BOOKS
Scroll to find titles in our various series, including:
TheLegacy Series in Short Fiction
The Linda Nemec Foster First Book Award for Poetry
The Portage Poetry Series
The Back Home Series in Creative Nonfiction
The Heritage Series
New Releases
Fall 2026
$24.95 | Nov 2026
220 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-81-2
The Loneliness of Glass
Kathleen Furin
Featuring women on the borders, Kathleen Furin’s stories show how a deepening understanding of inner truths can challenge one’s social belonging, and how this tension between inner and outer selves serves or destroys. Grappling with complicity, the characters in The Loneliness of Glass struggle as they learn how an intent to “save” others is often fraught with hypocrisy and can lead to self-destruction.
“Incandescent . . . Furin is a major new talent.”
—Jonathan Vatner
author of Carnegie Hill
$24.95 | Nov 2026
220 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-56-0
Ask Me About the Money
Keith Lesmeister
With profound empathy, searing details, and propulsive scenes, these stories introduce situations at once simple and profound, strange and familiar. From railroad tracks, to cheap motels, from garage sales to cow pastures, Keith Pilapil Lesmeister tunes our hearts to the powerful frequency of money.
“Deeply felt, generous, big-hearted stories by one of the most exciting and talented short story writers out there.”
—Andrew Porter
author of The Imagined Life
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$24.95 | Nov 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-88-1
There’s No Way to Know
Mary Alice Hostetter
“Readers familiar with any small town in America will recognize the colorful inhabitants of Tanner’s Gap, West Virginia. From the gossiping quilters to the young women with dreams of taking over the local diner to the high school basketball star who just wants to get out of town, Hostetter has woven these unflinching stories together with lyrical threads of loss, jealousy, and loneliness. These are the men and women who stay, who leave, who are left behind, and I promise when you get to the end, you’ll want more.”
author of In an Uncharted Country
$24.95 | Nov 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-87-4
Aboard the Old Buoy
Andrew Rihn
“Rihn has crafted a collection of picaresque tales that pull no punches (infused with the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s boxing stories) about the hangdog Steve Costigan, Jr. They are brisk with action, roguish characters, barflies, and stings of physical comedy like we haven’t seen since the days of Chaplin and Keaton. I don’t want to overstate it, but these are Melvillean tales focused on the pugilist rather than the sailor, punctuated with sharp prose and keen thoughts.”
author of The Ship of Death
$24.95 | Nov 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-86-7
Never Mind Your Good Reasons
BettyJoyce Nash
“These stories are packed full of longing, regret, and resignation and glimmers of hope and resilience. They open readers’ eyes to the everyday struggles of people one might pass on the street, on the bus, in a parking lot who might not be given a chance of a second glance. Nash finds gravity in those characters. She holds a tenderness for the ordinary, the woebegone, the beaten down and writes with poignancy, humor, and empathy.”
—Debra A. Daniel
author of In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit
$22.95 | Nov 2026
120 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-74-4
Summer & Other Stories
Tamara Skidmore
Six stories follow the life of Ruby, a Michigan girl living, struggling, and searching in San Francisco in Tamara Skidmore’s raw and moving story cycle. Her Midwestern memories intrude upon her California present, haunting and helping her as she wonders about the great heights and darkness in her life. Starkly real and exacting in its endurance and spirit, Summer & Other Stories is a soulful exploration of a woman’s dangerous proximity to ruin and rebirth.
“Compellingly intimate.”
—Stuart Dybeck
author of The Coast of Chicago
$24.95 | Nov 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-85-0
Welcome to North Bank
Phillip Sterling
“At times devastating, beautifully sorrowful and at others bitterly joyful, Sterling has captured the complexities of smalltown life that one should never confuse for ‘the simple life.’ This is to say that what really gets these wives, husbands, smalltown business owners and politicians, door-to-door salesmen and lovers from one day to the next is hope. There is nothing more human than that.”
—RS Deeren
author of Enough to Lose
$23.95 | Nov 2026
150 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-84-3
Abandon
Storm Ainsely
“A raw and immersive debut that follows a drifting narrator through a fractured underground world of music, addiction, friendships, and fleeting revelations. . . . the work further pushes boundaries and captures a new generation searching for meaning while standing at the edge of collapse. Weaving lyrical and realistic lines, Ainsely is a writer who unflinchingly explores the fragile spaces between creativity and self-destruction, hope and nihilism, connection and isolation.”
—John Chavez
author of City of Slow Dissolve
$24.95 | Oct 2026
224 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-67-6
Mervelous Freaks of Nature!
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple
From oddballs and lonely hearts living on the fringes of suburbia to stunning abnormalities pulled out from Mother Nature’s bag of tricks, MARVELOUS FREAKS OF NATURE! is a delightfully sly study of the shadowy crannies of the human heart. A dazzling debut so full of life it hurts.
“Continually amazes, sometimes quietly and sometimes with the force of a bomb.”
—Mary Grimm
author of Transubstantiation
$24.95 | Oct 2026
216 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-57-7
Tradeoffs
David Galef
From the minor to the magnificent, Tradeoffs follows its many characters toward their various conclusions—sometimes logical, sometimes absurd, yet always true. Intricate in its construction and thrilling in its breadth, Tradeoffs pays off.
“Masterful . . . compelling and thought-provoking.”
—Francine Witte
author of Radio Water
$25.95 | Oct 2026
238 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-77-5
Bullies & Cowards
Kevin Grauke
What makes a bully? What makes a coward? Who determines what makes a person one or the other? How does one avoid being either? Bullies & Cowards reveals the darkness and courage buried in each of us.
“As brutal as it is beautiful. . . . Without question, Grauke is one of our finest short story writers today.”
—Jonathan Danielson
author of The Lowest Basin
$24.95 | Oct 2026
216 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-76-8
Secrets and Other Hobbies
Mary Hannah Terzino
Serious and darkly humorous, noble and morally ambiguous, achingly vulnerable and always memorable, Mary Hannah Terzino’s debut lays bare an indelible and realistic Midwest.
“Gutting and complex . . . a literary coup for all those who love the Midwest.”
—Katey Schultz
author of Still Come Home
$23.95 | Oct 2026
152 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-79-9
The Great Silence
Daniel Scott
Set in isolated monasteries, in the cabs of snowplows, in maximum-security prisons and junior-high locker rooms and windowless Manhattan apartments, the bracing, innovative stories in Daniel Scott’s The Great Silence expose and exalt human longing amidst the push and promise of American life.
“A beautiful, moving collection.”
—Karen E. Bender
author of The Words of Dr. L
$24.95 | Oct 2026
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-80-5
And Night Shall Come
David J. Rank
The stories in David J. Rank’s debut collection reveal what things wait in the shadows beyond human vision: creatures best left alone, monsters lurking within ourselves, and dark emotions ready to erupt from tormented souls.
“Full of wit and dark humor, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury.”
—Sarah Read
Bram Stoker Award Winner
$24.95 | Oct 2026
196 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-70-6
Tollund Man
Jeff Esterholm
“This book whispers and explodes, sings then kicks down the door.”
—Luis Alberto Urrea
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
“Esterholm writes my kind of crime fiction—tough, tender, and as rich as marrow.”
—Peter Farris
author of The Devil Himself
$24.95 | Oct 2026
174 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-75-1
Rumors of Peace
Hope Coulter
Biting, canny, and tender, Rumors of Peace conjures a group of characters who, amid many kinds of upheaval, spin the magic of stories to make sense of their lives.
“Coulter swiftly summons not only vanished times and places but entire lives into being.”
—Kevin Brockmeier
author of The Ghost Variations
Series List
$22.95 | Apr 2026
118 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-36-2
Hands
Pardeep Toor
What happens if hard work doesn’t pay off and dreams don’t come true? Hands follows Hans, a downtrodden and aimless immigrant pursuing the so-called American Dream by any means necessary.
“Brilliant . . . a beautiful work of art.”
—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
National Book Award Finalist
$24.95 | Apr 2026
206 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-37-9
I Felt My Life With Both My Hands
Jessica Treadway
These stories affirm the significance of our most inner selves, and the possibility of grace in human connection.
“A writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.”
—The New York Times Book Review
$24.95 | Apr 2026
180 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-38-6
This Is How We Speak
Rebecca Reynolds
What do we owe one another? Rebecca Reynolds tells stories within stories of parents, children, turmoil, and forgiveness.
“Vibrant and alive and necessary.”
