. The Kings make the unfortunate decision to follow guide Stephen Meek, who leads them into blistering weather, drought, and treacherous river crossings along the Terrible Trail. A Heart for Any Fate will be released in conjunction with Oregon’s 150th birthday. Originally published by the Oregon Historical Society, this new edition will include the history of the real King family and a forward written by Jennifer Armstrong.
Hope Friis leads a normal life for any teenager living in Berkeley, California in the 1960s: she hangs out with friends, spends time with her family, and dreams of winning a singing competition and college scholarship despite her pronounced stutter. It seems like she has everything under control, until she takes part in the Free Speech movement that engulfs the city—a choice that could crush her chance of competing.
Life’s private reflections, big and small, shape and define the characters in Eliot Treichel’s debut short story collection. Rural Wisconsin—the lonely, aching expanse of quiet isolation—doubles as a metaphor for the characters who yearn for a closeness in personal relationships that is just out of grasp. A rivalry between lumberjacks reaches a sticky end. A man’s substandard work on his house mirrors his halfhearted attempt to fix his marriage. A little girl’s valorous rescue of mice is lost on her unsentimental father. High school soccer teams, bear cubs, dog sledding—all are masterfully woven together in a landscape that becomes a character in itself. Treichel expertly captures the voice of the individual, allowing any individual, anywhere, who has felt the inescapable pangs of loneliness, to connect to his characters’ aching hearts and quiet plights.
Lincoln’s Daughter completes Tony Wolk’s Lincoln “Out of Time” trilogy about inexplicable, time-traveling Abraham Lincoln, and the widow who gives birth to his daughter. A Lincoln scholar himself, Wolk blends historical facts and people with fictional characters, skillfully bringing time, place, and president to life—once again proving his dedication to both history and literature. It’s 1964, and Abraham Lincoln’s daughter, Sarah, daydreams about meeting her father.
In 1991, war broke out in Croatia. Matko Marušić’s short stories offer a human perspective on the war that is not told in history books. Each story illuminates the love and dedication the Croatian people have for their country, and their struggle to find purpose and meaning in the midst of tragedy. Matko Marušić’s other writings include a novel, a collection of short stories for children, and two additional collections of short stories for adults. Do Angels Cry? Tales of the War was originally published in Croatia and Great Britain in 1996. A preface, written by Dr. Stanimir Vuk-Pavlovic, has been added for the American edition.
Brace yourself for a collision between 1865 and 1955. Joan Matcham has just discovered that she’s pregnant by a man who died ninety years earlier: Abraham Lincoln. His brief sojourn to the Illinois of 1955 ended, he is returned to his own time and place, leaving Joan to deal with the consequences of their night together. Even as friendship, impending motherhood, and a new love revive Joan, she is haunted by recurring visions of the last week of Lincoln’s life. This alternative history tale brings Lincoln’s emotions and thoughts to the modern reader, from 1865, through 1955, all the way to us in the present. With references to Shakespeare, Arabian Nights and others, Tony Wolk’s Good Friday is truly an intimate and compelling story that defies classification and appeals to readers across genres.
The Weight of the Sun, a short story collection by Geronimo Tagatac, sparkles with an appeal that comes from a deep understanding of human nature. Here are the farm laborers, dancers, kitchen workers, and soldiers who make up a world that is wrought with pain, nostalgia, and stunning grace. From the widowed Filipino father raising a son in a migrant work camp to the young veteran haunted by the ghost of war, The Weight of the Sun shows us not only what it is to be human, but how the human spirit can grow when faced with overwhelming adversity. Tagatac brings these characters home in our hearts with a poise and dignity that marks a new and powerful voice in short fiction.
Easter weekend, 1955, and Abraham Lincoln finds himself in Evanston, Illinois, mysteriously transported from 1865 at the height of the Civil War. Ninety years after his assassination, this wry, gaunt man, briefly relieved of the burdens of life in his own time, encounters a future society, idealized images of himself, reminiscences of friends and acquaintances long dead, and rare understanding from a woman very different from Mary Todd, his troubled wife. He returns to our nation’s highest office and the bloody conflicts of the War Between the States, a man restored by his experience of the future and determined—as ever—to preserve the Union. Writer and scholar Tony Wolk has been fascinated by Lincoln, “the essence of a good man,” for four decades. In this novel, Wolk skillfully blends history, fantasy, and the writer’s craft to bring Abraham Lincoln to life—Lincoln the man of flesh and blood as well as Lincoln the President. Readers emerge from a mesmerizing read with the sense of having been in Lincoln’s head and in his skin. Henceforth, references to Abraham Lincoln have a personal resonance: “The Father of Us All” is no longer a stranger.
Utopia—we all want our own, but who pays for it and at what price? Croatian poet Dubravka Oraić Tolić’s delivers a masterful, thought-provoking answer with exquisite language and imagery in the epic poem American Scream. As Columbus’s dream of reaching India was interrupted by the discovery of a new land, we too discover unexpected lands in pursuit of our dreams. Complementing American Scream is Palindrome Apocalypse—a palindrome that is artful in both technique and story—presented side-by-side with the Croatian original to preserve its visual effect. Together, Oraić Tolić’ poems:
