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Vihos’ haiku journal makes December 1 debut

Ordinarily we wouldn’t promote books we didn’t publish, but this one is an exception. For one thing, we did the book design. Second, it’s a fantastic collection of haiku bundled with a daily journal.

Here’s the official description at lisavihos.com:

“In 5-7-5: a daily haiku journal, Lisa Vihos marks the passage of time through the most observational of all poetic forms: haiku. Her daily poems are rooted in the natural surroundings of her Wisconsin home, and while her portraits of daily life can be personal and introspective, all are evidence of universal experience. Through sun and clouds, joy and sorrow, Vihos reminds us of the transience of the natural world and life itself. This journal urges readers to seize the pen and write the day, for one year or up to four.”

This book will not be on Amazon, at least not for a while, but you can buy it from the author’s website. I hope you will. I plan on giving this book to several people for the holidays.

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Newest acquisition: Pigeon Falls by Jeff Elzinga

We’re excited to announce we will publish Jeff Elzinga’s second novel, Pigeon Falls. Look for it in April 2025.

About the book

Pigeon Falls follows surveyor Tom Bishop and his small band of coworkers, a traveling crew of wind turbine builders, to an out-of-the-way corner of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area for one final project of the season before winter arrives. During their week amid this distinctive landscape, unforeseen challenges test the crew’s character and threaten to pry the team apart. Caught up in the ordeals are a pig farmer hell-bent on reversing generations of family failure, a young newly-wed resisting an abusive husband, and other local citizens living the quintessential life of folks in small-town America. Tom Bishop must also come to terms with his own undiagnosed health issues and whatever legacy a childless, divorced man can hope to leave behind someday. As Bishop says, after one particularly trying day, “The truest form of darkness, when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, is found not in the heavens but on earth.” In Pigeon Falls the disabling effects of hardship and greed are laid bare, yet in the end it is a story of solidarity, resilience, and hope.

Learn more about the author at his website: jeffelzinga.com

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Announcing the Calliope Chapbook Series

from Water’s Edge Press in conjunction with Lakeland University

Some of you may know that before I became the editor of Water’s Edge Press, I taught high school English for nearly 27 years. Part of my teaching philosophy was the belief that we learn best by doing. We get better at writing by writing, for example. So when the opportunity arose to collaborate with Madeleine Wattenberg’s Literary Publishing class at Lakeland University on a chapbook series, I saw the prospect as win-win all around, for students, for teachers, for writers, and for my press.

The Calliope Chapbook series was named in honor the Greek goddess Calliope, muse of epic poetry. The first installment of three chapbooks to be published in the spring of 2025 will be open to emerging or experienced poets from Wisconsin only. Writers of the three selected chapbooks will be given a publishing contract with Water’s Edge Press, but must be open to working with student editors throughout the production and promotion processes.

If you are a Wisconsin poet not affiliated with Lakeland University and are interested in this unique and exciting opportunity, please visit the Water’s Edge Press website to learn more about the press and to read the call for submissions. The submission window runs from November 15, 2024 – January 15, 2025.

This hybrid publishing venture is not a contest. There are no fees to submit. There are no cash awards.

View the submission guidelines.

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Welcome Franco Pagnucci

We’re happy to announce that we’ve signed Franco Pagnucci and will publish his collection of poems, Again The Red Fox.

Franco Pagnucci, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, has published storytelling books for teachers and students as well as six volumes of poetry: Breath of the Onion: Italian-American Anecdotes (2015), Tracks on Damp Sand (2014), a chapbook Imprints of Your Tires on Damp Sand (2012), Ancient Moves (1998), I Never Had a Pet (1992), and Out Harmsen’s Way (1991).

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Welcome Joan Wiese Johannes

We’re excited to welcome Wisconsin poet Joan Wiese Johannes to Water’s Edge Press. We will publish her collected poems Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance: And Other Missteps in fall of 2023. Johannes is a member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and is well known through her many previous publications, her work with poets and poetry, as well as numerous awards. Read her bio on our authors page.

About this new collection, Lisa Vihos, poet laureate of Sheboygan, WI says “Johannes guides us through the missteps of youth, adulthood, and old age, culminating in being “on the right foot.” This collection will leave you “yearning to step out on that proverbial limb” with the poet, who gives us daring movement in every poem.”

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay in touch with news about Joan and her book.

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Geosmin is finalist in Midwest Book Awards

Geosmin

Congratulations to Catherine Young, whose book Geosmin was selected as a finalist for regional poetry in the 2023 Midwest Independent Publishers Association Midwest Book Awards.

“This year’s finalists represent the best of the best in Midwest publishing,” said Jennifer Baum, the association’s director. “We are proud to honor these authors and publishers for their outstanding work,” she said.

Gold winners will be announced in person at the Midwest Book Awards gala held on June 17, 2023 at Open Book in Minneapolis. Renowned book critic Mary Ann Grossmann is set to keynote the event, which is open to the public.

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Welcome Lois Baer Barr

photo by Ed Levin

We’re excited that novelist Lois Baer Barr has joined the Water’s Edge Press team. Her novel The Tailor’s Daughter, based on her mother’s experiences growing up in Louisville, KY between the two world wars, is a beautiful story of one family’s grit and determination to make their way in a United States not always welcoming of Jewish immigrants.

Projected publication is late fall 2023.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay in touch and so you’re the first to know about Lois’s novel. Sign up form is at the bottom of this page.

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Welcome Marilyn Zelke Windau

Marilyn Zelke Windau’s name is well known in Wisconsin. As an established poet, she’s published numerous collections. Her poems arise from lived experience with nature, her work as a master gardener and former art teacher, and her family. She’s a docent in reality at her local art museum, but in her upcoming book Beneath the Southern Crux, Zelke Windau is our guide through art of another kind, the wonders of the southern hemisphere: seas, mountains, ruins, and above all, resilient human life and culture in landscapes that are at once beautiful and formidable.

Beneath the Southern Crux is due out in spring of 2023. While you wait, you can find her work in two anthologies from Water’s Edge Press: The Water Poems and The Aging Poems.

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Welcome Lisa Vihos, author of The Lone Snake

We’re happy to announce that we will publish The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola.

The novel captures the life of Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola using real and invented characters and a fictive memoir that brings readers into the artist’s intimate life. Vihos’ portrait of life in the 16th century is a rich tapestry that blends art history, romance, and verse to tell a timeless tale of what it means to create.

Read the full description and advance praise for this stunning debut novel.

Vihos is not new to Water’s Edge Press. She co-edited the poetry anthology From Everywhere a Little: A Migration Anthology. She’s also a contributor to The Aging Poems. The Lone Snake is her first novel. Read more about her on our Author’s page or at lisavihos.com.

The medallion image on the cover is licensed from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Welcome poet Kathleen Serley to Water’s Edge Press

We’re excited to announce that Kathleen Serley’s collection of poems, Statements Made in Passing, will be released by Water’s Edge Press in the spring of 2022. The poems arise out of the poet’s sharp observation of people and things near her own door.

Kathleen Serley, a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, is a lifelong Wisconsin resident, enjoys the way retirement has opened her days to poetry. Her poems have been published in The Solitary Plover, Volga River Review, Verse Wisconsin, Red Cedar and Verse and Vision where she won an Artists’ Choice Award.

Stay tuned for more about this book in the coming months. If you are not yet subscribed to our newsletter, please fill in the subscription form today. That way, you’re never out of the loop.