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Art keeps good alive in the worst of times. In the face of ugliness, pain, and death, it’s art that has the power to open us all to a healing imagining of new possibility; it’s art that whispers to the collective that even in the ashes of loss, life always grows again. That’s why right now, in this tumultuous time of war and pandemic, we need poets more than we need politicians. In response to the multitude of global crises we’re currently experiencing, editor Stefanie Raffelock put out a much-needed call to her writing community for art to uplift and inform the world, and the authors of She Writes Press answered. Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis—a sometimes comforting, sometimes devastating, but universally relatable collection of prose, poetry, and art about living through difficult times like these—is the result. Addressing topics including grief and loss, COVID-19 and war in Ukraine, the gravity of need and being needed, the broad range of human response to crisis in all its forms, and more, these pieces explore how we can find beauty, hope, and deeper interpretation of world events through art—even when the world seems like it’s been turned inside out and upside-down. Any and all royalties from Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis will be donated to World Central Kitchen. Publication Date: June 7, 2022 Editor: Stephanie Raffelock Foreword By: Brooke Warner -
New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane. Author: Leslie Johansen Nack Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
A week after Easter 1973, Lily Vida Wallace is dropped like an immigrant into Greenville, South Carolina, following the lynching of Black church sexton Sam Jefferson. Returning home to Manhattan, Lily toddles further outside her familiar world while continuing theological studies in anticipation of the overturn of a centuries-old, males-only priesthood and struggling anew with her erratic engagement. When her fiancé flees following discovery of professional impropriety and Atlanta attorney Rodney Davis lands in her path, love growing between the two accelerates Lily's understanding as it challenges her naïveté about race. Some two decades later, high-profile interracial nuptials in Oakland, California, become the occasion for a reunion between the now Reverend Vida and Lucius Clay, the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina. Within weeks of their re-meeting, Lucius is dispatched to cover Black church burnings, beginning with Lily’s hometown in Texas. Writer Hilton Als recently commented: “We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories.”American Blues offers no neat resolution. Instead, its timely story invites, as it tangles with, readers’ own assumptions and complex experience of race and gender in America. Author: Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck Pub Date: April 12, 2022 -
Mary Em Phillips has decided to kill herself after losing her beloved Mamie, who raised her; her husband, Jack, who has left her for another woman; and her only son, Petey, who has died as a result of a freak bacterial infection. But when Mosely Albright, a black man from Chicago’s South Side, comes to her back door one morning needing a drink of water and seeking directions back to the train, her plans are derailed . . . to the chagrin of Mishigami (so named by the Ojibwe, also known as Lake Michigan), who has been trying to lure Mary Em into his icy depths in the hopes that she will save him. Mary Em wants nothing more than to end her anguish. Mosely is searching for the love he’s been missing most of his life. And Mishigami who fears he is dying from rampant pollution and overfishing, seeks a champion. A story of friendship, survival, connection and the unquestioning power of nature told through three distinct voices, Speed of Dark affirms a love of humanity that transcends all else, including race and background. Author: Patricia Ricketts Pub Date: May 3, 2022 -
Gracie is a serious, sensitive, aspiring writer; Jannie, her autistic younger sister, is passionate about birds. As children, they were taken by their mother on a senseless trip through Europe that ended in their mother’s suicide. Now, in Berkeley, their father works tirelessly to find ways to engage Jannie, while Gracie unwilling to reveal the truth about her mother’s suicide or her sister’s autism to anyone outside her family weaves a web of lies around herself that isolate her even as Jannie, in part through her relationships with and understanding of birds, begins to speak, interact, and emerge. Narrated by Gracie and alternating back and forth between 2002, when the sisters are still children/adolescents, and 2017, when they are in their early adulthood, The Language of Birds is a story of coming to understand what seems unfamiliar and indecipherable, and of finding authentic ways to be with the people you love. Author: Anita Barrows Pub Date: May 17, 2022 -
Tom Smiley signed up as a private in the Confederate army when he was eighteen and quickly came to regret it. Spending the last year of the war in a Union prison scarred him so deeply that even death hasn't brought freedom from its memory. A ghost in his deserted childhood home, he can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, or shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early 21st century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced to not only face his own terrible secret but also come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in his house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, who is both fascinated and frightened by his ghostly presence—and whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both. Author: Abigail Cutter Pub Date: July 12, 2022 -
