Here we go: The next Read America Read Project is March 25th.
Leave a book for someone to take anywhere you want. This time, ask two people you know to do this also. This way the project
will grow each month. I would like a book marker to go in every book so people know where they are
coming from. Thank you for being a part of this project.
Lets make March 25th great! Send me photos too. I have a list of names of who
participated and as this grows, keep letting me know you are doing this. Thanks a zillion.
You all rock. Lets get America reading!!!!
e-mail: gloria@read-america-read.org
Thanks so much,
Gloria
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Brief Description of Saying Goodbye
A year in the life of a six-year-old Slovak boy being brought up by his grandparents in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia.
In this flash story of childhood and self-discovery, filled with heartbreak and joy, betrayal and love, Adam must
invent who he will become.
Andrew Stancek describes his vocation as dreaming - clutching onto hope, even in turbulent times. He has
been published widely, in SmokeLong Quarterly, FRIGG, Hobart, Green Mountains Review, New World Writing,
New Flash Fiction Review, Jellyfish Review, Peacock Journal and The Phare, among others. Among his contest
wins are the London Independent Story Prize, the Reflex Fiction contest, and the New Rivers Press American
Fiction contest. His work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2021, the Bending Genres Anthology and
Bath Flash Fiction anthologies. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Saying Goodbye is the story of a family reckoning with loss, loyalty, disappointment, devotion, and at the center our narrator,
a child as unforgettable as any Dickens hero. Abandoned by his mother, rescued by tenderness, he loses his innocence and
finds his courage in a world both unapologetic and lit with the fiercest sort of love. This gorgeous story will break
your heart open.
-Nancy Stohlman, After the Rapture and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction
Some boys get a layer cake, others get abandonment. When young Adam's unstable mother drops him off at his
grandparents' Bratislava home prior to his sixth birthday, he knows she is not coming back. Instead he must
stitch together a new life, of neighborhood bicycle rides, local shopkeepers, warm strudel smells, and
fresh family pain. Andrew Stancek's Saying Goodbye is at once a story of longing and grief, and one of
resiliency and tender connection between a grandfather and a boy. "Something good always grows out of
something awful, like mushrooms out of manure," Adam says. This is a spare, effective novella-in-flash of
one year in a boy's life, beautifully written, memorably told.
-Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace
$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-75-8 | 52 Pages
About the Author
Vassiliki Rapti was born and raised in Greece, and studied Comparative Literature and Media in Greece, France, and the
United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an Emphasis in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis,
and is the author of several books, including Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond (Ashgate, 2013),
the co-edited volume Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2021), and the bilingual poetry
collection Transitorium (Somerset Hall Press, 2015). Her translation publications include Greek surrealist author
Nanos Valaoritis, and her poetry and translations have been published in various international journals.
She received a Parnassos Literary award in Greece in 1998.
Her poetry is fueled by surrealist imagery, a pursuit of playfulness in artistic expression, and a desire to
capture wonderment in everyday life. She is Chair of the Ludics Seminar of the Mahindra Humanities Center at
Harvard University, where she founded the Advanced Training in Greek Poetry Translation and Performance Workshop,
and currently teaches World Literature and Digital Culture at Emerson College. She is the founding director
Citizen TALES* Commons, an international collective of scholars and artists.
The poetry collection that forms the core of this volume was published in Greek in Athens in 2021.
In November 2022, the Voice of Greece, the radio arm of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (EPT),
featured Vassiliki as its Poet of the Week, with twice
daily readings of her poetry throughout the week.
About the Translator
A native of Toronto, Canada, Peter Bottéas holds a Master's degree in Translation from the Université de Montréal and
worked for many years as a translator, revisor, editor, and educator in French Canada. After a twenty-year detour as a
psychotherapist in Boston, he recently returned to one of his first loves, literary translation, and is currently the
primary translator of Greek Boston-based poet Vassiliki Rapti. The author and translator have done several poetry
readings together in New York and Boston, as well as in on-line forums. He is a member of the multidisciplinary
think-tank and creative forum Citizen TALES Commons and, along with Vassiliki, is co-host of the podcast series
Borders Unbound: Hellenic Poetry of the Diaspora and Beyond. Peter is also an occasional voice-over artist, an
infrequent poet, and an aficionado of French and Greek poetry set to music.