—Mary Miller
author of Always Happy Hour
$24.95 | Apr 2026
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-39-3
Your Place in This World
Jake La Botz
What does it mean to find your place in this world? Jake La Botz burrows his way deep into the challenges of revelation, showing how change can bless us and curse us, and ultimately save us.
“Engrossing . . . excellent.”
—Adventures in Americana
$24.95 | Apr 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-42-3
All That It Seems
Jim Landwehr
Eclectic, relevant, and earnestly human at every turn, Jim Landwehr’s stories sparkle with magic and fantasy, hum with technology and history, and celebrate human triumph in troubling times.
“Brimming with life, humor and heartbreak.”
—Frank Bures
author of Pushing the River
$24.95 | Apr 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-43-0
Lafferty, Looking for Love
Dennis McFadden
People like Terrance Lafferty because he’s harmless. All the trouble he gets into, all his predicaments, are usually self-inflicted, and happen only because he’s on that most elemental of quests: he’s looking for love. And, as you might guess, he’s looking in all the wrong places.
“Charming.”
—Foreword Reviews
$24.95 | Apr 2026
225 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-44-7
All Gone Now
Michael Caleb Tasker
Examines lives touched by absent parents, escaped convicts, and looming hurricanes in slowly changing worlds, peopled with beaten souls that refuse erosion.
“Brings to life the wounded and the lost, and the yearning within the human heart.”
—Michael Sela
author of The Restorer
$24.95 | Mar 2026
174 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-21-8
Apple & Palm
Patricia Henley
The town of Whistle Pig, like the mountains that surround it, can appear unchanging, as immutable as geography. The lives of the characters in Patricia Henley’s linked stories contrast with that predictability.Apple & Palm is a provocative close-up examination of aging, memory, and desire.
“Stirring.”
—Booklist
$24.95 | Mar 2026
220 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-35-5
Bodies in Bags
Jamey Gallagher
Jamey Gallagher’s stories, steeped in desperation and told in tough but tender voices, are about the effects of—and the compulsion to—violence. Bodies in Bags, with its flex and fever, is so visceral you can smell it.
“Steel-hinged and hard-won.”
—Benjamin Drevlow
author of Honky
$27.95 | Mar 2026
288 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-40-9
A Green Glow On the Horizon
Dawn Burns
Exposes the complicated, often contradictory yearnings and compulsions, griefs and grievous missteps of our fellow human beings.
“Tender, funny, and masterful”
—Bonnie Jo Campbell
National Book Award Finalist
$24.95 | Feb 2026
228 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-25-6
Yes, No, I Don’t Know
Kathryn Gahl
Stories that form a luminous patchwork of Midwestern strivers, lovers, and dreamers in thorny circumstances. Controlled, tender, and masterful, Gahl weaves despair and hope into a single thread of healing grace.
“Brimming with compassion.”
—Larry Watson
New York Times Bestselling Author
$24.95 | Feb 2026
218 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-22-5
How We Do Things Here
Matt Cashion
Matt Cashion’s cast of slow-learners reveals how we try (and fail) and retry to forge meaningful connections in the troubled spaces we’re so desperate to share.
“Surprising, very funny, and brimming with compassion.”
—Lori Ostlund
author of Are You Happy?
$23.95 | Feb 2026
156 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-24-9
Release of Information
Kali White VanBaale
Exploring marital roles, complex family legacies, abuse, and generational trauma, the interconnected characters and stories move through time and space, as VanBaale catches ordinary people in extraordinary moments of revelation.
“Striking and haunting.”
$24.95 | Feb 2026
178 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-34-8
The Price of Their Toys
John P. Loonam
John P. Loonam builds a mosaic of modern life, charged with the arrogance of youth, the despair of aging, and the prices we pay along the way.
“A vivid, powerful coming-of-age tale, a story of stories.”
—Frank Haberle
author of Downlanders
$24.95 | Feb 2026
162 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-23-2
Neon Steel
Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Magical realist and neon-lit, McCauley faithfully follows a group of nerds and the magic that excites them, bringing to life a city and a state of being.
“These linked stories are valentines to Black culture, Blerds
(Black nerds), and Pittsburgh. . . . A fun homage to anime.”
—Kirkus Reviews
$24.95 | Feb 2026
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-27-0
The Divide
Evan Morgan Williams
Set in the Mountain West, place is not just a backdrop; it is a provocation, an invitation to hope, and a mirror to reflect either consolation or indifference, depending on the case.
“A collection of memorable character studies with a good sense of presence—and absence.”
—Kirkus Reviews
$24.95 | Dec 2025
212 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-13-3
We Should Be Somewhere By Now
Stephen Tuttle
With singular style and grace, Stephen Tuttle explores what it means to be a stranger in familiar places and among familiar people.
“Intensely visible and invisible at once, Tuttle probes questions about our relationships and the ways we live and grieve.”
—Aimee Bender
author of The Color Master
$24.95 | Dec 2025
228 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-17-1
These Are My People
Steve Fox
Edna Ferber Fiction Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
Whirling and wondrous, these stories show Steve Fox at the peak of his powers.
$25.95 | Dec 2025
242 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-18-8
A Day Doesn’t Go By When I Don’t Have Regrets
J. Malcolm Garcia
Hard-boiled tales of characters living well below the radar of the people around them, but redemption might be right around the corner as long as the will to search for it still exists.
“Deft and moving.”
—Andria Williams
author of The Longest Night
$24.95 | Dec 2025
174 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-20-1
The Caged Man
Calvin Mills
Unnatural events pivot unremarkable people into surreal conflicts and resolutions in The Caged Man, Calvin Mills’ debut collection. Through his characters’ isolation, grief, and longing, Mills makes us see the fantastic in the mundane.
“Intricate . . . effortless storytelling.”
—T.C. Boyle
National Book Award Finalist
$25.95 | Nov 2025
258 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-11-9
The Plan of Chicago
Barry Pearce
Shortlisted, Fiction
William Saroyan International Prize
Finalist, Fiction
Foreword INDIES
Book of the Year
$24.95 | Nov 2025
172 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-12-6
Burner and Other Stories
Katrina Denza
Katrina Denza writes women in conflict. Wrestling with connections and disconnections, highs and lows, and the vagaries of modernity, Burner and Other Stories shows us how we live today.
“Seductive, smart, and funny.”
—Jill McCorkle
author of Old Crimes
$24.95 | Nov 2025
160 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-14-0
Trust Issues
K.P. Davis
International Impact Book Awards
Contemporary Fiction
The twenty sharp, poignant, and biting stories in Trust Issues comprise a stunning beacon for hard-headed folk fighting to be heard when nobody listens.
$24.95 | Oct 2025
182 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-08-9
Western Terminus
Michael Keefe
In tales tinged with magical realism, Michael Keefe’s characters find themselves caught in the limbo between self-discovery and self-destruction.
“These stories explore moments of transition and revelation with profound wisdom, empathy, and precision.”
—Kimberly King Parsons
National book Award Finalist
$24.95 | Oct 2025
202 pp| Paperback
978-1-968148-09-6
Guardians & Saints
Diane Josefowicz
We’re born unfinished, in need of everything—love, food, attention, care. The linked stories in Guardians & Saints explore the ways in which modern orphans fail to thrive.
“Gorgeously rhythmic and constantly surprising.”
—Beth Bosworth
author of The Source of Life and Other Stories
$24.95 | Oct 2025
194 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-04-1
Like Human
Janet Goldberg
Janet Goldberg’s mesmeric stories pit people against their loved ones, their landscapes, the fluid boundaries of safety, and ultimately, the vagaries of love.
“An intimate, exquisitely observed collection . . . mesmerizing.”
—Stephanie Cowell
American Book Award Winner
$24.95 | Oct 2025
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-10-2
Adult Children
Laurence Klavan
da Vinci Eye Award
Eric Hoffer Awards
People deal with a world out of kilter, as Edgar Award-winning Laurence Klavan weaves together threads of humanity and strangeness to dizzying and heartfelt effects.
$24.95 | May 2025
196 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-84-4
The Hopefuls
Elizabeth Oness
From award-winning writer Elizabeth Oness comes a new collection of rapturous and compelling stories about ordinary people and their joys, slights, families, and failures.
“In Oness’s hands, even the smallest, most ordinary lives loom large.”
