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AWP, Kansas City, February 2024

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Books

​​Scroll down to browse our various titles, listed here by series: 

​Legacy Series in Short Fiction

Portage Poetry Series

Back Home Series in Nonfiction​​

Heritage Series​

​​J. Baird Callicott Environmental Humanities Series​​​​

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Wisconsin Writers Association, October 2023.


​​​​The Legacy Series in Short Fiction

Story collections by new and emerging writers


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$26.95 | April ​2024 | 242 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-34-9

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RYAN HABERMEYER is the author of the short story collection, The Science of Lost Futures (2018). His prize-winning stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions, Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing & Literature at Salisbury University. 

Find him at rhabermeyer.com

​​​​Salt Folk

Ryan Habermeyer​

Set within a speculative geography that is and is not Utah’s past, present, and future, the panoramic collage of stories and flash fictions in Salt Folk explore the eco-fabulist environs of the American West at the intersections of history and myth. The Yeti, recently deported from the Himalayas, finds himself in a Mormon retirement community. A glacier grows in the toxic valley left behind by the evaporated Great Salt Lake. A librarian collects the residue of a decayed rainbow on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Melancholically absurd, the salty women and foolhardy men in Ryan Habermeyer’s reimagined American West confront catastrophes large and small, magical and mundane, with grotesque optimism and quixotic tenderness.

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Praise for Salt Folk

“Like being given a tour of an eccentric inventor’s laboratory. No matter how closely you watch, from the flick of a switch to the final electrical zap, you never follow exactly how you find, in your open palms, each story’s small miracle.”

—Zach Powers, author of Gravity Changes

“A relentlessly inventive, standout collection. Habermeyer is a fearless and ardent writer. His sentences shimmer, startle, and slay.”

—Michelle Ross, author of They Kept Running

“One of the most innovative and eclectic collections I’ve read in some time…with unforgettable characters, unforeseeable twists, and profound observation.”

—Michael Czyzniejewski, author of The Amnesiac in the Maze

“The crazed crystalline stories found in Habermeyer’s multifaceted Salt Folk work together like cantilevered mobiles of pristine prisms chiming in a gale force wind of pure segmented light.”

—Michael Martone, author of Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana 

​“Habermeyer is an extraordinary stylist…introducing us to a world of marvels transformed through the alchemy of his prose.”

—Trudy Lewis, author of The Empire Rolls




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$24.95 | April ​2024 | 192 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-19-6

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PATRICK NEVINS is the author of Man in a Cage (2022). His stories have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Sundial Magazine, Jabberwock Review, The MacGuffin, and other journals. He lives with his family in Columbus, Indiana, where he is an associate professor of English.

​The Commission of Inquiry

Patrick Nevins

A chimpanzee is stolen from Cameroon and rocketed to space as the test flight for John Glenn’s historic orbit; a former child star struggles to stay sober; a prehistoric mammal imagines a better version of itself; a trio of ragpickers strip Union and Confederate dead of their clothes; a couple sees the woods move; the former commissaire of the French Congo investigates atrocities. Eclectic in its breadth and startling in its power, The Commission of Inquiry investigates life, death, and other matters, as Patrick Nevins delivers twenty stories built to surprise, challenge, and even change us.

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Praise for The Commission of Inquiry

“‘But I want to know what they’re saying.’ Readers of this wide-ranging, far-reaching collection will keep turning pages, spurred on by that wanting, too.”

—Sara Lippmann, author of Lech and Jerks

The Commission of Inquiry traverses time and space and even species to plumb the depths of human failings and longings. . . . Through it all, Patrick Nevins moors his impressive range of subjects with profound insights into who we are.”

—Jennifer Wortman, author of This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love.

“Wonderful and bracing doesn’t begin to describe this collection, and I read these stories with the enthusiasm of a kid given a View-Master for the first time. Nevins’ range is incredible, and as one moves through these stories the feeling of what is possible opens up for the reader even as, for the characters, things may be–and often are–closing down. Enos the chimp has my heart.”

—Ethan Rutherford, author of Farthest South: Stories​




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$24.95 | April ​2024 | 198 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-20-2

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TIM CONRAD holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a PhD from Western Michigan University. His work has been published in journals such as Story, Willow Springs, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Quarterly West. He teaches creative writing at Michigan State University.

The Machine We Trust

Tim Conrad

A boy attends summer camp where campers are tasked with managing their own flocks of sheep; a set of brothers kidnap their father’s prized pet buffalo; a young man travels the country with his mother, a peripatetic professor who has pioneered a radical service-learning curriculum; an unemployed man attempts to teach himself to beat a polygraph test. In The Machine We Trust, Tim Conrad’s narrators and characters come of age in a surreal American landscape—sometimes late, sometimes unsuccessfully. With exacting prose that searches and clutches, Conrad exposes the cracks where hearts are broken, and redemption is just one chance away.

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Praise for The Machine We Trust

“Tim Conrad is something of a Raymond Carver for the new millennium—his everyday people glow with the power of loss and suppressed longing.”

—Wendy Brenner, author of Large Animals In Everyday Life

“Gifted with a devilish wit like Lorrie Moore’s, and George Saunders’ marvelous sense of the weird—and a gloriously imaginative and utterly compelling voice entirely his own—Tim Conrad gives us tales both fantastically fabulist and devastatingly true. So nestle in—just as if you were curling up in Paul Bunyan’s enormous outstretched palm.”

—Thisbe Nissen, author of How Other People Make Love

“Tim Conrad’s debut story collection takes readers through an American Midwest filled with men and women living on the margins, surrounded by chain-link fences, both resented and needed, not just of the landscape but of the heart. Together, these stories are a tender portrait of our desire for love and acceptance, all told in language that is suspenseful, moving, and perfectly written.”

—Michael Nye, author of Until We Have Faces



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$24.95 | April ​2024 | 190 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-21-9

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BRETT BIEBEL is the author of 48 Blitz (2020) and Winter Dance Party (2023). His short fiction has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction and featured in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Stories. He teaches writing and literature at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.

​​​Gridlock

Brett Biebel

There’s a 200-mile long traffic jam on I-94, and people are going to be stuck there for days. Maybe weeks. Told in striking, kinetic flashes, Brett Biebel’s Gridlock explores the event, its origins in American political, athletic, and romantic institutions, and its impact on all the individual lives that go on in its shadow. Four roommates order a Japanese sex robot. A man designs a book review algorithm. Sentient pitching machines debate life, death, and violence, and bags of deli ham fly across trashy grocery store parking lots as the cars idle. Day in and day out. Their gears grinding down to nothing, or, well. Maybe it’s something after all.

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Praise for Gridlock

“At the end of this book I felt as if I had been witness both to dazzling diagnosis and dazzling mystery.”

—Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback SpecialNational Book Award finalist

“Poignant and inspired, evaporating the gridlock that can blind us all to our own humanity.”

—Leigh Allison Wilson, author of From the Bottom Up 

“Each wildly different story in Gridlock begins with a terrific first sentence that announces the world of the story, then moves along at a headlong, hellbent pace that is totally mesmerizing to end with a perfect last line.”

—Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications 

“Beautifully crafted, these stories will invite you, no, tell you to read and re-read them as you get to know the wonderful landscape Brett Biebel has created.”

—Francine Witte, author of Just Outside the Tunnel of Love






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$24.95 | November ​2023 | 178 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-09-7

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KEVIN CLOUTHER is the author of We Were Flying to Chicago: Stories (2014). He is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha Writer’s Workshop, where he directs the MFA in Writing. He lives with his wife and two children in Omaha.

M​​aximum Speed​

Kevin Clouther​

Like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Kevin Clouther’s Maximum Speed moves across time and point of view to dramatize youth’s aftershocks. The unifying presence in three characters’ lives is Billy, an apprentice drug dealer in South Florida. His improbable appearance twenty years after his death reconnects ​Nick, Andrea, and Jim with each other and with the shared secret of their past.​

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To ​order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Maximum Speed

“These wonderfully evocative, interconnected stories are about growing up, growing apart, and how modern communications technology enables distant figures from the past to suddenly be brought into the present.”

—Booklist

"Kevin Clouther joins the ranks of Karen Russell and Lauren Groff with this hypnagogic livestream from America's unconscious id . . . AKA Florida. With wounded, spiked prose in the Chekhovian observational style, brightened with a humane levity of heart, Maximum Speed spins us around the maypole of the gouged lives of four friends. This book has authorial soul, and soul lasts, as will these diamond-scratched pages." 

—Tom Paine, author of Scar Vegas

“With meticulous craft and profound compassion, Clouther conjures this vibrant collection of connected stories of friends wrestling the ghosts of their past. Balancing heart and humor, Maximum Speed bears witness to the raw hope of youth and the bittersweet wisdom of age.” 

—Frances de Pontes Peebles, author of The Air You Breathe

“These elegantly braided stories, told in precise, crystalline prose, create a vivid portrait of friendship and loneliness, of nostalgia and loss. Moving effortlessly between humor and heartbreak, these stories add up, as in the best linked collections, to a rich and varied world of tenderness and beauty.” 

—Nathan Oates, author of A Flaw in the Design and The Empty House: Stories 


Reviews, Interviews, & Media
Booklist​​​​Large Hearted Boy​​​Hypertext

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$24.95 | November ​2023 | 208 pp

Paperback | 979-1-960329-10-3

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JOHN MICHAEL CUMMMINGS is the award-winning author of three novels and over one hundred short stories. His short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The North American Review, The Iowa Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. He lives in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where his family has lived for six generations.


​The​​ Spirit in My Shoes

John Michael Cummings​

Featuring twenty-three stories, John Michael Cummings’s debut story collection brims with the vitality and complexity of our shared humanity. In tales that conjure comparisons to John Updike, Raymond Carver, and William Gay, Cummings tells the truth about loneliness, relationships, and the common struggles we all face with prose both precise and vibrant. Cummings’s voice, assured yet questioning, will stay with you long after you’ve finished The Spirit in My Shoes.​​

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To ​order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Praise for The Spirit in My Shoes

​“Alternatingly funny, touching, and at times surprising, but wholly satisfying in its weight and depth.”

Kali White, author of The Monsters We Make

“A remarkable collection of stories thrumming with subtle probing humor and quiet insight.”

—Aimee Parkison, author of Girl Zoo

“In the flawed, indomitable spirits of these characters, we see ourselves. An unforgettable collection.” 

—Gerry Wilson, author of Crosscurrents and Other Stories

“A wonderfully thoughtful work by an obvious master of the short form.” 

—Sung J. Woo, author of Skin Deep and Everything Asian

“In the wide range of Cummings’s concerns, readers will find not only much to contemplate but also much to celebrate.” 

—Ron Tanner, author of Far West and Missile Paradise 
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Reviews, Interviews, & Media
The Journal (Harpers Ferry, WV)​​​​The Frederick News-Post (WV)​​​
Charleston Gazette-Mail (WV)​​​​Spirit of Jefferson (Charles Town, WV)​​​
Eastern Panhandle Talk​​​

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$24.95 | November ​2023 | 184 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-13-4​

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JANE CURTIS holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and attended New York University on a National Endowment for the Humanities award. Her stories have been published in Midwest Review and the Rosebud Literary Magazine. She lives in southeastern Wisconsin.


​Reach Her in This Light​​​​​

​Jane Curtis

Eleanor, a strong woman who pours disastrous relationships into writing stories; Amy, radicalized by racist interactions directed toward her daughter; Maddy, taken to writing the lyrics to her own sad songs; and Louise, who is saved from despondency by her vegetable garden. Four women living in Madison, Wisconsin. Four lives woven together by Jane Curtis, in her vibrant and explorative debut. Told with flashes of song, sensuality, and sincerity, Reach Her in This Light unfolds as a fiery and empathetic mosaic of lives lived, as four women each search for their own kind of freedom.

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To ​order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Reach Her in This Light

“Like fragments of colored glass, these brief pieces present glimmering shards of happening, moments of connection in the lives of an intriguing cast of characters who blink in and out of each other’s stories, gradually accumulating to combine into a colorfully vivid mosaic of coming of age in the Midwest in the 1960s.” 

—Christopher Chambers, author of Kind of Blue and Delta 88

“These spare, linked, beautifully written stories rise like bread into a poetic and moving whole. Whole lives, notably less affluent women’s lives, are revealed and celebrated in their telling.”  

—Jeffrey D. Boldt, author of Blue Lake

“Despite upheaval, these women are centered and true, never bitter or jaded. They endure husbands dying, lovers who wander in and slip off, a child’s untimely passing, adolescent rebellion and skids into poverty. Still, they reach one another, and others in the light.” 

—Ruth Holladay, The Indianapolis Star
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​Reviews & Interviews

Madison Magazine


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$24.95 | October ​2023 | 184 pp

Paperback | 979-1-960329-12-7

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LEAH MCCORMACK's work has appeared in New England Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Redivider, Fiction, Prairie Fire, The Portland Review, Hotel Amerika, Big Muddy, and REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters. She teaches creative writing at the University of South Dakota.

​Fugit​ive Daydreams

Leah McCormack​​​

Blending elements of fiction and nonfiction, Fugitive Daydreams dares to challenge the boundaries of the short story by blurring the lines between convention and experimentation. Leah McCormack’s debut collection features a house as alive as its inhabitants, a mother dealing with multiple sclerosis and dementia, a pair of conjoined twins getting separated, dysfunctional families struggling with expectations and middle-class realities, and a writer pushing against gendered aggression. With power and stylistic inventiveness, McCormack embraces the absurd while refusing to look away from painful truths.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Praise for Fugitive Daydreams

“McCormack’s stories do nothing to protect anyone—especially the writer herself, and she is a writer, and a good one.” 

—Pete Dexter, author of Paris Trout, National Book Award winner

“I love the restless energy of this collection, and I admire its perfect fusion of urgency and playfulness.” 

—Chris Bachelder, ​author of The Throwback Special, National Book Award finalist

​“Fugitive Daydreams is an important and beautifully written book.” 

—Patrick O’Keefe, author of The Visitors and The Hill Road, Story Prize winner 

​“By turns furious, melancholy, and tender, these stories are gems.”  

—Leah Stewart, author of What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw

​“A remarkable, and remarkably brave, first book.” 

—Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? ​




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$24.95 | October ​2023 | 212 pp

Paperback | 979-1-960329-08-0

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JEFF ESTERHOLM is an award-winning story writer. His fiction has been published widely in Midwestern Gothic, Shotgun Honey, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Beat to a Pulp, Crime Factory, Mystery Tribune, Pulp Modern, Tough, Yellow Mama, and many other venues. He lives in Superior, Wisconsin.​

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​​​​The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories​​

Jeff Esterholm​

​The last good time in the Great Lakes region, the so-called Third Coast gouged into the Upper Midwest of America, was in the shipbuilding era of the two world wars. But even in 1941, in Port Nicollet, Wisconsin, a certain taint grew and spread. It was a port city: sketchy men; fresh-faced boys; salesmen with their sample cases; able-bodied seamen. Always passing through. Occasionally, the locals glimpsed opportunity, but, just as quickly, it was gone. The prospect of something better could not gain purchase on the south shore of Lake Superior. It was as if the people and region, an area in the distant past promoted by developers as the next Chicago, had slipped the moorings and drifted, minus captain and crew, on the waters of Lake Superior. In The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories, Jeff Esterholm explores what happens when people slip their moorings and are set adrift.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Prai​​se for The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories

“Esterholm writes characters who burrow under your skin. One of the best collections of short crime fiction I’ve read in recent memory.” 

—William Boyle, author of Shoot the Moonlight Out

“Maybe the neon of a North End tavern or the lake boats calling in the lonely night brings out the worst in people. One thing I know is Esterholm can write.” 

—Anthony Bukoski, author of The Blondes of Wisconsin

​“Peopled with folks who live dark lives without knowing exactly the why’s or how’s of how it all happened . . . history, story, despair, hope, all in such sparse wording. A compelling read.” 

—Marcie Rendon, author of Sinister Graves

​“A master storyteller at work.” 

—C.W. Blackwell, author of Hard Mountain Clay​

"Esterholm delivers a watertight collection of short crime stories deftly written with prose cut to the bone but never lacking a poet's sensibilities."

—Sean Patrick Little, author of the Abe & Duff Mysteries


Reviews & Interviews

The Cap Times (Madison, WI)​​​Wisconsin Writers Association​
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel​Madison MagazineSean Patrick Little

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$24.95 | October ​2023 | 234 pp

Paperback | 979-1-960329-07-3

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JODY HOBBS HESLER lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills. Her stories and other work have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Necessary Fiction, CRAFT, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia.




