by Admin | Apr 15, 2022 | New Release, News
Marriages and Other Dilemmas: Collected Stories and a Memoir by Kitty Beer was released April 15, 2022. This book balances 16 short stories with a 50 page memoir. With heroines of every age, the stories are dynamic, dark, sexy, and humorous, and the frank and open memoir adds insight to the experience. In the stories, she explores consequential events in the lives of ordinary people, revealing her love for life and the idiosyncrasies that make life profoundly interesting. Crisp writing and a jaunty tone take the reader on a journey to the outer edges of desire, love and revenge. In her memoir, Beer takes an honest and insightful look back on her life, filled with “mistakes, thrills, fears, bliss, and delusion,” overcoming the grief of misfortune with good nature and resoluteness. While Beer’s trio of thriller novels reflect on her passion for the environment, Marriages and Other Dilemmas skillfully reflects on her personal life and observations of the world around her.
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, it hits 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 | Sep 24, 2021 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 02 Sept, 2021 – Plain View Press announces the new release of Blink Factor, a crime thriller by Steve Barry, to bookstores and Amazon on September 2, 2021.
With two identities, artist David Asher can forever capture what he sees in the blink of an eye. He tries to solve the mystery of his abusive father as his father hunts him down. He faces the looming threat of the Manhattan Crime Boss and the wrath of inquisitive FBI and CIA operatives.
Born in Manhattan, Steve Barry studied painting at Boston University, the Boston Museum School and the Art Students League of New York. He left an early career in advertising on Madison Avenue for the Southwest and worked as Creative Director for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper Gaining recognition as a painter, he taught art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe before moving to Texas with his wife. Always attracted to the creative process, Blink Factor is his first novel.
Copies of Blink Factor (ISBN: 978-1632100917) can be purchased on Amazon or in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | Sep 24, 2021 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 07 July, 2021 – Plain View Press announces the release of Deadly Discrimination, a Fr. Jake Mystery by Albert Noyer, hitting bookstores and Amazon on July 7, 2021.
When the local store in Providencia, New Mexico is sold to a Muslim, Fr. Jake encourages tolerance but a white supremacist attempts to blow it up by crashing into the gas pump. The Archbishop later visits and tells Fr. Jake he is wanted back in Michigan at his old parish, setting things in turmoil. Complete with maps and historical references, this is the third book in the Fr. Jake Mystery series.
A Swiss-born artist and writer, Albert Noyer was raised in Detroit, Michigan. After the Army and degrees in art, art education, and teaching humanities, he worked as a commercial artist and taught art in public schools and art history at a private college. Noyer retired to New Mexico with his wife, Jennifer, where he exhibits watercolor paintings and woodcut prints in galleries and regional exhibits. Also a writer, his contemporary Fr. Jake Mysteries, The Ghosts of Glorieta; One for the Money, Two for the Sluice; and Deadly Discrimination are published by Plain View Press, along with the two volume Alberix the Celt, a historical retelling of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul from the viewpoint of a Celtic youth caught up in the Romanization of the country now called France. Noyer also published the A.D. fifth century novels, the Getorius and Arcadia mysteries, set in an era critical in creating the political, religious, and cultural institutions that survive into modern times. Copies of Deadly Discrimination (ISBN: 978-1632100931) can be purchased on Amazon or in quantity from Plain View Press.
by Admin | Sep 23, 2021 | New Release, News
Austin, Texas, 10 May, 2021 – Plain View Press announces the release of TIME and TIDE: An Atlas for the Grieving, a chapbook by Denise Thompson-Slaughter at bookstores and Amazon on May 10, 2021.
Time and Tide: An Atlas for the Grieving, crystallizes grief and transforms the horrors of 2020 into poetry. In doing so, it creates a brief historical and philosophical summary of a “saturnine cycle” we will never forget.
Denise Thompson-Slaughter is an author living in western New York State. Her previous published works include two books of poetry (Elemental, Plain View Press, 2010, and Sixty-ish: Full Circle, Spirited Muse Press, 2017); and a mystery novella (Mystery Gifts, Spirited Muse Press, 2018). “Cleaning the Coincidence Closet: Exploring the “Inexplicable” (nonfiction) is forthcoming in late spring 2021.
Copies of the TIME and TIDE chapbook (ISBN: 978-1632100870) can be purchased on Amazon or in quantity from Plain View Press.
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, at 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. Beyond mere words, the word drawings in At the Edge of the Cliff touch extremes of feeling that jar the subconscious and make each poem an experiment, 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.
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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