—David Jauss
author of Glossolalia
$24.95 | May 2025
180 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-83-7
Never Stop Exiting
Michael Hopkins
Finalist, Edna Ferber Fiction Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
Finalist, Short Fiction
American Book Fest
Michael Hopkins’ dazzling mix of stories helps us see the world as if through beginner’s eyes, a prism where the refractions usher in light and life.
$24.95 | May 2025
212 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-81-3
Broken Heart Syndrome
Anne Colwell
Death doesn’t end relationships in Broken Heart Syndrome but transforms them. Colwell’s characters live lives haunted by ghosts, and yet they all eventually choose to suture up their despair for a chance at restoration.
“Nothing less than thrilling.”
—Liam Callanan
author of When in Rome
$24.95 | May 2025
168 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-82-0
The Mexican Messiah
Jay Kauffmann
Stories of faith, chance, and haunting grace from a striking new voice, The Mexican Messiah glows with life and darkens with shadow.
“A work of wonderment.”
—Vanessa Blakeslee
author of Perfect Confition
$24.95 | Mar. 2025
182 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-65-3
Close to a Flame
Colleen Alles
Named one of
Literary Hub’s
100 Notable Small Press Books 2025
Finalist, Fiction
Society of Midland Authors
$24.95 | Mar. 2025
228 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-71-4
American Animism
Jamey Gallagher
Named one of
Literary Hub’s
100 Notable Small Press Books 2025
Grand Prize
Eric Hoffer Awards
Veering between realism and magical realism, each story in American Animism, the astonishing debut collection from Jamey Gallagher, illuminates something necessary, something true.
$24.95 | Feb. 2025
198 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-74-5
Soaked
Toby LeBlanc
One word describes Louisiana fifty years from now after climate change intensifies: Soaked. Laughing in the face of oblivion, lending a hand to the hopeless, adapting in spite of tragedy, and enduring when everything else is gone, is what the people of Louisiana, Toby LeBlanc’s people, do best.
“Deeply intimate and significantly important.”
—Southern Review of Books
$24.95 | Feb. 2025
230 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-64-6
The Continental Divide
Bob Johnson
Named one of
Literary Hub’s
100 Notable Small Press Books 2025
Longlist, PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Finalist, Fiction
Society of Midland Authors
$24.95 | Feb. 2025
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-63-9
Keeping What’s Best Left Kept Secret
David Ricchiute
Finalist, Fiction
Chicago Writers Association Awards
Stirring and elegant, Keeping What’s Best Left Kept Secret probes the force of untold secrets on the daily business of making do. In these stories, David Ricchiute uncovers deception teeming with self-deception, and the final returns have much to do with the accidental chemistry of fate.
$22.95 | Feb. 2025
146 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-73-8
Shocker in Gloomtown
Dan Libman
Bursts of humor, pathos, and absurdity people the tales in Shocker in Gloomtown, as Dan Libman continues his exploration into the strange fissures of Midwestern surrealism.
“Quick, funny, touching, serious, sometimes surreal, with a distinctive colloquial voice.”
—Stephen Dixon
National Book Award nominee
$24.95 | Feb. 2025
174 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-52-3
The Correct Response
Manfred Gabriel
In The Correct Response, Manfred Gabriel artfully blends the fantastic and the real, culminating in surreal but heartfelt tales of longing, love, and loss against the backdrop of modern America.
“A short-story collection with characters so real they might just grab you by the shirt collar.”
author of South of Luck
$24.95 | Feb. 2025
198 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-70-7
The Path of Totality
Marie Zhuikov
United by the power of appearances to deceive and captivate, Marie Zhuikov’s tales glisten with the magic and menace of everyday lives.
“Love, in its numerous forms romantic, parental, devotional, inspirational, and desperate has a lingering presence in Zhuikov’s collection of tales.”
$24.95 | Jan. 2025
182 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-62-2
The Three Devils
William Luvaas
With grit and grace, chaos and compassion, angst and absolution, The Three Devils makes us reckon with the maelstrom, all while wrestling with the longings of the busted and beautiful human heart.
“As human as it is haunting . . . mesmerizing and deeply unsettling.”
—Necessary Fiction
$24.95 | Nov. 2024
244 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-48-6
Welcome Back to the World
Rob Davidson
Winner, Short Fiction
In stories of finding life anew in ever-changing circumstances, Rob Davidson’s soaring prose reminds us that hope is visible in the darkest of times.
“An impressive set of stories from a skilled observer of the human animal.”
—Kirkus Reviews
$24.95 | Nov. 2024
240 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-39-4
Greyhound Cowboy
Ken Post
In his perceptive debut, Ken Post peeks into frailty, confrontation, and friendship, illuminating the fascinating and fragile details that make up our lives.
“This little book is big in many ways .”
—Kim Heacox
author of Jimmy Bluefeather
$26.95 | Nov. 2024
244 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-48-6
Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse
Heidi Bell
Winner, Fiction
Chicago Writers Association Awards
Midwest Book Awards
Finalist, Short Fiction
$24.95 | Oct. 2024
164 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-42-4
The Waterman
Gary Schanbacher
With powerful and salty prose, Gary Schanbacher shows how the decisions we make reverberate through the decades of our lives and affect not only our destiny but also the destinies of those around us.
“Imaginative and evocative . . . an engrossing reading experience.”
—Rocky Mountain Reader
$24.95 | Oct. 2024
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-46-2
Close Call
Kim Suhr
Carefully crafted, surprising, and humane, the stories in Kim Suhr’s Close Call unveil emotion in tight spaces, hearts in turmoil, and the searching soul of the Midwest.
“A fresh take on love, hate, jealousy, faith, loss, fear, conformity, and disappointment.”
—Wisconsin Writers Association
“Close Call gets us close—we slip in and out of various bodies just in time to start squirming.”
—Maggie Ginsberg
author of Still True
$24.95 | Oct. 2024
176 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-45-5
The Silver State Stories
Michael Darcher
Amidst the casinos of Reno, Nevada, the “Biggest Little City in the World,” Michael Darcher introduces us to the dealers, workers, and patrons of the Aces Oasis Casino. Steady, assured, and compassionate, he shows us more than high rollers and underbellies. He gives us real people.
“Exquisitely funny, wry, and tender. This book is hard to put down.”
—Corrina Wycoff
author of Damascus House
$24.95 | Oct. 2024
184 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-44-8
What We Might Become
Sara Reish Desmond
Winner, Short Story Collection
Storytrade Book Awards
Bronze Medal, Short Story – Fiction
IPPY Awards
Deft and moving, What We Might Become shares the uncertainty about how we ought to live in transitional moments and, perhaps more desperately, forever.
“Desmond’s stories are so real, so painfully true.”
—Necessary Fiction
$24.95 | Aug. 2024
252 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-41-7
An Instinct for Movement
Michael Mattes
From a blighted Mid-Atlantic city to pre-millennium San Francisco to the hills of California pot country to a woodland outpost in the Pacific Northwest: with each new dislocation, Michael Mattes strives for clarion, momentary truths born of human comedy.
“One of the best collections of riveting, character driven short stories I’ve ever read.”
—Robert Dugoni
New York Times Best-Selling Author
$24.95 | Apr. 2024
200 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-20-2
The Machine We Trust
Tim Conrad
Midwest Book Awards
In The Machine We Trust, narrators and characters come of age in a surreal American landscape—sometimes late, sometimes unsuccessfully. With exacting prose that searches and clutches, Tim Conrad exposes the cracks where hearts are broken, and redemption is just one chance away.
“Gloriously imaginative and utterly compelling.”
—Thisbe Nissen
author of How Other People Make Love
$26.95 | Apr. 2024
242 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-34-9
Salt Folk
Ryan Habermeyer
Finalist, Short Fiction
Association for Mormon Letters Awards
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.
“Habermeyer writes with the existential despair of Samuel Beckett, the nightmarish humor of Franz Kafka, the discomfiting imagination of Ben Marcus, and the dark precision of Gordon Lish and his acolytes.”
$24.95 | Apr. 2024
192 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-19-6
The Commission of Inquiry
Patrick Nevins
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.
“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.
$24.95 | Apr. 2024
190 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-21-9
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.
“Dazzling.”
—Chris Bachelder
National Book Award Finalist
$24.95 | Nov. 2023
178 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-09-7
Maximum Speed
Kevin Clouther
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 sacred of their past.
“Wonderfully evocative.”
$24.95 | Nov. 2023
184 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-13-4
Reach Her in This Light
Jane Curtis
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.
“Despite upheaval, these women are centered and true, never bitter or jaded.”