Ever since an insomniac, lovelorn Sappho looked up at the moon, Greek lyric poetry has echoed her register of
gluko-pikron: the sweet-bitterness of longing. We open our mouths because we desire. Open Bathed in Moonlight to
any page and you'll find the language of desire suffused by the tender, intensely focused erotic glow of
Vassiliki Rapti's rapturous gift. Yet the moon, and Sappho, are not the only presiding spirits of illumination
in this magical collection. Rapti has struck the Sapphic note in a new key by fusing it with the voices of
some of the great surrealist Greek poets of the twentieth century. The result is a felicitous mix of mournful
eloquence and expressionist imagination, delicate inwardness and evocative power-a testament
to the "Perpetual Perseverance" of a disciplined and formidable imagination:
you were cast among myriad
multicolored peacocks
so that you might learn the skill
of perseverance
dragged out, freed after aeons
flung, whirling, whirling
into the embrace of the moon.
In the pitch-perfect registers of Peter Bottéas's beautiful translation, Bathed in Moonlight is pristine.
-George Kalogeris, author of Winthropos, Associate Professor of English Literature and
Classics at Suffolk University, Boston
As it moves back and forth over time, Bathed in Moonlight explores the ambiguity of what is lost and what is gained in
poetry. While Vassiliki Rapti's poems certainly engage with the voices of her native Greek tradition they would also seem
to be in dialogue with poetries beyond the borders of the western world. She tends to locate individual experience in the
collective. And so, with intense lyricism and transformative, vivid expression, each poem creates its own separate world
of emotional strength. These poems are fluent, vibrant, reflective, sensitive, open and brilliantly sensory.
They reflect Rapti's wonder at the world, the cyclic nature of life and language. Her voice spins, floats, and
whirls from spiral shells, floating lakes, the ever vigilant moon and calls through fragments of memory, the
depths of the underground and the unspoken that hides between each line.
-Gonca Özmen
Vassiliki Rapti's luminous, capacious poems are journeys arising from hope and fears; aching and searching, they
seek kinship and reconciliation with nature which is the true home for the restless, solitary self. Sensuous yet
balanced, sparse yet containing multitudes, Bathed in Moonlight illuminates the life of the mind where remembrance
and unbridled thoughts run together, where human yearnings are an enduring life force, where words, written from
the innermost place resonate and affirm the power of poetry. This marvelous collection of poems is a balm in our
fractured and chaotic time.
-Pui Ying Wong author of The Feast
$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-76-5 | 66 Pages
Barbara Molloy is a writer, artist, and jazz vocalist who makes her home in Coupeville, Washington on beautiful
Whidbey Island. A previous book of poems, In Favor of Lightning, was published by Wesleyan University Press. Ms. Molloy's
work has been nominated for Pushcart prizes and has won awards from The Pen Foundation. Her poems have appeared in a
variety of literary journals.
Barbara Molloy's new collection Heaven with Others is a feast for the senses, as well as an elegiac reminder that all
we have is the present. These poems study mortality: "As if it was not her at all,/dying,/abut to die,/being dead,/or
returned to life..." (“Gift of Sunflowers”). In the hands of this accomplished lyricist even the most sordid past is rendered
as fine art and gifted with visceral re-birth in organic images not easily forgotten: "Leaves strewn about the yards-/the
exact color of church and rectory bricks..." (Breeze). Molloy's voice brings down the high-brow and lifts up the colloquial.
We are the beneficiaries of her vision.
-Judith Skillman
In this new collection, Barbara Molloy Olund keeps a sharp focus on the chaos of discarded objects and lives while tracking
surprising moments of humor. "Who said 'cherish the moments' and/ 'life gives you a lemon; make lemonade?'/ Are they
tired yet?..." asks the narrator (Of Ghosts). These poems respect the hard work of living. There's an intention here,
almost a promise, to never let go of what matters, no matter how seemingly unimportant an object or detail, how elusive
a relationship-what prevails is the intention to continue searching for what's real and what's not. "I will not love the
past./ Let it glitter. Let it sit forward..." (Decision). I admire how this work confronts the spiritual labor of care giving,
birthing, struggling with addiction, negotiating with ghosts, and parenting. And I'm touched by the ongoing, archetypal
process running through these pages-the sorting-out of wisps of beauty from the detritus of life.
