by Admin | Feb 15, 2022 | New Release
Austin, Texas, 14 Feb 2022 – After a career in academia, Maria Wells of Austin, Texas presents her poems and art in her first poetry book, Images in the Clouds: reading the sky, published by Plain View Press and hitting bookstores everywhere on February 14, 2022..
With 60 poems and 10 color photos and art, Images in the Clouds carries the reader forward and back in time, to inner and outer worlds. Taken from Wells’ treasure trunk of a life of adventure and world travel, some verses share memories of places and people, while some delight with pure fantasy and imagination.
A Fulbright Scholar and Doctoral graduate from the University of Pisa, Maria Xenia Wells Zevelechi spent her academic career at the University of Texas at Austin. After retiring, she embraced poetry when a friend’s painting inspired her first poem, “Memories in Silver,” written in Paris at a meeting of Poets and Writers. A member of the Austin Poetry Society, she gives readings in Austin, Paris and Greece. With two daughters, five grandchildren and the memory of a loving husband, she lives in Austin, Texas.
“‘Memories in Silver’ is a wonderful piece of writing—a simple idea, simply done and beautifully sustained. It is full of emotion, yet not over-wrought. Every image, every phrase, every recollection rings true.” —Andrew Lycett, London Author / Biographer
“These poems have personal integrity and are both deeply felt and clearly voiced, always welcome in any art.” —Kurt Heinzelman, Professor Emeritus of Poetry and Poetics, The University of Texas at Austin
“‘In Trieste by the Sea’ has fine details, good suspense throughout, sense of being there, in that place, that moment…good with mood, tone, emotions quietly expressed.” —David Wevill, Poet
“Maria Wells is a natural poet. She weaves details that invite the reader to share in the moment as if they were standing beside her. Her work reflects her travels, culture, and knowledge without being lofty and her observations reveal parts of the human psyche with wisdom, clarity, and sometimes humor.” —Cathy Sydlo Wilkes, Author / Poet, New Braunfels Creative Writers
Images in the Clouds: reading the sky, ISBN 9781632100948, can be purchased on Amazon.com, or in bulk by contacting the publisher. Publisher Plain View Press is a 45-year-old issue-based literary publishing house, a far-flung community of humane and highly creative writers, artists and activists, whose energies bring humanitarian enlightenment and hope to individuals and communities grappling with the issues of our time—peace, justice, the environment, homelessness, education and gender.
by Admin | Jan 25, 2021 | New Release, News
Plain View Press announces the publication of At the Edge of the Cliff by Marian Kaplun Shapiro, a book of experimental poems, hitting bookstores and Amazon on January 25, 2021. At her poetic peak, Shapiro experiments with visual form and edgy content to disrupt fundamental givens and generate transformative experiences. Word drawings in At the Edge of the Cliff go beyond mere words, touching extremes of feeling that jar the subconscious and make each poem an experiment, leading a beautiful and challenging climb to the edge.
With college studies in English, music, writing, teaching, and psychology, Shapiro works as a practicing psychologist in Lexington, Massachusetts, where she also creates art as a poet and lives as a free spirit with her view of woods, flowers, birds, and an unpolluted sky. Now 80 something, she adores her family and sees life as one long experiment that has turned out amazingly well.