—Indianapolis Star
$24.95 | Nov. 2023
208 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-10-3
The Spirit in My Shoes
John Michael Cummings
In tales that conjure comparisons to John Updike, Raymond Carver, and William Gay, The Spirit in My Shoes tells the truth about loneliness, relationships, and the common struggles we all face with prose both precise and vibrant.
“Funny, touching, and at times surprising.”
—Kali White
author of The Monsters We Make
$24.95 | Oct. 2023
212 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-08-0
The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories
Jeff Esterholm
Honored Fiction
Wisconsin Library Association
On the Third Coast, the shores of Lake Superior, Jeff Esterholm explores what happens when people slip their moorings and are set adrift.
“Compact and succinct, fresh and interesting.”
—Wisconsin Writers Association
$24.95 | Oct. 2023
184 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-12-7
Fugitive 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. With power and stylistic inventiveness, Leah McCormack embraces the absurd while refusing to look away from painful truths.
“Furious, melancholy, and tender.”
—Leah Stewart
234 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-07-3
What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better
Jody Hobbs Hesler
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.
“Thoughtfully crafted and skillfully realized.”
—Necessary Fiction
$24.95 | Apr. 2023
204 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-35-9
Hoist House
Jenny Robertson
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.
“Stories driven by muscled, energetic prose, the sort of prose honed by years of manual labor. ”
—North American Review
$24.95 | Feb. 2023
192 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-33-5
Finding the Bones
Nikki Kallio
Longlist, Edna Ferber Fiction Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
Finalist, Short Fiction
American Book Fest
Cygnus Award in Science Fiction
$24.95 | Feb. 2023
200 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-36-6
Where Are Your People From?
James B. De Monte
Spanning ninety years, 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.
“Elegiac and brimming with vivid, immediate life.”
—Varley O’Connor
author of The Master’s Muse
$21.95 | Feb. 2023
146 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-34-2
Self-Defense
Corey Mertes
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.
“The stories are as addictive as the throw of the dice or turn of the cards that Mertes’ gambling addicts can’t resist.”
—West Trade Review
$24.95 | Jan. 2023
234 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-76-4
Sometimes Creek
Steve Fox
Winner, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
Winner, Short Fiction
American Book Fest
Finalist, Indie Fiction
Chicago Writers Association Awards
$24.95 | Jan. 2023
184 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-77-1
The Plagues
Joe Baumann
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.
“Imaginative, heartfelt, and brilliant.”
—Aura Martin
author of Butterflies Over Flame
$21.95 | Nov. 2022
220 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-72-6
Kind of Blue
Christopher Chambers
The stories in Kind of Blue juke and jive in an unpredictable voice-driven romp. 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.
“It’s the kind of book best read out there in the world, amongst the commotion of life.”
—Wisconsin People & Ideas
$28.95 | Nov. 2022
374 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-73-3
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.
“Gregory offers hope for rural life. . . . An unforgettable, subtly powerful portrait.”
—Wisconsin People & Ideas
$21.95 | Mar. 2022
148 pp | Paperback
978-1-7377390-4-3
Evangelina Everyday
Dawn Burns
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.
“Evangelina is the kind of book you want to curl up with. . . . Many Midwestern women can relate to Evangelina and her hopes and desires.”
—Memoirous
$21.95 | Jan. 2022
268 pp | Paperback
978-1-733308-67-0
Township
Jamie Lyn Smith
With honesty and empathy, Jamie Lyn 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.
“Township leaves readers considering their own existence—their purpose, their failures, and the vulnerability required to find fulfillment.”
—Prairie Schooner
$18.95 | Dec. 2021
202 pp | Paperback
978-1-733308-64-9
Responsible Adults
Patricia Ann McNair
Distinguished Favorite, Fiction
Independent Press Awards
In Responsible Adults, farms fail, families break apart, and work is hard to come by. The characters in Patricia Ann McNair’s fictional Midwestern towns are fueled by grief and hope, loss and desire.
“Edgy, empathically imagined, and strongly crafted.”
$17.95 | Dec. 2020
236 pp | Paperback
978-1-733308-61-8
Great 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.
“Luminous with what lesser writers miss: the magic and the splendor of the commonplace come alive.”
—Lee Martin
Pultizer Prize Finalist
$18.95 | Dec. 2019
242 pp | Paperback
978-0984673-97-1
Nothing to Lose
Kim Suhr
Finalist, Short Story
Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Personal and powerful, Kim Suhr’s Nothing to Lose shows us a region filled with real people: less than perfect, plagued with doubts, always reaching.
“It seems as if Kim Suhr doesn’t invent characters; rather, she channels them.”
—Sandra Scofield
National Book Award Finalist
$18.95 | Dec. 2018
200 pp | Paperback
978-1-733308-94-0
The Appointed Hour
Susanne Davis
The luminous interconnected stories in The Appointed Hour shine a compassionate light on a changing rural America, spanning generations and locations by exploring the emotions that accompany life’s trials. The heart-wrenching challenges draw Susanne Davis’s characters together in feelings of love, loss, hope, and community, united throughout history by the place they call home.
“These characters are astonishing and distinctive, and the situations, settings and narratives are haunting, vibrant and irresistible.”
New Release
February 2026
Paperback | 978-1-968148-45-4
Under the Honey Locusts
Kakie Pate
Winner of the inaugural Linda Nemec Foster First Book Award for Poetry
“A collection of thresholds and rooms, these are poems made of landscapes and objects and longings that seem to shimmer even in the half-lit house of grief. . . . Every place we enter feels charged and changed, haunted and blessed by the vision and care of such a poet. The world needs its true artists; Kakie Pate is one of them.”
—Allison Seay
author of To See the Queen
“In a time when many poems adopt the tonal equivalent of clamor in an effort to be heard, along comes Kakie Pate’s Under the Honey Locusts, a first book of understated lyrics that belie the urgency of their rich emotional depths. . . . At once painfully tuned to our ‘unbelonging’ and mindful that ‘when the sun sets, / the light still remains, victorious,’ her poems read like messages etched in bark, so finely crafted they appear indelible having become part of the living tree.”
—Daniel Tobin
author of Dusk, Empire: New and Selected Poems 1987–2024
New Releases
Fall 2026
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$21.95 | Sept 2026
100 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-58-4
Light in the Evergreens
Lex Runciman
“Thoughtful, generous, and fully present.”
—Hilary Menos
author of Berg
$21.95 | Sept 2026
86 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-61-4
Smooth Side, Rough Side
Arthur Vogelsang
“Vogelsang’s good, nasty poems evoke the America of Norman Rockwell.”
—John Ashberry
Pulitzer Prize Winner
$21.95 | Sept 2026
80 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-60-7
Birds Sing, Anyway
Clay Matthews
“A cataloguing and a witnessing to the patterns and progressions of a life.”
—Marianne Worthington
author of The Girl Singer
$21.95 | Sept 2026
100 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-59-1
Running Lights
Michael Lauchlan
“A sweet balm; a consoling tributary, gentling through a world that, like a torrent, so often threatens to sweep us away.”
—Kelly Fordon
author of What Trammels the Heart
$21.95 | Sept 2026
120 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-62-1
Whatever Dimness or Brightness
Rae Gouirand
“Carefully wrought poems that sing, revel, glow, and delight.”
—Julie R. Enzer
$22.95 | Sept 2026
106 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-65-2
No Lost Feast
Jacob Boyd
“Filled with music, humility, and heart.”
—Sarah Rose Nordgren
author of Palace of Subatomic Bliss
$22.95 | Sept 2026
98 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-63-8
Advice for the Boys
Garrett Stack
“These are poems of mortality, of loss, of generational nuance and dissonance and wisdom in the landscape of contemporary American violences.”
—Diane Seuss
Pulitzer Prize Winner
$21.95 | Sept 2026
84 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-64-5
Botrytis
Bruce Cohen
“The book is a wind phone, and we, its readers, are only overhearing its memories, jokes, and wonder.”
—Darcie Dennigan
author of Palace of Subatomic Bliss
$22.95 | Sept 2026
90 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-66-9
Jackie Robinson’s Real Gone
Matthew Johnson
“Johnson has given us a baseball book that understands and plays the blues. Baseball is a game of joy and sadness.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
author of If God Invented Baseball: Poems
$22.95 | Sept 2026
120 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-69-0
Space Stations
Heather Dubrow
“Dubrow’s poetic lobbies invite us into a various imaginary real estate, hers and ours—space stations on the route to other possible lives.”