-Christianne Balk
"Sometimes," Barbara Molloy writes "the most impossible/variables line up." And in her poems, they do. Her poems leave
me breathless, off kilter, bewildered (in the archaic sense of being lured into the wilds). In these wilds, grief is a
force of gravity. The vision here is uncanny-the familiar is strange, the strange familiar. The seemingly ordinary
embodies the unforeseen, what Stanley Plumly called in her first book "a kind of clairvoyance."
-Eric Pankey
The poems in Barbara Molloy's new book, Heaven With Others, don't rest quietly in the realm of the familiar and
quotidian. Nor do they keep to the territory of the uncanny and mysterious. Molloy's poems travel in the shifting
borderlands between those irreconcilable worlds. That's the rocky, unmapped terrain that her fiercely moving poems
lead us through. I'm reminded of Jean Valentine's sudden leaps into unforeseen light, and also of C.K. Williams's
earthbound acknowledgement of the grit underfoot. These beautiful, memorable poems are compassionate, honest
testaments to what it is to walk here alone and in company, as a mortal body inhabited by spirit and dream.
-Jennifer Atkinson
$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-54-3 | 56 Pages
Elizabeth Lund is the award-winning host of Poetic Lines, which features
in-depth interviews with established and emerging poets. She also covers
poetry for major publications, including The Christian Science Monitor,
where she edited poetry for ten years. From 2015 through 2019 she wrote
a monthly poetry column for The Washington Post. Her own poems have
appeared in the US, the UK, and Canada. She has read and appeared at a
variety of festivals, most recently the Gaithersburg Book Festival, where she
served as the final judge for the 2020 high school poetry contest.
Long before 2020, when the world began grappling with a pervasive pandemic that resulted in widespread personal
isolation, another type of malevolence locked many women inside their homes. These poems address the devastating
effects of domestic violence and seek to restore one victim’s voice, allowing her to speak to and through another
generation of women.
Poetry is one of the few art forms that enables us to approach extremely difficult and complex human experiences
without having to turn to didacticism or preaching. Lund’s poems do this exquisitely as they grapple with the intense
emotions of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. Each poem is a compelling piece of a much larger
puzzle - one that explores the effects of toxic masculinity and the debilitating fallacy that a woman can
free her abuser from his own darkness.
With the concision of Emily Dickinson who taught us to "tell all the truth but tell it slant -," and a stream of
consciousness narrative, Lund creates the perfect modality to convey an intense and painful journey that generations
of women have experienced.
The result, Un-Silenced, is an absolutely stunning, heart-rattling read that implores us to open our hearts and minds.
-Michael S. Glaser, Poet Laureate of Maryland 2004-2009
A gunshot is fired. Police are called. One could say the sky/turns a deaf ear. In this powerful collection,
Elizabeth Lund, the omnipresent speaker, honors a beloved aunt and casts light on other women who have suffered
domestic abuse. Through poignant narrative and lyric fragments, Un-Silenced takes us deep into a culture that
perpetrates violence against women. Lund gives these women the dignity they deserve while finding solace and
closure to her own familial pain. This is a major debut of an authentic, compassionate voice! May all who have
been harmed or are in harm's way, directly or indirectly, be blessed by this book's presence in the world.
-Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest and Silvertone
Elizabeth Lund has captured the sorrow and malevolence of our times in lyrics that are unsparing, mysterious, and
defiantly beautiful. I was captivated from first page to last.
-Hilary Holladay, author of The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography
$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-79-6 | 60 Pages
Ash by Gloria Mindock from Glass Lyre Press
Gloria Mindock is the author of I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone
(Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia
Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, (U Šoku Štampa), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson).
Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian,
Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, Albanian, bulgarian, Turkish, and French. Gloria has been published in
numerous literary journals including Gargoyle, Web Del Sol, spoKe, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction,
Ibbetson, The Rye Whiskey Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories, Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary
Writing and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime
Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the
Newton Writing and Publishing Center. She received the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize from Writing in a
Woman's Voice. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.