“A book of poetry and drawings that explore emotional disconnections, silences, and efforts to make contact. …her purpose is to pursue ‘extremes of feeling’ and their resulting epiphanies through ‘experimenting with form and content.’ These experiments encompass diagrams, sketches, spacing, and unusual typography, which often focus attention on conceptual organization. …Poems that creatively reveal the unsaid and unsayable.” —Kirkus Reviews
“‘If the clocks are running slow, will we have more time than we thought?’ Shapiro muses. It’s a riddle; an invitation without return address, a dreamscape brimming with the raw and paradoxical nature of the unconscious. Pivoting between visual poetry, free verse, and prose poetry, Shapiro, a therapist as well as poet, captures the wonder and challenge of our flawed humanity with a generous helping of grace.” —Nina Corwin, LCSW; author of The Uncertainty of Maps
“Marian Shapiro asks us to ask ourselves, ‘Why here? Where are we going? What time is it? What is foreground? Background?’ Shapiro guides us through an amalgam of poems, lyrical, brutal and redemptive. In the midst of her pinwheel of life, six wondering clocks, and assorted graphic and sprawling cursive mind play poems, she teaches us ‘inch by inch’ that we need horizon, ‘To weigh/ the whatness of lake/ the whoness of mountain/ the whenness of/ sky.'” —Barbara Laiolo-March, Poet, cofounder of the Surprise Valley Writers’ Conference
“Joy. Terror. Sorrow. The author’s familiarity with those unspoken, secret parts of ourselves brings us to that something in us that is even beyond the unconscious. This collection of poetry challenges the givens of poetic form, opening us to asking ourselves: Is there something like a spirit or soul in there? Could that be?” —Sanford Rosenzweig, Clinical Psychologist
“In her collection of poetry, The Edge of the Cliff, Marian Shapiro hammers home some vital philosophy intertwining minute details and instructive ‘eurekas’ to transport readers to a lost time when existence was under less threat. Shapiro also allows glimpses into grim realities in poems like ‘Rape,’ that, instead of hammering readers with overkill, remind us of the horrors in calm terms. Her ability to mix the vastly philosophical with the intensely personal is evidence of her mastery of form.” —Doug Stuber, Editor, Poems from the Heron Clan
Publisher Plain View Press is a 45-year-old issue-based literary publishing house, a far-flung community of humane and highly creative writers, artists and activists, whose energies bring humanitarian enlightenment and hope to individuals and communities grappling with the issues of our time—peace, justice, the environment, education and gender. Copies of At the Edge of the Cliff , paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-083-2), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | Oct 7, 2020 | News
You are invited to attend Catherine’s Hamilton’s Zoom Book Launch and Reading Event
Hosted by Malvern Books, in Austin!
WHEN: Thursday, October 8, 2020
At 7 – 8 P.M. Central Time
More event details are on the Malvern Books website at:
https://malvernbooks.com/event/catherine-a-hamilton-austin-book-launch/?instance_id=3336
You can join with the link on that page.
by Admin | Jul 31, 2020 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 31 July, 2020 – Plain View Press announces the release of Gypsy Spirit: and Other Stories of Childhood, Nature, Life Choices, Loss, and Love by Ute Carson, hitting bookstores and Amazon on July 31, 2020.
Gypsy Spirit contains a lifelong collection of published short stories, flash stories, essays, commentaries and memoirs of Ute Carson. A woman who survived World War II horrors in early life, Ute Carson tells vivid stories that reveal of a life rich in history and full of tenderness, joy, and celebration. With family photographs and children’s drawings, this collective family adventure is both entertaining and insightful for people of all ages. The captivating stories follow Ute Carson’s journey through Childhood, to Nature, to Life Choices, to Loss, and finally to Love.
A writer from youth and an M.A. graduate in comparative literature from the University of Rochester, German-born Ute Carson published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Carson’s story “The Fall” won Outrider Press’s Grand Prize and appeared in its short story and poetry anthology A Walk through My Garden, 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines in the US and abroad. Carson’s poetry was featured on the televised Spoken Word Showcase 2009, 2010, 2011, Channel Austin. A poetry collection Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem “A Tangled Nest of Moments” placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook Folding Washing was published in 2013 and her collection of poems My Gift to Life was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Award Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Her poetry collection Reflections was out in 2018. She received the Ovidiu-Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Mulicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018 she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Award Prize by Plain View Press. Ute Carson’s website is www.utecarson.com.
Copies of Gypsy Spirit, paperback (ISBN: 9781632100764) can be purchased on Amazon or in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | Jul 30, 2020 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 31 July, 2020 – Plain View Press announces the release of The Last Resort: A Novel by Kay Tobler Liss, hitting bookstores and Amazon on July 31, 2020.
A Manhattan attorney in turmoil finds a remote resort on the end Long Island, where a surfer, a fisherman, and a Native American woman fighting to preserve ancestral land, give him an appreciation of nature, environmental and social justice, and a new purpose in life. With career and marriage in turmoil, he drives desperately away from all he knows to an out-of-season resort on Long Island. As he struggles to put his life back together, the tension between past and present comes alive and he finds new meaning in life through the natural world and social justice for a long-oppressed race of people.
