The leaves that fell in February |
|
|
|
Langston Hughes once said ... |
|
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enter the International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition |
|
|
|
Small presses have potential for significant impact, and at Vine Leaves Press, we take this responsibility quite seriously. It is our responsibility to give marginalized groups the opportunity to establish literary legacies that feel rich and vast. Why? To sustain hope for the world to become a more loving, tolerable, and open space. It always begins with art. That is why we have launched this writing competition. We would love for you to enter your manuscript!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bethanee Epifani once said ... |
|
To love is to be brave. To love is to operate in your natural state.
|
|
|
|
|
|
VLP at AWP |
|
Several VLP authors recently attended AWP, held in Kansas City earlier this month. In addition to book signings and readings, Joseph Lezza and Rachel Stolzman Gullo also participated in AWP panels.
AWP 2025 will be in Los Angeles from March 26-29, 2025. Proposal submissions will open soon, but here are the guidelines.
Photo Credits: Martha Engber
|
|
|
|
Robert Hayden once said ... |
|
Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ann S. Epstein |
|
The Goldilocks Question and More
|
|
"Perversely, I disliked studying history as a schoolchild. The 1950s curriculum emphasized memorizing names and dates, especially discoveries and conquests, that were disconnected from students’ lives."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jayne Martin |
|
Slipping Away and Us
|
|
"No one seemed to notice when she began losing adjectives." Jayne Martin's "Slipping Away" was recently published by the South Florida Poetry Journal. Her flash piece, "Us," was recently published by Bending Genres.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Octavia E. Butler once said ... |
|
You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marc Rosenberg is a screenwriter, film producer and resident lecturer in screenwriting at Bond University. He’s had seven feature films produced, won two Australian Writers’ Guild Awards and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Rosenberg grew up in Texas, worked as an estate agent in London, was a year on an Israeli kibbutz, and has spent more than half his adult life in Australia. Rosenberg has written The Screenplay Tree, a ‘how-to’ book on film structure, which is available on Amazon and contributes to the periodical, Film International. KYD’S GAME is his first novel.
Kyd's Game will be published in September.
Jocelyn Jane Cox was a competitive figure skater for 11 years with her older brother as her partner then coached the sport for over 20 years before becoming a full-time writing coach and teacher. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her essays, creative nonfiction, fiction, and humor have appeared in several publications, including The New York Times, Slate, The Offing, Litro Magazine, and Belladonna Comedy. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives near Nyack NY with her husband, son, and the antique eyeglass collection she started with her mother.
Her memoir, Motion Dazzle, will be published in September 2025.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kathleen Collins
|
|
"KC: That hardly seems like a disorder to me. It’s your personality. Lots of people are quiet.
FR: Quiet isn’t valued in our society. In libraries and churches, maybe, but not in general life."
Kathleen Collins recently interviewed one of her characters from her recently published Study in Hysteria for Books by Women.
|
|
|
James Ladd Thomas
|
|
"The best a writer can do in creating a character is observe similar people, ask similar people questions about their lives, read articles about such people, and read and watch similar characters in books and movies. Basic research." Roz Morris recently interviewed James Ladd Thomas as part of her Nail Your Novel series.
|
|
|
|
|
Anamika Mishra once said ... |
|
I love March as it gives me hope that new beginnings are always beautiful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Check out our top-rated all-time bestsellers & other recommendations: |
|
|
|
|
|
Saving Face: A Memoir |
|
by Effy Redman
|
|
Born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Moebius Syndrome, Redman's grit and eye for beauty help her survive childhood bullying and adolescent doldrums. Her physical transformation at age thirteen via plastic surgery eviscerates her concept of image, just in time for her and her family to immigrate from hardscrabble Manchester, England to America's disorientingly scenic upstate New York. Not until diagnosis in young adulthood with bipolar disorder does Redman come out of the closet as a lesbian, finally claiming her most inherent identity.
