Editors' Note: (This Fucking Body Is) Never Yours was the runner-up for our 2016 prose chapbook contest, and will be published by Gazing Grain Press in spring 2017. I was delighted when I read Lily Hoang’s description of my writing as “the skin of a sentence.” It’s an accurate portrayal of my consistent struggle to show you how much words, whispers, stories and cellular arrangements go together for someone like me. Ever since I was a girl growing the tits of a woman, I have a

Nicole Rollender Absence of Stars $7.00 dancing girl press In the 13 poems within Nicole Rollender's chapbook Absence of Stars (dancing girl press, 2015),“A hummingbird’s skeleton opens my hands / like a flower.” This chapbook is filled with flowers and bones, flight toward the light and falling down onto the ground, tiny and helpless. The beginning of the collection is inspired by the early birth of a tiny baby, a living life form that emerged from the womb too soon, a new

Sarah Certa Juliet (I) H_NGM_N, 2014 portable document format, free If you haven’t had a chance to check out H_NGM_N’s digital chapbook series, may I heartily recommend that you do so. The press is publishing 6 chaps per year in free, downloadable pdf format, which is an amazing opportunity to read fresh work regularly. The most recent release (Dec. 2014) is a new chap by H_NGM_N’s Associate Poetry Editor Sarah Certa, who has a full length collection, NOTHING TO DO WITH ME (

Ashley Toliver Ideal Machine Poor Claudia, 2014 Hand sewn, $10 What I actually want to tell you is that I like this book. You should buy it and read it. The poems are beautifully made and surprising. The sequence includes illustrations that complement the poems' image-making. The whole thing makes me feel feelings. But in case my personal recommendation doesn’t carry much weight and you want to know a little more about the book, it seems only fair to tell you that, too.

Sarah Marcus: What roles does feminism and the idea of inclusive feminism play in your life and in your writing? Anne Lesley Selcer: Feminism is one tool thru which I understand the constant misidentification of my power. Its theories then help me understand the cumulative effects of those constant misidentifications (or obstructions, oppositions) and the structures which support, enforce and dictate them. I am interested deciphering the material relations which enclose my bo

Khadijah Queen I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013 Digital Chapbook, $3.00 18 pages Khadijah Queen, author of the full-length collections Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic 2008) and Black Peculiar (Noemi 2010), has a new digital chapbook available for download from Sibling Rivalry Press: I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On. The chap opens with the following directive: “This is a work of fiction.” More specifically, it is a

Kassandra Lee Zombia dancing girl press, 2014 Paperback, $7.00 33 pages Kassandra Lee’s debut chap, Zombia, begins in the late 90’s in Lee’s native San Diego, where the classroom maps have not yet been updated from the Soviet era. In the flux from the Cold War to the post-9/11 "war on terror," Lee’s world, as the title implies, is constantly on the verge of entering new seasons of danger; a girl in a cul-de-sac experiences “a sense of belonging like how a landmine belongs

Join us this week at George Mason University for a reading featuring 2014 Chapbook Contest winner Anne Lesley Selcer and runner-up Kevin McClellan! We are thrilled that once again our sponsor, the Fall for the Book Festival, will feature the launch of our 2014 chapbook during this week's festival. The festival will run from Sept. 11th-18th, with readings and panels across Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. The Gazing Grain Press reading will be held from 4:00-5:15 pm on S

Gazing Grain Press is pleased to announce that judge Dawn Lundy Martin has selected Anne Lesley Selcer as the winner of our 2014 feminist chapbook contest for poetry/hybrid manuscripts! Her chapbook from A Book of Poems on Beauty will be published in September. We'll have a launch and celebratory reading during Fall for the Book on Saturday, September 13. We are also happy to announce that Dawn Lundy Martin has named Kevin McLellan's manuscript Before the Door as runner-up.

Gazing Grain Press is pleased to announce that Laura Neuman's The Busy Life, winning chapbook of our inaugural inclusive feminist poetry contest selected by judge Brian Teare, is now available for purchase! Please follow the link to purchase through PayPal for only $8 per copy, with a special free shipping offer for purchases within the U.S. If you require shipping outside the U.S., please follow the link for international shipping ($3 flat rate). Thank you for your suppor