Ann Josephson is a twenty-five-year-old sociopath whose compulsive kleptomania manifests itself in the most unlikely of places: the community center where she works out every day. The walls of the community center insulate her from the terrors of the outside world, which include her freelance work as a graphic artist; her socialite parents, who pay the better part of her living expenses; her therapist, who devotedly punches the clock; and the dark void of romantic relationships. As Ann battles the inner demons that plague her millennial psyche, she must also battle the fiends that plague her at the gym: the loudly grunting beefcake who can’t be bothered to drop his weights at a reasonable volume, the naked old lady in the locker room using a towel as butt floss, the housewife in yoga pants that obviate the need for yoga wheeling her double stroller up and down the indoor track. Set in suburban Kansas City in 2012, Community Klepto—a droll combination of Bridget Jones’ Diary and Choke—makes incarnate the characters and shenanigans that go on in every gym in the world. Author: Kelly I. Hitchcock Pub Date: June 21, 2022 -
A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family.Klara’s first visit to Seville in 1925 opens her eyes and her spirit to an era in which Spain’s major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shared deep cultural connections. At the same time, she is made aware of the harsh injustices that persist in Spanish society. By 1930, she has landed a position with the medical school in Madrid. Though she feels compelled to hide her Jewish identity in her predominantly Christian new home, she finds that she feels less “different” in Spain than she did in Germany, especially as she learns new ways of expressing her opinions and desires. And when the Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936, Klara (now “Clara”) enlists in the Fifth Regiment, a step that transports her across the geography of the embattled peninsula and ultimately endangers a promising relationship and even Clara’s life itself. A blending of thoroughly researched history and engrossing fiction, Home So Far Away is an epic tale that will sweep readers away. Author: Judith Berlowitz Pub Date: June 21, 2022 -
2023 Nonfiction Book Awards Gold Winner 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in Autobiography/Biography 2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist in Autobiography & Memoir—Adult Nonfiction 2022 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Honorable Mention in Non-Fiction—Autobiography 2022 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Autobiography II—Coming of Age/Family
“Sublime writing brightens an unforgettable, harrowing personal account.”—Kirkus Reviews “...a testament to the human spirit that will not be denied fulfilling its potential. Armento gives witness to the hard fact that we sometimes have to nurture ourselves and shows just how that can be done.”—Sue William Silverman, author of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences THE STORY OF ONE GIRL’S SEARCH FOR HOPE IN AN ABUSIVE, DYSFUNCTIONAL HOME AND OF THE TEACHERS WHO EMPOWERED HER As the “Seeing Eye Girl” for her blind, artistic, and mentally ill mother, Beverly Armento was intimately connected with and responsible for her, even though her mother physically and emotionally abused her. She was Strong Beverly at school—excellent in academics and mentored by caring teachers—but at home she was Weak Beverly, cowed by her mother’s rage and delusions.Beverly's mother regained her sight with two corneal transplants in 1950 and went on to enjoy a moment of fame as an artist, but these positive turns did nothing to stop her disintegration into her delusional world of communists, radiation, and lurking Italians. To survive, Beverly had to be resilient and hopeful that better days could be ahead. But first, she had to confront essential ethical issues about her caregiving role in her family.
In this emotional memoir, Beverly shares the coping strategies she invented to get herself through the trials of her young life, and the ways in which school and church served as refuges over the course of her journey. Breaking the psychological chains that bound her to her mother would prove to be the most difficult challenge of her life—and, ultimately, the most liberating one. Author: Beverly J. Armento Pub Date: July 5, 2022 -
When her charismatic mentor, Ernesto, publicly chooses her as his professional partner, all indications are that Vera’s bodywork career is about to ignite. There is just one glitch—no, make that two. Vera—single mother of savvy, smart teenage India and her scruffy mutt, Francisco—is fucking Ernesto. As for her new promotion . . . Ernesto took it from his wife, Jean, in order to give it to her. As Vera becomes increasingly embroiled in Ernesto and Jean’s dark shenanigans, she quickly realizes that what seemed like an exciting opportunity is more like a deal with the Devil. Confronted with the consequences of her own yearning for male validation, it takes India, a glamorous and aristocratic client named Grace, and the mysterious goddess White Tara, Tibetan Goddess of compassion, to teach Vera the virtues of a sustainable path to self-authority. A fast-paced, humorous tale, The T Room is sure to prove irresistible to every adventurous woman familiar with that Saturday-morning-bookstore trajectory that starts with Self-Help, diverts into Romance, and lands heartfirst in Spirituality. Author: Victoria Lilienthal Pub Date: July 19, 2022 -