—D.E. Green
author of Catastrophizing in Catastrophe
$22.95 | Sept 2026
130 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-68-3
Lake: Love Poems
Jeff Fearnside
“The scope is large and Fearnside’s lines sing with passion and authenticity.”
—Allan Peterson
National Book Award Finalist
Series List
$21.95 | Jan 2026
96 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-30-0
Time Traveling
Kate Deimling
“The collection opens and opens, leaving room for Deimling’s own stories and ours.”
—Lance Larsen
author of Making a Kingdom of It
former Poet Laureate of Utah
$21.95 | Jan 2026
110 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-32-4
Little Joy
Matthew Murrey
“A book of prayers for finding joy in little things.”
—Athena Kildegaard
author of Prairie Midden
$19.95 | Jan 2026
78 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-29-4
When I Was Baptized in Missouri Dirt
Chad Parmenter
“A book that reaches for God without losing hold of chickens or cicadas.”
—Rodney Jones
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
$19.95 | Jan 2026
84 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-31-7
The Worse For Wear
Jenna Goldsmith
“A celebration of poetry as one of our flawed humanity’s greatest, redeeming habits.”
—Robin LaMer Rahija
author of Inside Out Egg
$21.95 | Jan 2026
94 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-33-1
The Vinegar in Our Hearts
Jesse DeLong
“Maximalist and minimalist, brilliant and tender.”
—Brad Richard
author of Turned Earth
$21.95 | Jan 2026
98 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-28-7
Mouth
Amorak Huey
“Bby turns despairing and lusty, deeply funny, and—always—restoratively human.”
—Sandra Beasley
author of Made to Explode
$21.95 | Sept 2025
124 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-01-0
Pandora’s Prairie
Katherine Hoerth
“Poignant, deeply personal, honest, and insightful. . . . This poetry is timeless and rich.”
—David M. Parsons
2011 Texas State Poet Laureate
96 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-97-4
Temporary Shelters
Grant Clauser
“Line by line, these poems produce moments of pristine beauty . . . that simply stunt your breath.”
—Jack B. Bedell
author of Ghost Fores
$21.95 | Sept 2025
118 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-98-1
The Weather of Our Names
Cal Freeman
“Dazzling . . . Midwestern philosophy at its best.”
—Chicago Review of Books
$21.95 | Sept 2025
116 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-15-7
An Introduction to Error
Deirdre Lockwood
“A brainy, passionate, wildly original book.”
—Rosanna Warren
author of Hindsight
$24.95 | Sept 2025
120 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-07-2
tic tic tic
Heidi Seaborn
“Gently and magically reorients our eyes, turns us toward the light of awareness where language is action.”
—Major Jackson
author of Razzle Dazzle
132 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-03-4
And the Heart Will Not Quicken
Russell Thorburn
“Forward-looking.”
—Margaret Rozga
author of Restoring Prairie
$21.95 | Sept 2025
116 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-02-7
Wildfire
Corie Rosen
“Very few poets writing today have Rosen’s range. In her work, we get both Frank Capra and Orpheus. The micro and the macro.”
—Ishmael Reed
National Book Award Finalist
$21.95 | Sept 2025
114 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-16-4
Lost Cathedral
Hannah Rodabaugh
“Rich, verdant, blisteringly clear-eyed poems.”
—Catherine Wagner
author of Nervous Device
$19.95 | August 2025
82 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-95-0
Even the Sky
Kevin Thomason
“Thomason works irony into grace, leading us to unexpected revelations of a world, often our own, that does not rhyme.”
—James Brasfield
author of Cove
$19.95 | August 2025
94 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-06-5
The Underdream
Aiyana Masla
“Captivating, innovative, and grounded.”
—Larkin Christie
author of gather all your supple creatures
$21.95 | August 2025
102 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-96-7
Exile Is Home
Elvis Alves
“A Brooklyn fever dream.”
—Michelle Reale
author of Season of Subtraction
$22.95 | August 2025
134 pp | Paperback
978-1-968148-00-3
How We Argue
Sharon Rose-Kouros
“Insightful, challenging, and creative.”
—Nancy Seubert
$21.95 | April 2025
94 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-79-0
Torrential
Jayne Marek
$24.95 | April 2025
160 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-86-8
Users with Access
Brandon Krieg
$21.95 | April 2025
110 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-80-6
Another Native Tongue
Susan Riley Clarke
“A tribute to a brilliant poet and kinder friend, and a must-read for all who desire an authentic life, no matter the cost.”
—Anne M. Dichele
author of Ankle Deep and Drowning
$22.95 | April 2025
138 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-85-1
Dining on Salt
Wayne Lee
$21.95 | April 2025
100 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-88-2
Flu Season
Katie Kalisz
“Kalisz humbly comforts us as she enables us to realize that maintenance with ever-present dread is love.”
—Jack Ridl
author of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch
$21.95 | April 2025
108 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-89-9
No Trouble Staying Awake
Teresa J. Scollon
Finalist, Poetry
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year
$19.95 | March 2025
86 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-78-3
Catch & Release
Lauren Crawford
“Eloquent and gutsy, Lauren Crawford’s poems are intimate and unsettling. Few young poets are so gifted and sagacious.”
—Susan Kinsolving
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
$19.95 | March 2025
92 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-66-0
Steelhead
Lauren K. Carlson
“A deeply satisfying book to read, filled to the brim with spot-on imagery and set adrift with well-timed phrasing and lines and sudden pauses that make the entire flow come alive with love and candor.”
—Maurice Manning
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
$21.95 | Jan. 2025
100 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-58-5
The Coronation of the Ghost
Benjamin Gantcher
“Visceral, humane, contrarian, often wildly funny or bracingly matter-of-fact . . . brilliant.”
—D. Nurkse
author of A Country of Strangers
$21.95 | Jan. 2025
102 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-72-1
Red Camaro
Dwaine Rieves
“A fine collection about making sense of the broken, masculine, and wild.”
—Nadia Arioli
author of Mother Fur and Be Still
$19.95 | Jan. 2025
80 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-61-5
The Stone Tries to Understand the Hands
Susannah Sheffer
“Susannah Sheffer is a tremendously gifted poet. Her poems are deftly crafted, luminous.”
—Eduardo C. Corral
$21.95 | Sept. 2024
98 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-79-0
Love as an Invasive Species
Ellen Kombiyil
“A gorgeous book of resilience, hope, and love—especially love.”
—Lynn Melnick
author of Refusenik
$19.95 | Sept. 2024
98 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-56-1
They Were Horrible Cooks
Allison Whittenberg
“With honesty, humanity, and wit, They Were Horrible Cooks intermixes historical themes and everyday traumas, boldly laying bare the realities and ironies of a dog-eat-dog world.”
—Tiya Miles
National Book Award Winner
$19.95 | Sept. 2024
82 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-55-4
The New Life
Wendy Wisner
Finalist, Poetry
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year
$19.95 | Sept. 2024
88 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-57-8
Cuttings
Hannah Dow
“Deep-rooted in beauty, strength, and a luminously acute mind, these lyrics contemplate what love is . . . with a startling and sustained grace that makes these poems lustrous as pearls.”
—Amy Gerstler
National Book Award Finalist
$19.95 | Sept. 2024
86 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-59-2
Forgive the Animal
Sarah Pape
“This beautiful book is ultimately about the idea of home—the home of the body, the home of family, the home of a place—and how home must be incessantly fought-for, earned, and saved.”
—Rick Barot
author of Moving the Bones
$21.95 | Sept. 2024
106 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-53-0
Where Babies Come From
Ori Fienberg
“These pieces are things of meaning, things of hidden meaning and overt meaning, things of wordplay and sound and light and great sadness and understanding and they are very, very good.”
—Amber Sparks
author of And I Do Not Forgive You
$21.95 | May 2024
100 pp | 2nd. Ed. Pbk
978-1-960329-29-5
The Blue Divide
Linda Nemec Foster
“Rich with closely observed detail, narrative depth, and poignant historical reflections, this is a generous and beautiful collection.”
—Publishers Weekly
118 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-47-9
Restoring Prairie
Margaret Rozga
“Rozga’s poems hauntingly sing of cumulative loss and the power of nature to bring truth to our wounds.”
—Jennifer Morales
author of Meet Me Halfway
$21.95 | May 2024
124 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-37-0
The Velvet Book
Rae Gouirand
Finalist, Lesbian Poetry
Lambda Literary Awards
114pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-36-3
A Bright Wound
Sarah A. Etlinger
“A delicate and tender examination of the many conflicting facets of the self as daughter, wife, mother, and lover as well as an interrogation of family history, memory, faith, and landscape.”
