Current Books

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son of bukowski
wallis R. Sanborn III

Where Bukowski ends, Sanborn begins. Wallis Sanborn’s Son of Bukowski is lived Dirty Realism, fraught with drinking, drugs, sex, madness,badness, and sadness. These poems rage and howl with power and anger and love and the elements of the street and bar and ally life. Where does a misanthrope go to read of such a life? Here,
in these pages, in these minimalist works of the boxing ring, the bankrupt marriage, the life in the bottle. The 21st century calls for an updated Dirty Realism, and Son of Bukowski provides.

jovita: An anthology on the life and legacy of jovita idar
edited by isaac chavarría & christopher Carmona

Jovita Idar (1885-1946), teacher, journalist, nurse, and civil rights
activist, grew up in Laredo, Texas where her family published La
Crónica, a Spanish-language newspaper that exposed segregation,
lynching, and other injustices endured by Mexican Texans in the early
20th century. At a time when signs announcing “No Negroes, Mexicans, or Dogs Allowed” were common in shops, restaurants, and other public places, she helped organize the First Mexicanist Congress in 1911, a convention that tackled racism and the lynching of Mexican Americans, launching the civil rights movement for Mexican American in the U.S. She helped create the League of Mexican Women, one of the first known Latina feminist organizations, and served as its first president. Encouraging women’s involvement in public policy, Idar worked for women’s rights, suffrage, quality bilingual education for Mexican American children, and an end to racism and segregation.

chispas: Poems
christopher carmona

Chispas is a collection of five years of poems. Written here and there. Covering topics of identity, love,  injustice, and the universe.

Sacred Wounds
PW Covington

PW Covington's work is rooted in his personal experiences and in the energy of movement. These poems take us from the war-ravaged airfields of Somalia to south Texas ranches,from the badlands of Utah to the Bay Area underground, and from the isolated introspection of a prison cell to the foot lights of the spoken word stage. These poems will resonate with any reader that loves the rush of wind through their hair, and with any reader that fights against injustice, the status quo, or parochialism; any reader that still believes in the promise held by mountains on the horizon.

Outrage: A Protest Anthology for Injustice in a Post 9/11 World
Edited by Rossy Evelin Lima and Christopher Carmona

The last few years have seen several incidents of outrage from the people and now we must respond the best way possible, through our writings and artwork. This anthology is dedicated to the atrocities of the shootings of black and brown people to the injustices that the refugees have encountered when fleeing war-torn countries, to the rise of anti-Latin@ sentiment that has led to the banning of Mexican American and Ethnic Studies, to the banning of brown bodies through xenophobic legislation, and the constant and complacent racism against anything Middle Eastern or Asian, to the complete disregard to indigenous rights in the name of corporate progress.

Nuev@s Voces Poeticas: A Dialogue about New Chican@ Identities
with Isaac Chavarría, Gabriel Sanchez, Rossy Evelin Lima, & Christopher Carmona

This book examines the identities of Chican@ in a post-9/11 America. In an effort to not hijack and prescribe new Chican@ identities from one author’s perspective, this book is constructed in dialogue format with 4 different perspectives and 4 different approaches. We ask the questions: What has triggered such an interest in Chican@ in recent times? What types of poetry, writing, and art is being created and what are the social factors that have led to new Chican@ identities? ­ is book addresses four di‑ erent identities within the “Chican@” identity such as xicanindio (Carmona), inmigrante (Lima), poch@ (Chavarria), & the fluid Chican@ (Sanchez) as a jumping off point to discuss all that is happening currently.

Afoot in a field of Men
Pat littledog

A rollicking feminist look at life on the down-and-out... "Rough around the edges and breaking all the rules, Littledog's much the better for it. Beyond redneck chic...her confessional celebration should put the schools of Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason to shame. And make no mistake-without romancing poverty, this mother's a stitch." -Krikus Reviews

The Fluid Chicano
Gabriel H. Sanchez

"The Fluid Chicano has its roots deep in the soul of deep south Texas, and its heart in the stars. This ranging collection is too diverse to be cordoned off behind the expectation of what Chican@ poetry 'should' be. Rebirth and death, paradise and people; let Gabriel Sanchez be your guide." --PW Covington, author of Dear Elsa, Letters from a Texas Prison

Poet & Vampire
Chuck Taylor

An episodic post-modern fiction attempting to discover the true value of art and life in contemporary America.... "Like Jack Kerouac, Taylor moves beyond the grand secular tradition of modern writing into the unknowable landscapes of the spiritual." --Connie Williams

