Jan Bottiglieri has a book of poems out—it is called Alloy and it is from Mayapple Press. Here’s how Mayapple describes Jan’s book: “A butterfly casts the shadow of a man; a homesick mermaid cleans teeth; a young girl pushes a heavy iron, singing. In Alloy, these and others (daughter, mother, astronaut; an occasional zombie or alien) find voice through poems exploring memory in all its shifting sense and purpose: from childhood recollection to adult reckoning, from folklore and fairytale to family relationships. Bottiglieri’s poems live in large moments and small, in the shimmering balance between grieving and consolation, between loss and what comes after. How do our memories—of our keenest pleasures, our deepest losses, our daily miracles, of the people we love and the stories we tell ourselves—shape our sense of self, or teach us how to move through the world? How do they build us, strengthen us, make us more than what we are?” Jan’s website is linked here.
You can read Patty Somlo’s fiction in a number of places, such as “The Spell” which appears in Change Seven; “Dust,” which appears in Dark Matter; “The Neighbor,” which appears in Clare Literary Magazine; “Bird Nature,” which appears in 99 Pine Street; and “Dead,” which appears in Literally Stories.
It won’t be long before I will be telling you about her new book Hairway to Heaven in which some of these stories appear. It’s due out soon from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2017. If you want to know more about Patty, check out her website.
Donna Hilbert has had some poems out in the world recently. “My Girl” was posted on Your Daily Poem site in June and “Credo” and “Dad’s Lunchbox” appear on Verse-Virtual. You can visit Donna’s website to read more about her work.
Laura Rodley has a story “The Longest Night” in Two Hawks Quarterly.
Susan Mahan has a short memoir piece “Bath Time at Nana’s” in Life in 10 Minutes.
I have a poem “I Google my name” on the Silver Birch Press blog spot. I love when this poem is published because I wrote it to honor Wade Ellen who died in VietNam. This poem appeared as part of the “All About My Name” series. Now Silver Birch has a new call for submissions; the subject this time is “My Perfect/Less-Than-Perfect Vacation.” Poetry and flash fiction are accepted.
One site I love to check out daily is David Gutowski’s Largehearted Boy, which he describes as: “a music blog featuring daily free and legal music downloads as well as news from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture.” Here’s a link to July 6, 2012, when the site featured Joe Meno’s Office Girl. If my coming-of-age novel is ever published, I sure hope it can be featured on this site because it is packed with references to music from the 1970s.
What do you think about the word “just?” Overused? Overused by woman especially? Making the rounds is this Business Insider article (“Google and Apple alum says using this one word can damage your credibility’) by Ellen Petry Leanse. Jezebel picked up on it. But not everyone is happy about this un-just business; you can read “Just get off my back” at Parentwin. As far as I am concerned, you can do just what you want.
Peace, love, and solace