As a writer and editor, Kay Tobler Liss worked for newspapers and magazines in New York and Maine for many decades, including Sunstorm Arts, House and Hamptons Magazine, and was managing editor of The Shelter Island Reporter. Liss studied Literature at Bard College and Environmental Studies at Southampton College and taught courses in both fields in New York and Maine. She lived in Montauk, New York for 13 years and now lives in Maine.
“The Last Resort depicts the spiritual journey of a broken man who replenishes his spirit and finds his true self in reconnecting with the natural world. In scenes of surfing in the wild ocean, the blossoming of a romance, and the struggles of the native Montauketts to reclaim their ancestral land, Liss captures the essence of Montauk in all its raw beauty. With luminous prose embedded with philosophical ruminations and Native American truths, this haunting, dreamlike narrative will linger long in the reader’s consciousness.”
—Celine Keating, author of Layla and Play for Me, and co-editor of On Montauk: A Literary Celebration
Copies of The Last Resort, paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-080-1) or ebook (ISBN: 978-1-63210-081-8), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | Jul 30, 2020 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 30 July, 2020 – Plain View Press announces the release of All My Parents: Seeking a Sense of Self in Family, by Nancy Henderson-James, hitting bookstores and Amazon on July 30, 2020.
In All My Parents: Seeking a Sense of Self in Family, Nancy Henderson-James contemplates the impact of her ancestors and descendents on her relationship to family. She delves into the lives of parents and grandparents and how their personality traits and passions affected life and those of her children and grandchildren. When she married at 23, her husband’s family also influenced her and their children, and at times stepped in to teach her how to be a mother. The arrival of her grandchildren brought her life into balance, revealing that family is to nurture and love, to care for each tiny human who joins our lives, to appreciate each unique personality and the pure joy inherent in participating in family life. From her grandparents, to her parents and surrogates, to her children and grandchildren, Henderson-James follows the family arc and discovers a way back to family integration. Copies of All My Parents, paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-072-6) or ebook (ISBN: 978-1-63210-073-3), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
Living her first two years in Washington state, Nancy Henderson-James spent the rest of her childhood years abroad in Portugal, Angola, and the former Southern Rhodesia. Often schooled away from her family, a variety of adults substituted as parent figures in her life, experiences which shaped her and her world view. Nancy graduated from Carleton College and received her library science degree at Pratt Institute. She worked as a high school librarian in Durham, North Carolina, where she has lived with her husband for 46 years. Nancy authored At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa (2010), which was honored with the Reviewers Choice Award by Reader Views.
All My Parents takes a deeper look into issues of attachment disruptions. For all who have lived globally mobile lives, or grown up in families whose parents are divorced, or worked with children of refugees, foster kids, or any other number of ways attachment patterns are interrupted, this is an important book. It reveals how such a story impacts the deepest places of a soul and family relationships.
—Ruth E. Van Reken, co-author of Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds and co-founder, Families in Global Transition
by Admin | Jun 23, 2020 | New Release, News
Plain View Press announces the timely release of The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems by Jack Coulehan, hitting bookstores and Amazon on July 1, 2020. The Talking Cure highlights physician Jack Coulehan’s poetic career, exploring the poetry of tenderness and steadiness in medical practice—observing moments, healing gestures, and internal response that reveal the worth of the individual and an ethic of compassion. A virtual book launch reading, hosted by The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, will take place on Wednesday, July 17 at 6:30 PM EDT.
A physician by trade, poet-author Coulehan uses poetry to reflect and express the trials and triumphs of keeping the body well and of facing death. The Talking Cure contains new poems plus selections from six previous books. The poems look beyond the difficulties of physical existence to see the worth and holiness of the individual with directness, passion, and humor. They show an ethic of compassionate solidarity between patient and doctor, person and family, the individual and the community. Copies of The Talking Cure, paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-078-8) or ebook (ISBN: 978-1-63210-079-5), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
An Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Jack Coulehan was formerly director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including Bursting with Danger and Music (Plain View Press, 2012). A medical educator, his medical writing includes essays on clinical trials, medical ethics, and humanities, and an award-winning textbook, The Medical Interview: Mastering Skills for Clinical Practice. Information about his books can be found at Jack Coulehan’s website.
