We’re excited to announce the books we’ll be publishing in the next couple of years*. These were chosen from the open submission period we had this year. It was an enlightening way to discover several new writers that we didn’t know about and to plan ahead for an exciting future of projects. Out of over 230 submissions, we could have chosen twenty or thirty rock-solid literary gems, but to keep ourselves relatively sane (i.e. not overwhelmed!) we chose the following seven amazements. *(Pub dates have been edited as of 6/23/22)
2021
Emilly Prado “Funeral for Flaca” (essays), July ’21
Emilly Giselle Prado is a writer and educator living in Portland, Oregon. She is a “first-and-a-half” generation Chicana raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by a first-generation Mexican American and a Mexican immigrant. Emilly spent half a decade working as a freelance multimedia journalist, producing award-winning reporting centered on the voices and experiences of people from historically marginalized communities. She is the author of Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019) a youth non-fiction book about the intersections of identity and society. Her writing can be found in NPR, Marie Claire, Bitch Media, Eater, The Oregonian, Ms. Magazine, and more. When not writing, Emilly serves as the Director of Youth Programs at Literary Arts by day and moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latinx DJ collective she co-founded in 2017.
Michael Seidlinger “Runaways: A Writer’s Dilemma” (novella), Oct ’21
Michael J. Seidlinger is a Filipino American author of My Pet Serial Killer, Dreams of Being, and other books. He has written for, among others, Buzzfeed, Thrillist, Goodreads, The Observer, Polygon, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writer’s Conference, and Sarah Lawrence. He is a co-founder and member of the arts collective, The Accomplices. You can also find him on Twitter and Instagram.
2022
Shane Kowalski “Small Moods” (flash fiction), Feb ’22
Shane Kowalski lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has an MFA in fiction from Cornell University. His work appears in Electric Literature, SLICE, Puerto del Sol, Tammy, Juked, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbooks Dog Understander (Frontier Slumber, 2017) and How I Solve How I Feel (Ghost City Press, 2020).
Hillary Leftwich “Aura” (memoir), July ’22
Hillary Leftwich is the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press/The Accomplices 2019). She runs ☿ Al·che·my Author Services & Workshop and teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers. Some of her work can be found in The Rumpus, Entropy, Denver Quarterly, and Hobart.
Katie Gene Friedman “Foreign Body” (personal essay—Scout Book series), November ’22
Katie Gene Friedman is a feminist killjoy with an invisible disability who works as a sexual and reproductive health provider. She is attracted to the grotesque, obscure, and absurd. A native New Yorker, she lives in West Philly with her murdery cat and muppety pup.
2023
Parker Young “Lodged Halfway Into a Wall” (short fiction), March ’23
Parker Young lives in Chicago. His work has appeared in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Bluestem, and elsewhere. He is an editor at Featherproof Books.
Jennifer Robin “Destroy Nothing [the most important thing]” (memoir), June ’23
Jennifer Robin has toured the West Coast over many years, with a mix of avant-garde music and reading, including appearances at Bumbershoot and Portland’s NOFEST. She is the author of Death Confetti (Feral House), Earthquakes in Candyland (Fungasm), Bouzi (Creative Arts), and Even Snowflakes Heal and You Can Download Skin (Ladybox). Her work has been published in political and poetic zones, including Counterpunch, PLAZM, Five2One, HorrorSleazeTrash, and the King Shot Press Nasty anthology. Her novel, Icons Falter, will be released by Clash Books in 2022. She writes about:
a. ghost meat
b. exile
c. failed Amtrak romance
d. the burning planet