{"title":"Zone 3 Press","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"a-woman-a-plan-an-outline-of-a-man","title":"A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eA Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man\u003c\/em\u003e, Sarah Kasbeer's vivid descriptions of growing up in Illinois recall the coming-of-age memoirs of Mary Karr, but written for the #MeToo era. As an adult living in New York during this clarifying cultural moment, she has no choice but to fully reckon with the aftermath of her own trauma.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In this moving and propulsive collection, the author explores how trauma transforms us—and the miraculous ways trauma itself can be transformed. In A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man one woman picks up the pieces of a typical all-American girlhood: the abusive boyfriends, the sexual assaults, and the pervasive feelings of isolation and shame. I emerged from this collection oddly hopeful about the process of healing, especially if it can bring us a book like this.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Alice Bolin,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eDead Girls\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"These essays held me as rapt as a great conversation with a smart and funny stranger. Sarah Kasbeer is a born raconteur whose stories name some of the loneliest parts of growing up female and turn them joyful with insight and levity.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMelissa Febos\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cstrong\u003eWhip Smart\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eAbandon Me\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This book is a treasure; it is a dagger and an emancipation, a slice and a stitch, as devastating as it is darkly funny. To say I loved this book would be an understatement. Kasbeer has a rare gift of exposing her human flaws and secrets—inescapable truths we all carry—then kicking down the door and tracking down a path to redemption without taking any shortcuts or prisoners.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMira Ptacin\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe In-Betweens\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ePoor Your Soul\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSarah Kasbeer\u003c\/strong\u003e is an author, essayist, and fiction writer living in New York. Her work appears in \u003cem\u003eCreative Nonfiction, \u003c\/em\u003ethe\u003cem\u003e Cut, Dissent, Elle, Guernica\u003c\/em\u003e, and many other places.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHer essay collection, \u003cem\u003eA Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man\u003c\/em\u003e, published by Zone 3 Press in 2020, received a medal in creative nonfiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe's owned by a single tuxedo kitty.\u003cem\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294312866109,"sku":"9781733150514","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781733150514ita.jpg?v=1724878023"},{"product_id":"an-imperfect-rapture","title":"An Imperfect Rapture","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eAn Imperfect Rapture\u003c\/em\u003e, Kelly recreates the real-life shadowlands of her youth, and her unflinching examination of people and places offers readers a glimpse into an experience hidden from or ignored by our first-world culture. Its unsparing narrative resonates as both a personal exorcism and a public plea for empathy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Written with the spare, sensual, and deeply evocative prose of a master, this brave and ultimately transcendent memoir is an absolute gem. What Kelly J. Beard accomplishes here is stunning: by stepping nakedly back into her youth as the daughter of Christian fundamentalists, a lifelong couple whose love for one another never seemed to wane, she also steps back into violence and neglect, poverty and the shame of the poor, the striving for one's very selfhood when few seem to be able to help or pay much attention. And Beard renders all of this, and more, with a poet's clear-eyed search for the truth. An Imperfect Rapture is a plaintive hymn of forgiveness, and it moved me to tears many times over. This is, quite simply, a beautiful book.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eAndre Dubus III,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eGone So Long\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eDirty Love\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Haunting in its recall, this elegiac book spins through a galaxy of fundamentalism, poverty and mental illness. Instead of 'coming of age,' it's a 'coming to terms' story, burning with desire to cut loose from a demon-possessed past. It's an eyewitness account of what happened inside a dark house. Beard's writing is vast, engulfing, accomplished. In many ways An Imperfect Rapture is itself a faith healing.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eJanisse Ray,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eEcology of a Cracker Childhood \u003c\/em\u003e(Milkweed Editions)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"An Imperfect Rapture is transcendent—a story of personal grace and self-realization, one woman's courageous path through the shadows of a fundamentalist youth. The memoir itself is a kind of prayer, a kind of promise, in which the vibrant prose shimmers, as in this passage, with 'a dreamy quality, as though conjured from smoke, trailing the razor edge of reality…' A luminous debut.