​​What​ Mak​es You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better

Jody Hobbs Hesler​​​

​The grisly death of the hermit outsider in a tight-knit neighborhood prompts a young mom to yearn for solitude. A man wrestles with regrets from a 30-year-old affair while his wife hovers toward death in the ICU. An older, childless woman aches to rescue the seemingly mistreated child she observes in the grocery store. And a girl's desire to avoid the party her father dragged her to nearly gets her abducted. Told with restraint and deep compassion against the backdrop of Virginia back streets and small towns, Jody Hobbs Hesler's debut collection shines with its portraits of longing, disconnection, and the ache for renewal and redemption that comes from our own frailties.​

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Praise for What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better

"Hesler's writing is carefully crafted, with plots that create suspense and often a surprising twist at the end. Although potential for horror lurks in some of the plots, it is an uplifting book that speaks about the ways people can help make each other's lives better."

Rivanna Review

"In this brilliant debut...Hesler demonstrates the ironic understanding of humanity, the deep compassion, and the literary skill of a serious, new fiction writer."

Exacting Clam

"Eloquent, articulate, original, memorable, deftly crafted, What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better: Stories by author Jody Hobbs Hesler is a literary treat throughout and an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as community, and college/university library Literary Fiction & Short Story Anthology collections."

Midwest Book Review

There’s a loneliness running through this collection, a recognition that no matter how many people we may have in our circle, we can never fully connect with another, never quite shake that sense of detachment that comes with being an individual.

Heavy Feather Review

​​Reviews, Interviews, & Media

HypertextElectric Literature​​The Writer's Story
Midwest Book Review​​Vol. 1 Brooklyn​​Writer's Digest​​
​​BloomThe Cavalier Daily (VA)​​​​CRAFT
​​Cambridge Common Writers Heavy Feather Review Exacting Clam


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$24.95 | February ​2023 | 204 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-35-9


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JENNY ROBERTSON is a fiction writer and poet from Minnesota and Michigan currently living in Wisconsin. Her chapbook of short fiction, Hard Winter, First Thaw, was published in 2009. Her fiction has appeared in Hypertext Magazine, South Carolina Review, Cutthroat, Gulf Stream, Flyway, and SLAB.



​Hoist House: A Novella & Stories

Jenny Robertson

Cher Bebe manages the dance floor and flogs patrons at a nightclub while his estranged father takes his last breaths back home; a man walks a moonlit trail through his ancestral lands on his way to abduct a child; a Michigan tornado spotter grieves the end of his marriage; Maggie Pancake returns to her Minnesota hometown, jilted by her fiancée, a professional clown; and the titular novella follows fourteen-year-old Sadie and her Finnish immigrant mining family in Iron Range Minnesota in the months leading up to the Milford Mining disaster of 1924. With power and compassion, Jenny Robertson weaves tales that explore the precarity of immigrant life, worker exploitation, the tensions and dangers inherent in growing up, and the ephemeral nature of the American Dream.


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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Hoist House

“These comedies and tragedies are sweaty and fragrant, brimming with energy, and the language is exuberant.”

—Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist, author of American Salvage

​​“Beautiful and shattering, these stories cut deep grooves into my memory.” 

—Alexandra Lytton Regalado, author of Relinquenda

​“Jenny Robertson’s stories evoke my favorite Midwestern writers: Jon Hassler, Joan Chase, and Jim Harrison—no-nonsense storytellers who lure you in with a sentence and then keep you rapt with prose as straight as an arrow aimed at your heart. Hoist House is everything you could possibly want in​​ a debut.”

—John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph

“Every next story took me deeper, and deeper into that human realm where hilarity and tears combine in a rare and lovely kind of magic.”

—Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New & Selected

“Robertson has conjured a stunning debut that every reader should cherish.”

—Craig Lesley, author of Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman

Reviews & Interviews

Grey Sea & Sky (Hillary Moses Mohaupt)​ KAXE (Northern Minnesota)

South Carolina ReviewSouth Carolina Review.pdf



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$21.95 | February 2023 | 148 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-34-2

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COREY MERTES grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. His short stories have appeared in many journals and have been shortlisted for the Tartts Fiction Award, the American Fiction Short Story Award, and the Hudson Prize. This is his first collection.

​Self-Defense

Corey Mertes

A morally dubious chef reacts unconventionally when he comes to believe that his prized dog has killed the pet rabbit of the middle-school girl next door; an angry, second-rate actor seeks a life-affirming path in a place that offers only oddities and  dreams; two gamblers descend into chaos and despair; and a love affair between an aging Texas wildcatter and a mercurial art teacher at his son’s school goes tragically awry. Crackling with lyricism, hard-bitten truths, and soaring prose, the twelve stories in Corey Mertes’s Self-Defense follow their down-on-their-luck protagonists through life’s narrow passes to its snow-covered valleys below.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Self-Defense

“There’s no artifice to be found here. Mertes is the real deal, not so much writing stories as he is bringing them out of hiding as though by séance.” 

—Jeff Vande Zande, author of Rules of Order

"With striking prose and exactitude, Corey Mertes's Self-Defense follows a collection of strange, sad, but wholly unique characters through twelve unforgettable stories, all seeking a version of self-defense against their own demons and disappointments. A gritty but emotionally sensitive clutch of tales."

Kali White, author of The Monsters We Make

“The characters in Corey Mertes’s debut collection desperately try to defend themselves against the lure of drugs and booze and the scourges of illness and infidelity. Self-Defense may be full of failed dreams, but it is charged with memorable characters, whip-smart dialogue, and bleak landscapes rendered beautiful by the author’s lyrical prose.” 

—Rita Ciresi, author of Pink Slip and Sometimes I Dream in Italian

Reviews & Interviews

West Trade Review In Kansas CityThe Pitch 

Kansas City StarKansas City Star - Local Literary Spotlight (051423).pdf


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$24.95 | February 2023 | 198 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-36-6

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JAMES B. DE MONTE received an MFA from Kent State University and a PhD from the University of Toledo. His novella, Brotherhood (2015), was longlisted for Shakespeare and Company’s Paris Literary Prize, and his short fiction has appeared in The Showcase, Fjords Review, and Italian America. He lives in Northeast Ohio with his wife and four sons.​

​Where Are Your People From?

James B. De Monte

Meet Giacomo Agostini, retired coal miner and first-generation American, a son of foreigners, a Depression kid who never got over it, the second-oldest living member of the St. Theresa’s Knights of Columbus hall, and a pick-and-shovel man from Appalachian Ohio. Spanning ninety years, James B. De Monte’s Where Are Your People From? explores the fellowship and hardship of Midwest Italian-Americans in the post-industrial Appalachian region of Ohio through the eyes of a son of immigrants. With authenticity, humor, and grace, De Monte delivers a truly American story.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Where Are Your People From?

“A completely original, ambitious collection of stories skillfully united by voice, place, and spirit. While spanning decades of struggle in one Italian-American family, De Monte writes with both humor and pathos of these complex, unvarnished working-class lives.” 

—Jim Ray Daniels, author of The Perp Walk and Gun/Shy

“By turns elegaic and brimming with vivid, immediate life, James DeMonte’s collection evokes the soul and concern of Carlo Levi and the gorgeous rough detail of the Appalachian writer Breece Pancake. The reach is bold, novelistic, the individual stories break ground into the soil of Frank O’Connor’s ‘submerged populations."

—Varley O'Connor, author of The Welsh Fasting Girl and The Master's Muse

“It’s about storylines, and how those stories we pass on give us the power to know ourselves, and the hope that we might be remembered after we’re gone.”

​—Joseph Bates, author of The Strikeout Artist and Tomorrowland: Stories

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$24.95 | February 2023 | 192 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-33-5

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NIKKI KALLIO is an award-winning writer, editor, and educator. Her work has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Minerva Rising, Wisconsin People & Ideas, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in central Wisconsin.​



​Finding the Bones: Stories & A Novella

Nikki Kallio​​

A father tries to explain to his daughter what Earth was like, a boy believes his mother has been abducted by aliens, a ghost hunter wonders if her absent father is a deceased serial killer, and in the near future the sun makes people go insane. Weaving science fiction, gothic storytelling, and paranormality into eight stories and a novella, Nikki Kallio establishes herself as a fresh, innovative, and compassionate voice in speculative fiction and magical realism.

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FINALIST, Fiction: Short Story​, American Book Fest Best Book Awards 2023 

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​FINALIST, Cygnus Award in Science Fiction, Chanticleer International Book Awards 2023

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​​To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise f​​​or Finding the Bones

“With themes of home and homelessness, destruction and humanity, Nikki Kallio delivers a focused and nuanced collection with whimsical and surreal connections to Wisconsin and the Midwest. These are very fine stories.” 

—Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed

“Nikki Kallio . . . deftly moves through time and space to illustrate griefs both massive and particular, as well as the impossibility of understanding and loving anything new.” 

Rebecca Meacham, author of Let’s Do and Morbid Curiosities

Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection" Wisconsin Writers Association

Windy City Reviews A Geography of ReadingReaders' Favorite 



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$24.95 | January 2023 | 234 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-76-4

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STEVE FOX is the winner of the Rick Bass/Montana Prize for Fiction, an American Book Fest Best Book Award, and the Zona Gale Award. His work has appeared in or been recognized by Midwestern Gothic, Narrative Magazine, The Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Sciences & Letters, The Iowa Review, Whitefish Review, Cutbank, the Wisconsin Writers Association, and more. Steve lives in Wisconsin with his wife, three boys, and one dog.



​Someti​mes Creek

Steve Fox

The seventeen unrelenting stories in Steve Fox’s debut story collection, Sometimes Creek, traverse a sub-zero trail of plausible magic and grit from a kaleidoscope of broken ice at a hockey rink in Wisconsin that coils through haunted rivers and around dangling legs of jamón serrano in sweltering Spanish bars and back again to a place where Kafka and Carver meet up on the page. Fox’s clean prose takes you by the hand and weaves a tapestry of tenderness, dissonance, indifference, dystopia, and charm into that gauzy space that collectively takes shape in your hands as Sometimes Creek.

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WINNER, Fiction: Short Story, American Book Fest Best Book Awards 2023 

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WINNER, Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction, Wisconsin Writers Awards 2022

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FINALIST, Indie Fiction, Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Awards 2023

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Someti​mes Creek

"An astute, confident writer spins grim but entrancing tales."

​—Kirkus Reviews

“Perfectly Midwestern, perfect portraits of perfectly imperfect people. Like coal that never turns into diamonds, but sparks up just the same.” 

​—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

“You fall into these words, are enveloped by these lives, troubled by the uncanny—coming away from this collection moved, haunted, and not quite intact.”

—Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion

“Endlessly surprising, strange, and satisfying.”

—Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

“Hardscrabble and tender, these seventeen story gems gleam in Midwestern dust.”

—Amy Cipolla Barnes, author of Ambrotypes

Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Kirkus Reviews Madison MagazineWisconsin State Journal

Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection" Madison BookBeat

Wisconsin Writers Association CutBank (interview)

CutBank (review) Twin Cities Pioneer Press

Eyes on Imagination​ Hudson Star Observer​​

New Books in Literature​​ Wisconsin People & Ideas​​


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$24.95 | January 2023 | 184 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-77-1

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JOE BAUMANN is the author of Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise. His fiction and essays have appeared in Phantom Drift, Passages North, Emerson Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and many others.​


​The Plagues​

Joe Baumann

The biblical plagues that overtook Egypt in the book of Exodus are transported into the twenty-first century in The Plagues, a collection of eleven stories that take place primarily in St. Louis, Missouri, and its surrounding suburban areas, and Lafayette, Louisiana. Frogs, flies, blood, and boils descend upon a cast of primarily young, LGBTQ+ characters, all searching in some way for love and acceptance amidst burgeoning sexual awakenings. Equal parts playful and personal, Joe Baumann’s The Plagues does more than recast the past; it charts a way forward.

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To order directly from the press, email 
cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Plagues

“Over and again, Baumann’s characters reach across the ever-widening gulfs opened by the ever-increasing weirdness of their worlds for human connection, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but that’s where the hope lies.” 

Adam Brooke Davis, editor of Green Hills Literary Lantern

“Joe Baumann is a force of nature, and his collection is imaginative, heartfelt, and brilliant, and an absolute must-have.” 

Aura Martin, author of Butterflies Over Flame

Reviews & Interviews

Peculiar Journal


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$24.95 | November 2022 | 220 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-72-6

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CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS was born in Madison, Wisconsin and has since lived in North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana. He’s back in Wisconsin where he works as a bartender, an editor, and a teacher in a state prison.



​Kind of Blue

Christopher Chambers

The stories in Kind of Blue juke and jive in an unpredictable voice-driven romp. Set in rural Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, and South Florida, these are stories that start and stop and surprise, swerving all over the road.These are stories of wanderlust and music, loss and misdirection, disasters large and small. With the sound and rhythm of language driving each tale, Christopher Chambers gives voice to the working- and middle-class worlds of the American Midwest and the South.

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Praise for Kind of Blue

“I finished it feeling as if the man had left little pieces of his soul on every page, and I swear to God I lost count of the number of sentences I wish I had written.” 

Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table

“Chambers accomplishes what only the best writers can; he makes every character feel both universal and unique, each setting both a vacation and a return home.” 

M.O. Walsh, New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize

Reviews & Interviews

Madison Magazine


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$28.95 | October 2022 | 374 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-73-3

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ELISE GREGORY received her MFA from Eastern Washington University. Gregory’s poems and fiction have appeared in various, national literary journals. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Domestic Spiral and Aftermath, as well as the co-editor of an anthology, All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood (with Emily Gwinn). She lives with her family and animals in western Wisconsin.​

​The Clayfields

Elise Gregory

In The Clayfields, Elise Gregory’s powerful debut, the lives of three women are threaded together through the changing backdrops of farming communities in the twenty-first century. Where country churches are closing and old man bars are turning into wineries, an eclectic mix of characters must decide to evolve with new forces or leave their settler roots for new lives.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Clayfields

“Elise Gregory has brought a world to life in this beautiful, engaging book. ” 

Samuel Ligon, author of Wonderland

The Clayfields is a sensual and heartfelt debut.” 

Keith Lesmeister, author of We Could Have Been Happy Here

Reviews

Volume One   Madison Magazine 2023 "Don't Miss Collection"

​Twin Cities Pioneer Press Cutleaf

Wisconsin People & Ideas




$21.95 | March 2022 | 150 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-04-3

eBook | 978-1-960329-16-5​

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DAWN BURNS is a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction and founder and co-organizer of the SwampFire Retreat for Artists and Writers. She was the recipient of a 2014 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Fiction. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.


​Evangelina​ Everyday

Dawn Burns

Evangelina is as everyday as women come. If she were a landscape, she'd be a patch of woods on the edge of a fallow Indiana field, her edges visible from all directions from miles away. Nothing special on the outside. A disturbance to nobody. One might think her a boring, self-contained Midwestern housewife. Mixing humor and sincerity, Dawn Burns roots her debut collection firmly in the minutiae of Midwestern life, focusing on the inner life of one who suffers the annoyances of a Midwestern lifestyle in a manner all her own, a manner filled with anxious contemplation of the worth of her life.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Evangelina Everyday

Evangelina Everyday is dazzling in its balance of satiric fun and serious storytelling, underscoring the stifling safety of traditional women’s roles and the vulnerability involved in accepting one’s own socially disruptive desires.” 

Mary Catherine Harper, author of Some Gods Don’t Need Saints

“Evangelina dreams of what feels to her like the boldest fantasy of all: getting to somehow be her full self. Burns renders this vivid inner world with compassion and a sharp eye for emotional detail. As a result, Evangelina Everyday is an invitation to hope—to hope that what is bound can become free.” 

David Ebenbach, author of Miss Portland and How to Mars

Reviews

Steve Henn ​Pan-o-ply: Story & Art Michiana


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$21.95 | January 2022 | 268 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-67-0

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JAMIE LYN SMITH is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her work has appeared in The Pinch, Mississippi Review, The Kenyon Review, American Literary Review, Yemassee, and Bayou. She is a 2020 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.​


Township​

Jamie Lyn Smith

Set in Appalachian Ohio, Jamie Lyn Smith’s debut short story collection, Township, explores a region and the rotating cast of characters who call it home. With honesty and empathy, Smith closely examines the strains that intimate family ties put on lives worn raw by collective history. Ultimately, the nine stories in Township interrogate the notion of reconciliation, examining whether people can truly change and if forgiveness is possible.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Township

“Supple, deeply rooted in place, and astonishing in their bite and wit, the stories in Township reveal Jamie Lyn Smith’s mastery of the form.” 