If I Go Missing
Octavio Quintanilla_

In Octavio Quintanilla’s first collection of poetry, If I Go Missing, the mundane and the violent intertwine with the lyrical and the beautiful. Poignant and deeply haunting, these poems reveal a new and powerful voice. Quintanilla’s work is heartfelt, transcendent, and will resonate with us for years to come.
—Marjorie Agosín

When the Wood is Green
Paul McCann

When the Wood is Green is filled with angst, drama, tension, and irony as he describes the experiences of a young man in a time and place where possibilities shrink but dreams persist. Texas ambiance comes across loudly and clearly as the speaker ghost-hunts at Presidio la Bahia, struggles with religion and politics, even has a gun pulled on him on a Texas highway.

poxo
Isaac Chavarria

This collection of poetry revisits the lives of those uprooted and attempting to adjust to life in the United States, entering the barrio-colonia where canals, orange groves, and streets intersect. It settles in the mexclado of raza: anglos, tejanos, immigrants, chican@s, transients, y mas. Welcome to un topsy turvy poxo world, where the flawed and perfect speak the same.

I took my barrio on a road trip
Edward Vidaurre

Take a trip with the Barrio Poet from El Salvador to East LA and finally to Texas in this collection of poems by a man who escaped the fate of many in the barrios of la lucha and turned his life experience into art. I Took My Barrio on a Road Trip is a poetic story of struggle and survival--and a love story for life.

The Garden Uprooted
Katherine Hoerth

Welcome to the uprooted garden of fairy tales and pleasure. Set in Deep South Texas along the muddy banks of the Rio Grande, The Garden Uprooted tells the story of the forging of an identity. They speak to what it means to be a girl, a woman, and a human being in this contested space. The landscape is always lush in flora, culture, and language. This garden is ripe with imagination and sensuality - just watch out for toads!

Saving a Songbird
Jerry Craven

Saving a Songbird is a collection of short works of creative nonfiction--short memoirs of unusual intensity and range. Each essay tells of the narrator's dealings with unusual people he knew, many in various Venezuelan villages, others in towns in Texas. Several of the essays have won major awards.

Searching for Rama's Spear
Jerry Craven

Searching for Rama’s Spear is a book of wonder for all ages. Craven writes of the Texas Big Thicket in such clear language that readers can hear the Thicket, smell it, touch and taste it in all its mysterious beauty.   This is tale is full of mystery and danger and exotica.
    

Beat
Christopher Carmona

These poems set out to redefine what it means to be beat. Working to reaffirm that the beat keeps moving from generation to generation and as it moves it changes with the times, Beat is Christopher Carmona's  declaration that beat poetry is alive and well, mixing together life in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, life as a Chicano, and life as a beat poet. This book serves to keep the tradition of the Beat Generation alive and well where it should be...in poetry.

Dancing backwards IN Texas
Connie Lane Williams

Connie Lane Williams has bared her soul in this sometimes startling, rebellious, often comedic, occasionally dramatic collection of poems in Dancing Backwards in Texas.   From the humor of self revelation, to the comfort of tradition, this collection is never boring, but full of the rhythmic twists and turns of the West Texas landscape set against the harmonies of a global consciousness. Not playing by the rules, life is always an adventure for Williams as she states her case against social pragmatism.

The Big Thicket
Jerry Craven

Set in East Texas in 1870s, The Big Thicket is a tale of people in the wildest part of the American frontier, the Big Thicket, where law is sometimes only a rumor. It is the tale of the beginning of the industries that in our time have decimated the forest. Jerry Craven's novel will keep you turning pages and will leave you with much to ponder.

Ceaseless Greasepaint in Combat Stance
Ken Jones

No poet writing today blends the anger and hard edginess of street/performance poetry with the informed elegance of formal verse as effectively and artfully as Ken Jones.  Where can one find poems about drunk tanks, American Indians, teeth bleeding red at the bit, angst, the worship of dung, sex, materialistic greed run amok, spiritual yearning, and Santa Claus causing a disturbance in the mall?  In Ceaseless Greasepaint in Combat Stance, that’s where.

Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street
Hedwig Gorski

This archival memoir of an experimental pedestrian verse drama theater piece, Booby, Mama!, created in 1978 provides a view of Austin's early avant-garde, its soft underbelly. It is not exactly a feminist work, more feminine and cross-gendered from the other side of the tracks. Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street includes added photos by Mark Christal of the second production of Booby, Mama!