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eHarrison Candelaria Fletcher\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003ePresentimiento: A Life in Dreams\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I am deeply shaken and moved by Kelly Beard's conscientious, harrowing, and psychologically acute memoir of her childhood and youth. She evokes the confusing, abusive, fundamentalist world of her impoverished family with an eerie precision and clarity. An Imperfect Rapture is an insightful, courageous book.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eEdward Hirsch\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eGabriel: A Poem\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Living Fire\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"From religion to love to death to demons to angels to discovering the secret mechanisms of forgiveness, An Imperfect Rapture is, in fact, rapturously perfect. Kelly Beard's debut memoir is not to be missed.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eConnie May Fowler,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eBefore Women Had Wings\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eA Million Fragile Bones\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKelly J. Beard\u003c\/strong\u003e practiced employment discrimination law in the Atlanta area for two decades and has received many honors for her work, including a certificate of recognition from the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence for her service with the Legal Assistance for Victims Project. In 2016, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work appears in the \u003cem\u003eSanta Ana River Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Creative Nonfiction,\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eFive Points. An Imperfect Rapture\u003c\/em\u003e is her first full-length memoir.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"'My mother saw demons,' begins Kelly J. Beard's stunning debut memoir. Though I feared the narrator would show me the cruelty and violence of her parents' chosen faith, she does so with such a commitment to understanding the sources of her family's suffering that I had to follow her narrative. Religious fundamentalism and poverty, the latter made worse by the former, fracture the narrator's family into unrecoverable pieces. Only her parents appear unscathed by the 'steel belt' of their faith. They remain devoted to each other, their intimate and loving relationship a stark contrast to the isolation of their children. Over the years, I've wondered,' Beard writes, 'why it seems other families endure similar or greater deprivations without siblings turning rivalrous or mean…. I wonder what particular ingredient combined to make our compound combustible. Our father's complicated anger? Our mother's changeable heart? Or that one singularly unstable ingredient: their hard faith?' Beard examines all three influences from the perspective of a sensitive and perceptive child and that of an adult looking back, the two voices essential to memoir. Some of the most beautiful passages arise when both of these narrators co-exist. 'It was the last time I remember our family laughing together. We were headed into mean years none of us could see...'\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMargaret L. Whitford\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"'In the Foursquare Pentecostal Church in the 1960s, Kelly J. Beard's mother saw demons, though those demons ended up being nothing like Beard's childhood self-imagined: 'Instead, they will appear in fires and floods, in her family's fractured lives, and in the carnage of their faith.' An earnest memoir about the destructive influences of poverty and fundamentalism, Beard's An Imperfect Rapture bears witness to their legacy. Beard's parents were deeply invested in each other, often at the expense of their children. When they transformed into strict fundamentalists, the family entered a 'spiritual and financial vise' with lasting repercussions. Theirs was a god who functioned as enabler and source of their fatalism, one whose answers to prayers begot a hopelessness and desperation so profound it's abject. Once her parents' anger and unpredictability combined with a rigid sense of God and church as the only sources of community and trust, the dissonance of violence, neglect, and poverty wasn't discussed. From authoritarian parents to abusive siblings, the trauma in this memoir is phenomenal and harrowing. The neglect ranges from benign to malign, and Beard delivers these horrors without ceremony, dropping them into her narrative almost casually. Beard's prose confers beauty on even the ugliest moments. The memoir thrives on unexpected and vital imagery...