David Lynn, Editor Emeritus of The Kenyon Review

“Jamie Lyn Smith’s voice rings with the authenticity of hard-won wisdom. The stories in her debut collection, Township, open the hearts of the broken and put-upon and find the underside of the overlooked, the ignored, the tossed-away, the miscreant, the wild, the wandering.” 

Lee Martin, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Bright Forever

Reviews & Interviews

Kenyon CollegeBexley Public Library (OH)Dayton Daily News (OH) 

Writer Writer Pants on Fire Now, Appalachia


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$18.95 | December 2020 | 202 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-64-9

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PATRICIA ANN MCNAIR has managed a gas station, served as a medical volunteer in Honduras, sold pots and pans door to door, tended bar and breaded mushrooms, worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and taught in the English and Creative Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago for many years. She is the author of the award winning collection The Temple of Air.



Responsible Adults 

Patricia Ann McNair

In Responsible Adults, a mother uses her reluctant adolescent daughter as a model for her art photography. “Your mother loves you best when you are ugly,” the girl comes to believe. A stepfather attacks a neighbor boy for exposing a shameful secret to his stepdaughter. A pregnant and undocumented young woman brings new life to a failing church and its dwindling congregation. Farms fail, families break apart, work is hard to come by, and the characters in these fictional Midwestern towns are fueled by grief and hope, loss and desire. What happens when responsible adults are anything but responsible people? When they are at best, irresponsible, and at worst, dangerous?

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Responsible Adults

"​Edgy, empathically imagined, and strongly crafted."​​

Booklist

“Responsible Adults is devastating, in the best possible way. . . . Readers are wiser and more compassionate for knowing these stories.” 

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage, National Book Award Finalist

"In this remarkable collection, McNair hits her writerly stride with a sureness that is nothing less than breathtaking.” 

Christine Maul Rice, author of Swarm Theory

Reviews & Interviews

New City LitNational Book ReviewLiterary Hub 

InterlochenChicago Review of BooksColumbia Chronicle 

Fiction Writers Review Solstice Literary Magazine  Superstition Review Booklist  



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$18.95 | December 2019 | 236 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-61-8

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JOSEPH O'MALLEY was born and raised in Detroit. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now lives in New York City.​



Gre​at Escapes from Detroit

Joseph O'Malley

In Great Escapes from Detroit, Joseph O'Malley tells stories of families living in Detroit. In an imperfect city that beckons and repels, these characters probe the ever-shifting terrain of the human heart, where the tenacious pull and push of love, trepidation, and occasional joy plays out as they navigate the opposing impulses that exist in all families: to embrace their circumstances, or to escape. Whether it's the father who fears he may have spawned a monstrously violent child, the woman overwhelmed by dealing with a crazy neighbor while caring for her ailing father, the teenage boy who finds that asceticism won't shield him from the horrors or the joys of life, or the happy woman who can't help her severely depressed husband, these stories reveal the throbbing kernel of hope that persists even in the most dire circumstances.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Great Escapes from Detroit

“The stories in Great Escapes from Detroit are luminous with what lesser writers miss—the magic and the splendor of the commonplace come alive.” 

Lee Martin, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Bright Forever

"The work in this collection documents high stakes emotional moments while being surprisingly restrained. Great Escapes from Detroit is a marvel." 

Daniel Libman, author of Married but Looking

Reviews 

Bookish


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$18.95 | December 2018 | 242 pp

Paperback | 978-0-984673-97-1

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KIM SUHR lives and writes in south-eastern Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Wisconsin People & Ideas, Midwest Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, and others. She is the director of Red Oak Writing.​


Nothing to​ Lose 

Kim Suhr

Drawing on the rich complexity of the American Midwest, Kim Suhr peoples her debut book of fiction with characters that we know, carved out of the Wisconsin landscape and caught between expectation and desire. An Iraq war veteran stalks the streets of Madison. Four drunk friends hunt deer outside of Antigo. A mother tries to save her son. A transplanted New Yorker plots revenge against her husband. A man sobers up and opens a paintball range for Jesus. A woman with nothing to lose waits for her first kiss.

2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist! — Kergan Edwards-Stout

FINALIST, Short Story Collections, Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2020-2021

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu


Praise for Nothing to Lose

“It seems as if Kim Suhr doesn’t invent characters; rather, she channels them. She finds a perfect balance between the plainspoken thoughts of her unlikely heroes and the exquisitely chiseled prose of her own voice. 'Oh him,' you might think; 'Oh, her'; and then the punch of a story’s turn makes you gasp with recognition.” 

Sandra Scofield, National Book Award finalist, author of Beyond Deserving, Swim, and The Last Draft

“Suhr’s is the kind of voice that makes me feel held in the storyteller’s hand.” 

Steven Huff, author of Blissful and Other Stories

Reviews & Interviews

Christi Craig Wisconsin Author Review Lake Effect (WUWM 89.7)Milwaukee Journal Sentinel




$18.95 | December 2017 | 188 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-05-0

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SUSANNE DAVIS is an award-winning writer. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her fiction and nonfiction have been included in the Notre Dame Review, Am​erican Short Fiction, Clackamas Literary Review, Harvard Law Bulletin, Feminist Studies, St. Petersburg Review, and others. She lives in Glastonbury, Connecticut.


The Appointed Hour

Susanne Davis

The Appointed Hour shines a compassion​ate light on a changing rural America, spanning generations and locations by exploring the emotions that accompany life’s trials. The heart-wrenching challenges draw Davis's characters together in feelings of love, loss, hope, and community, united throughout history by the place they call home.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Appointed Hour

“A shatteringly original collection of short stories from an extraordinary writer.” 

Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You

“There are moments and imagery in this collection that will follow you through your days and take your breath away.” 

Maddie Dawson, author of The Stuff That Never Happened

Reviews & Interviews

Carolineleavittville The Day The Daily Campus (UConn) 

The Heroine's Circle

The Portage Poetry Series

P​athbreaking poetry collections

​ 

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$21.95 | April 2024 | 124 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-37-0

Rae Gouirand is also the author of two collections of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water (2018) and Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize, 2011), the chapbooks Rough Sequence (winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award, 2023), Little Hour (winner of the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, 2022), Jinx (winner of the Summer Kitchen Competition, 2019), and Must Apple (winner of the Oro Fino Competition,  2018), and a short work of nonfiction, The History of Art (winner of The Atlas Review’s Open Reading Competition 2019). She lectures in the Department of English at the University of California-Davis. ​​


The Velvet Book

Rae Gouirand

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Praise for The Velvet Book

"When stargazing, certain phenomena can only be seen with peripheral sight. I’m reminded of this fact by Rae Gouirand’s long poem The Velvet Book, whose indirect engagement with subjects yields true vision. Love, death, the past, what might yet be possible, what a self is and is not—all are strung together here like sumptuous, light-shot gems, and the couplets that carry them flow easily as brook water, page into page into page. This book is a beautiful experience."

—Christopher Nelson
 
"By turns measured, sharp, slippery, and ecstatic, Rae Gouirand’s The Velvet Book is a stunning achievement. With a studious, prismatic eye (and ear), Gouirand attends to the sumptuous and mysterious folds of velvet, of the space between what we wear and who we are, of the overlap between interior and exterior. Ultimately, this book is a learned, generous, and queer meditation on commitment, on 'the question of how to stay/and then how to allow for drift,' on the marriage between the self and the other that finds itself in language and the body of the beloved."

—Brent Armendinger
 
"The Velvet Book is restless, it refuses to settle. Under the cover of velvet, dreaming velvet, it feels its edges and disorientations, its zones of endlessness. Here, thought rustles and deepens, velvet-tongued, and moves us to impossibly dizzying places where everything touches. The Velvet Book is heartfelt, questing, sumptuous—a meditation on grief and love and their textures, on what is and isn’t possible to promise, on what it means to be a fully available living self."

—Richard Siken

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$21.95 | April 2024 | 114 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-36-3

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Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her family. A two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Never One for Promises (2018), Little Human Things (2020), and The Weather Gods (2023). 

A Bright Wound

Sarah A. Etlinger

How does a daughter forge her own life in a situation fraught with loss, grief, and the weight of her mother’s expectations? Sarah A. Etlinger’s re-telling of the myth of Persephone and Demeter is coupled with poems about everyday experiences related to motherhood, aging parents, and grief. Themes and symbols associated with Judaism—the pomegranate, the seasonal rituals, the matrilineal culture—play a crucial role as Etlinger explores the interconnectedness of these two ancient cultures. Poems about modern-day life parallel the themes of loss and the unexpected jewels that can come from grief: forgiveness, self-awareness, and a more deeply-rooted connection.​

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Praise for A Bright Wound

"These poems demonstrate something incredibly rare: wisdom."     

—Allison Adair, author of The Clearing

"Etlinger is an apt poet-storyteller, one willing to take the risk of telling the story . . . not in prose but in verse."

—Jenna Goldsmith, author of Crush

"A delicate and tender examination of the many conflicting facets of the self . . . as well as an interrogation of family history, memory, faith, and landscape."

—Heathen Derr-Smith, author of Thrust


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$21.95 | April 2024 | 106 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-38-7

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Julia Paul is the author of Staring Down the Tracks (2020) and Shook (2015). She served as the first Poet Laureate of Manchester, Connecticut (2014–2019), and she currently serves as president of the Riverwood Poetry Series, a longstanding reading series in Hartford, Connecticut.​



Table with Burning Candle

Julia Paul

With a dual sense of convulsion and care, Table with Burning Candle tackles a subject that is every parent’s worst nightmare—the death of a child. Grieving the loss of her son to opioid addiction and eventual overdose, Julia Paul questions how to move forward in the face of unspeakable loss. Poems speak to God, the coroner, and death itself. But more so, they confront death, absence, the importance, or lack thereof, of the body, and imagine the afterlife. Yet, as Paul reminds us, everyone knows grief, and sharing grief gives us the courage to live in the madness and beauty of the world, no matter the circumstance.​


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Praise for Table with Burning Candle

"Deeply moving, this requiem, this elegy chronicling the stages of grief through multiple lyric modes, these pages are as musical as they are heartbreaking."

—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

"Paul’s emotionally complex rendering of suffering and love knows, finally, that 'death creates a space that only love/can fill' and only love can give a voice."

—Robert Cording, author of In the Unwalled City

"Inventive and beautiful."

—Pat Hale, author of Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed

"Julia Paul’s intimate conversation with death over the loss of her son to heroin addiction presents as many answers as questions. The only question that remains is—are we too afraid of the answers? Are we too afraid to grieve? In a room of her own, Paul locks the door, dims the light, nestles into her chair and maternally awaits the affirmation within."

—Frederick Douglass Knowles II, author of Sinking in Moonlight Alone

"Vilomah—the Sanskrit word for 'against a natural order'—is used to describe a parent who has lost a child. In Table with Burning Candle, poet Julia Paul journals that aberrant, out-of-kilter state. The mother of an adult son who died of an overdose, Paul offers us a seat at her table of grief, serving poems that vacillate between anguished and angry, hopeless and consumed with magical thinking."

—B. Fulton Jennes, author of Blinded Birds​ 
​​​

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$24.95 | February 2024 | 182 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-23-3

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Tara Bracco is the founder and producing artistic director of Poetic People Power. She is a recognized leader in the field of art and social change and has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Rail, and HuffPost. Her work as a journalist has been published by Cosmopolitan, American Theatre, Condé Nast Traveler, BUST, and Clamor.

Poetic People Power

edited and created by Tara Bracco

For 20 years, the New York City-based spoken word group Poetic People Power has creatively explored social and political topics, offering insights and solutions to issues that affect our everyday lives and the world around us. This debut anthology invites readers to explore three of their shows about environmental heroes, women's voices, and human rights abuses.


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Praise for Poetic People Power

“This powerful and nuanced collection of performative verse exemplifies Poetic People Power’s impactful use of literary forms to advance social change. The skilled craftsmanship and emotional heft of these works serve as potent reminders of spoken word’s transformative potential.”

—Daniel Gallant, former executive director, Nuyorican Poets Cafe 
 
“This book is a revolution unto itself, a 20-year testament to unwavering dedication to poetry and activism, to looking at hard truths and demanding change. Every poem is a gem. Poetic People Power deserves high praises for this remarkable achievement.”

—Chantal Bilodeau, founding artistic director, Arts & Climate Initiative

“Poets have long used their words for resistance and as mouthpieces for social justice or political movements—José Marti, Julia de Burgos, Pablo Neruda, Gary Snyder, Walt Whitman, Audre Lorde come to mind. The poets in this book are heirs to this tradition—making known those who are unknown, using art to guide our understanding of what could be, and entrusting us with a call to action.”

—Elena Martínez, folklorist at City Lore

Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Badass Lady-Folk


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$21.95 | February 2024 | 120 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-26-4

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Sally Ashton is a writer, teacher, and editor-in-chief of DMQ Review. Author of four books, including The Behaviour of Clocks (2019), Ashton specializes in brief forms across genres. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and is headed to the Moon in 2024. She served as Santa Clara County Poet Laureate (2011-2013)

Listening to Mars

Sally Ashton

Listening to Mars serves as a record of our national transit, one a journey from there—before the Covid-19 pandemic—to here—a new now. Our microscopes pinpoint a virus; our telescopes search the edges of the Universe; we look, as we always have, to the heavens for comfort and clarity. Underlying our global social turmoil is the environmental emergency we find ourselves facing, and the irony of seeking new worlds while degrading if not destroying our own. With empathy and precision, Sally Ashton moves through the time of our confinement and an increasingly fractured world, trying to tell the story, to bear witness, to find a way through. Trying to find the glints of light in the journey we are still traveling.

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Praise for Listening to Mars

​“Explores the struggles we face when confronted daily by the miraculous and terrifying universe we inhabit."

—Peter Johnson, author of While the Undertaker Sleeps

“Loss and wonder, dread and awe gyrate throughout the book, spinning like heavenly bodies, the poet equally rigorous and tender in her search for words that make the world look like what it feels like."

—Holly Iglesias, author of Angles of Approach

Listening to Mars beguiles and wonders. Its poignant, glistering poems meditate on beauty and sadness in equal measure, considering the ineffable and absorbing glories of the cosmos, the Covid pandemic and its aftermath, and the importance of a fully engaged quotidian life."

—Cassandra Atherton, co-author of Prose Poetry: An Introduction

“These are poems of witty watchfulness, mystery at the brink of ruin, and sustained delight in the “kabillioness/of it all" that you simply won't want to miss."

—Annie Kim, author of Eros Unbroken

Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Rattle Poetry DMQ Review



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$21.95 | February 2024 | 124 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-35-6

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Hikari Leilani Miya is an LGBTQ Japanese-Filipina American. She is a doctoral student in Florida State University’s program in creative writing, and she holds a Master’s Certification in herpetology from the Amphibian Foundation. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in dozens of in-print and online magazines across North America, including MacGuffin, Chestnut Review, Eunoia Review, Broadkill Review, and Brave Voices.​ ​​


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Do Not Feed the Animal

Hikari Leilani Miya

With poems that glow with energy, humor, heartbreak, and risk, Do Not Feed the Animal, the astonishing debut from Hikari Leilani Miya, breaks molds and reshapes expectations. Food, culture, behavior, voice, and self-portraits—Miya confidently paints her canvas with the shades of her Japanese-Filipina identity. Innovative in approach and moving in message, Do Not Feed the Animal soars by way of the ingenuity and heart of its storyteller.

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Praise for Do Not Feed the Animal

“A ferocious debut."

—Michael Chang, author of Synthetic Jungle

“An incredible debut. Miya's voice feels immediate, very present, like let's go right now, and we go."

—The Cyborg Jillian Weise, author of Cyborg Detective

“Owls try really hard to sound as awesome as Hikari's poems, but they just can't do it. Sorry, owls."

—Kyle Flak, author of Sweatpants Paradise


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$18.95 | February 2024 | 86 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-30-1

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Brady Bove is the author A Day of Humanity (2020). Originally from Franklin, Tennessee, she earned a B.S. in biomedical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021, prior to moving to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. ​


Dear Lo

Brady Bove

Dear Lo captures the difficulty and raw emotion of moving to a new place and struggling to form meaningful relationships. Highlighting the change of mindset needed to confront the loneliness, find peace, and continue putting yourself out there, Brady Bove delivers a personal series of modern epistles, like prayers in the dark. But being alone, she ultimately discovers, does not have to mean being lonely, as hope leads to healing and community.​

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Praise for Dear Lo

“An intimate, beautifully written poetry collection filled with vivid, dream-like imagery. It will touch the heart of anyone looking for a fresh viewpoint on our relationship to humanity.” 

