Silver Birch Press Congratulates Its Pushcart Prize Nominees

Silver Birch Press congratulates its six Pushcart Prize nominees for writing published during 2013:

Jeffrey C. Alfier, author of the poetry chapbook The Wolf Yearling (May 2013)

Rachel Carey, author of the novel Debt (February 2013)

Chris Forhan, author of the poetry chapbook Ransack and Dance (July 2013)

Ellaraine Lockie, author of the poetry chapbook Coffee House Confessions (February 2013)

Philippa Mayall, author of the memoir Phoenix (June 2013)

Daniel Romo, author of the poetry chapbook Romancing Gravity (May 2013)

We were honored to publish your work during 2013! 

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall through Sun., 12/1/13

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix: A Memoir by Philippa Mayall is #2 on the Amazon Kindle list for free biographies and memoirs of women.  Download your free copy through Sunday, 12/1/13 at at this link.

NOTE: If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download Kindle read apps — for free — at Amazon.com

For her outstanding writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Philippa Mayall for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall (Wed., 11/27 – Sun. 12/1/13)

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — from Wednesday, 11/27, through Sunday, 12/1/13, at this link.

This is a memorable book — beautifully and even lyrically written…exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.” 

JOHN RECHY, author of CITY OF NIGHT and THE MIRACULOUS DAY OF AMALIA GOMEZ

For her outstanding writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Philippa Mayall for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Free Kindle version of Debt, a novel by Rachel Carey from 11/14-11/18/13.

A FREE Kindle version of the Silver Birch Press release DEBT, a novel by Rachel Carey is available from Thursday, Nov. 14, through Monday, Nov. 18, 2013. You can download the Kindle version— which retails for $6.99 – for free at Amazon.com.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Set in New York City, Debt – a satirical look at the 2008 financial meltdown — follows a range of characters who owe something to someone in a variety of ways. From main character Lillian Fitzgerald — a recent grad with an Master’s in Creative Writing in one hand and $100,000 bill for her student loans in the other — to Henry Bolt, the mysterious force who owns the bank that financed Lillian’s student loans, and an assortment of other people up and down the debt chain (bill collectors, stock market mavens, the wealthy, the foreclosed, the bankrupt, the desperate, the spoiled, the gamblers, the winners, and the losers), Debt covers a wide universe without leaving the five boroughs.

NOTE: If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download Kindle read apps — for free — at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Carey is a writer and filmmaker. She received an MFA in Film Directing from NYU, a M.Ed. from Harvard, and a BA in English from Yale. She currently teaches college film classes — and lives with her husband and daughter in New Jersey. Rachel is still paying back her student loans — and has dedicated her novel to the Sallie Mae Corporation.

ANNOUNCEMENT: For her outstanding and original writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Rachel Carey for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. 

Ransack and Dance, poems by Chris Forhan

In July 2013, Silver Birch Press released Ransack and Dance, a collection of poems by Chris Forhan — one of our favorite all-time poets. We are pleased to nominate Chris Forhan for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

POEM FROM THE COLLECTION:

JOY
by Chris Forhan

It seized me—never mind the circumstance: sudden
scent in the breeze like cinnamon, sun silvering
a roof as the unicycle parade began—it seized me
 
as sickness does, wholly, with no mercy,
all of my body obeisant to its law as though none of it
were mine, finally: not the joy or the body.

“RANSACK AND DANCE is a book by a poet reaching the heights of his art. Every word is where it is for a reason, and every sound is where it is for a reason. And those reasons add up to surprise and delight. This is the rarest thing for a collection of poems: there is not a line of prose in it!”

THOMAS LUX

“Chris Forhan‘s images and insights . . . seem . . . to spring from the poet’s subconscious to the reader’s, with the vessel of the poem their only necessary medium. I can think of no better reading experience or more that could be asked of the best poetry.” LAURA KASISCHKE, West Branch Wired

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chris Forhan, born and raised in Seattle, Washington, is the author of three books of poetry: Black Leapt In, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars, winner of the Morse Poetry Prize and a Washington State Book Award; and Forgive Us Our Happiness, winner of the Bakeless Prize. He is also the author of two chapbooks, x and Crumbs of Bread, and his poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Parnassus, and other magazines, as well as in The Best American Poetry. He has won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two Pushcart Prizes and has been a resident at Yaddo and a fellow at Bread Loaf. He lives with his wife, the poet Alessandra Lynch, and their two sons, Milo and Oliver, in Indianapolis, where he teaches at Butler University.

Find Ransack and Dance, poems by Chris Forhan at Amazon.com.

Stellar reviews for Coffee House Confessions by Ellaraine Lockie

Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie — author of the Silver Birch Press poetry release Coffee House Confessions — on her latest rave review.  Written by David Fraser — who calls the collection “unique…quirky, entertaining, and meaningful” — the review appears at ascentaspirations and ragazine.