\" - \u003cstrong\u003eLetitia Montgomery-Rodgers\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294343536957,"sku":"9780990633365","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9780990633365ita.jpg?v=1724878556"},{"product_id":"bell-i-wake-to","title":"Bell I Wake To","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBell I Wake To\u003c\/em\u003e takes a magnifying glass to all living things and gives them a greater meaning and purpose, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant. Crane's vivid and precise language paints beautiful, and sometimes bittersweet, familial scenes while contending with heavy topics like death, loss, grief, and healing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"From the opening lines of this stunning collection, I am immediately and irrevocably invested in what this speaker has to say, the many worlds and wounds and healings she weaves through bright, immediate, richly developed image, lexicon, and description. The whole of me responds to these poems, the tenderness and unflinching courage wrapped amidst the foliage and wildlife of the speaker's garden. The spareness in the syntax and line juxtaposed with the poignant storytelling of these poems captures my imagination, as the mothering\/daughtering strength of Bell I Wake To is immense and fills me with light.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e-Jenn Givhan,\u003c\/strong\u003e Author of \u003cem\u003eGirl With Death Mask\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The poems in Bell I Wake To create a sacred space honoring seasons, generations, the body, and every living creature the poet comes across. Patty Crane writes with the kind of attention Simone Weil says is close to prayer, and indeed under her gaze everything is blessedly alive with song and shimmer, present in its leafing out and its leaving. Her supple language can transform a white birch into a mouthful of sunrise and then to the flush on a young girl's cheek. \"My subject is surprise,\" the poet says, the kind of surprise that comes from precise seeing, vivid language and the sly humor of one who knows how quickly the ordinary can turn and amaze. This is a beautiful book, a crucial presence in our scattered world.\" -\u003cem\u003e-Betsy Sholl,\u003c\/em\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eHouse of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The intimate and exquisite exactitude with which Patty Crane meets the natural world is remarkable. Bell I Wake To brims with keen-eyed, tender noticing—bats are \"tin origami,\" the snake her spade delivers is \"a length of slow-moving muscle,\" and finches are \"singing wanting.\" Our pleasure is further deepened by how fluidly outer and inner worlds spill into one another, as when a flower's blush of color brings back \"the flush \/ of a daughter's cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping\" or \"the sudden tree of her \/ standing beside me.\" This book is calibrated to be quietly piercing.\" --\u003cstrong\u003eEllen Doré Watson,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003epray me stay eager\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePatty Crane\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003eBELL I WAKE TO \u003c\/em\u003e(Zone 3 Press First Book Award, 2019) and \u003cem\u003esomething flown\u003c\/em\u003e (Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, 2018), and translator of \u003cem\u003eTHE BLUE HOUSE: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer\u003c\/em\u003e (Copper Canyon Press, 2023) and \u003cem\u003eBRIGHT SCYTHE \u003c\/em\u003e(Sarabande Books, 2015), her selected translations of the Swedish Nobel laureate. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals, most recently in \u003cem\u003eBellevue Literary Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry East\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eVox.\u003c\/em\u003e Her translations have recently appeared in \u003cem\u003eAmerican Poets, Poetry, Five Points\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eGuernica\u003c\/em\u003e. Her work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell and Hedgebrook. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hilltowns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294379581757,"sku":"9780990633396","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9780990633396ita.jpg?v=1724879107"},{"product_id":"flutter-point-essays","title":"Flutter Point: Essays","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFlutter Point\u003c\/em\u003e is a collection of essays that centers on humanness, rumination, and truth, and it was the winner of the 2015 Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Erik Anderson, in these very edgy essays of Flutter Point, mines the rich ore of the 'or,' back slashing, back and forth, through the porous membranes of punctuated category, the skeletal strata of this gelatinous and layered world. To 'decide' is to cut, to sever, and Anderson is a katana smith par excellence, folding fluid steel, folding it back on itself again and again, peening home the sudden stunning serration less, it seems, than a molecule thick, while still separating out those old infinite spaces between the stars and the anxious quantum angstroms buzzing at the center of our very beings.