—Tanya Taylor, author of Why I Tell You Everything

“I’m a voracious reader, but not of as much poetry as I’d like. I suppose it just feels too indulgent. This little luxury of Dear Lo, however, was a delightful reminder to allow my soul what it craves. Brady Bove dances artfully around the most relatable of feelings. Her voice is so clear and somehow familiar that you’d swear you know her. ”

—Alicia King, author of Healing: The Essential Guide to Helping Others Overcome Grief & Loss

“Brady Bove’s searing, obsessive poems are deceptively simple. Beneath each poem in Dear Lo is a palpable urgency—the voice of a woman at a crossroads in life, desirous and searching. I was captivated from the first page and I can’t wait to see what’s next for this talented new poet.”

—Wendy Wisner, author of Morph and Bloom

​Reviews & Interviews

Madison Magazine Read Review Repeat






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$21.95 | February 2024 | 104 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-28-8

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Michelle Meyer is the author of The Book of She (2021). Her poems have appeared in Under Her Eye: A Blackspot Books Anthology, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Nebulous, Remington Review, Tabula Rasa Review, Welter Online, and Zoetic, among others. In addition, Michelle is a worldwide house and pet sitter who especially loves cats. She lives in Western Wisconsin.​


The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child

​Michelle Meyer

Written after the unexpected death of her mother, Michelle Meyer’s The Trouble With Being A Childless Only Child takes root in the body, exploring loss and trauma along with the sexual and social dynamics of one woman’s place among men. Part epistolary and part memoir, Meyer questions her own role in creating the boundaries that defined her mother’s life while reaching, often in vain, for clarity through the fog of loss. Serving as both tribute and penance, each poem is a funeral song versed with longing, and ultimately hope, for spiritual release.​

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Praise for The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child

​“A richly rewarding book, one about healing and redemption, a book sutured with forgiveness and bound in love.”

—Robert Hedin, author of At the Great Door of Morning

“By turns delicate, brutal, bitterly funny, and haunting, these poems capture the evolving ways that loss and love intertwine.”  

—Jacqueline West, author of Candle and Pins

“While there is grief in this collection, there is a clarity and acceptance in words that are wise and earned.”

 —Mary Logue, author of Heart Wood: Poems

“These poems are painful dirges and celebratory wakes and, best of all, sometimes both at once.”

—John Graber, author of Thanksgiving Dawn

“Effective...effortless...impossible for any reader to forget.” 

—Emma Snyder, editor-in-chief of Tabula Rasa Review

Reviews & Interviews

Wisconsin Writers AssociationRemington Review


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$21.95 | February 2024 | 106 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-27-1

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Dion O’Reilly is the author of Ghost Dogs (2020). Her poems and essays have appeared in Rattle, The Sun, American Journal of Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, and New Letters. She splits her time between a ranch in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains and her residence in Bellingham, Washington.​



Sadness of the Apex Predator​

Dion O'Reilly

The beauty and danger of an isolated family compound, the corruption that privilege can bring, an extensive burn injury that interrupts a girl's life, and the many predators who swoop in when the scarred woman is loosed, again, into the world—all of this is woven throughout Sadness of the Apex Predator, a collection of poems that studies both the way Sapiens feed on one another and also the redemption our hungers can bring.

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Praise for Sadness of the Apex Predator

“A tour de force with urgent poems that address the perilous present and the past that's gotten us here. . . . A burn survivor, O'Reilly writes visceral poems addressing not only the pain but also vulnerability.These are wonderful and necessary poems."

—Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story

“There's an entire world here, as well as the history of beauty and unspeakable brutality of which the human animal is equally capable. The poems are searingly vivid, public, political, but also intensely and painfully intimate. . . . This is one of my favorite books in recent memory. What a voice."

—Erin Bilieu, author of Come-Hither Honeycomb

“With language both muscular and merciless, O'Reilly debrides the newfound body of her speaker from aggression. She lays bare some very hard truths, yet these are poems that teach foremost of decency, cautioning us to wean ourselves of the hindbrain's instinct to inflict harm, of the impulse to place ourselves first."

—Rooja Mohassessy, author of When Your Sky Runs Into Mine

Reviews & Interviews

DMQ Review


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$18.95 | February 2024 | 78 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-32-5

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Bonnie Jill Emanuel’s poetry appears in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other publications. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York where she received the Jerome Lowell DeJur Award in Creative Writing, and the Irwin and Alice Stark Poetry Prize. Born in Detroit, she now lives in New York.​



Glitter City

Bonnie Jill Emanuel

Like glitter – tiny, precision-cut, reflective particles – the poems in Glitter City shine by reflection with flashes of light. Narrative, cinematic, and at times trance-like, the poems trace their way back in time. From Fulton Street, Brooklyn to Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, over city scaffolds and rural fields, across graveyards and weedy highways, Emanuel’s debut collection grieves and loves, glittering fiercely.  

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Praise for Glitter City

 “In the spare, intense, searching, sometimes sidelong poems of Glitter City, Emanuel writes in burst after burst of light, her images and insights accruing into seriously dazzling designs of illumination.”

—David Groff, author of Live in Suspense

“When you read these poems, you feel them in your body.  You feel these beauties everywhere in the physical matter of your being. Bonnie Jill Emanuel’s poems glitter.”

—Matthew Lippman, author of We Are Sleeping with Our Sneakers On

“Emanuel’s eye for texture and surprising insights in poem after poem mean she is always listening.”  

—Sean Singer, author of Today In The Taxi

“In poem after nimble poem, Glitter City is that rarity––a true and sustained pleasure to read.”

​—Elaine Sexton, author of Drive

Reviews & Interviews

Read Poetry



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$21.95 | February 2024 | 114 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-22-6

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CAILTIN COWAN lives on Michigan's west coast. Her writing has appeared in Best New Poets, The Rumpus, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Missouri Review, Southeast Review, Denver Quarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Account, and elsewhere. She serves as Director of International Programs and Chair of Creative Writing for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lakes, Michigan.

Happy Everything

Caitlin Cowan

The urge to create beauty and be beautiful haunts Happy Everything, Caitlin Cowan’s powerful celebration of feminine resilience. The materiality of marriage and divorce abound in the postnuptial ghost stories Cowan tells with no-nonsense, Midwestern frankness and the intimacy of an afterparty conversation in a corner booth. Happy Everything is a deranged wedding registry of various poetic forms which highlight the perverse tenacity of ancestral traumas and the paradoxes inherent to women’s relationships with men. These poems are a collage of traditions from a past that women are continually attempting to escape.

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Praise for Happy Everything

“Caitlin Cowan has written the kind of book women poets were once warned against. Plathian in its ferocious truth-telling, it refuses to be shushed, spinning narratives of cheating fathers and husbands, of men with ‘rabbit-rattlesnake / risotto’ on their breath. Cowan brilliantly frames the poems via epigraphs from a cooking and etiquette manual, and offers a sequence of prose poems titled after relics of material culture, as in ‘Leifheit Perle Handheld Crumb Sweeper,’ in which the crumber is ‘a tiny metal cog in / a creaking old machine, an industry as old as I do.’ The underlying reality of the book is the excruciating ache of containment in that creaking machine, and the lyric mode as a powerful mechanism of liberation.”

—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnetswinner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Caitlin Cowan’s Happy Everything takes on birthdays, anniversaries, Easter, Mother’s Day, the New Year, Halloween—all the markers that insist upon celebration, whether or not the speaker feels joy. Happy Everything is the antidote to Hallmark cards, to the Hallmark channel, to forced gaiety as it is thrust upon women to perform happiness and beauty no matter their real life events. Cowan subverts what we think we know about marriage and divorce and the traumas of childhood in a witty, heartbreaking voice all her own. This is a terrific debut!” 

Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story

“Pulsing with a deft balance of wisdom and righteous rage, the masterful, lyrical, and gut-punching poems of Happy Everything look the staid picture of domestic ‘happiness’ square in the face and say, for all our sakes, ‘not good enough.’ Cowan’s poems sear with wit, precision, and a steadfast allegiance to the underground sisterhood that keeps us human.”

—Jenny Molberg, author of The Court of No Record

“What a rare and welcome surprise it is to come upon a young poet who possesses enough ambition and talent to illuminate—unforgettably, I think, in the case of Caitlin Cowan—what might be called the too muchness of life, to celebrate that nameless mortal abundance variously ending in ecstasy, despair, hope, grief, prayer, emotional collapse, or silent acceptance. I passionately recommend Happy Everything to any member of the human species who somehow missed the train and hungers to know exactly what it is like to live on planet Earth.”

—B. H. Fairchild, author of An Ordinary Life ​

“At the center of Happy Everything lies a stunning examination of what could too easily be dismissed as a ‘failed marriage,’ brought vividly into focus by Caitlin Cowan’s uncommon gift for rendering even the bleakest scenes with lush particularity and eviscerating wit."
 

—Mark Bibbins, author of 13th Balloon

"A deeply moving collection.”

—Bruce Bond, author of Patmos

"I’ve been waiting for this poet’s first book for a long time. I am left gutted by its brilliance, by its brakelines and linebreaks, by its manifolds and musicality, by its movement between demolition and rebirth, and by the healing it flowers forth.”
  

—Matt W. Miller, author of Tender the River​

​Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Poetry Off the Shelf Lit Hub



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Paperback | 978-1-960329-31-8

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JUDY BRACKETT CROWE's stories and poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. She is the author of Flat Water: Nebraska Poems (2019) and a member of the Community of Writers. Born in Nebraska, she lives and writes in a small town in the foothills of California’s northern Sierra Nevada.​


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The Watching Sky

Judy Brackett Crowe

Stirring landscapes and a searching heart inform The Watching Sky, the vibrant and compassionate full-length debut from award-winning poet Judy Brackett Crowe. Both a probing exploration of the natural world by various, mostly anonymous, speakers, focusing on intimate encounters and interactions, and a questioning and celebration of identity, Crowe’s astute sense of place grounds her work in fields and mountains, soft light and small roads, stories and sounds. With wonder and hope, The Watching Sky proves that there is always another chance, and plenty of stars to follow.

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Praise for The Watching Sky

“These poems are accessible, grounded in both history and geography of place."

—Terry Lucas, author of The Thing Itself

“An authentic voice that makes us all believers.”

—Lynne Thompson, author of Fretwork 

“Crowe stands against the dulling and dumbing down of the world for the life that’s in us and around us.”

—Gene Berson, author of Raveling Travel 

“The poems are full of familiarity, dreaminess, and nostalgia for stories and the myths of common lives.”

—Kirsten Casey, author of Ex Vivo (out of the living body)

“Over each creek and mountain, and under every moon-washed sky, we revel in Crowe’s exquisite affirmations of finding home in nature’s every wingbeat.”

—Julie Valin, author of Songs for Ghosts



Let It Be Told_Cover_ARC4 (1).jpg$18.95 | January 2024 | 78 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-18-8

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MARK B. HAMILTON is the author of OYO: The Beautiful River (2020) and Confronting the Basilisk (1993). His poetry has been widely published, and he is perhaps the only living person to have traced the entire Lewis and Clark route on their approximate time-table, traveling as they did by paddle and pack mule. ​


​​Lake, River, Mountain

Mark B. Hamilton

In Lake, River, Mountain, Mark B. Hamilton follows the Lewis and Clark route on a physical journey paddling a kayak westward on the Missouri River, across the Great Plains. Immersed in a natural world, the environment is ever-present. The weather, the water, the habitats and fauna, and the lands of Native Americans all merge to conjoin or confront, as they in turn influence beliefs, emotions, and hopes for the future. Hamilton crafts poems both intimate and sweeping, with time and history merging into a confluence of friendship, family, and finding one’s place in the world.

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Praise for Lake, River, Mountain

​“Hamilton holds life as close as the shining flower. . . . This is a wise, tough, and joyful collection.” 

—Ann Fisher-Wirth, author of Paradise Is Jagged​

“With poetic grace, Mark B. Hamilton brings life’s past portages to the present, never to be forgotten. Lake, River, Mountain expresses the ongoing grandeur of rediscovering relationships with past landscapes.”

—Rich Clow, author of Spotted Tail: Warrior and Statesman

“If Lewis & Clark had a poet with them, it would have been Mark Hamilton. Visually captive, thought provoking and inspiring. ”  

—Norm Miller, founder of Missouri River Paddlers 

“Mark Hamilton travels in a world made of metaphor. . . . he sees what others might only look at, finds the unexpected relationships.”

—Grace Butcher, founder of The Listening Eye

 



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$21.95 | January 2024 | 134 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-17-2​

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RUSSELL THORBURN is the author of several poetry collections, including Somewhere We’ll Leave the World (2017). A National Endowment for the Arts recipient and first poet laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he lives in Marquette with his wife. His poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music, North Dakota Quarterly, Dunes Review, and Sou’wester.



​​Let It Be Told in a Single Breath

Russell Thorburn

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Praise for Let It Be Told in a Single Breath

“This brilliant book immerses us in the impassioned memories of Russell Thorburn.”

—Beverly Matherne, author of Love Potions, Teas, Incantations

​“I know I can always turn to the poems of Russell Thorburn to make me believe that poetry does indeed matter, that it is still a living breathing way of being in the world.”

—Peter Markus, author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds

“More than any living poet I know, Thorburn invites us into the company of recurring characters inhabiting a fully-formed world of the imagination.”

—Jonathan Johnson, author of May Is an Island

“Poems emerge from the page with heart and build to fever, into and out of dislocations in time, place, memory, insight.”

—M. Bartley Seigel, author of​ This Is What They Say

“As John Prine would say, these poems are more like souvenirs. Each is presented and bathed within a threshold where life became . . . what? Maybe where life became alive.”

—Ken Meisel, author of The Light Most Glad of All

“The vision here is Keatsian in its complex figurations of beauty. The poems will break your heart while affirming your faith in the timeless power of music.”

—Cal Freeman, author of Poolside at the Dearborn Inn​

​​“There is a genuine earthiness to the imagistic and engaging narrative poems of Russell Thorburn. There is much news to get from his poems . . . and you’ll be glad to meet his finely crafted words on the page that will continue to feed your soul.”

—M. L. Liebler, author of I Want to Be Once ​​

​Reviews & Interviews

Public Radio 90 (WNMU)​ Mining Journal​


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$21.95 | November 2023 | 98 pp

978-1-960329-11-0 (2nd Ed. Pbk)

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LINDA NEMEC FOSTER has published thirteen collections of poetry, including Bone Country, The Blue Divide, Amber Necklace from Gdansk, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book). The first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (2003–2005), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.



​​Talking Diamonds

Linda Nemec Foster

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Talking Diamonds

“The brilliance and power of Foster’s language, which has been evident in earlier volumes, is even stronger in this book.”​​

—Lisel Mueller, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

“Foster exacts an energy that is, precisely, visionary, even miraculous. This is an effort so widespread in contemporary poetry as itself to seem a commonplace, and one that generally fails. Not so in Talking Diamonds, which challenges, intrigues, awes, and ultimately gratifies, poem after excellent poem.”

—Sydney Lea, author of No Doubt the Nameless and Here

“A humanist at heart, Linda Nemec Foster has demanded from her poetry an artfulness that engages ordinary life. With each new book her work has continued to mature, deepen, console, surprise, and Talking Diamonds is as wise as it is lovely.”

—Stuart Dybek, author of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern

“[Foster’s] works here are exceptional and gleaming, serving as a reminder that even experts can excel beyond their own greatness.”

​—The Grand Rapids Press


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$21.95 | September 2023 | 100 pp
Paperback | 978-1-96​0329-06-6​

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DAVID SALNER is the author of several poetry collections, including Summer Words: New & Selected Poems (2023). His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, North American Review, and Ploughshares. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

The Green Va​ul​t Heist

David Salner​​

With his sixth poetry collection, The Green Vault Heist, David Salner assumes a strong voice, with a unique moral vision. In poems covering artistic, literary, social, and autobiographical themes, Salner writes as a poet awed by the sweep of human culture, deeply concerned by the unfolding shambles. Evocative and reflective, Salner’s poems honor the diversity and depth of human resilience and put forward a concerned optimism, even as we yearn for something better.​

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu 


Praise for The Green Vault Heist

The Green Vault ​Heist is not only a beautiful book, it is great company.”

