We’re excited that our soon to be published novel from Jeff Elzinga–Pigeon Falls–is a BookLife Editor’s Pick. It’s gratifying when other book professionals recognize excellence.
You’re going to love this book. It is a timely story with characters that will grab your heart.
Pre-Order Now.
We’re sometimes asked how to go about placing a review for one of our books on Amazon. There are other guides out there, but we’ve tested the steps that follow.
A new anthology of baseball poems will be published in the fall of 2025 by Waters Edge Press. The editors, Tom Erickson and Ed Werstein, hope to assemble 75 to 100 poems that celebrate the many facets of baseball, and show off the many ways baseball plays an important and rewarding part in many lives.
Do you have a favorite player or team? Did you play in Little League? Did you listen late at night to games when your team was playing on the west coast? Did you play stick ball on city streets? Do you remember the first major league game you attended? You get the idea.
Please send only one or two poems, in one Word document file, to: Ed Werstein at wersted@gmail.com .
You must put “Baseball Poems, (your name)” in the subject line.
Previously published poems are OK with proper acknowledgment.
Payment for an acceptance is one copy of the anthology. After publication, all rights revert to the poet.
We’re excited to share this news. Freesia McKee, Lynn Aprill, and Megan Muthupandiyan are the three newest authors at Water’s Edge Press. We will publish their chapbooks this spring. Stay tuned for more. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news.
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.
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
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.
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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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.
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.
Ancestral
$25.00
A Hollow Bone
$16.00
Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance: And Other Missteps
$18.00
Something Novel Came In Spring
$15.00
Poems from the Winter House
$25.00