\" --\u003cstrong\u003e Michael Martone\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eMichael Martone\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWinesburg, Indiana\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Flutter Point's essays are palpably haunted by the past and future of our species and planet. But Anderson does something rare and even hopeful, even so: his ruminations pry apart our default intuitions about humanness and animality, the natural and built environments, art, language, and the body, and hold them apart like parentheses for us, to find a little space inside. In that space, these essays search for truthful, appropriate kinds of mourning and pleasure, presence and detachment. The brilliance of Flutter Point is that what results are fresh new forms of the essay—moving, intelligent, relentless, still, and made exactly for our time.\" -- \u003cstrong\u003eKristin Dombek,\u003c\/strong\u003e author of T\u003cem\u003ehe Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErik Anderson\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eis\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003ethe author of three previous books of nonfiction: \u003cem\u003eThe Poetics of Trespass\u003c\/em\u003e (2010), \u003cem\u003eEstranger\u003c\/em\u003e (2016), and \u003cem\u003eFlutter Point: Essays\u003c\/em\u003e (2017), selected by Amy Fusselman for the 2015 Zone 3 Nonfiction Book Prize. He teaches creative writing at Franklin \u0026amp; Marshall College, USA, and lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.\u003cem\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294403600701,"sku":"9780990633327","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9780990633327ita.jpg?v=1724879490"},{"product_id":"east-walnut-hills","title":"East Walnut Hills","description":"\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eEast Walnut Hills\u003c\/em\u003e is the debut collection of poems by Emily Spencer, the winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\"East Walnut Hills, the breathtaking debut from Emily Spencer, creates a self through seeing. In this collection, the meandering and curious consciousness of the flaneur is joined with the intuitive visual strategies of the artist, tracing lines (architectural, historical, spiritual) through identity, voice, and place. This site-specific book is at once map and photograph, a history of place tied to the quotidian. For Spencer, to dwell is to understand the impact of memory, capitalism, education, and ecology on one's location. Cincinnati is nowhere and everywhere— humming with grief and life—in these exquisite poems.\" --\u003cstrong\u003eClaudia Rankine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In East Walnut Hills, the divine and the everyday are indistinguishable from one another. Eden is both mythically untouchable and just down the street in Cincinnati, Ohio. Emily Spencer leads us through these poems as if through the wings of a living museum, imploring us to take our time and look—really look. But Spencer is not our tour guide, she is the artist.'\" --\u003cstrong\u003ePaige Lewis\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This is a book that proceeds in electric hushes, spare and lithe and deeply smart. The poems wind their way through Ohio neighborhoods, through husks of industry and commerce, through transport and abandonment, through invitation and exclusion, through histories, presents, and futures of biodiverse community—gender, race, and class. East Walnut Hills is a brilliant achievement.\" --\u003cstrong\u003eNatalie Shapero\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Emily's crisp and alert poems are notations and noticings rooted in East Walnut Hills, Ohio. There is a warping of time, and people in these poems too: what is classic, what is new? How are traditions proscribed and inscribed? The lovely wordplay of Spencer's work, as a community-based global citizen, presents an expansive meditation on Black life and perception through residue, through the ghosts of where we, in the particular, have been and are.\" --\u003cstrong\u003eTracie Morris\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEmily Spencer\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003eEast Walnut Hills\u003c\/em\u003e (Zone 3 Press, 2021) and winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry. Her poems appear in the \u003cem\u003eKenyon Review, POETRY, Pleiades,\u003c\/em\u003e and elsewhere. Spencer earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is from Cincinnati, Ohio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294425129277,"sku":"9781733150545","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781733150545ita.jpg?v=1724879985"},{"product_id":"creature-wing-heart-machine","title":"Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award in 2022.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the desert to MRI machines to online dating to the Large Hadron Collider to the flora and fauna of natural and imagined worlds, \u003cem\u003eCreature, Wing, Heart, Machine\u003c\/em\u003e follows the central protagonist, Alva, as she seeks meaning and the keys to human connection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is precision, awe, and ache coursing throughout Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine. This is a book \"made of blood and muscle.\" These stunning poems are reminiscent of what I love most about the heart and heat of poetry, peppered with a knack for fantastic figurative language, and a keen specificity in the soupy, surreal loss of love and longing. I am grateful to have read this book brimming with various desires (both with levity and grief)…. L.S. McKee speaks through the mask of the character Alva, blurring the first and third person, when she writes, \"Alva is and is not me.