—Heathen Derr-Smith
author of THRUST
$21.95 | April 2024
106 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-38-7
Table with Burning Candle
Julia Paul
“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
182 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-23-3
Poetic People Power
Tara Bracco (ed.)
Finalist, Performing Arts, NIEA
$21.95 | Feb. 2024
120 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-26-4
Listening to Mars
Sally Ashton
“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
$21.95 | Feb. 2024
125 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-35-6
Do Not Feed the Animal
Hikari Miya
“A ferocious debut.”
—Michael Chang
author of Synthetic Jungle
$18.95 | Feb. 2024
88 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-30-1
Dear Lo
Brady Bove
“An intimate, beautifully written poetry collection filled with vivid, dream-like imagery.”
—Tanya Taylor
author of Why I Tell You Everything
$21.95 | Feb. 2024
104 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-28-8
The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child
Michelle Meyer
“Delicate, brutal, bitterly funny, and haunting.”
—Jacqueline West
author of Candle and Pin
$21.95 | Feb. 2024
114 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-22-6
Happy Everything
Caitlin Cowan
IPPY Awards
Finalist, Medal Provocateur
Eric Hoffer Awards
$18.95 | Feb. 2024
78 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-32-5
Glitter City
Bonnie Jill Emanuel
“Spare, intense, searching . . . Emanuel writes in burst after burst of light.”
—David Groff
author of Live in Suspense
$21.95 | Feb. 2024
106 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-27-1
Sadness of the Apex Predator
Dion O’Reilly
“A tour de force . . . wonderful and necessary poems.”
—Denise Duhamel
author of Second Story
$21.95 | Jan. 2024
130 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-31-8
The Watching Sky
Judy Brackett Crowe
Nebraska Book
Awards (2025)
$18.95 | Jan. 2024
78 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-18-9
Lake, River, Mountain
Mark B. Hamilton
“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
134 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-17-2
Let It Be Told in a Single Breath
Russell Thorburn
“I know I can always turn to the poems of Russell Thorburn to make me believe that poetry does indeed matter.”
—Peter Markus
author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Bird
$21.95 | Nov. 2023
98 pp | 2nd. Ed. Pbk
978-1-960329-11-0
Talking Diamonds
Linda Nemec Foster
“[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
$21.95 | Sept. 2023
100 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-06-6
The Green Vault Heist
David Salner
“The Green Vault Heist is not only a beautiful book, it is great company.”
—John Skoyles
Ploughshares
$21.95 | Sept. 2023
106 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-02-8
We Are Reckless
Christy Prahl
n 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 Grudge
$21.95 | Sept. 2023
90 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-03-5
Everything Waits
Jonathan Graham
book rich with grace and music.”
—Eduardo C. Corral
author of Slow Lightning
$18.95 | Sept. 2023
84 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-05-9
There is a Corner of Someplace Else
Caleb Michael Jones
“Soothing, startling, tender, moving, and insightful.”
—Henry Hughes
author of Back Seat with Fish
$18.95 | May 2023
84 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-00-4
Silent Letter
Gail Hanlon
“Hanlon’s poems radiate energy and vibrant life.”
—Jennifer Barber, author of The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made
$21.95 | May 2023
92 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-38-0
Always a Body
Molly Fuller
“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
$21.95 | May 2023
106 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-39-7
Fulgurite
Catherine Kyle
“Fluid and porous, these poems have a witchy, spellbound nature. These pieces float.”
—Allison Titus
author of High Lonesome
$21.95 | May 2023
106 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-37-3
Bowed As If Laden With Snow
Megan Wildhood
“For Megan Wildhood, life hasn’t gone unnoticed. . . . by her poems I’m not just moved, but transported, transformed.”
—Don Haggerty
$18.95 | March 2023
84 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-32-8
The Body Is Burden and Delight
Sharon White
“A book filled with wit and wonder . . . with all that moves under the ice of knowing.”
—Elaine Terranova
author of The Diamond Cutter’s Daughter
$21.95 | March 2023
110 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-31-1
Bone Country
Linda Nemec Foster
NYC Big Book
$21.95 | March 2023
96 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-01-1
New Wilderness
Jenifer DeBellis
Independent Author Awards, Literary Global
$21.95 | March 2023
82 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-79-5
Monarch
Heather Bourbeau
“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
$18.95 | March 2023
84 pp | Paperback
979-8-986966-30-4
Not Just the Fire
R.B. Simon
“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
$20.95 | Sept. 2022
134 pp | Paperback
978-1-737739-09-8
Mourning
Dokubo Goodhead
“An unflinching examination of loss, grief, and yearning for ancestral roots . . . a work which angers yet soothes us in our times of need.”
—Genaro Ky Lý Smith
author of The Land South of the Clouds
$18.95 | Sept. 2022
108 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-75-7
The Walk to Cefalù
Lynne Viti
The poems reassure us: the journey is worth it.”
—George Franklin
author of Noise of the World
$21.95 | Sept. 2022
172 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-71-9
The Found Object Imagines a Life
Mary Catherine Harper
“Authentic, perceptive, and sensitive.”
—Mark B. Hamilton
author of Confronting the Basilisk
$18.95 | Sept. 2022
82 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-70-2
Naming the Ghost
Emily Hockaday
“A powerhouse of small, intense, sometimes brutal, always brilliant poems.”
—Jane Yolen
author of Kaddish
$18.95 | Sept. 2022
82 pp | Paperback
979-8-986144-70-2
Holding My Selves Together
Margaret Rozga
Finalist, Edna Muedt Poetry Book Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
$19.95 | Apr. 2022
162 pp | Paperback
978-1737739-06-7
Messengers of the Gods
Kathryn Gahl
“Gahl’s poems are filled with the sweet but hard liquor of life.”
—Karla Huston
Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2017-2018)
$18.95 | Mar. 2022
118 pp | Paperback
978-1737739-03-6
After the 8-Ball
Colleen Alles
“Should everyone read this beautiful book? As I see it, yes.”
—W. Todd Kaneko
author of This Is How the Bone Sings
$18.95 | Dec. 2021
102 pp | Paperback
978-1733308-69-4
Broken On the Wheel
Barbara Costas-Biggs
“A perceptive, masterful debut.”
—Maggie Smith
author of Good Bones
$18.95 | Dec. 2021
126 pp | Paperback
978-1733308-68-7
Sparks and Disperses
Cathleen Cohen
“Cathleen Cohen’s life and poetry are a passionate expression of dedication to everything we need to live whole and meaningful lives.
Institute for Poetic Medicine
$18.95 | Dec. 2021
102 pp | Paperback
978-1737739-00-5
Careful Cartography
Devon Bohm
Winner, First Horizon Award, Eric Hoffer Awards (2022)
$14.95 | May 2020
102 pp | Paperback
978-1733308-62-5
Lost and Found Departments
Heather Dubrow
“A dexterous and quite moving poetry collection . . . an ode to poetic craft.”
—Rowan Ricardo Phillips
National Book Award finalist
$9.99 | May 2019
114 pp | Paperback
978-0966848-88-5
The Almost-Children
Cassondra Windwalker
—Seven Jane
author of The Isle of Gold
$12.99 | Dec. 2016
83 pp | Paperback
978-0966848-83-0
Meditations of a Beast
Kristine Ong-Muslim
“Each poem leaves a bruise. Each verse slips right into your ear—eel-like—and never leaves.”
—Chicago Review of Books
New Releases
$23.95 | August 2026 | 160 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-72-0
Mostly Woodcock
Joe Knight
“Knight turns loss into opportunity as he reconnects with people and places, especially through woodcock hunting, the bird and activity that for decades helped nurture his relationship with the outdoors. From hot Montana grasslands to alder thickets and icy rivers in Wisconsin, you’ll be captivated and uplifted by this sterling example of a man and his dog navigating life’s bumpy roads and hunting up the best it has to offer.”
—Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“An honest book.”
—Dave Carlson, Wisconsin Conservation
Hall of Fame Inductee
“A delightful stroll through the western Wisconsin woods. . . . pull your chair up to the woodstove, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage, and settle in for a comfortable evening.”