This is the story of Rebecca Stirling’s childhood: a young girl raised by the sea, by men, and by literature. Circumnavigating the world on a thirty-foot sailboat, the Stirlings spend weeks at a time on the open ocean, surviving storms and visiting uncharted islands and villages. Ushered through her young life by a father who loves adventure, women, and extremes, Rebecca befriends “working girls” in the ports they visit (as they are often the only other females present in the bars that they end up in) and, on the boat, falls in love with her crewmate and learns to live like the men around her. But her driven nature and the role models in the books she reads make her determined to be a lady, continue her education, begin a career, live in a real home, and begin a family of her own. Once she finally gets away from the boat and her dad and sets to work upon making her own dream a reality, however, Rebecca begins to realize life is not what she thought it would be—and when her father dies in a tragic accident, she must return to her old life to sift through the mess and magic he has left behind. Author: Rebecca Stirling Pub Date: July 26, 2022 -
If you’re stressed and unhappy because of problems with a boss or colleague, you pay a price. Not only can your mental and physical health suffer, your nearest and dearest get sick of hearing about it. Going to bed angry and waking up only to dread a new workday is a terrible way to live. Remote work may have lessened the impact of annoying colleagues for a while, but they can still find ways to irritate. If you’re co-located, the “mute” and “stop video” buttons don’t exist to diminish your exasperation. Not all jerks are the same; the person you find to be a nightmare may be perfectly acceptable to others. And, astonishingly, someone else may even think you’re the jerk! Author Louise Carnachan has the credentials and experience to make her an expert in this area, but more importantly, she’s been in the trenches herself. With an emphasis on the positive actions you can take while being attentive to your specific situation, Work Jerks provides practical advice on how to deal with a variety of problematic coworkers—whether in-person or remotely—so work can stop being something you dread and start being something you enjoy. Author: Louise Carnachan Pub Date: June 14, 2022 -
Charles Booker is thrilled to start married life in Two Harbors, Minnesota, with his ambitious ornithologist bride, Caroline—but he sabotages his own happiness when, blinded by his desire for a family, he tricks Caroline into a pregnancy she doesn’t want. Caroline, bold and unapologetic, follows her own nature and holds Charles to his promise to parent their daughter without her help—an arrangement that allows her to travel the world and follow her birds, wherever they may take her. This uneasy truce results in near tragedy for their daughter, Grace, who comes of age in a household full of toxic resentment on the one side and suffocating love on the other, and increasingly struggles with her mental health as she grows older. Told by all three of the characters involved and set against the backdrop of Lake Superior, Finding Grace is a piercing chronicle of the struggles and eventual insight gained by each over the years, starting with Charles and Caroline’s courtship and continuing into Grace’s early adulthood—and a poignant coming-of-age journey for both Grace and her parents. Author: Maren Cooper Pub Date: July 19, 2022 -
After Frieda Hoffman’s second miscarriage, she felt alone, ignorant, and overwhelmed with emotions. Finding little literature or support available, her entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and she decided to create the resource she wished she’d had: real stories about pregnancy loss from real women without the off-putting lens of religion or academia so typical of the self-help genre. Through Hoffman’s own journey and those of nineteen women she interviewed, Carry Me explores universal themes of grief, bearing witness, transforming adversity into opportunity, and the paradox of feeling alone while sharing a common experience. The diverse women and narratives unpack the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of loss; notions of womanhood and motherhood; and the intersections of public health, body politics, and patient care. Readers are called to action to share their own stories in order to heal themselves and support others. Nearly everyone knows someone affected by pregnancy loss, yet most of us are not comfortable, even in the relative safety of the company of friends and sisters, discussing this serious health issue. It’s time to normalize the dialogue and help one another through our losses by sharing our resources, our wisdom, and our stories by carrying one another. Author: Frieda Hoffman Pub Date: June 7, 2022 -
When Laura Whitfield was fourteen, her extraordinary brother, Lawrence, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. That night she had an epiphany: Life is short. Dream big, even if it means taking risks. So after graduating from high school, she set out on her own, prepared to do just that. Laura spent her first summer after high school on North Carolina's Outer Banks, a magical few months filled with friendships, boys, and beer. There she met a handsome DJ who everyone called "Steve the Dream," and risked her heart. When September came, Steve moved to New York City to become a model, prompting Laura to start thinking about modeling, too. After just one semester of college, still seeking to fill the void left by her brother's death, she dropped out and moved to New York to become a cover girl. But while juggling the demands of life in the big city waiting tables, failed relationships, and the cutthroat world of modeling; she lost her way. A stirring memoir about a young woman's quest to find hope and stability after devastating loss, Untethered is Laura's story of overcoming shame, embracing faith, and learning that taking risks and failing can lead to a bigger life than you've ever dared to imagine. Author: Laura Whitfield Pub Date: April 5, 2022 -