\" Sometimes we need the architecture of another voice to find our own. I felt seen and understood by the way Alva drank in the whole strange world with beauty and sorrow, reminding us that \"we're all machines hungry to be opened.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eTiana Clark\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eI Can't Talk about the Trees without the Blood\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn powerful persona books like Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine, you get to know an author's alter ego as a character whose life is pure, vivid testimony. But what makes these particular poems so memorable is how L.S. McKee simultaneously investigates the question of being Alva on the page, and how sharply she addresses the need to create a second self while confronting heartbreak. Sensual, cinematic, and alternately fierce and hopeful, Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine is a moving chronicle of what it takes to transform. -\u003cstrong\u003eMaria Hummel\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eHouse and Fire\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the frank confiding of this delicious debut, Creature, Wing, Heart, Machine, McKee does a lot of things, and introducing us to Alva is my favorite. Do you know who Alva is? I am pretty sure she is us…. There is so much tenderness here—for all of us, for \"how you're not alone, how we're all machines hungry to be opened.\" But also for \"every beloved thing that kneels and drinks.\" \"How could her life\/be different?\" she wonders, looking with wonder at the wonder of the world. Walking with her through these poems, their humor and sweetness, their wry awareness of their own predicaments, is like having a funny best friend in the romantic comedy of our lives. We are lucky to be here with Alva, and with L. S. McKee. -\u003cstrong\u003eJill McDonough\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of\u003cem\u003e American Treasure\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eL.S. McKee\u003c\/strong\u003e is a writer and educator. Her work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eNarrative, The Massachusetts Review, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, Copper Nickel\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. She has taught writing at several universities, including MIT, and is now Coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Georgia. Originally from East Tennessee, she lives in Athens, Georgia with her family.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49294439153981,"sku":"9781733150576","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781733150576ita.jpg?v=1724880432"},{"product_id":"souvenirs-from-paradise","title":"Souvenirs from Paradise","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs an art critic and museum staffer, Erin Langner was skeptical of what she would find when she visited the Las Vegas Strip for the first time in the mid-2000s. To her surprise, she returned whenever the opportunity arose, seeking to understand her attraction to this \"escape\" destination--and the personal histories it conjured. The architecture of the Mirage casino surfaced the vacations to Florida that bandaged her grieving family together in the wake of her mother's death. An encounter with a fake Venus de Milo during a bachelorette party shed light on her identity construction as a woman. An impersonator show evoked the rituals we create as we navigate loss. When read together, the essays of \u003cem\u003eSOUVENIRS FROM PARADISE\u003c\/em\u003e become a guide to holding fantasy and reality together in one glimpse, in order to better understand our impulses and ourselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Souvenirs from Paradise is such a powerful and moving essay collection, with many of the narratives poised at the edge of loss or grief, the sensations that none of us seem able to escape. With beautiful, clear-eyed prose, she manages to invite us into the most intimate spaces of personal transformation and witness reckonings with need. I admire how she portrays becoming as a consequence of relationship, whether a connection lasts a lifetime or just a few days. A lyrical intensity runs through the collection, illustrating the weight of emotion. Langner's facility in writing about grief is also stunning, as there's no intent to hide it or sweep it away. One lives with it everywhere, all the time, as that, too, is life.\"--\u003cstrong\u003eWendy S. Walters\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Erin Langner gives us Las Vegas in all its glittering lights: what makes the city so special and how it contributed to the artist, curator, sister, and mother she is today. Souvenirs from Paradise asks us to consider the places that made us, the weird magic that keeps pulling us home and how we've grown and changed because of it. I loved it.