In Gloria Mindock's powerful new book, the flames of love die out and the ashes linger until they dissolve into air.
The body is hostage, in charred relics of failed intimacies—The burnt-out ends of smoky days (T.S. Eliot).
There's beauty in the truth of Mindock's words and images: Things got smokier, battling the embers with//false waters.
And there's hope: Not everyone believes in destruction.// All the heart wants is to beat. Above all,
these poems radiate feeling, compassionately aware, attuned to a world of broken love that is burned beyond
recognition, the ashes drifting and settling: how much sorrow can this heart take?// There is never an answer.
Ash sears and sings.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest
In Ash, Gloria Mindock writes a gritty, beautifully haunting collection of poetry. Ash is what remains behind after
destruction, ruin, death, and burning. Similarly, the poems in this collection are what will remain. Fight the shadows
and wade through the darkness on a path paved by Mindock's vivid imagery, stark language, and dynamic voice, all of which,
make for a most memorable experience. Now more than ever, we need these poems. With the utmost economy of words, skillful
syntax, and emotional connections, each poem reverberates into the depths of your consciousness. Dark, intense, and wholly
unique, Ash, by Gloria Mindock is what you've been waiting for—a collection of poetry that consumes and smolders.
Are you ready?
—Renuka Raghavan, author of Out of the Blue and The Face I Desire
Gloria Mindock is a poet with singular vision: in Ash, a human heart is rolled out, then baked, then thrown to the birds;
broken crucifixes are shoved into junk drawers and gather dust; a spurned/murdered woman turns into a beautiful plant
that gives her ex-lover a rash. With mordant, Pinter-esque wit, Mindock explores just how far love, and even human
decency, can unravel—to the point of arson, to the point of war.
Ash begin with a series of poems about lethal house fires that may be literal or metaphorical ("my skin was burned by
your compulsion to be famous"), then expands to pinpoint the similar essence of human cruelty that enables soldiers to
kill. As the narrator of "Doomed by the Numbers" explains: "the fact is people will still go on brutally/killing each
other./Who will take my place and write about it?"
Ash concludes with an engaging, Rabelaisian roundelay of voices—mini-plays, summed up in just two stanzas, about
complicated relationships between two people.
Once again, with Ash, Mindock proves herself to be unafraid of the dark. She is truly a leading,
contemporary master of the edgy.
—Karen Friedland, author of Places That Are Gone and Tales from the Teacup Palace
Passionate and observant, Gloria Mindock is a tragic poet.
Her books are wounds revisited. She knows that nothing, never heals.
"With a rolling pin in my hand, I roll your heart out flat... stop it from beating.
The redness of blood turns to wax, sticky while wet." (Baked)
She senses the pain of the world in her being.
"The void looms deep, scorched like the desert blowing aimlessly." (Exit)
As her latest book Ash attests without doubt, Gloria is both a warrior and a martyr. Her words are
swords that slowly transform into tears.
Her anger at life's injustice is mighty, but mighty is her generosity and her openness towards repair, harmony and universal peace.
A must-read Ash conducts the reader through thorny labyrinths of pain and despair, allowing now and then a glimpse of ultimate
resolve and liberation in verses of a rare beauty:
"...but gravity is about to free me into space... People will look at me day and night and ask, "what is it?" There is no control
over what happens. The cathedral is high and my freckles fell on the floor as I left. Paleness now, that no one sees, but in
the universe, I will be a prism." (Gravity)
"...A hunger surrounds us, dust gathers, and is wiped off, space evading all this as songs of the wind come through the window
and we all hum." (Room)
—Flavia Cosma, author of In the Arms of the Father, Val-David, QC
$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-941783-75-7 | 71 Pages
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ABOUT THE PRESS
ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS was founded in April of 2005.
The press solicits poetry, fiction, and plays from various writers
around the world, and holds open contests regularly for its chapbooks,
postcards, broadsides and full-length books.
I look for work that has a strong voice, is unique, and that takes risks with language.
Please see submission guidelines for current information.
I encourage queries from Central and Eastern Europe.
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