—John Skoyles, Poetry Editor, Ploughshares

“Poems concise yet compelling and ever-celebratory of this life each of us has been given amid ‘the quickness of time.’” 

—Edward Byrne, Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review

“The book takes us to baby-boom Baltimore and twenty-first-century Spain and orchestrates those places as the grounds where we live, breathe, and savor our freshly encountered human lives.”

—Anne Colwell, Poetry Editor, The Delmarva Review

“David Salner’s poems sing of the dreams and realities of the working life. . . . Natural, compelling, compassionate, and memorable.” 

—David Stephenson, Editor, Pulsebeat



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​​$21.95 | September 2023 | 106 pp
Paperback | 978-1-96​0329-02-8

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CHRISTY PRAHL is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in a host of national and international journals. She splits her time between Chicago and rural Michigan.​



​We Are Reckless

Christy Prahl

In Christy Prahl’s debut collection, her largely narrative-driven poems occupy the fissures of American life, whether exploring self, relations​​hips, or the natural world. The poetic architecture acts as a kind of repair for the subjects themselves, who are often broken but striving. The result is Prahl’s interrogation of the fragile hum of contemporary life as well as the brutalism that acts as its foil. Stirring, sensitive, and sincere, We Are Reckless helps lighten the weight of all we carry by breaking rules, stepping across boundaries, and risking pain for greater purpose.​


NOMINEE, Best New Poetry Collection by a Chicagoan, The Chicago Reader, 2023

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu 

​Praise for We Are Reckless

We Are Reckless is an ode to the imperfection of our brief lives, a tribute to how we break apart and come back together, complete with beautiful scars.”

—Jessica Walsh, author of Book of Gods and Grudges

We Are Reckless captures the extra in the ordinary, deep-diving into the familiar moments of life and making them new, and imbuing them with honesty and heart.”

—Elizabeth Crane, author of This Story Will Change

“The poems in We Are Reckless situate us in wild terrain where love grows, dies, and regenerates again with uncontrollable wonder.”

—Julie Babcock, author of Rules for Rearrangement

We Are Reckless is a book to renew our shared language and our shared world.”

—Toby Altman, author of Discipline Park and Arcadia, Indiana​


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​​$21.95 | September 2023 | 90 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-03-5

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JONATHAN GRAHAM was born along the Ohio River in Martins Ferry, breathed air that chugged from smokestacks at Wheeling Steel, and grew up not far from there in a small enclave of immigrant Slovak coal miners. He resides on a farm/sanctuary in the woodlands of East Central Ohio.




​Everything Waits

Jonathan Graham

​In his lyrical and expansive debut, Jonathan Graham highlights the natural world, the rugged beauty and kinship with a coal-mining region in Appalachia, the loud thunder when relatives and townspeople die in a devastating mine explosion – the yin and yang of love and death, remorse and longing. These poems are hungry, filled with vivid imagery. A quest for beauty in a world of chaos, Everything Waits travels an arc, moves from Appalachia to search the greater natural world beyond: the mountains of Alaska, islands of Lake Erie, beaches of the Carolinas and Gulf Coast, then circles back to the foothills of Ohio’s Appalachia. As the poetry moves from darkness to light and back again into darkness with the promise of light, there exists the divining comfort of “words everywhere,” where it is okay to move away from living.​

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu ​

​Praise for Everythi​​ng Waits

“Jonathan Graham’s attentiveness to the natural world is staggering: the imagery is so precise, so vivid it’s like stepping into a landscape painting. Graham has written a book rich with grace and music.” 

—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning and Guillotine: Poems

“Jonathan Graham is an American voice we need—right now, in this time. From the farm, to Wales, to church, to train tunnels with boys, these poems are the truth of life lived, life saved, life lost in front of us. This book captures what you thought language couldn’t.”

—Jeff Knorr, Sacramento Poet Laureate, Emeritus

“Survival, resilience, and ultimately, a quietly joyful wisdom shape the arc of these beautifully made, compelling poems.” 

—Carol D Guerrero-Murphy, author of Bright Path Dark River

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​​$18.95 | September 2023 | 84 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-05-9

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CAMDEN MICHAEL JONES is a writer, educator, and wildland firefighter. His work has been published in the Train River Anthology, the Furious Lit Anthology, and Instapoets, as well as in outdoor magazines throughout the Pacific Northwest. He lives in Fossil, Oregon.


​There is a Corner of Someplace Else

Camden Michael Jones

There is a Corner of Someplace Else is a tapestry of Camden Michael Jones’s life as a wildland firefighter, high school teacher, life-long student, and human living in the 21st century. There are moments of reflection on philosophy and history, moments of panic and fear, of calm, of peace in nature, and throughout there is a constant underlying praise of sweat and work. Taken together, Jones’s spare yet soaring debut challenges readers to see beyond our own vision, to look farther along at what might be our better selves.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu ​

​Praise for There is a Corner of Someplace Else

​“Steeped in the culture of the Pacific Northwest, Camden Michael Jones’s poetry is soothing, startling, tender, moving and insightful. Here are the honest testimonies of the mischievous boy, dedicated teacher, firefighter, historian, husband, outdoorsman, and mindful poet. We find an authentically lived present and a deeply examined past—a rich collection, indeed.” 


—Henry Hughes, author of Back Seat with Fish

“Jones brings a fresh, varied voice to the contemporary poetic conversation. A very worthy book.”

—Marjory E. Lange, author of Telling Tears in the English Renaissance

“Earnest and thought-provoking, this collection is a joy to read.”

—Ryan Topper, Western Oregon University​


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$18.95 | May 2023 | 84 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-00-4

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GAIL HANLON is the author of the chapbooks SIFT (2010) and Mirabilia (2022). She won the National Writer’s Union Poetry Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Iowa Review Award and CutBank’s Patricia Goedicke Prize. She lives in New Hampshire.​


Silent Letter​

Gail Hanlon

Silent Letter, the masterful full-length debut from Gail Hanlon, centers around the idea of learning to navigate desire, uncertainty, and grief. In part through art and literature, and in part through alternative ways of knowing, divination, I Ching, Tarot, dreams, meditation, and ritual, Hanlon’s poems explore the natural world and the edges of memory, language, and consciousness. Breathtaking in its c​​oncision and stirring in its empathy, Silent Letter soars.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu
 

Praise for Silent Letter

“Brisk, honed, graven as talismans, but somehow fluent and sensual, always carried by a most subtle sprezzatura—Gail Hanlon’s poems offer so much of what I want from poetry: one person’s brave whistling in the dark, a song that mystery can’t help but envy and give an answer to.” 

—David Rivard, author of Some of You Will Know

“Hanlon’s poems radiate energy and vibrant life; to read them is to partake of a bracing beauty.” 

—Jennifer Barber, author of The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made

​“Gail Hanlon’s masterful, uneasy mixture of ghostly epistles, imagistic memoir, and involute but plainspoken metaphysics sketch a quiet wilderness of self, a grief-land of beautiful questing and questioning. ” 

—Gregory Lawless, author of Dreamburgh, Pennsylvania​



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​$21.95 | May 2023 | 94 pp
Paperback | 979-8-986966-38-0

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MOLLY FULLER is the author of the full-length collection For Girls Forged by Lightning: Prose & Other Poems as well as two chapbooks, Tender the Body and The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love. She is the winner of the Gris-Gris Literary Journal Summer Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence, New Poetry from the Midwest, 100 Word Story, and Bellingham Review. Fuller is the recipient of Artist Residencies from both Wassaic Project and Vermont Studio Center.​



​​​​
Always a Body

Molly Fuller

Rather than seeking answers, Molly Fuller’s Always a Body calls into question the goal of answers, of the idea of linear and logical paths to answers; her poems seek, instead, to replace static answers with a desire to discover meaning through the dynamic of poetic searching. The poems work toward a language that can be used to come to terms with loss through the exploding and re-making of metaphor and what is expected from formal structures of languaging/poetics. Fuller pushes at the confines both of language and the themes of loss, so that the individual and the cosmos converge, creating tensions between what is unified and what is divergent, between other and self, and about the pains and the pleasures of the body, always the body.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Always a Body

“These poems are desperately sexy and beautifully deranged—dare to live with them a while and they will disturb you, comfort you, and change you.” 

—Michelle Lewis, author of Animul/Flame

“Fuller’s writing is fluent in the language of critique but never bogged down by it; every crisp syllable erupts with courage, love, confidence, and endurance.” 

—Andrew Rihn, author of Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights

“These musical poems—that move with a rhythm much like a pulse through a body—explore desire, pain, grief, and pleasure.” 

—Nicole Robinson, author of Without a Field Guide​

“Though there’s a lot of pain and sorrow in these poems, there’s also a movement toward a life with its many rewards . . . we realize that what we’ve read as an extended elegy might also be a quiet resurrection.”

—Rick Campbell, author of Sometimes the Light

“Molly Fuller writes, painting the body, painting the body as common denominator, as art and memory, as every reason.”

—Karen Schubert, author of The Compost Reader

“The thread holding these poems together is sturdy and deep-rooted in capturing the atmospheric ephemeral, in making us feel in familiar ways where the body and where our selves fuse and where we break.”

​—Angie Mazakis, author of I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First​


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$21.95 | May 2023 | 104 pp
Paperback | 979-8-986966-39-7

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CATHERINE KYLE is the author of Shelter in Place (2019) and other poetry collections. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She is an assistant professor at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where she teaches creative writing and literature.​



Fulgurite

Catherine Kyle​​​

Named for the glassy, mazelike structures that can form underground when lightning strikes sand, Fulgurite weaves together reality and myth. Informed by fairy tales, domestic fabulism, and environmental concerns, Catherine Kyle examines gender on large and small scales. Patriarchal influences in domestic spaces are compared to patriarchal influences on national and global levels, and identity is made complex by the fusion of survival, dissociation, and promise. The collection bears witness to the grief of the everyday while simultaneously pursuing hope.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu 

Praise for Fulgurite

“These ethereal poems exist within the mysterious, magical realm of fairytale. Fluid and porous, they have a witchy, spellbound nature. These pieces float.” 

—Allison Titus, author of High Lonesome

“Here is a poet who understands metaphor as deep transformation, whose lines strike like lightning and fuse to startle us into truth at once spiritual and politically vital.” 

—Chen Chen, author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

“We are fortunate to have Kyle’s many-faceted constructions in the world.” 

—Jennifer Militello, author of The Pact

Reviews, Interviews, & Media

Kirkus Reviews Verse DailySuperstition Review​​


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Paperback | 979-8-986966-37-3

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MEGAN WILDHOOD is a neurodiverse writer from Colorado. She is the author of the chapbook Long Division (2017), and her work has been published in The Atlantic, Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun, and elsewhere. You can find more of her work at meganwildhood.com.​


​​Bo​wed As If Laden With Snow

Megan Wildhood

Over the course of the eighty-one poems that make up Bowed As If Laden With Snow, Megan Wildhood considers humanity’s climate crisis in parallel with the personal experience of divorce from the perspective of someone who has felt alienated and abandoned by the environmental movement. Still as madly in love with nature as she is with human beings, Wildhood showcases incredible range with heart, humanity, and hope.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu 

Praise for Bowed As If Laden With Snow

​“Megan Wildhood gives unwavering honor to what falters and dies—and with this, she offers hope in radical accompaniment with whatever may befall us.” 

—Candace Tkachuck, reparational activist and writer

“For Megan Wildhood, life hasn’t gone unnoticed. . . . by her poems I’m not just moved, but transported, transformed.” 

—Don Haggerty, poet and painter


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$21.95 | March 2023 | 96 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-01-1​​

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JENIFER DEBELLIS is the author of Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free…(2021) and Blood Sisters (2018). She edits Pink Panther Magazine and directs the Detroit Writers’ Guild (501c3). Her writing appears in CALYX, Medical Literary Messenger, and elsewhere. She teaches at Saginaw Valley State University.​



​​
New Wilderness

Jenifer DeBellis

New Wilderness takes readers through the nuances of raising a mentally ill child whose young adult brain cancer experiences transport this daughter and mother into an uncharted wilderness. With little more than a demagnetized compass and crayon-drawn treasure map, the daughter travels deeper into wastelands. Four states away, her mom charts a new topography to smuggle her back to civilization. The poems in this collection build on a triangulated path that moves between life before, during, and after cancer. Despite compounding loss, disappointment, and destruction, Jenifer DeBellis’s versified narratives reveal that paths forged with love can lead even the wildest creatures out of bewildering terrain.


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FINALIST, Poetry: General, International Book Awards 2022-2023 

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for New Wilderness

“Yes, this collection has fortitude and resilience in spades, but DeBellis arrives at these only after meticulously surveying the wreckage that illness makes of good intentions…Not an easy read, New Wilderness, but one that…leaves us with a blueprint for bearing the slings and arrows of any human life.” 

—Iain Haley Pollock, author of Ghost, like a Place

“The real splendor of New Wilderness is in the variety of beautifully crafted poetic forms; poems which themselves are objects of rescue, for they bring order to all the contextual turmoil. I could not put this book of valorous verse down.” 

—Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of Capture Theory

“DeBellis’s use of image, humor and irony…allows readers to navigate emotional highs and lows of mental/physical health as a survivor would and, hopefully, understand the unique power of women, of mothers and of poetry.”

—Brad Johnson, author of Smuggling Elephants Through Airport Security

Reviews & Interviews

New Books in Poetry​




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$21.95 | March 2023 | 110 pp 

Paperback | 979-8-986966-31-1

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LINDA NEMEC FOSTER has published thirteen collections of poetry, including The Blue Divide, Amber Necklace from Gdansk, Talking Diamonds, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book). The first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (2003–2005), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.



Bone Country

Linda Nemec Foster

Linda Nemec Foster's collection of prose poems is a reflection of the world before COVID. All of the pieces are inspired by other parts of the world—Istanbul, Rome, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, Seville—not the familiar landscape of the United States. But, the narrator is definitely not a native of these countries; they are “the other,” “the foreigner,” the American with a distinct Midwest sensibility who is trying to make sense of a world on the brink of an unforeseen catastrophe. The world as we used to know it. 

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Bone Country


“In Bone Country, Linda Nemec Foster’s fractured and melancholic travelogue, the poems (or micro-lyric essays) serve as such luscious and destabilizing portals through which the cities of our world are passed, emerging on the other side slick with luminescence—more amazing, more sad, holy, essential, and strange. ” 

—Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

“In Linda Nemec Foster’s Bone Country, each keenly composed and compressed piece seems at once fragmented and yet self-contained. It’s the speed and addictive rhythm with which they reel by that transforms this collection into a visionary travelogue.” 

Stuart Dybek, author of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern

Bone Country shimmers with consummate artistry.” 

—Clare MacQueen, editor/curator of MacQueen’s Quinterly

Reviews & Interviews

Verse Daily​Publisher's Weekly​MacQueen's Quinterly

A Little Too QuietNorth of Oxford​​ZYZZYVA​​​

New Books in Poetry​


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$18.95 | March 2023 | 84 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-32-8

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SHARON WHITE is an author, poet, and educator. Her book Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. She is also the author of Boiling Lake (On Voyage), a collection of short fiction, and two poetry collections, Eve & Her Apple and Bone House.




The Body Is Burden and Delight

Sharon White

At the intersection of poetry and prose, Sharon White's The Body Is Burden and Delight examines ecological communities in fragile northern Landscapes, and in the geography of the poet's daily life. Moving from Denmark and Sweden, to Lithuania, Shetland, and Wales, White explores the inner landscape of myth and dreams inspired by a deep connection to the earth, and the beauty and loss inherent in those ecosystems. 

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Body Is Burden and Delight

"Sharon White finds a mystical space, the top of the world, where there is snow, a mountain village, icy running water. Then she populates it. . . . This is a book filled with wit and wonder, ‘how,’ White says, ‘the Arctic must be melting, from the bottom up,’ with all that moves under the ice of knowing.” 

Elaine Terranova, author of The Diamond Cutter’s Daughter and Dollhouse

The Body Is Burden and Delight is body and all its elements traveling at the speed of light and orienting on the compass of a word—to make every poet jealous, or to generously give us a guide by which to climb the lattice of details and yearning.”

—Peter Money, author of American Drone: New and Select Poems

“You can find yourself anywhere on earth in this book, and the message is the same. The landscape has its own story. This poet takes on the powers of Eve to rewild all of it.”