\"--\u003cstrong\u003eMegan Stielstra\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Wrong Way to Save Your Life\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Erin Langner's Souvenirs from Paradise is on one hand a book about Las Vegas, but just as much a brilliant, extended meditation on the menacing allure of the extravagant in a voice that's never cool or pompous, but participatory--always awake to the senses and their mysterious craving. It's not like any other place-based book I've ever read, and it both fed and unsettled me in all the best ways.\"--\u003cstrong\u003ePaul Lisicky\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eLater: My Life at the Edge of the World\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Erin Langner's Souvenirs from Paradise is a deeply moving meditation on family and loss, and the obsessions we turn to in order to distract ourselves from grief. Ironically, through the funhouse mirror of Las Vegas, a city filled with artifice, Langner is able to show us her true reflection, and make sense of herself as a mother and bereaved daughter. The result is a resonant, relatable, and entertaining travelogue of the soul.\"--\u003cstrong\u003eSari Botton\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eAnd You May Find Yourself . . .\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Erin Langner's Souvenirs from Paradise is a gorgeous and intensely intelligent meditation on kitsch, contemporary art, and the glorious madness of Las Vegas, that beacon of \"fun\" beaming in the desert. Crucially, Langner--in the spirit of Joan Didion, Wayne Koestenbaum, Susan Sontag--circles her subjects obsessively, prodding them with her incisive gaze, and worrying the insidiousness and beauty of not just Vegas, but its cultural allegories (Michael Jackson, Disney World).\" --\u003cstrong\u003ePeter Mountford\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Dismal Science\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eErin Langner\u003c\/strong\u003e is an essayist and arts writer. Her work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Offing, Fourth Genre, Hyperallergic, METROPOLIS\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Stranger\u003c\/em\u003e. She resides in Seattle, Washington, where she works in an art museum and lives with her husband and daughter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49297885856061,"sku":"9798218045685","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9798218045685ita.jpg?v=1724946406"},{"product_id":"for-daughters-who-walk-out-like-sons","title":"For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons\u003c\/em\u003e illustrates the struggle of leaving, finding, and trusting good places. Drawing from the Ramayana epic and Biblical accounts, the poems candidly explore the complex dynamics of belonging and faith as a daughter and mother where walking often resembles seeking, changing, and returning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In this spectacular debut, notions of what it means to be beautiful-both inside and out-get complicated with a refreshing vulnerability. Komal Mathew makes captivating poems bubbling over with uncommon wisdom and grace.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eAimee Nezhukumatathil\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons, Komal Mathew presents us with a speaker obsessed not just with leaving home, but with being welcomed upon return: 'The first time I heard \/ the story of the prodigal son, \/ I was in college and always jealous.' The poems in this collection are filled with questions about the journey: How can a woman be certain of her safety in such a dangerous world? Is it possible to return to open arms? 'Who could \/ trust the future with a past like that?' In this stunning book, Mathew lists the dangers that await us in the open world, and she shows us why it's still worth exploring.\" —\u003cstrong\u003ePaige Lewis\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In a gorgeous debut collection, Komal Mathew's poems yield a faith of transparency and yearning, a lyric pulse arisen from the longing of our souls to be clothed with eternity, our heavenly home: 'Though my love for you didn't end \/ because the singing ended, the lullaby \/ moved to a wind that promised a nest…' This lovely book is a festival of light infused with love, bejeweled by the elemental truths in this earthbound life of family, motherhood, and human desire: 'Blessed be the one who hears you cry out \/ like a million pressed stones - \/ jasper, turquoise, emerald with gold - \/ and uncovers your breath of bees.'\" —\u003cstrong\u003eKaren An-hwei Lee\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKomal Mathew \u003c\/strong\u003eis a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003ePoetry, Diode Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Narrative, The New Republic\u003c\/em\u003e, and others. Her debut collection of poems, \u003cem\u003eFor Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons\u003c\/em\u003e, won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She lives with her family in Smyrna, Georgia, where she is working on a middle-grade novel in verse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone 3 Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49298119917885,"sku":"9781733150552","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781733150552ita.jpg?v=1724951630"}],"url":"https:\/\/itascabooks.com\/collections\/zone-3-press.oembed","provider":"Itasca Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}