Saving Face is a searing personal tribute to anybody who has ever felt like an outsider. This memoir honors the grace of a face that stands out in a crowd, defying societal beauty norms. Disability meets transcendence, suffering becomes hope, and the individual expands into community. The inability to smile, in Redman’s book, lights a window onto the human capacity for redemption.
|
|
|
Your Story Starts Here: A Year on the Brink with Generation Z |
|
by Jim Zervanos
|
|
Jim Zervanos, a seasoned high-school English teacher and father of two, embarks on a mission at the cusp of a new school year. He realizes that today's youth are thrust into a tumultuous world and burdened with saving it. To chronicle this extraordinary period in America, he assigns himself a unique task: keeping a journal. Within its pages, we witness “his kids” grappling with pressing issues like identity politics, gun violence, and political uncertainty. A sophomore prodigy wrestles his demons onto the pages of his fiction before entering a psychiatric hospital. An estranged junior posts ominous threats on Snapchat, while a principal sabotages a student walkout. Meanwhile, in his classroom, Jim prepares a hiding space for an active shooter event and, back home, finds solace in the eulogy of his young sons’ pet fish, sent on its final journey with a flush. By year's end, Jim, unwavering in his determination to inspire hope in his students, discovers that it's the youth who inspire hope in him. Their creativity and ideals paint a vivid portrait of an evolving America, seen through the kaleidoscope of Generation Z. Your Story Starts Here: A Year on the Brink with Generation Z is an intimate exploration of the challenges, resilience, and unwavering hope of today's youth in a turbulent world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Study in Hysteria |
|
by Kathleen Collins
|
|
In the middle of 1974, Flora is privileged and middle-aged in a liberation-hued America, and feels both compelled by and left out of the women’s movement. She finds it difficult to activate her limited supply of empathy as she contends with a clandestine and unlikely friendship, a worrisome health scare, a domineering and philandering psychiatrist husband or her own distant daughter.
Flora's secret foray into psychotherapy does nothing to halt the sense that there is a better life for her somewhere else, in some parallel existence. T hrough the continuum of psychological diagnoses, she is lost in the murky place between contentment and discontentment, normal and abnormal.
Is her state of mind a clinical, diagnosable condition, or common malaise? Perhaps she'll find out if she stops resisting to share herself with those who love her.
|
|
|
When the Ocean Flies |
|
by Heather G. Marshall
|
|
An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity on a collision course as Alison finds herself caught between the life and family she has so carefully constructed on one continent and the family from which she was taken on another.
Shunned by her father’s family, reunited with her natural mother, and reconnected with a long-lost love, Alison finds herself trying to shepherd her youngest child towards college while questioning everything she thought she knew about herself.
When her natural mother uncovers a series of letters written to Alison from the grandmother she never knew, resurrecting the stories of generations of women—stories long buried by patriarchal rule—Alison realizes that she must find the courage to face and reveal the secrets of her own past. At what cost, though? And who and what will be left in the aftermath?
When the Ocean Flies explores the pain of separation and abuse, and the power of love to heal even over huge gaps in time and geographical distance.
|
|
|
|
|
And congratulations to Melanie Faith for her new book, Does It Look Like Her?
|
|
|
|
Does It Look Like Her? |
|
by Melanie Faith
|
|
Alix briefly meets an accomplished artist at a coworker’s dinner party and subsequently sits for a painting that becomes well-known. But Alix is neither a one-trick pony nor an ingénue; she’s 47 and embarking on her own painting and teaching journeys while starting her life over with her young son.
This collection of narrative poetry spans years and POVs—including Alix; her son, Sam; her ex; and her colleague, Meghan—and explores what it means to pursue artistic passion, the personal meanings we overlay onto art and artists in a society not conducive to art-making, ambition at midlife, the indirect route to so-called overnight success, and more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
We need your help to keep diversity alive in literature. |
|
Together, we can continue to bring stories from around the world to readers everywhere. Thank you for being a crucial part of the Vine Leaves Press community.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|