Norman, OK ) May 20, 2010--Mongrel Empire Press, an Eclectic Publishing House specializing in regional and unusual literary works, announces the publication of six new titles in the past five months. Of the six titles, three are poetry and three are nonfiction. Four of the collections also feature black and white photographs.
The three poetry titles are Spare Parts by Ken Hada, My Sideways Heart by Nathan Brown, and Oklahomaography by Joey Brown.
Ken Hada, author of Spare Parts, is a literature professor and coordinator of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. His collection includes powerful, finely crafted yet accessible poems about fishing, hunting, waitresses, sons, and fathers. Award-winning novelist Diane Glancy says that Hada’s poems, “acting as spare parts in themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”
My Sideways Heart by Nathan Brown, popular regional poet and musician, offers the reader fractured love poems, funny and poignant at the same time. As Concho River Review poetry editor Jerry Bradley opines, Brown’s poetic voice is “compassionate, frighteningly honest, and disturbingly beautiful.” Nathan’s collection includes black and white photographs, as does Joey Brown’s Oklahomaography.
As the title suggests, Joey Brown’s Oklahomaography offers a poetic geography of Oklahoma people and places; Missouri Review editor Speer Morgan recommends the collection for “anyone who understands the abiding connection to place.” Oklahomaography has recently been featured on Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases recommendation list.
The three nonfiction titles recently released by Mongrel Empire Press are a biography, L. W. Marks: A Baptist Progressive in Missouri & Oklahoma, 1862-1943, by Alvin O. Turner; a memoir, Crossing a Different Bridge, by Judith Tate O’Brien, and Fighters & Writers, a collection of creative nonfiction essays by John G. Rodwan, Jr.
Alvin O. Turner, brings his historian’s rigor and his poet’s instinct for graceful writing to the fascinating story of minister, businessman, and mayor of Edmond, OK, L.W. Marks. The collection is illustrated with vintage Marks family photographs.
Judith Tate O'Brien's Crossing a Different Bridge presents “distilled memories of a life in the oil patch, Catholic boarding schools, and the convent are honest and intense. Her spare, precise language and unflinching inward gaze crystallize harsh experience into high art” (Terry Britton, President of Rose State College).
John G. Rodwan’s Fighters & Writers is a “spirited and far-ranging meditation on boxing that's also a thoughtful inquiry into the relationship between the writer's craft and the fighter's” (Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights). Fighters & Writers is illustrated with black and white photographs.
For more information on Mongrel Empire Press or to obtain review copies of these and other titles, contact the Press by sending an email from the web site: www.mongrelempirepress.org. Mongrel Empire Press books are available from the Press, the authors, Amazon.com and selected independent bookstores.
About Mongrel Empire Press
Mongrel Empire Press was established in 2007 with a mission to publish well-written, thoughtfully-considered works across generic and disciplinary boundaries. The Press actively identifies and promotes Oklahoma and regional writers while at the same time making room for outside the region works that, because of their mixed generic, disciplinary, and philosophical approaches, cannot find a home at other presses that have a more narrowly defined mission.
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
Editor & Book Designer
Mongrel Empire Press
www.mongrelempire.org
mongrel@mongrelempire.org
The three poetry titles are Spare Parts by Ken Hada, My Sideways Heart by Nathan Brown, and Oklahomaography by Joey Brown.
Ken Hada, author of Spare Parts, is a literature professor and coordinator of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. His collection includes powerful, finely crafted yet accessible poems about fishing, hunting, waitresses, sons, and fathers. Award-winning novelist Diane Glancy says that Hada’s poems, “acting as spare parts in themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”
My Sideways Heart by Nathan Brown, popular regional poet and musician, offers the reader fractured love poems, funny and poignant at the same time. As Concho River Review poetry editor Jerry Bradley opines, Brown’s poetic voice is “compassionate, frighteningly honest, and disturbingly beautiful.” Nathan’s collection includes black and white photographs, as does Joey Brown’s Oklahomaography.
As the title suggests, Joey Brown’s Oklahomaography offers a poetic geography of Oklahoma people and places; Missouri Review editor Speer Morgan recommends the collection for “anyone who understands the abiding connection to place.” Oklahomaography has recently been featured on Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases recommendation list.
The three nonfiction titles recently released by Mongrel Empire Press are a biography, L. W. Marks: A Baptist Progressive in Missouri & Oklahoma, 1862-1943, by Alvin O. Turner; a memoir, Crossing a Different Bridge, by Judith Tate O’Brien, and Fighters & Writers, a collection of creative nonfiction essays by John G. Rodwan, Jr.
Alvin O. Turner, brings his historian’s rigor and his poet’s instinct for graceful writing to the fascinating story of minister, businessman, and mayor of Edmond, OK, L.W. Marks. The collection is illustrated with vintage Marks family photographs.
Judith Tate O'Brien's Crossing a Different Bridge presents “distilled memories of a life in the oil patch, Catholic boarding schools, and the convent are honest and intense. Her spare, precise language and unflinching inward gaze crystallize harsh experience into high art” (Terry Britton, President of Rose State College).
John G. Rodwan’s Fighters & Writers is a “spirited and far-ranging meditation on boxing that's also a thoughtful inquiry into the relationship between the writer's craft and the fighter's” (Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights). Fighters & Writers is illustrated with black and white photographs.
For more information on Mongrel Empire Press or to obtain review copies of these and other titles, contact the Press by sending an email from the web site: www.mongrelempirepress.org. Mongrel Empire Press books are available from the Press, the authors, Amazon.com and selected independent bookstores.
About Mongrel Empire Press
Mongrel Empire Press was established in 2007 with a mission to publish well-written, thoughtfully-considered works across generic and disciplinary boundaries. The Press actively identifies and promotes Oklahoma and regional writers while at the same time making room for outside the region works that, because of their mixed generic, disciplinary, and philosophical approaches, cannot find a home at other presses that have a more narrowly defined mission.
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
Editor & Book Designer
Mongrel Empire Press
www.mongrelempire.org
mongrel@mongrelempire.org