A young, determined woman figures out life and love while staying true to herself in this whip-smart and genuinely witty debut. Twenty-eight-year-old Hannah Spencer wants nothing more than to change everything about her life. After ten years of living in cities, Nathan Wild has just moved back home to Vermont and doesn’t want to change anything about his. Recently laid off from her depressing job in Boston and ready for a challenge, Hannah heads to Vermont for the summer to take care of her sister’s kids and do some serious soul searching. There, against the stunning landscape of the Green Mountains, she embarks on an ambitious project: building a treehouse for her niece and nephew. As she hammers away, she formulates a plan to jump-start her life with a new job out West. But will Nathan-next-door complicate her desire to change course? A witty, romantic, and inspiring story of a young woman taking control and making tough choices about love and work to build the life she wants, The Treehouse on Dog River Road will have you rooting for Hannah every step of the way. Author: Catherine Drake Pub Date: May 10th, 2022 -
Clare Rainbow-Dashell, the only child of delightfully eccentric, wealthy hippies, has just taken a hiatus from her career as an acclaimed wildlife photographer and returned to California to pursue her academic dreams when a disastrous affair with a professor catapults her to another continent: Africa. There, she immerses herself in well-paid commercial work for a luxury safari lodge as she seeks to regain her emotional and financial self-reliance. All this, however, is complicated by her relationship with her charismatic, imperious employer and her undeniable attraction to a leading black rhino specialist two men who are at war over both environmental politics and Clare herself. Set against the formidable backdrop of the Namib Desert, Rhino Dreams dramatizes the crisis of endangered species preservation and the horrors of poaching, interweaving this very real ecological darkness with the internal and external battles of three characters driven by fierce passions and divided notions of duty, ambition, and desire. It is a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant ride and, in the end, a testimony to how tenuous and precious both life and love can be. Author: Carolyn Waggoner and Kathryn Williams Pub Date: April 19, 2022 -
“Why is this moment happening in my life and what can I learn from it?” Michelle Douglas asked and answered this question almost every day for ten years, writing down one thing she learned each day from ages twenty-one to thirty-one. In these pages, she shares her experiences and learnings from the adventures that lie ahead for young adults—moving, working, loving, losing, quitting, building, and more, all while attempting to maintain a strong sense of self. Written for anyone just starting out or suddenly starting over, this field guide—part advice book, part journal—will help you discover the very important yet not-so-obvious lessons to be learned in your own life right now. Things like . . .- the weakness isn’t necessarily where the leak is
- surround yourself with people who are willing to lift while they climb
- you can’t change the shape of a piece to force it into your puzzle
- don’t go looking for love, go looking for things you love to do
- it’s what you bring to the table, not how long you’ve been sitting at it
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Through personal stories and extensive research, Sidelined: How Women Manage (and Mismanage) Their Health examines the many ways in which women unwittingly neglect their own health. Researcher and writer Susan Salenger describes how women tend to place their needs behind the needs of their families, how they blame themselves for getting sick, and how they too often hesitate to question their doctors’ advice. But women’s attitudes toward themselves and their health don’t exist in a vacuum—which is why Salenger also examines the cultural and medical history that has conditioned women not to act in their own best interest, offering insight into the gender biases of the medical community and exploring why women are misdiagnosed more often than men and why we’ve been routinely omitted from clinical trials. Designed to help women—particularly women over thirty-five—become more aware of why they make the decisions they do and Sidelined will equip readers with the knowledge, language, and skill sets they need to get the best healthcare possible. Author: Susan Salenger Pub Date: April 12, 2022 -