—Karen Donovan, author of Monad+Monadnock

“Read this book all at once and then linger over White’s icy, wise language line by line. I keep repeating the word ‘wonder’ when I think about her work.”

—Eli Goldblatt, author of For Instance and Wissahickon Creek: Walks & Dreams

“Sharon White invites us to the elemental edges of our world. . . . But in all this entrancing beauty, White doesn’t let us side-step the people who inhabit these spaces so precariously—the women who shoulder responsibility, the boys proud of achievement, the isolated artists, the ghosts.”

​—Nathalie Anderson, author of Stain

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$21.95 | March 2023 | 82 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-79-5

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HEATHER BOURBEAU's work has appeared in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and SWWIM. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. She is the co-author of Some Days The Bird, a poetry conversation with the Irish-Australian poet Anne Casey (2022).



Monarch

Heather Bourbeau

Exploring histories forgotten or often overlooked, Heather Bourbeau's Monarch is a powerful poetic memoir of the American West. Focused on the people and events that shaped California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, Bourbeau crafts a regional history that counteracts the simple narratives we are told and taught. Epic, personal, and compelling, Monarch impacts how we see each other and how we see our shared environment.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu


Praise for Monarch

​“Heather Bourbeau chronicles the flotsam of human effort—both destructive and reparative—over the West Coast of the North American continent. She’s convinced me there’s no better way to get history than poetry. I feel close to these figures (both human and nonhuman) that time, greed, hypocrisy, and desperation have stolen from us. Monarch leaves you splashed with feeling and leavened with learning.” 

Lulu Miller, author of Why Fish Don’t Exist and Co-Host of Radiolab

“Such a record, a history of us distilled to a raw violence that comes through the record keeping done by a poet, an artist. . . . It’s such a book of loud screams and silent introspection. Bourbeau has shared with us something of incredible power.” 

Chiwan Choi, author of my name is wolf

“A stunning poetry collection. . . . a dazzling guide to the past that thrums like a beating heart. . . . This book is nec​essary and important, and should be taught in schools.” 

Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and Circa

Reviews & Interviews

periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics Brooklyn Poets

The Poetry Salon KALW (San Francisco) New Books in Poetry


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$18.95 | March 2023 | 84 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986966-30-4

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R.B. SIMON is a queer, black visual artist and writer. She is the author of the chapbook, The Good Truth (2021), and her work has been published in multiple journals, as well as shortlisted for the 2022 Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.​

​​Not Just the Fire

R.B. Simon

In her powerful debut, R.B. Simon confronts subjects that we often dare not talk about in our daily lives, topics we shy away from in our water-cooler conversations. From miscarriage to addiction and overdose, and from bullying and racism to mental illness and eating disorders, nothing is off limits. Ultimately, Not Just the Fire is a story of resiliency. Weaving a narrative of overcoming in a world often harsh and unfair, the narrator returns again and again to the hope of “the blessed new day.”

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Not Just the Fire

“These poems are gorgeous and necessary and sing the deep truths and lessons of a warrior who has returned with both the wounds and the wisdom of experience.” 

—Jenn Givhan, author of Belly to the Brutal

"Ultimately, Simon conveys . . . that to make it through the fire and out alive means that anything & everything is possible." 

—Chris Stark, author of Carnival Lights and Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation

“Ultimately, Simon conveys . . . that to make it through the fire and out alive means that anything & everything is possible.”

​—Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim​


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$18.95 | September 2022 | 108 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-75-7

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LYNNE VITI is Senior Lecturer Emerita in the Writing Program at Wellesley College. She is the author of Dancing at Lake Montebello, Going Too Fast, The Glamorganshire Bible, and Baltimore Girls. She lives in Westwood, Massachusetts.​​



​The Walk to Cefalù

​Lynne Viti

Moving and life-affirming, The Walk to Cefalù moves the reader through the family history that Lynne Viti imagines, embellishes, or even invents out of whole cloth, and into young adulthood and coming of age. Striving for universality, Viti creates a dura​ble sense of a speaker limited by an outside force that she constantly has to find ways around, or through, to contentment and ease. Even when limited by separation or loss, her walk inspires us to reach higher.


WINNER, Miriam Chaikin Poetry Award, Westbeth Artists Housing 2023

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Walk to Cefalù

​“In the very first poem of The Walk to Cefalù, Lynne Viti both recollects her childhood and announces her MO: ‘Beneath each tale, I sensed another/—a truer—story, an alternative text/a painful experience smoothed over.’ Telling that ‘alternative’ story behind the story—the tender elegy beneath the smoothed over surface—‘that’s my job.’ In these engaging, intelligent, and touching poems, Viti fulfills her admirable intentions.” 

Lloyd Schwartz, author of Who’s on First?: New and Selected Poems

“Viti’s poems are beautiful, eloquent, and they speak about a life lived. A life examined. Her memories take us on a journey.” 

Gloria Mindock, author of Ash

“Viti mines rich veins of memory and experience to bring us vivid moments, both recent and past, with the wisdom and grace of a poet who has navigated—and survived—this wild, dangerous, and beautiful world.”

—Matt Hohner, author of Thresholds and Other Poems

“Lynne Viti honors life. . . . This is a book ‘to help us map/the deepest, most human things.’”

—J.D. Scrimgeour, author of Lifting the Turtle​


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$20.95 | September 2022 | 134 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-09-8

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DOKUBO MELFORD GOODHEAD is a Nigerian poet, scholar, and researcher. He received his Ph.D. in English and MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington, and is a former professor of interdisciplinary studies at Spelman College. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.​​​




Mourning​

Dokubo Melford Goodhead

Weaving factual and fictional stories about the lives of his loved ones, and those he looks to for strength, Dokubo Melford Goodhead’s Mourning is a meditation on the magnitude of loss. Powerful, raw, and elegiac, Goodhead’s collection is also a commentary on the plight of the Ijaw island people of the oil archipelago of the Niger Delta region of post-colonial Nigeria, where the country gets almost all of its revenue through the mining of oil and gas. Doubling as memoir and poetic exploration, Mourning sets its sights on nothing less than the human soul, and what we must do to protect it.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Mourning

​“Dokubo Goodhead’s Mourning is an unflinching examination of loss, grief, and yearning for ancestral roots.” 

Genaro Ky Lý Smith, author of The Land South of the Clouds

“This is a collection of powerful poems about loss and grief. Goodhead’s poems are devastating and striking. And, so, so beautiful.” 

Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street


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$21.95 | September 2022 | 172 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-71-9

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MARY CATHERINE HARPER is Professor Emerita in the Humanities at Defiance College in Northwest Ohio. A 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award winner, she was selected as the 2019 Ohio Arts Council Poetry Resident at the Fine Arts Work Center of Cape Cod. She is the author of the chapbook Some Gods Don’t Need Saints, and her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review, New England Review, The Spectacle, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The Offbeat.

​​The Found Object Imagines a Life: New and Selected Poems

Mary Catherine Harper

In The Found Object Imagines a Life: New and Selected Poems, Mary Catherine Harper collects some of her most personal and poignant poems. With precision and gravity, Harper explores a High Plains family struggling with loss, the cracks and fissures of human love, and the celebration and wonder that are part of the human process of living in and through language. Our inner landscapes, outer des​ires, and complicated triumphs find a home in Harper’s first full-length collection.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Found Object Imagines a Life

“No matter the subject at hand, Harper’s poems serve as revelation and reminder to love fiercely, embrace paradox, and tell stories.”

—Dawn Burns, author of Evangelina Everyday

“This is a collection alive to the world and rich with what it finds there.”

—Laura Donnelly, author of Midwest Gothic

“Harper’s voice is authentic, perceptive, and sensitive.”

—Mark B. Hamilton, author of OYO, The Beautiful River

“Readers will discover that the fine line between truth and lying—which the author humbly calls misremembering—is actually masterful creation.”

—Amy Wray Irish, author of Breathing Fire​

Reviews & Interviews

The Crescent-News (OH) FUMFA Poets and Writers Live

Cider Press Review




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$18.95 | September 2022 | 82 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-70-2

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EMILY HOCKADAY has five chapbooks of poetry—Beach Vocabulary, Space on Earth, What We Love and Will Not Give Up, Starting a Life, and Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide—and her work has appeared in the North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, West Wind Review, and Newtown Literary. She lives in Queens.​


​​Naming the Ghost

Emily Hockaday


A woman has both recently become a mother and lost her father, and a ghost has begun haunting this new family. What is the ghost? Why is it here? In poems of the everyday, Emily Hockaday charts a course toward healing in the face of loss, and living in the wake of death. With heartbreak and striking clarity, Naming the Ghost examines grief, physical pain, and the way chronic illness manifests itself in everyday life.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Naming the Ghost

“The poems in this collection haunt and delight. ”

—Jared Harél, author of Go Because I Love You​

​“A powerhouse of small, intense, sometimes brutal, always brilliant poems." 

Jane Yolen, author of Kaddish

“Finding revelation in the mundane, Hockaday’s poems reverberate with the tension—and journey—toward healing.” 

Diana Marie Delgado, author of Tracing the Horse

Reviews & Interviews

Journal Inquirer (Manchester, CT) SPECPO Queens Gazette (NY) 
The Poetry Question Literary Mama New Books in Poetry​​​


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$19.95 | April 2022 | 162 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-06-7

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KATHRYN GAHL is an award-winning writer and poet. She is the author of The Yellow Toothbrush: A Memoir of Trauma and Mercy (2022) and The Velocity of Love (2020). She lives in Eastern Wisconsin.​





Messengers of the Gods: ​New and Selected Poems

Kathryn Gahl

Moving and mysterious, the poems in Messengers of the Gods: New and Selected Poems by Kathryn Gahl have such a nice beat, you can dance to them—even if you have two left feet. Let layers of life draw you in—lovers, fondue, a wafer moon, even bee hives—as Gahl hears the scramble of time and catches each beat. Join her. 

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Messengers of the Gods

Messengers of the Gods is a masterpiece of poetic craft and deeply felt truths, thanks to Kathryn Gahl’s ability to dance with words in an alchemy of form and style.” 

Sylvia Cavanaugh, author of Icarus, Anthropology of Addiction

“Gahl invites us into the house of memory ‘where we inhale pain and exhale love,’ and we hang on her every word. Perhaps we are all just experiencing ‘a brief glory traveling through space and time,’ on this earth. ‘Come dance with me / connect with me,’ Gahl implores, and we do.”

​—Cristina M.R. Norcross, author of The Sound of a Collective Pulse

​“Kathryn Gahl’s Messengers of the Gods journeys through the dance of life. . . . This is an exquisite read, with a masterful use of language, celebrating movement with words.”

—Annette Langlois Grunseth, author of Combat and Campus: Writing Through War

​“Messengers of the Gods is the song we all need to hear right now in this unsettling world to ‘teach our cells new moves,’ as Gahl writes, to become Iris and fly, to hold loves beyond the grave, and, most important, to dream.”

—Jodie Montag, Lakeland University

“Kathryn Gahl’s poems are filled with the sweet but hard liquor of life.” 

Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017–2018, author of Grief Bone

Reviews & Interviews

Midwest Book Review Mistress of the House of Books


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$18.95 | March 2022 | 118 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-03-6

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COLLEEN ALLES is a native Michigander and writer living in West Michigan. Her chapbooks include So What to Say to a Bird, Porch Light to the Longshoreman, and Three Stars. Her first novel, Skinny Vanilla Crisis, was published in 2020.


​After t​he 8-Ball

Colleen Alles

Reply hazy, try again. All the poems in After the 8-Ball want answers, and so have thrown themselves at the mercy of a black plastic 8-Ball ­filled with dark blue alcohol and a tiny twenty-sided die. Love, loss, and Lake Michigan feature prominently in this debut collection from Colleen Alles, who examines everyday life in the Midwest with precision and depth. From the hound asleep in the sun to the pebbles lined up in the sill of a window facing west, these poems stand ready to accept whatever the 8-ball has in store, hoping, always, for, As I see it, yes.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for After the 8-Ball

 After the 8-Ball is a wise and remarkable collection.”

—Linda Nemec Foster, author of The Blue Divide and Talking Diamonds

“Colleen Alles has given readers a true gift: language that adroitly captures what it’s like to be alive in this world, a singular human in a human body, awash in memories, mourning, and the wistful, wondrous loneliness of everyday life.” 

Amorak Huey, author of Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy

“Colleen Alles reminds us how difficult it can be to live in the worlds we have made for ourselves. Should everyone read this beautiful book? As I see it, yes.” 

W. Todd Kaneko, author of This Is How the Bone Sings

Reviews & Interviews

Ecce Signum



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$18.95 | December 2021 | 102 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-00-5

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DEVON BOHM is a writer, poet, and educator. She holds degrees from Smith College and Fairfield University, and her work has appeared in Labrys, The Graveyard Zine, Necessary Fiction, Spry, and Sixfold. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut.






​Careful Cartography

Devon Bohm

Careful Cartography, the striking debut collection from Devon Bohm, doubles as life writing and poetry. With her detailed geographic narrative, Bohm plots out her autobiography through both external and internal landscapes. Strong in style and voice, these impactful free verse poems create a map through wordscapes that equate to topographical locations, a search culminating in the most elusive and unmappable of locations: a home.

Hoffer Finalist

WINNER, Best Publication (Academic Press), Eric Hoffer Awards 2023


Montaigne Medal Winner

SHORTLIST, Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, Eric Hoffer Awards 2023


Montaigne Medal Winner

WINNER, First Horizon Award, Eric Hoffer Awards 2023


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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu


Praise for Careful Cartography

“This is a life that speaks for many lives.” 

Baron Wormser, author of Legends of the Slow Explosion

“It’s slow work to accept that living is both stone and fruit, but our poet is here to show us just that.” 

Carol Ann Davis, author of The Nail in the Tree

Reviews & Interviews

The Eric Hoffer Award CitationPoetry Spoken Here


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$18.95 | December 2021 | 102 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-69-4

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BARBARA COSTAS-BIGGS is a poet and librarian from Southern Ohio. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Review, Northern Appalachian Review, The Pikeville Review, 8Poems, and others. Her chapbook, The Other Shore, was a finalist for the Washburn Prize from Harbor Review. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and an MLIS from Kent State University.

​Broken On the Wheel

Barbara Costas-Biggs

Drawing on the beauty of the Southern Ohio hills and Northern Appalachia, Barbara Costas- Biggs’s debut poetry collection, Broken On the Wheel, weaves together marriage, motherhood, and memory into a tapestry of creation and reclamation. With bold strokes and striking detail, Biggs mines the messiness of modern life, the reawakenings we strive to experience, and the faith that comes with trying to fix what appears unfixable.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Broken On the Wheel

“Broken On the Wheel is a perceptive, masterful debut.” 

Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod and Good Bones

“This book is a whole world, one I know and keep close to me, and I can’t imagine a way it could be more complete.” 

Darren C. Demaree, author of a child walks in the dark

“Biggs’s honesty is intense, her attention to detail remarkable.” 

Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate

Reviews & Interviews

Still: The Journal



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$18.95 | December 2021 | 126 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-68-7


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CATHLEEN COHEN was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia.


​​Sparks and Disperses

Cathleen Cohen

The poems in Cathleen Cohen’s Sparks and Disperses reckon with contemporary life through the perspective of visual artists. Drawing on an ancient Kabbalistic myth of the “shattering of vessels,” Cohen explores issues of fracture, healing, and creation; the challenges of poverty, isolation, and the pandemic; and how we can find meaning and joy through artmaking. By building a poetic mural made of cracked ceramics, household items and glass shards, Cohen promotes healing through continuity and hope.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Sparks and Disperses

“These poems gather up the sensuous fruit, the curiosity and grace of the poet’s living.” 

Yolanda Wisher, author of Monk Eats an Afro, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Poet Laureate, 2016-2017

“Sparks and Disperses touches reality and, by this actual touching, reveals life in its exquisite brilliance and raw distress.” 

John Fox, The Institute for Poetic Medicine

Reviews & Interviews

Readers' Favorite Poetry Online Radio BookLife Review 

The Reading Bud Midwest Book Review 

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$17.95 | May 2021 | 168 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-66-3

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MARGARET ROZGA a life-long Wisconsin resident and the Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2019–2020, lives in Milwaukee. An emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Waukesha, she continues to teach a poetry workshop for Continuing Education at what is now the UW-Milwaukee Waukesha campus.




Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems

Margaret Rozga

In Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems, her fifth volume of poetry, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga brings together some of her best-loved poems about Milwaukee’s fair housing marches and her concern for issues of peace and social justice, with new poems that identify with Alice in Wo​nderland and imagine new Alice adventures. New poems also grapple with issues of recent political turmoil and pandemic-induced uncertainty. These deeply written poems find in language the glue that may hold our selves together.


HONORAB​LE MENTION, Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award, Wisconsin Writers Awards 2021

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

​Praise for Holding My Selves Together

“Rozga’s newest collection is deliciously dizzying, like a lakeside summer at the peak of day. Fiery, hazy, warm, and refuge, these pieces offer a generous scope of Rozga’s voice, views, and celebrations of the everyday.” 

Dasha Kelly Hamilton, 2021-2022 Wisconsin Poet Laureate

“Sorrow, despair, hope, rage, tenacity, faith. It’s all here, as it should be—Rozga’s poetry is an honest grappling with what it takes to fight for a better world.” 

Nikki Wallschlaeger, author of Waterbaby

"Margaret Rozga's Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems is a master class in poetry: its movement, its tension, its bafflement, its power. As I read, I found myself speaking lines out loud, for the enjoyment of their brokenness. . . . I will return to Holding My Selves Together to hear these prayers again." 

Jennifer Martelli, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry

Reviews & Interviews

Milwaukee Journ​al Sentinel Highland Park Poetry  

Madison Book Beat

Wisconsin People & Ideas Sundress Publications 

Madison Public Library Arts + Literature Laboratory


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$14.95 | August 2020 | 102 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-62-5


HEATHER DUBROWJohn D. Boyd, SJ, Chair in Poetic Imagination at Fordham University, is the author of Forms and Hollows and two chapbooks. Among the journals where her poetry has appeared are Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review. She was director of Fordham’s Poets Out Loud reading series from Fall 2009 to Summer 2020.​​


Lost and Found Departments

H​​eather Dubrow

Lost and Found Departments explores the intersections and tensions among many  types of loss and, sometimes, recovery—of words, of people, of memories, of literary genres. Ranging from found poetry and monologues, to reimagined forms and poems of loss and recovery, Heather Dubrow’s collection challenges readers to see beyond the surface of the everyday. With these witty, intelligent, and humane poems, Dubrow encourages us to see and discover the world around us as more than static or mechanistic. To her, the world is poetry.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Lost and Found Departments

"Heather Dubrow’s Lost and Found Departments is a dexterous and quite moving poetry collection. It’s an ode to poetic craft that, within its rich myriad of voices, structures, and forms, revels in Dubrow’s lexical puckishness, incisive sense of humor, and rather notable ability to discover poetry everywhere and in every thing." 

Rowan Ricardo Phillips, National Book Award finalist

"With her keen sense of language’s capacity for pleasure and her puckish wordplay, Dubrow’s observances transform into renovations, each renewal made possible through the very words she uses to record thought. In these pages, lost are the places and person whose perils we grieve, the “back home in back there” never to be recovered; found is Dubrow’s wide, careful heart, made wider in the attempting." 

Kimberly Johnson, Brigham Young University

Reviews & Interviews

Kenyon Review Battery Journal



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$14.95 | August 2020 | 108 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-63-2

ALFONSO BREZMES was born in Madrid (Spain) in 1966. His first book, La noche tatuada, was a surprising revelation; written at an age when many poets start to retire. Since then he has produced, slowly but surely, the books Don de lenguas, Ultramor, and Sed, all of them with the Spanish publishing house Renacimiento; and Vicios ocultos, with the Argentinian publisher Leviatán. Marginal Notes is the first bilingual anthology of his poetry for an English-speaking readership.



Marginal Notes (Notas Marginales)

Alfonso Brezmes

edited and translated by Eduardo Gregori

Meditative, innovative, and incredibly talented, Spanish poet Alfonso Brezmes departs from tradition to deliver poems that are subtle, elegant, and playfully ironic. He draws upon historical and popular literature to craft poems that both haunt and delight. Brezmes invites readers to experience worlds of love, melancholy, fantasy, and adventure, each ripe with their own symbolism and yearning passion. Translated by Eduardo Gregori, many of Brezmes’s poems are now available in English for the first time. Marginal Notes is an entertaining entry point into modern Spanish poetry, as well as a sterling addition to contemporary world poetry.

To order, please email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu
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$14.95 | August 2019 | 114 pp

Paperback | 978-0-966848-88-5


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CASSONDRA WINDWALKER writes from the southern coast of Alaska, where she is cheered on by a ghost cat, a useless dog, and a tolerant husband. She is the author of two novels, Bury the Lead and Parable of Pronouns. The Almost-Children is her debut book of poetry.​


The Almost-Children

Cassondra Windwalker

Uncovering heartbreak and hope, Cassondra Windwalker takes us on a journey deep into the human heart, set against the backdrop of a beautiful natural world. Her poems are filled with pain and redemption, force and forgiveness, and the responsibility of love. Intense in its imagery, graceful in its style, and keen to the matters of the heart, The Almost-Children will haunt you, heal you, and lift you up. 

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The Almost-Children

“With taut, beautiful, and oft-haunting prose, Cassondra Windwalker gives us a book of unforgettable poetry that burrows into your heart and mind in equal measure.” 

Seven Jane, author of The Isle of Gold

“Sad poems for sad times. Windwalker brings her lyrical style to these empathetic poems reminiscent of Rollo May’s The Courage to Create.”

—Jason Dias, author of Finding Life on Mars

The Almost-Children is a flat-out amazing collection. Poems such as “new definitions” and “after the accident” are especially moving when each line is slowly pulled from the page and examined. It’s then that the reader becomes aware of how Windwalker frames these quieter, more intimate moments through deft word choice and subtle flourishes.”

—Alcy Leyva, author of And Then There Were Crows​

The Almost-Children is filled with raw emotion, eloquently expressed through Ms. Windwalker’s poetic style. The images evoked by these poems will stay with me for years to come.” 

Lanie Goodell, author of Salvagium




$14.95 | December 2016 | 96 pp

Paperback | 978-0-966848-83-0

Inspired by Entropy": An Interview with Kristine Ong Muslim - SmokeLong  Quarterly

KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM is the author of nine books of fiction and poetry, She lives in a small farmhouse in Sitio Magutay, a remote rural highland area in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao.​​​​

Meditations of a Beast

Kristine Ong Muslim


"Kristine Ong Muslim is a fearless writer who pushes us to the edge of an abyss and asks us to jump. Meditations of a Beast is a dark, wild, ruthless collection that offers glimpses of worlds and futures beyond our own. Each poem leaves a bruise. Each verse slips right into your ear—eel-like—and never leaves. We are witnessing the rise of a truly singular voice in speculative fiction and poetry."  

 Adam Morgan, Chicago Review of Books



Selected as one of the "Best Poetry Books of 2016" by the Chicago Review of Books


To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu




The Back Home Series in Nonfiction

Unique and original voices in creative nonfiction, memoir, and essays 

 

Wildlifer_Cover.jpg$32.95 | January ​2024 | 304 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-25-7

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ROBERT ROOT is the author of several narratives of history and place, including Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth (2017), Following Isabella: Travels in Colorado Then and Now (2009), and Recovering Ruth: A Biographer’s Tale (2003), and the essay collection Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Place (2012). He has published and presented widely on creative nonfiction. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin.​



The Arc of the Escarpment

Robert Root

The rocks of the Niagara Escarpment were formed in the middle of the Silurian Period (c. 443 to c. 412 million years ago) and were exposed during periods of glaciation that prevented and removed subsequent geologic depositions as recently as 11,000 years ago in the northern Midwest. The Arc of the Escarpment invites us to discover nearly hidden evidence of the Escarpment, ascend to cliff tops, descend to the base of cliffs, crawl into sinkhole-formed caverns, walk the woodlands that surround the cliffs, learn the changes that industry and commerce made to the landscape, and discover the sites that ecologists and conservationists have explored and preserved. With great detail and a sincere dedication to place, Robert Root encourages us to pay attention to the land beneath our feet, appreciate its changes, and value its preservation as we travel back through time and appreciate the scale of the history of the landscape around us.

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Praise for The Arc of the Escarpment
 
“Root might be looking for what defines him and his home, but he offers us even more: the reminder that when we know more about not just who and where we are but also when we are, we can begin to wrestle with the fallacy of arbitrary boundaries and to understand—deeply—the value of humility.” 

—Barbara Hurd, author of The Epilogues
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“Root enriches these stories of stone and scalloped shorelines with research, revealing a stunning breadth of history held in shapes that glaciers made.”

—Christine Stewart-Nuñez, author of Chrysopoeia: Essays of Language, Love, and Place

“Root brings to bear a wealth of detail and insights that traverse time and ecological thought.”

​—Leslie Carol Roberts, author of The Entire Earth and Sky
Wildlifer_Cover.jpg$28.95 | January ​2024 | 288 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-33-2

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YOLANDA DELOACH is an avid section hiker and outdoors advocate. She became a "1,000 miler" on the Ice Age Trail in 2021.​

Squatter

One Woman's Journey to Reclaim Her Spirit on the Ice Age Trail

​​​Yolanda DeLoach

I’m emotionally not in a good place. So begins Yolanda DeLoach’s raw and redemptive Squatter, a tale of trails, trekking, and overcoming trauma. Between heartache and the realization that a relationship was never as it seemed, DeLoach pushes herself toward Wisconsin’s historic Ice Age Trail, a place of friendship and, ultimately, forgiveness. But the forgiving starts from within, as she makes her way, section by section, along the trail’s storied footways. Honest, heartfelt, and told with a survivor’s grace, Squatter inspires, encourages, and listens, like a good friend on the trail.
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Praise for Squatter
 

“Yolanda DeLoach shows us what trail magic is all about. ”

—Patty Dreier, Past President, Ice Age Trail Alliance

“Many people use long-distance hiking—whether intentionally or subconsciously—as a way to heal. That includes Yolanda DeLoach, whose memoir about her trek along the Ice Age Trail beautifully showcases both the wonders of this National Scenic Trai​l and how therapeutic hiking can be.”

—Melanie Radzicki McManus, author of Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail

​“A courageous story. Yolanda’s vivid descriptions of the Ice Age Trail’s beauty, obstacles, and emancipation brought back wonderful memories of my own hike. Yolanda also weaves a challenging emotional journey into the narrative with raw honesty. Successful memoir writing is not about what you did, it’s about what you did with it.”

—Ed Abell, author of My Father’s Keep

Reviews & Interviews

Hudson Star-Observer  Milwaukee Magazine  Lodi Enterprise / Poynette Press​​​​​​​​St. Paul Pioneer Press 


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$22.95 | December ​2023 | 154 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-24-0

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DAVE GRESCHNER is an an award-winning outdoor writer and columnist. He served as the sports/outdoors editor at the Rice Lake Chronotype in northwest Wisconsin for over forty years, where he won twenty Wisconsin Newspaper Association first-place awards. Soul of the Outdoors​ is his first book.​



Soul of the Outdoors

​Dave Greschner

It takes years to learn the art of seeing, of expecting to see nature’s gifts. In Soul of the Outdoors, Dave Greschner passes that art along. He tells how little that chickadee at the feeder weighs, how tree buds survive in winter, how far a fisher leaps, and what the six blobs of shadows are on the creek bed below a water strider. He traces the cycle of seasons, immersing us in spring hikes to the marshes of emerging frogs and returning birds, summer’s coolness along the trout stream, a forgotten apple tree in autumn, and a full moon snowshoe hike in winter. With humor and heart, Soul of the Outdoors treks along the trails of one’s outdoor adventures and, ultimately, the trails of our lives.​

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Praise for Soul of the Outdoors

​“Greschner writes of the world in the way I wish to see it: with knowledge, authenticity, and reverence most of all.” 

—B.J. Hollars, author of Flock Together: A Love Affair with Extinct Birds

Soul of the Outdoors is part field guide, part almanac. Whether we join Dave Greschner while he’s road hunting for firewood or cradling a saw whet owl on his snowshoe trail, we’re right there with him every step of the way: from watching mulberry-tinged sunsets to discovering the first horned lark in the melt of winter.”

—Patti See, author of Here on Lake Hallie

​“Dave Greschner writes prose with lyrical poetry, helping the reader reconnect with the simple joys of childhood—times of playing outside until dark, exploring the natural world, letting that world be our first and best teacher.”

—Timothy Goodwin, author of Within These Woods

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$32.95 | April ​2024 | 320 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-15-8

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NEIL F. PAYNE is a Certified Wildlife Biologist and Professor Emeritus of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He worked as a wildlife biologist for the Newfoundland and Labrador Wildlife Service (1967–71) and as a wildlife professor for the University of Washington in Seattle (1973–75) and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (1975–98). He lives part-time in Florida, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and on the shore of the Wisconsin River in Wisconsin.​​



Wildlifer

​​Neil F. Payne

Neil F. Payne has spent nearly his entire adult life working as a “wildlifer” throughout North America. With several books, articles, and research studies to his credit, Payne closes his estimable career by guiding readers through an analysis of wildlife management as a profession. From the influence of Aldo Leopold and John Muir, to wildlife education, habitat diversity, and the value of conservation, Payne provides an exhaustive study of not only a profession, but also a way of life, and how it must be preserved.​

To pre-order directly from the press (20% discount), email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu 


Praise for Wildlifer

“Neil F. Payne has lived an exceptional life. He honorably served his country as a Marine in Vietnam, raised a loving family, and has made and continues to make a substantial contribution to the singularly important profession of wildlife management. This book will undoubtedly help the reader better understand why the wildlife profession, biodiversity and ecosystem management, environmental education, leadership, and relationships are key to guiding society for generations to come.”

—Adam N. Payne, Former Secretary, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

“Marvelous writing—and exciting coverage over many years.”

—Estella Leopold, Professor Emerita of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle​​​



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$28.95 | September ​2023 | 268 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-14-1

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JOHN HARMON is a widely commissioned composer. He created the jazz studies program at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and later founded and led the award-winning jazz nonet Matrix, which toured the country for nearly six years. Harmon serves as Composer-in-Residence for the Red Lodge Music Festival, artistic director for Fox Jazz Fest, and in 2005, was named a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. He holds honorary doctorates from Lawrence University and Ripon College.​​​



From the Heart: The Story of Matrix

John Harmon

In 1974, nine musicians came together in Appleton, Wisconsin, to form Matrix, a jazz fusion ensemble. Led by composer and keyboardist John Harmon, the group rose to prominence on the festival circuit before recording six acclaimed albums. Follow Harmon as he tells the story of the band, from their beginnings in the Midwest to their greatest successes to their reunion tours that brought them back together. From the Heart brings you into the inner workings of a highly influential music group, as well as closer to the man who made it all happen.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for From the Heart: The Story of Matrix​​

“When I first heard Matrix, I freaked! These guys were real musicians playing incredibly intelligent compositions. I became their biggest fan!”

—Bobby Shew, world famous trumpet player/recording artist 

​"The band was carried by the remarkable camaraderie of its members and crew. But John, who I still call 'Chief,' from those days, was the rock of the whole operation. Every member had his own role, but Matrix was his baby. ​No John Harmon, no Matrix. A high point in all of our lives. Hail to the Chief."

—Kurt Dietrich ("Dietch"), trombone, author of Wisconsin Riffs: Jazz Profiles from the Heartland

"Know this though, whatever goodness Matrix possessed was borne of the seeds of John Harmon’s honesty, humility, and the uncompromising musical vision he planted in each of us."

—John Kirchberger ("Kirch"), saxophones

"Matrix was a gift. The diversity of our music determined the variety of our experiences. I will always look back on my Matrix days with fondness and gratitude to all our band members."

—Mike Hale ("Tex"), trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion

"It was a place in time that provided a space for us to express our love of music and present it in an honest way. We learned from each other, supported each other, and aspired to be better players as we tackled some of the most difficult ensemble playing I had ever encountered."

—Larry Darling ("Zap"), trumpet, flugelhorn, synthesizer

“Matrix spoke with a voice filled with joy, energy, and originality that captivated music lovers and critics alike. Together, they shared and achieved the same vision. They created the legacy of Matrix: one of excellence, invention, and collaboration." 

