Ship of Theseus - by Christopher Willard (CC#82)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very pleased to announce the publication of Ship of Theseus, a brilliant new poetic work by Christopher Willard.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

"Prepare for an ascent into the maelstrom, where the huckleberries howl and butterflies twirl, caught in the F5 tornadoes they created 10,000 wingflaps ago. The pitch and yaw of the deck is so scintillating you'll know why Christopher typed this with his tongue, and you'll never guess it's a replacement crew until they sing a sick sea shanty explaining why there is something rather than nothing. Walking the plank will never be the same." 
—William Merricle, author of Fractured Fairy Tales and Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam

Ship of Theseus is 32 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5", featuring cover art by Steven B. Smith. ISBN 978-1-940996-35-6. Published 31 March 2016. Available for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Brief bio of Christopher Willard:

Published novels: Sundre and Garbage Head.  Shorter works have have appeared in Salon, World Literature Today, Canadian Verse 2, Third Wednesday, Ranfurly Review, Ars Medica, Ukula, Coffee House Press, Broken Pencil, Sobriquet, and in the anthologies Can’t Lit: Fearless Fiction;  Double Lives: Reinventing & Those We Left Behind;  and Poet to Poet: Poems Written to Poets and the Stories that Inspired Them. My writing often takes place under the watchful eyes of my cats, Squeaky and Twinkle. I currently teach at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 - by Dianne Borsenik (CC#83)

Crisis Chronicles Press is overjoyed to announce our latest book. Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 contains 139 pages of poems by poet-performer-producer-publisher Dianne Borsenik, almost all of which were published in various journals, magazines, anthologies, newspapers, and chapbooks over the past thirty-five years. Chosen from her vast body of work, these poems represent her most popular and enduring material, both on the page and on the stage. Covering years of tie-dye and travel, laughter and loving, meditations and performances, her poems are, by turns, wicked, willful, wonderful, and wild.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $12.00 USD Elsewhere $16.00 USD

Nominated for a 2018 Ohioana Book Award. Available for $12 US (plus $3 postage) from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

5.5 x 8.5", perfect bound. 144 pages. Cover art is a finger painting by Camren (editor John Burroughs' 2-year-old grandson). ISBN: 978-1-940996-34-9.

Dianne Borsenik [photo by James Borsenik]

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio/Cleveland area poetry scene and regional reading circuit. She is a member of Literary Cleveland, Heights Arts, the Ohio Poetry Association, the Haiku Society of America, and the Ohioana Library Association. In 2011, she founded NightBallet Press and has since published over 80 titles for poets across the U.S. In September 2015, she produced BeatStreet Cleveland as part of the International Beat Poetry Festival. Her poetry has appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Great Lakes Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, bottle rockets, Voices of Cleveland, Modern Haiku, Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac and The Magnetic Poetry® Book of Poetry. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous galleries and projects, including Heights Arts' EKPHRASTACY, the Wick Poetry Center's Speak Peace: American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children's Paintings, Amy Mothersbaugh's Studio 2091, & S. A. Griffin's cross-country project The Poetry Bomb. A copy of her haiku chapbook Blue Graffiti (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2011) is in the Decatur Haiku Collection at Millikin University. Actor Jonathan Frid ("Barnabas Collins" on 60s television's Dark Shadows) used three of her poems in his live, one-man show Genesis of Evil. Her poem "Let's Get It On" (from her chapbook Thunderclap Amen) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2013, and again in 2014, she won first place in the Best Cleveland Poem Competition. In summer 2015, her poem "Disco" was selected by Lit Youngstown and the Summer Festival of the Arts to appear on tee shirts and reusable tote bags. Borsenik was born in Oberlin, Ohio, on February 2, 1955. Her Zodiac sign is Aquarius, her Chinese Zodiac sign is the (wood) Sheep, and the bat is her totem animal. She believes in the musicality of language and the originality of expression in poetry, and is willing to travel for readings. Learn more at dianneborsenik.com and nightballetpress.com.

Under My Dark - by Lana Bella (CC#81)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very pleased to announce the publication of Under My Dark by Lana Bella. This is the latest release in our NineSense series of 9-poem chapbooks by writers you need to read. This chapbook is currently out of print.

Lana's writing is uniquely beautiful.  Highlights of Under My Dark include "The House of Wrinkled Bones," "A Violet Rain" "The Trumpet Man," "A Night in Harlem" and the title poem. This chapbook is available beginning 17 March 2016 for only $4.99 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.

 

 

 

 

Under My Dark is hand assembled, saddle stapled, bound with white cover stock, black card stock end papers and ivory parchment pages. Cover photo by Steven Smith. 8.5 x 5.5". Laser printed. ISBN: 978-1-940996-33-2. Limited 1st edition of 99 copies.

A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks (her second is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press). She has had her poetry and fiction featured in over 180 journals, including Chiron Review, Coe Review, Columbia Journal, Elohi Gadugi, Foundling Review, Fourth & Sycamore, Galway Review, Gravel Review, Literary Orphans, Lost Coast Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Quarterly, Roanoke Review and Sentinel Quarterly. She resides in the US and in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever frolicsome imps.   

Find her at facebook.com/niaallanpoe.

When You Don't Know Who You Are - by Alinda Dickinson Wasner (CC#80)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very happy to announce the publication of When You Don't Know Who You Are, a stunning new cycle of poems by Alinda Dickinson Wasner.

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United States $10.00 USD Elsewhere $15.00 USD

"Alinda Wasner has long been known as one of Detroit's finest poets, and this stunning, stark and deeply felt collection shows us why. Readers can see an experienced poet at work with her craft exploring the very essence of her own being and her own unique past. The poems in When You Don't Know Who You Are are filled with brilliant poetic sensibilities that will allow readers to grasp the poet's painful memories as she faces the buried ghosts of her past. Ms. Wasner's poetry allows us to feel, question and consider our own reality and who we really are. Through this poetic journey, we see our own journey as we 'swim into someone else's dreams.'"
          —M.L. Liebler, author of I Want to Be Once.

"In When You Don't Know Who You Are, Alinda Wasner takes on questions of identity and the meaning of family. These poems glow with clarity and a willingness to use imagination to uncover the truth. In "Faith," the narrator questions the Bible, the adoption story she's been told, and the myths of loss. In the title poem, Wasner shows the adopted adult as she experiments with alternative identities.  Every casual contact wants to know her ethnicity, and it's painful because she doesn't know the answer. Yet the narrator has to admit not being tied to a single story leaves room to 'make things up.' It's this longing to know the truth and also to find 'a God / who can take two halves of a baby / and put them together again' that gives these poems their strength and makes reading them a pleasure."
          —Dawn McDuffie, author of Bulky pick Up Day and Flag Day in Detroit

When You Don't Know Who You Are is 66 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-1-940996-32-5, and available 17 March 2016 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Alinda Dickinson Wasner’s work has appeared in 40 small press print and online journals. She has won many literary prizes including several Tompkins Awards, a Wittenberg University Writer’s Award, an Atlanta Review Prize, a Mr. Cogito Press Award, a Chicago Poetry Center juried prize, MacGuffin prize, Metro Times award, the Judith Siegal Pearson prize, and a Prague Writer’s fellowship, among others, and in 2012 received 2nd place in Ireland’s International Poetry Prize. She was also nominated for the 2011 Best of the Net Award.

Her collection, Still Burning [2015], is available from Ex Libris, Amazon, and B&N. Listed in Poets and Writers, Wasner lives and writes in Beverly Hills, Michigan.