When Lidia, a blocked Latinx artist in her sixties, goes on a group tour of Namyan, a fictional Southeast Asian country reopened to the world after a long dictatorship, she gets much more than the vacation she thinks she’s signed on for. Against a backdrop of pagodas and enigmatic customs, she and the disparate crew of eighteen Americans on the tour encounter one adventure after other experiences that challenge their assumptions about their host country’s placid surface of beautiful pagodas and wandering Buddhist monks. Along the way, Lidia finds companionship and sexual pleasure with Haynes, a Black man seeking adventure even danger in Namyan. On a nighttime excursion among mysterious ancient buildings, they watch the nighttime sky. Lidia remarks that the stars look upside down–a metaphor for Namyan as a foreign place and for her. She enjoys being with Haynes but is conflicted. The final chapter reveals a secret, the source of her conflict, and her steps towards new freedom. An Upside-Down Sky is cast of characters, including their Namyanese guide, mirrors America: straight, gay, gender-fluid, black, brown, white, progressive, conservative, artistic, repressed, old, young. Some of them accept Nanyam’s charming façade at face value, while others seek to understand the country’s brutal repression by the military and ongoing ethnic conflicts. And most, resistant as they might be to change, are transformed by their time there. Author: Linda Dahl Pub Date: April 19, 2022 -
Growing up in the ’50s in what was then the small town of Napa, California, Donna Brazzi had loving parents, a backyard the size of a football field with a swing and a big wooden picnic table perfect for summer barbecues, a cocker spaniel named Patty, and a cat named Stinky—everything a kid could want. She was a happy child. But as she grew older and started to reach for more than a young woman from a working-class, Swiss-Italian family was expected to want—a university education and a career in the larger world beyond her hometown—she began to see that if she was going to realize her big dreams, she was going to have to fight for them. Big Dreams is Donna’s story of pursuing her education goals while confronting society’s assumptions about women’s roles in work, marriage, and motherhood from the 1950s through the mid-2000s, helped along by the evolving social movements for equality. Her journey from obedient daughter to minister’s wife to PhD in sociology was never a smooth one—but ultimately, with passion and persistence, she broke free of the family and cultural assumptions constraining her, forged her own identity, and shaped the life she wanted. Author: Donna Brazzi Barnes Pub Date: April 5, 2022 -
After both her parents die, Linda Murphy Marshall, a multi-linguist and professional translator, returns to her midwestern childhood home, Ivy Lodge, to sort through a lifetime of belongings with her siblings. Room by room, she sifts through the objects in her parents’ house and uses her skills and perspective as a longtime professional translator to make sense of the events of her past—to “translate” her memories and her life. In the process, she sees things with new eyes. All of her parents’ things, everything having to do with their cherished hobbies, are housed in a home that, although it looks impressive from the outside, is anything but impressive inside; in short, she now realizes that much of it —even the house’s fancy name—was show. By the time Murphy Marshall is done with Ivy Lodge, she has not only made new discoveries about her past, she has also come to a new understanding of who she is and how she fits into her world. Author: Linda Murphy Marshall Pub Date: July 12, 2022 -
From the award-winning bestselling author of books about autistic and learning-disabled children, Mary MacCracken, comes an engaging memoir of love, marriage—and Alzheimer’s. Braving divorce to be together, Cal and Mary help each other overcome setbacks in their work. Cal’s inventions are increasingly successful; Mary’s first book is published to much acclaim, followed by three more. It seems nothing can stop them. Then Alzheimer’s strikes. Always a fighter, Cal vows to beat his disease, while Mary finds ways to sustain their loving life together, devising ways to help Cal as he falters. She herself is helped by good doctors, social workers, and many friends—a whole community of care. Still, all the support in the world can’t stop Cal’s decline. He goes missing at night, flees his daycare program repeatedly, and must finally go to a memory unit. But even then, he and Mary share bits of happiness. In the end, they fail to beat Alzheimer’s. Yet their story is also one of triumph, as their love persists all through and beyond their battle. Poignant and inspiring, The Memory of All That is a beautifully written love story that offers guidance and comfort to those dealing with dementia, or any of life’s challenges. Author: Mary MacCracken Pub Date: July 26, 2022 -
From the fall of 1918 to summer 1919, six YWCA women are attached to the North Russia Expeditionary Forces, an international military mission posted in the city of Arkhangelsk, North Russia. With this change, Clara Taylor’s second year working for the YWCA in Russia turns out to be vastly different from her previous year in Moscow. No longer teaching home economics or surveying factory conditions, Clara now finds herself dancing with soldiers at parties, then learning of their deaths in action the next day; reading to ill soldiers in the hospital; and serving hot coffee to ragtag men on the front lines of the Vologda railroad front in the bitter Russian winter. Throughout, she remains strong, courageous, and dedicated to her ideals of service. Even her own hospitalization for appendicitis does not stop her from supporting others in an untenable situation. Able to let loose about her own political views in these letters, Clara writes scathing commentary about the ineptitude of the military command. She also writes of the frozen landscape, the astounding beauty of the northern lights, homesickness, the strength of the Russian people, and, finally, the overwhelming joy of returning home to her family. Author: Katrina Maloney & Patricia M. Maloney Pub Date: July 26, 2022