—Mindy Cibrario, Appleton, Wisconsin



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$24.95 | August ​2023 | 228 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-99-8


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ANNE-MARIE OOMEN is the author of As Long as I Know You: The Mom Book, which won AWP’s Sue William Silverman Nonfiction Award and a Michigan Notable Book Award. Her other titles include The Lake Michigan Mermaid; Love, Sex and 4-H; Pulling Down the Barn; and House of Fields (all Michigan Notable Books).​



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The Long Fields

​Anne-Marie Oomen

Anne-Marie Oomen’s sixth essay collection, The Long Fields, celebrates rural life as she experienced it growing up on a farm and then into an adulthood marked by both wandering and homing. The three parts cover three phases of the author’s life: moments of early farm life in “Childhood’s Lamplight,” building her own home (complete with Estwing hammer) in “The Heart of Place,” and finally “Kuieren” (Dutch for “amble”) which delves into the wide swath of daily life. These three parts build a world that offers the vitality of living country. At its heart, The Long Fields voices the best of Midwestern rural living: a relationship to land, stewarding a place, and honoring the sacred quotidian.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu


Praise for The Long Fields

“Oomen’s words and stories walk us through Michigan’s seasons, our relationship with the land, and how this place defines us.” 

—Jacob Wheeler, author of Angel of the Garbage Dump 

“Anne-Marie Oomen’s glorious essays will give you something intensely personal: the necessary tension of a writer as she steps back, pushes against the beloved soil that nurtured her, but can’t completely leave it behind.” 

—Fleda Brown, author of Mortality, With Friends 

“Anne-Marie Oomen takes us beautifully and startlingly up close to the details of life, and then transports us to places sometimes wonderful and sometimes dark in our own hearts and minds and worlds.” 

—Jeff Smith, author of Becoming Amish

“This book is stunning. With its compassion, reflection, and celebration, Anne-Marie Oomen’s The Long Fields offers us a balm for our too-often battered hearts.” 

​—Patricia Ann McNair, author of Responsible Adults and Temple of Air



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$24.95 | August ​2023 | 178 pp

Paperback | 978-1-960329-04-2

ERIK MORTENSON is a literary scholar, writer, translator, and faculty member in English at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Michigan. 

CHRISTOPHER KRAMER (Christopher of Detroit) is the author of three novels and two poetry books with mystical themes. His latest novel, Dominique’s Confession, dives deep into the occult underbelly of Detroit during the Roaring Twenties. 

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​Kick Out the Bottom

Erik Mortenson & Christopher Kramer

Amidst the ruins of Detroit, two seekers question all that they thought they knew as they struggle to achieve spiritual awakening in this collaborative memoir. Guided by Ryan, an eccentric mystic from the suburbs, the pair explore a ramshackle city while running experiments on themselves in a bid for understanding who they are and what life means. But as the questions Ryan poses deepen, the two are left wondering what happens when you truly “kic​​k out the bottom.”

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Kick Out the Bottom

“Yes, ‘kick out the jams’ was one generation’s provocation, but Mortenson and Kramer inhabited in their youth a heady mixture of punkish aesthetics and neo-hip mysticism. They give us a Detroit that was on the edge of massive re-transformation even as they were themselves on their way to new modes of living.” 

—Aldon Lynn Nielsen, The Pennsylvania State University

“In Rilkean fashion, Kick Out the Bottom explores characters who are willing to change their lives as they endure an archetypal search for meaning.” 

—Daniel Morris, Purdue University, editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900

Kick Out the Bottom is the future of literature, or, to appropriate from the Detroit that the book transcends, we may ask, ‘Is there a Kick Out the Bottom in your future?’” 

—Stephen Paul Miller, St. John’s University, author of Being with a Bullet


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$28.95 | December 2022 | 294 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-78-8

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JEFF WILSON currently spends his time between his island cabin on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage and Lake Superior, adventuring with his wife, artist and illustrator, Terry Daulton. Wrong Tree: Adventures in Wildlife Biology is his first full-length book.  

TERRY DAULTON is an environmental educator and artist. She works in scratchboard, watercolor, pastels, and printmaking. Her artwork can be viewed at terrrydaultonart.com. ​

​Wrong Tree: Adventures in Wildlife Biology

Jeff Wilson, with illustrations by Terry Daulton

During his ​30+ year career as a wildlife technician for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Jeff Wilson learned to be at home in an eagle nest at the top of a white pine, tracking furbearers on snow covered forest roads, and spending nights under the stars banding loons. Jeff’s adventures (or misadventures) in wildlife biology, are incredibly informative, entertaining, occasionally hilarious, and passionate in the concern for the wildlife of the Midwest, North America, and the future.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Wrong Tree

“Jeff’s wild and often amusing lifestyle, captured in this book, shows that he is the last of a breed. But our movement, environmentalism, is not dying and Jeff offers a beacon for the next generation to preserve its ties to the land.” 

Rocky Barker, Pulitzer Finalist & author of Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America

“An illuminating and entertaining journey of inquiry into the wonders of nature.” 

Tia Nelson, environmentalist and daughter of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson

"Here is a well-written story of love for the outdoors and especially its wildlife.” 

Jerry Apps, author of Whispers and Shadows, A Naturalist'​s Memoir

“Jeff Wilson…is a world class individual and has more stories than anyone I have ever met.” 

Jim Paruk, author of Loon Lessons

Reviews & Interviews

The Larry Meiller Show (WPR) ​Outdoors Radio with Dan Small 

The Lake Guy  

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$24.95 | November 2022 | 240 pp

Paperback | 979-8-986144-74-0

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JIM LANDWEHR is the author of three previous memoirs: Cretin Boy, Dirty Shirt, and The Portland House. His nonfiction has been published in Main Street Rag, The Sun Magazine, Story News, Portage Magazine, and Wisconsin Outdoor News.. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin.​  


​At the Lake

Jim Landwehr

One year when asked around the campfire what their favorite vacation memories were, Jim Landwehr’s kids replied, “trips to the cabin.” In At the Lake, stories of fishing and kayaking, a single mother and growing teenagers, and parents wanting what’s best for their children weave a larger tale of the cabin experience in the Upper Midwest. Despite the changing settings and cast of characters, the principles of rest, relaxation, and renewal remain central to three generations of a Midwestern family. With fifteen rich personal histories, Landwehr delivers a memoir filled with humor, warmth, and reverence for life up North.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Chosen as the #1 Best New Lake Book of 2023 (Book Authority)

Praise for At the Lake

“In good times and in grief, Landwehr reminds us, the small moments we spend in nature with those we love are sacred.” 

Kim Suhr, author of Nothing to Lose

“Landwehr’s memoir is a heartwarming collage of personal yet universal memories.” 

Patricia Skalka, author of the Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries

“Jim Landwehr’s At The Lake takes us on a journey of Northwoods adventures.” 

Jeff Nania, author of the Northern Lakes Mystery Series

Reviews & Interviews

KFAN 100.3  Lakeland Times  Twin Cities Pioneer Press​​​​​


$21.95 | April 2022 | 94 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-08-1

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TAKWA GORDON is a Somali-American writer, editor, and social worker. She holds an MA in English and minors in comparative literature and literacy. She enjoys painting, running, reading, and kayaking. She currently lives in Ogden, Utah with her family. ​

Bod​​y Talk

Takwa Gordon

Blending poetry and nonfiction prose into a hybrid memoir brimming with humanity, Takwa Gordon’s Body Talk explores being bipolar, Black, a refugee, a woman, a Muslim, a child sexual abuse survivor, and a first-generation college student in America. At once a narrative of trauma and disruption, Gordon also investigates the power of love and community, and ultimately what healing looks like for a Black-American trying to carve out a story, and a future, of her own.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Body Talk

“An artistic, poignant portrait of vulnerability, self love, and survival.” 

Aitch Alexandar, author of My Body is a Junkyard

“Takwa Gordon’s Body Talk is at once an unflinching study of abuse and trauma, an illuminating meditation on the impact of racism and religious bigotry, and an uplifting chronicle of recovery and empowerment.” 

Vince Font, Glass Spider Publishing

“Anyone who has experienced armed conflicts in Africa or elsewhere may benefit from reading this memoir.” 

Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, author of The Suicidal State in Somalia




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$32.95 | April 2022 | 366 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-02-9

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CAROLYN DALLMANN grew up on a family farm within the village limits of North Freedom, Wisconsin. Prior to writing fulltime she worked at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Sauk County, Wisconsin, for over thirty years. Her life writing has appeared in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, and North Freedom is her debut book.​

North Freedom

Carolyn Dallmann

With the clarity of sharp memory and the innocence of youthful charm, Carolyn Dallmann takes readers on a nostalgic journey through family, farming, and growing up in North Freedom. Dozens of interrelated stories weave a narrative of promise and hard work, built on the backs of three generations of Wisconsin farmers within a thriving, small town community in the 1950s and 1960s. Dallmann’s raw, immediate style illuminates the past and reminds us of the vision and vitality of remembrance.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for North Freedom

“Carolyn Dallmann captures the innocence of a little girl growing up on a farm in a small rural Wisconsin community.”

Keri Olson, author of Find Your Heart, Follow Your Heart

“The rural charm and humor of these reminiscences is delightful. Wonderful family photos add to this portrait of mid-20th-century rural Wisconsin.” 

Marc Seals, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Baraboo Sauk County




$21.95 | April 2022 | 172 pp

Paperback | 978-1-737739-07-4

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MARTHA LUNDIN is a writer and educator living in Minnesota. They completed their MFA in nonfiction at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.​ Martha’s work can be found in Fourth Genre, Newfound, Gertrude Press, Ninth Letter, and Shenandoah Literary Journal, among others.​


​​The In-Between State

Martha Lundin

The essays in The In-Between State forward a compassionate analysis of bodies: queer bodies, bodies of water, bodies that are hated, and bodies that deserve love. Martha Lundin, in fifteen moving, finely-crafted essays, attempts to understand the ways in which people try to shape landscapes—how this can be a violent act, even as it seeks to be loving in some ways, and that this violence is not so different from the ways in which queer people shape their bodies to fit in or live outside of a norm. With essays both personal and progressive, The In-Between State forms a love letter to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, ultimately, a love letter to Lundin’s queer body and queer bodies across the United States.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for The In-Between State

“Rendered in crisp and sumptuous prose, and grappling toward transcendence, Lundin’s work uncovers the beautiful ‘outliers’ lurking amid the ornaments of our world. And in doing so, these essays levitate and whirl, as if miracles.” 

Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

“This collection marks the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American literature.” 

May-lee Chai, American Book Award winner, author of Useful Phrases for Immigrants




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$18.95 | April 2021 | 130 pp

Paperback | 978-1-733308-65-6

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ROBERT MILTNER is the award-winning author of two books of prose poetry, Hotel Utopia and Orpheus & Echo, and a short story collection, And Your Bird Can Sing. A professor emeritus of English at Kent State University Stark and the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing, Miltner lives in Northeast Ohio.​


Ohio Apertures

Robert Miltner

The inaugural volume in our "Back Home" series, Robert Miltner's Ohio Apertures is a collection of brief pieces of creative nonfiction that turns its attention to northeast Ohio's position as both a Great Lakes state and the north coast of America. Its dozen selections, which include flash memoir, lyric essays, narrative nonfiction, literary nonfiction, travel writing, and historical excavations of place, trace the author's life from early childhood onward, offering a template for understanding the impact of place, region, family, literacy, and cultural influence on the shaping of a Midwest identity.

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To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Praise for Ohio Apertures

“Miltner’s essays and reflections grant dignity to the commonplace.” 

David Giffels, The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt

“Ohio Apertures represents storytelling at its lyric best.” 

Barbara Sabol, Solitary Spin 

Reviews & Interviews

Rust Belt Girl The Boom Project River Teeth

The Heritage Series

New editions of out-of-print or neglected books on or about the Midwest


Front Jacket.png$12.99 | April 2019 | 272 pp

Paperback | 978-0-984673-96-4


The Wisconsin Idea

Charles McCarthy

Edited by Ross K. Tangedal and Jeff Snowbarger

Charles McCarthy’s The Wisconsin Idea, originally published in 1912, made the phrase “the Wisconsin idea” famous throughout the state and the country. Grounded in thorough research, meticulous detail, and a steadfast belief in the public good, the book is an important historical document of the state of Wisconsin, the Midwest, and the United States. McCarthy’s chronicle of progressive state craft in practice charges those in government to invest in “hope, health, happiness, and justice,” in order to build up, rather than exploit, the resources (both human and natural) of the country, that we may truly prosper as a free people.

This new edition, with informative annotations for contemporary readers, is a must read for scholars and students of progressivism at the turn of the nineteenth century, as well as a must own for those who believe in the power and responsibility of the Wisconsin Idea.

To order directly from the press, please email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Review

Middle West Review

The J. Baird ​Callicott Environmental Humanities Series

Named for famed environmental ethics scholar J. Baird Callicott, this series is designed to provide scholars the opportunity to reflect on environmental issues as they relate to the scholar’s academic area of specialization. 

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$14.95 | August 2019 | 206 pp

Paperback | 978-0-977480-26-5


Stranger, Creature, Thing, Other

Clint Jones

Clint Jones delves into the problematic nature of human Being by examining how we created the climate crisis and what it will take to change they nature of ourselves to save the natural world. Using the motif of monstrosity, Jones examines consumption, domination, historical inheritances, alienation, and competing social epistemologies to provide a richer understanding of the human element in nature and develop a new philosophical paradigm: ecostentialism.

To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu




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$9.99 | August 2018 | 128 pp

Paperback | 978-0-984673-95-7


​Ecological Reflections on Post-Capitalist Society

Clint Jones

Ecological Reflections provides an intellectual roadmap for deciphering the difficulties facing civilization confronted by the destabilization of late stage capitalism. Drawing upon a variety of resources, Dr. Clint Jones argues that it is of vital importance that traditional ideas about the human-nature divide be systematically broken down, not merely along the typical socio-political divides of race, class, and gender, but at deeper ontological and metaphysical levels.


To order directly from the press, email cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu

Review

​North Meridian Review 

Select ​Backlist Titles   


Among the Leaves: A Collection of Outdoor Essays

George Rogers​
Publication Date:  2012

From fish to deer, places to people, and everywhere in between, George Rogers captures the essence of Wisconsin’s wildlife and history in Among the Leaves. “What happened to THE State Park?” and “where have all the passenger pigeons gone?” are some of the questions answered in this captivating description of what the outdoors has to offer, both in Wisconsin and beyond. As a writer for the Stevens Point Journal and the Portage County Gazette, Rogers wrote an expertly crafted, widely read outdoor living column.


Syncopation

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
Publication Date:  2012

In nineteenth-century France, a woman’s role was explicitly defined: she was a daughter, then a wife, then a mother. This view was held by novelist and poet Victor Hugo, but not by his daughter, pianist and poet Adèle Hugo. Under such constraints, what’s a woman of passion to do? Syncopation, by Elizabeth Felt, breathes life into the unconventional thoughts of this controversial female figure. An elderly Adèle recounts her desperate attempts to gain personal freedom. Her memoir blurs the fine line between truth and madness, in a narrative that is off-kilter, skewed,…syncopated.

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Whipped, Not Beaten

Melissa Westemeier
Publicaton Date:  2011

Sadie Davis is craving change. Recently dumped and working for a boss she despises, she is determined to shake up her life as a single woman in the city of Madison. She takes a side job as a home party consultant selling kitchenware, hoping that it will be the spice that turns her life around. Through failed recipes and cold ovens, Sadie works to create something that’s a bit sweeter, a lot richer, and oh, so very delicious.

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Fugitive from Spanish Fascism: A Memoir by Miguel Domínguez Soler

Translated and with an Introduction by Richard Barker
Publication Date:  2010

Miguel based his memoir on the diaries he kept his entire life, including the dangerous years when he was a fugitive. His account of the Fascist repression is a valuable addition to recent works on the suppressed history of the atrocities committed during the Spanish civil war that brought General Francisco Franco to power.
 

Wisconsin River of Grace

Kyle L. White
Publication Date:  2009

Ghosts and kielbasa. Blow guns and flying whitetails. Abraham Lincoln and the Wisconsin-Illinois Truce of '07. Aldo Leopold's warning. Icelandic immigrants who wave. These are just a few of the mysteries of Wisconsin River of Grace, a book that explores the irresistible pull of God's Country.

Your Annotated, Illustrated College Survival Guide, Volume I

Patrick J. Rothfuss
Publication Date:  2005
 
Patrick J. Rothfuss, with illustrations by B.J. Hiorns, brings us his first volume of Your Annotated, Illustrated College Survival Guide.
 
"Pat approaches everything with a childlike, almost infantile wonder. His wide-eyed amazement is so young and fresh it would be crispy, yet tender, if it was a vegetable." -B.J. Hiorns​
 
Availability: Out of print

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