For her admirable poetry in Coffee House Confessions, Silver Birch Press is pleased to nominate Ellaraine Lockie for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. To celebrate, here’s a poem from the collection:

SINGLE AT THE SECOND CUP COFFEE SHOP
by Ellaraine Lockie

He asks if I’m Carol
A serious man squeezing a paper coffee cup
and smelling like an ad for Calvin Klein cologne
 
My denial so devastatingly disappointing
that he dashes straight to his Porsche convertible
And in despair peels out of the parking lot
 
Or his expectation so exceedingly unmet
that he chauffeurs disillusion and any further gamble
to his wheels of fortune and spins out of the game
 
I don’t even know the rules
But finish my iced Italian roast
Feeling like a woman who lied on her resume

Find Coffee House Confessions by Ellaraine Lockie at Amazon.com.

Cover photo by Nick Warzin. Find him at nickwarzin.com.

Poet Jeffrey C. Alfier, author of The Wolf Yearling

Jeffrey C. Alfier acquired a keen poetic vision from years of living and traveling throughout the Southwest. Composed mainly in syllabic verse, The Wolf Yearling (Silver Birch Press, 2013) exhibits strict attention to tightly controlled language that renders, in rich imagism, American deserts and mountains, the plains of the Trans-Pecos, border towns, and the sandy soils of east Texas.

Poem from THE WOLF YEARLING…

LATE LIGHT IN THE SANTA CRUZ VALLEY
by Jeffrey C. Alfier

If you can dismiss the moon’s pale ascent
you might hear wingbeats in the fading light,
dusk calling hawks to perch in cottonwoods
and toll a deadpan vigilance eastward
toward sierras that ruddle to shadows.
 
These hawks are connoisseurs of what it takes
to die when small prey barters noonday sun
for nightfall’s cooling of dry riverbeds,
waiting out the heat under my trailer.
Canted on one wheel, it tilts back to earth.

REVIEWS: 

“Alfier’s sharp lyrics come upon you like a door slammed by a hot desert wind might wake a lonely man into a new life. They are demotic, lived, and, without being sentimental, hopeful that our little span of being human matters after all.” DOUG ANDERSON, Poet-in-Residence at Ft. Juniper, Amherst, Massachusetts, instructor in poetry at Emerson and Smith Colleges

“If the forbidding and starkly beautiful American Southwest were condensed to the nuances of language, Alfier would be its quintessential oracle...I know of no poet writing today who handles the demanding form of syllabics (while consistently maintaining line integrity) with the consummate artistry of Alfier. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I give this fine collection of poems my highest recommendation.” LARRY D. THOMAS, Member, Texas Institute of Letters, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate

“Each poem is a testament to Alfier’s unflinching observations and hard-fought love of the Southwest. This is a rich portrait of a stunning landscape…The Wolf Yearling is a gift.” KEITH EKISS, author of Puma Road Notebook

Find THE WOLF YEARLING at Amazon.com.

Silver Birch Press congratulates Jeffrey C. Alfier for his 2013 Pushcart Prize nomination. 

The Desert Rancher on Sunday, poem by Jeffrey C. Alfier

THE DESERT RANCHER ON SUNDAY
by Jeffrey C. Alfier

Winds release clouds from the tread of drifting
but buoy the arcs of loitering hawks.
 
It’s so quiet he swears he hears sunlight,
Chihuahuan sage blossoming in clusters.
 
Where his footfalls impel a warbler’s flight,
distant church bells summon their own echoes.
 
He kneels, presses palms to parched tractor ruts
that angle off into wind-runneled fields.
 
Thin soil keeps him for another season,
the ground made of nothing his hands won’t hold.

…”The Desert Rancher on Sunday” appears in the Silver Birch Press release The Wolf Yearling, a collection of poems by Jeffrey C. Alfier, available at Amazon.com.

For his inspired poetry in The Wolf Yearling, Silver Birch press will nominate Jeffrey Alfier for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeffrey C. Alfier is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and was a 2010 nominee for the UK’s Forward Prize for Poetry. In 2012, he was nominated for a Breadloaf scholarship. In 2006, he received honorable mention for the Rachel Sherwood Poetry Prize, and in 2005 won first place awards from the Redrock Writer’s Guild of Utah and the Arizona State Poetry Society. He holds an MA in Humanities from California State University at Dominguez Hills. Having served twenty-seven years in the U.S. Air Force, he is a member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). Alfier’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals and his chapbooks include Offloading the Wounded (2009), Before the Troubadour Exits (2010), The Gathering Light at San Cataldo (2012), and The City Without Her (2012). He serves as co-editor of San Pedro River Review.