For reviews and purchase information, visit The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems . Find out how a physician uses poetry to make the practice of medicine more compassionate and ethical.
by Admin | Jun 23, 2020 | New Release, News
Plain View Press announces the release of Coming To Be: A Novel by Rebecca Thaddeus, hitting bookstores and Amazon on June 30, 2020.
In Coming To Be by Rebecca Thaddeus, a devastating blow forces Carly to reconcile her past, with the help of her best friends. Remembering the music and sexual revolution of the 70’s, she re-examines past assumptions and life with a bipolar husband, only to discover the inexplicable joy of Plato’s “coming to be.”
With a doctorate in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rebecca Thaddeus taught at Loyola University, the University of Illinois in Chicago, and Ferris State University for a total of 38 years. With a propensity for historical fiction, her first novel, One Amber Bead (2011), was set during World War II. My Mother’s Daughter (2019) was set in early 19th Century Mississippi. Her third novel, Coming To Be (2020), recreates the era of the sixties. Her books and blog posts can be found at oneamberblog.blogspot.com.
Copies of Coming To Be, paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-074-0) or ebook (ISBN: 978-1-63210-075-7), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | May 26, 2020 | New Release, News
Plain View Press announces the publication of the historical fiction novel Victoria’s War by Catherine A. Hamilton, hitting bookstores and Amazon on June 2, 2020. Inspired by events lost in World War II history, the book gives voice to the courageous Polish women kidnapped into real-life slave labor operation during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
Victoria’s War, a historical fiction novel by Catherine A. Hamilton, tells the story of Polish teenager Victoria Darski, who was sold into slavery during the Nazi occupation of Europe, and the deaf daughter of the German baker who bought her.
Copies of Victoria’s War, paperback (ISBN: 9781632100689) or ebook (ISBN: 9781632100696), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.
“Lagodny, Poland—September 1, 1939 — RADIO changed Victoria Darski’s world. It brought swing jazz and blues into her living room. And on the first of September, when she sat on the high-backed sofa and reached for the brass knob on the cabinet radio, it brought news of war.” In Victoria’s War, the lives of two young women intertwine when Victoria Darski, Polish and Catholic, is bought by the German Tod family and held in their bakery attic—the same place where Etta Tod, deaf and mute, hides her anti-Nazi paintings.
Victoria’s War is the debut novel from author Catherine A. Hamilton, who actively publishes and blogs at www.catherineahamilton.com. Of Polish descent, Hamilton has articles and poems published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Oregonian, the Catholic Sentinel, the Dziennik Związkowy, and the Polish American Journal. She authored the chapter about Katherine Graczyk in Forgotten Survivors: Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation, edited by Richard C. Lukas. She is available for public events and book club interaction.
“A searing reminder of the many lesser-known World War II stories that still need to be told.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] page-turning tour de force of historical fiction…”—Krysia Jopek, author of Maps and Shadows
“[A] riveting debut….of one Polish woman’s plight and her unlikely friendship with the deaf-mute daughter of her captors….I could not put it down.” —Brigid Pasulka, winner of the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Award for A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
by Admin | May 24, 2020 | Announcement, News
The Other Sister is American story that is a tribute to Hungarian immigrant women and their families, who arrived in America during the early 20th century. At 478 print pages, the ebook is a more affordable alternative. The novel can now be purchased as a print or ebook on Amazon.
The Other Sister is a passionate, startling and, wonderfully readable novel about generations of an immigrant family during the first half of the twentieth century. Its momentum shimmers with the presence and evanescence of life’s everyday and extraordinary moments. While Patricia Valdata illuminates the ways that history affects individual lives, the real star of the story is the individual. Brimming with unforgettable characters, The Other Sister is to be treasured.
— Kate Evans, author of Like All We Love and For the May Queen