—Christine Thomas, developer of “Becoming an Outdoors Woman”
$25.95 | August 2026 | 236 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-52-2
Departures
Marcia Williams
Marcia Williams grew up neither wanted nor loved. Important life choices followed: leaving home at sixteen, college, career, first husband, and even that lover. At age fifty-six she must either lead the life her mother wanted or escape the dysfunction and light out on her own. What Williams discovers in the process, along with her own self-worth, helps her recognize her mother’s passionate desire for legitimacy in a swirl of generational trauma. Departures charts the pain of parental decisions felt across decades, and how Williams chose life out of turmoil.
“A leave-taking and a reckoning—a journey toward hope, healing, and the companionship of a heart as true as her own.”
—Kim Barnes, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
$25.95 | August 2026 | 252 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-51-5
Water Finds a Way
Dave Hardin
Might there be a smaller story running like a hidden stream through the second of our nation’s two great, storied waves of migration from the rural South to the industrial Midwest? Water Finds a Way is a reflection on the enduring bond between David Hardin and his father, a poor Southern migrant, to Detroit, Michigan, in the middle of the last century. A bond forged in generational suffering, shame, and fear, but annealed in love’s timeless persistence. It is the story of two men who long for home, for a sense of belonging, for something lost in the chasm that yawns between them.
“A sanguine, bittersweet tale that delves deeply into our inherent need to belong.”
—John Smolens, author of Possession(s)
$27.95 | March 2026 | 270 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-48-5
Powder Plant
Carolyn Dallmann
For thirty years, Carolyn Dallmann held down various positions at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, in Sauk County, Wisconsin. A major manufacturer of gunpowder and other nitrocellulose-based propellants, Badger played a vital and controversial role in the life of central Wisconsin throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Follow Dallmann as she recounts her time there, from water testing, chemistry, and auditing, to explosions, the Vietnam War, bombings, and environmental decline. Told with immediacy and tenderness, Powder Plant is not only a rich personal history but also a remarkable catalogue of a world in chaos.
“Finally, a woman who actually worked in America’s military-industrial complex tells her story. It’s gritty, fascinating, and completely absorbing. If you love memoirs that uncover hidden histories, don’t miss this one.”
—Linda Saether, author of What We Can’t Forget
$27.95 | March 2026 | 270 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-26-3
Hound Dog
M.L. Liebler
From award-winning Detroit poet M.L. Liebler comes a heartfelt, thumping, and wide-ranging memoir of a life lived with music, muses, and the magic of the written word. From Elvis and Bob Dylan, to Robbie Robertson, Hüsker Dü, and Eminem, Liebler treads his well-traveled road using musical signposts that have defined a generation of artists. Throughout, his love for family, friends, and faith shine brightest, and we bear witness to the life of a man who has spent over fifty years championing artistic expression in all its forms. Hound Dog is nothing less than the album of M.L. Liebler’s life.
–––
“M.L. Liebler is the poet laureate of America’s working class.”
—Michael Moore, Oscar-Winning Filmmaker
“M.L. Liebler is an unstoppable force of nature, the likes of which neither the world of poetry nor the world of music, has ever seen.”
—Jim Daniels, author of An Ignorance of Trees
Fall 2025
$22.95 | August 2026 | 150 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-82-9
Early Season
Ron Davis
Ron Davis wrote memoirs, outdoors features, local histories, and commentaries about growing up and growing old in Wisconsin for nearly fifty years. Over that period, he squeezed in a full-time career teaching high school and then university classes in writing, photography, and video production while also working as a social media writer for the tourism industry in Northwest Ontario and as an associate editor and columnist for BMW Owners News. In addition to Owners News, his writing has been featured by Wisconsin Life, BMW Motorcycle Magazine, Volume One, Our Wisconsin, On the Level, Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine, The Badger Sportsman, Midwestern Motorcycling, and The Voice (National Writing Project). His essays have also been heard regularly on Wisconsin Public Radio. He passed away in 2025. Early Season is a collection of his best Wisconsin writing, from years of living and working there.
$21.95 | October 2025 | 132 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-05-8
In the Room at the Top of the World
Ben McCormick
Finalist, Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award
Wisconsin Writers Awards
Most of us know people from Milwaukee because they left: Oprah, Gene Wilder, Liberace. Milwaukee is too small to be a global hub, yet it’s too big to be idyllic. Good things happen there—great things don’t. Ben McCormick left it full of promise for writing grad school and in 2021 sulked to Oregon with no great novel or acclaim. And in the first six weeks his live-in relationship imploded, his first niece was born back home, and he witnessed Milwaukee’s great thing: the Milwaukee Bucks’ NBA title. Told through each playoff game, McCormick’s sprint of a lyrical memoir is about the alchemy of emotions and fandom, aging into someone we didn’t plan to be, and returning to a Midwest that makes us, breaks us, and makes us all over again.
–––
“Ben finds the humor, joy, and grit of the Midwest, but the soul of the book will hit any heart away from home.”
—Charlie Berens
Comedian & New York Times Bestselling Author
$24.95 | August 2025 | 180 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-91-2
An Ignorance of Trees
Jim Daniels
A Michigan Notable Book 2025
In his debut collection of nonfiction, Jim Daniels writes about trees, backyard swing sets, above-ground swimming pools, pets, and hoarding, carrying his beloved Detroit with him wherever he goes. A memoir in essays doubling as a rich and textured biography of place, An Ignorance of Trees enriches the terrain of the Midwest with heart, as bruised and beautiful as ever.
“To an essential catalogue of poems, Jim Daniels adds these essays on life’s riddles and mysteries. A more than worthy work in words”
—Thomas Lynch
National Book Award Finalist
“Daniels is probably the most introspective and sensitive tough guy writing today.”
—Sue William Silverman
author of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences
$24.95 | August 2025 | 190 pp
Paperback | 978-1-960329-94-3
Water Spell
Catherine Broadwall
Water Spell is, at its heart, a work of bibliotherapy. In this practice, counselors prescribe books as they would medicine, using stories as entry points for reflection, confrontation of pain, and eventual healing. Catherine Broadwall acts as both doctor and patient throughout her debut memoir, suturing her own wounds. While bibliotherapy and ekphrasis-writing inspired by visual art-are often reserved for traditional, canonically-approved texts, here Broadwall applies them to things like Pixar films, music videos, fairy tales, and video games. She democratizes these tools, showing that a reader’s delight in any narrative can spark profound revelation and growth.
“A balm, a salve, for the way observing is processing, is creating, and a reminder that the myth of healing’s finality is as inscrutable as a mermaid living on dry land. ”
—Katie Fuller
author of Careful
Series List
$23.95 | May 2025
150 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-90-5
Our Bodies Are Mostly Water
Katherine Riegel
Katherine Riegel finds a way through her grief in her compassionate and lyrical memoir of her sister’s life and death. Her sister-grief becomes a conduit for grief of all kinds, as she navigates a new life inundated with sadness but bright with memory.
“Riegel’s intelligent, thoughtful voice infuses the memoir with warmth, compassion, and grace.”
—Anne Panning
author of Dragonfly Notes: A Memoir
$24.95 | Mar. 2025
222 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-92-9
You Shoulda Been Here Last Week
Ted J. Rulseh
Ted Rulseh guides you through a lifetime of angling in You Shoulda Been Here Last Week: the joys, thrills, and failures; the moments of wonder; treasured times with friends and family.
“Rulseh understands the Northwoods mindset that makes some folks . . . abandon city life and eke out a less stressful living above the tension line.”
—Dan Small
host of Outdoor Wisconsin
$23.95 | Mar. 2025
156 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-77-6
Table Talk & Second Thoughts
Michael Martone
With wit and humor, Michael Martone writes his life as one of brief bites, effervescent episodes, and meaningful meals illuminated by the luminaries on the other side of the table.
“Martone is one of the few writers who was born in Indiana, writes about Indiana, and eats in Indiana, but meanwhile, he seems to have been everywhere else, too, meeting all the best writers.”
—Bonnie Jo Campbell
National Book Award Finalist
$29.95 | Mar. 2025
280 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-92-9
The Past Ten
Donald Quist, Kali White VanBaale, & Bailey Gaylin Moore (eds.)
Based on the Past-Ten.com website created and launched by executive editor Donald Quist in 2017, The Past Ten features a wide range of writers all answering the same question, where were you on this day ten years ago?
“A reflective mosaic, made up of some of the most exciting voices in American literature today.”
—Jaquira Díaz
$32.95 | Oct. 2024
322 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-15-8
Wildlifer
Neil F. Payne
Payne guides 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.
“Marvelous writing-and exciting coverage over many years.”
—Estella Leopold
$24.95 | Sept. 2024
230 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-50-9
Points of Tangency
Scott Russell Morris
Within the pages of Points of Tangency, a sequence of brilliant personal essays, Scott Russell Morris, a closeted queer Mormon, tells the story of meeting and then marrying his now wife. His story, told with grace, compassion, and dexterity, forges the framework of a life lived, and lives living together, in our mysterious and dynamic present.
Big hearted and quietly humorous. This book is a gift.”
—Sarah Viren
author of To Name the Bigger Lie
$24.95 | Sept. 2024
184 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-49-3
This Season, The Next: A Memoir
Casey Knott
Part DIY, part memoir, part musing, This Season, The Next finds Casey Knott at several intersections: starting over after a divorce, meeting the love of her life, blending a family, and finding and remodeling an urban farm complete with chickens and a much beloved pet turkey.
“A luminous, lyrical memoir.”
—Thomas Maltman
author of The Land and Little Wolves
$27.95 | Aug. 2024
264 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-51-6
Lessons in Geography
Phillip Sterling
Lessons in Geography chronicles how Phillip Sterling’s formative years in Northwest Lower Michigan not only inspired him to be a writer but also profoundly influenced his creative and critical perspectives.
“Rich with language, alive with memory, and moving with the experiences of a rural everyday Michigan life.”
—M. L. Liebler
author of I Want to Be Once
$24.95 | May 2024
230 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-40-0
We Come from Good Stock
Kay Oakes Oring
From marriage and children, to prosperity, loss, and reclamation, the Oakes clan represents the peril and promise of staking a claim, starting a family, and watching the things you build become eternal.
“This moving book inspires us to explore the stories found in our own family trees, wherever we are from.”
—Joelle Frazer
The Territory of Men
$32.95 | Jan. 2024
304 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-25-7
The Arc of the Escarpment
Robert Root
With great detail and a sincere dedication to place, Robert Root encourages us to pay attention to the land beneath our feet and value its preservation as we travel back through time and appreciate the scale of the history of the landscape around us.
“Root reveals a stunning breadth of history held in shapes that glaciers made.”
—Christine
Stewart-Nuñez
author of Chrysopoeia
$28.95 | Jan. 2024
288 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-33-2
Squatter
Yolanda DeLoach
Autobiography/Memoir, Storytrade Book Awards
Between heartache and the realization that a relationship was never as it seemed, Yolanda DeLoach pushes herself toward Wisconsin’s historic Ice Age Trail, a place of friendship and, ultimately, forgiveness.
“A courageous journey.”
—Door County Pulse
$22.95 | Dec. 2023
148 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-24-0
Soul of the Outdoors
Dave Greschner
With humor and heart, Soul of the Outdoors treks along the trails of one’s outdoor adventures and, ultimately, the trails of our lives.
“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
$28.95 | Sept. 2023
272 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-14-1
From the Heart: The Story of Matrix
John Harmon
From the Heart brings you into the inner workings of a highly influential music group, the jazz fusion ensemble Matrix, as well as closer to the man who made it all happen.
“No John Harmon, no Matrix. A high point in all of our lives. Hail to the Chief.”
—Kurt Dietrich
author of Wisconsin Riffs: Jazz Profiles from the Heartland
$24.95 | Aug. 2023
228 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-99-8
The Long Fields
Anne-Marie Oomen
Finalist, Memoir
Foreword INDIES
Book of the Year
Anne-Marie Oomen’s
sixth essay collection
celebrates rural life as she experienced it growing up on a farm
and then into an adulthood marked by
both wandering and homing.
“Beautiful language and elegant images.”
—Debra Gwartney
author of Live Through This
$24.95 | Aug. 2023
272 pp | Paperback
978-1-960329-04-2
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.
“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
$29.95 | Feb. 2023
296 pp | Paperback
979-8986144-78-8
Wrong Tree
Jeff Wilson
During his 30+ year career in wildlife management, Jeff Wilson found himself atop eagle nests, deep in bear dens, tracking furbearers on snow covered forest roads, and spending nights under the stars banding loons. His adventures (or misadventures) in
wildlife biology, are incredibly informative, entertaining, and occasionally hilarious.
“A beacon for the next generation to preserve its ties to the land.”
—Rocky Barker
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
$24.95 | Nov. 2022
240 pp | Paperback
979-8986144-74-0
At the Lake
Jim Landwehr
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.
With fifteen rich personal histories, Jim Landwehr delivers a memoir filled with humor, warmth, and reverence for life up North.
“A heartwarming collage of personal yet universal memories.”
—Patricia Skalka
author of the Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries
$19.95 | Apr. 2022
94 pp | Paperback
978-1-737739-08-1
Body 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.
“An artistic, poignant portrait of vulnerability, self love, and survival.”
—Aitch Alexander
author of My Body Is a Junkyard
$32.95 | Apr. 2022
378 pp | Paperback
978-1-737739-02-9
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.
“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
$21.95 | Apr. 2022
174 pp | Paperback
978-1-737739-07-4
The In-Between State
Martha Lundin
Martha Lundin’s 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.
“This collection marks the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American literature.”
—May-lee Chai
American Book Award winner
$16.95 | Mar. 2021
130 pp | Paperback
978-1-737739-65-6
Ohio Apertures
Robert Miltner
Robert Miltner traces his 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.
“Ohio Apertures represents storytelling at its lyric best.”
—Barbara Sabol
author of Solitary Spin
$32.95 | May 2026 | 276 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-53-9
The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids
Charles E. Belknap | edited by Colleen Alles
Originally published in 1922, Captain Charles E. Belknap’s The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids is a writer’s love letter to his adored city. Through 101 anecdotal columns, Belknap captured snapshots of life in 1850s Grand Rapids, Michigan, and beyond. His charming portrait was a success—popular then, and beloved by local historians a century later. This new and revised edition supplements the original columns with the nearly fifty that ran in The Grand Rapids Press subsequent to the book’s publication. For the first time, the full scope of his valuable and fascinating vignettes can be appreciated. Contextual essays by Colleen Alles clarify these unique, historic columns while celebrating, too, the extraordinary life of Captain Charles E. Belknap.
“Vivid and often humorous.”
—David Rowe, The Rapidian
“Belknap’s stories show the humans that make up our history, as individual people with all of their quirks, their hearts, and their faults.”
—Julie Tabberer
Director of the Grand Rapids History Center
$24.95 | May 2026 | 132 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-71-3
From Madison to Mobile: The Diary of Corporal Samuel Burdick, Jr.
edited by Daniel Scharfenberg
From Madison to Mobile is a transcribed historical diary by Samuel Burdick, Jr. (1834–1914) who served in Company D of the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War from August 1862 until July 1865. Join Samuel from his enlistment in Albion, Wisconsin as a civilian carpenter and read about his transformation into a soldier in the Union Army. Samuel’s daily entries give both brief and detailed accounts of the life of the everyday Union soldier fighting in the Western Theatre of the American Civil War, their daily hardships, marching, camp life, and of course battles. Samuel’s entries are complimented by annotations by one of Samuel’s descendants, editor Daniel Scharfenberg, who supplies the reader with context to Samuel’s family history, and his postwar life. This work of historical nonfiction is a wealth of knowledge for any reader interested in the American Civil War or the life of the citizen soldier during the war. Samuel’s detailed accounts of his service during the war make this book an ideal addition to any reader or historians’ library.
$24.95 | May 2026 | 156 pp
Paperback | 978-1-968148-54-6
Under the Pines
Ada J. Moore | edited by M. Wade Mahon & Lillian S. Mahon
Ada J. Moore (1832–1877) was the pen name of Ellen Phillips, a resident of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and a widely published poet. She is considered Stevens Point’s unofficial poet laureate. Under the Pines (1875) was her only collection.
“The book is made up of upwards of eighty short poems on as many different subjects, some drawn from nature, some from her early associations among the green hills of our own state; some are suggested by her new western home, and some by passing events. They are all full of the poetic element, and as pure as the falling snow-flakes. We know of no book more elevating in its tone, nor one with which those little snatches of time that every one has could be more profitably spent. . . . This little volume is full of gems.”
—Stevens Point Journal
“When Moore writes of love and of little ones passed away we know that her words come from the depths of a mother’s heart. It is genuine joy or real anguish that moves her. . . . Only a poet could do it with so much delicacy and grace.”
—Wisconsin State Journal
$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