Get four of our best and newest books for $30

We're thrilled to have published ten great books so far this year.  Here are four of them.  And now you can buy all four together for $30, postage free.

Titles included:

God Save Your Mad Parade by Austen Roye (Denton, Texas)
Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 by Dianne Borsenik (Elyria, Ohio)
Ship of Theseus by Christopher Willard (Calgary, Alberta)
When You Don't Know Who You Are by Alinda Dickinson Wasner (Detroit, Michigan)

And if you have one of these already, you can pick three along with any other Crisis Chronicles Press title in print and still get the $30 deal.

Most grateful for your friendship and support,
John

2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology - by 106 authors (CC#85)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present the 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology, featuring 108 poems by 106 writers from Greater Cleveland and around the world. Join us for the official release 7 May 2015, 3 p.m., at the Barking Spider Tavern, 11310 Juniper Road in Cleveland, Ohio. This book is perfect bound, 154 pages, edited by John Burroughs and available for $14, either at the launch event, from Mac's Backs or on May 21-22th at the Hessler Street Fair itself. Cover art by Frankie Metro.

 

Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio  
(216) 321-2665
info@macsbacks.com

 

This edition of the annual Hessler Street Fair anthology is our biggest yet, featuring poems by A.D. Adams, Stephanie Alexander, Michael J. Arcangelini, Jameson Bayles, Dianne Borsenik, Colton Bose, Jeffrey Bowen, Nancy Brady, Steve Brightman, Theresa Göttl Brightman, Christina M. Brooks, Skylark Bruce, William Burkholder, Chad Burrall, John Burroughs, Joann Celleghin, Michael Ceraolo, Shelley Chernin, Charles Cicirella, Lorraine Cipriano, Victor Clevenger, Wanda Morrow Clevenger, Caitlin Blair Cogar, Juliet Cook, A.S. Coomer, Roger Craik, Subhankar Das, Lori Dean, Patricia Dengler, Christine Donofrio, John Dorsey, Kevin Eberhardt, Poetessa Leixyl Kaye Emmerson, Diane Vogel Ferri, Richard Ferris, Francine Flatley, Justyce Foss, Kelle Grace Gaddis, Joshua Gage, Hannah Gates, Christopher Alexander Gellert, Ken Gradomski, Michael Grover, Jennifer Hambrick, Richard Harries, Charles Robert Hice, Veronica Hopkins, Alina Howard, Christine Howey, Dionne D. Hunter, Clarissa Jakobsons, Azriel Johnson, Chuck Joy, Stan Kaufman, Sue Kaufman, Diane Kendig, Kim theBwordpoet, Mindi Kirchner-Greenway, Paul Koniecki, Leonard Kress, Tom Kryss, Lori Ann Kusterbeck, Jill Lange, Phyllis Lee, Lennart Lundh, Susan Mallernee, Marc Mannheimer, Julie Ursem Marchand, Elizabeth Marino, Jonie McIntire, Sarah McIntosh, Frankie Metro, Marisa Moks-Unger, Anne Marie Moore, Laura Moore, Tracie Morell, Leah Mueller, Elliot Nicely, Tanya Pilumeli, Alois Polzer. Tam e. Polzer, Valentina Ranaldi-Adams, Brianna Robinson, Melissa Rose, Damian Rucci, Rikki Santer, Sharon M. Senal, Elizabeth Senn, Aisha Marie Smith, Kevin Frederick Smith, Rob Smith, Steven B. Smith, John Stickney, Katherine Sturniolo, Brian W. Taylor, Jonathan Thorn, Anna Marie Tokarsky, Kerry Trautman, Mary A. Turzillo, D.R. Wagner, Scott Wannberg, Alinda Dickinson Wasner, Laura Grace Weldon, Madison Whitacre, Rosemarie Wilson, and Eva Xanthopoulos. 

Contributors may show up at either event or contact Suzanne at Mac's to procure a copy for half price.

God Save Your Mad Parade - by Austen Roye (CC#84)

cover photo by Chandra Alderman

Crisis Chronicles Press is very pleased to announce the release of God Save Your Mad Parade by Austen Roye, a thirty-three piece collection of poetry, both narrative and otherwise, depicting the moments comprising a world far too evolved for its own good.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $10.00 USD Elsewhere $13.00 USD

God Save Your Mad Parade is 60 pages, paperback, available for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Officially published 6 April 2016.
ISBN: 978-1-940996-36-3.

See reviews and ratings of God Save Your Mad Parade at Goodreads.

Austen Roye is a writer and musician from Cleburne, Texas.  He has previously published a wide range of work in numerous literary magazines and has recently begun work on his next poetry collection, as well as a novel. In recent years he has relocated to Denton, Texas, where he lives with his girlfriend and a blue-eyed, food-thieving, lovably lazy catahoula/lab mix named Reggie.

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.

Choose Your Location

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.

Fractured Fairy Tales - by William Merricle (CC#79)

Crisis Chronicles Press gleefully announces the publication of Fractured Fairy Tales, a new chapbook by William Merricle, on 26 February 2016.  Merricle has long been one of my favorite writers, with incomparable wit, wordplay, dark humor and insight. And this collection of 29 poem tales showcases his work at its finest. 

Fractured Fairy Tales is 34 pages, hand assembled and saddle stapled, with red card stock cover, black card stock end papers and white pages. Laser printed. 8.5 x 5.5". ISBN 978-1-940996-31-8. Limited first edition of 99 copies. Nominated for a 2018 Ohioana Book Award.

The chapbook is currently out of print, but all of its poems (in some cases, slightly revised) appear in Merricle's Contempt of Gravity: The Complete Published Poems, 1981–2020.

 

Merricle in Cleveland [photo by Chandra Alderman]

William Merricle, of Lima, Ohio, has had many poems published in this and a previous century. His most recent chapbooks are Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2011) and Chaos Theory (NightBallet Press, 2013).

xx poems - by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (CC#78)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very happy to announce the publication of xx poems by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens. This is the latest release in our Ninesense series of 9-poem chapbooks by writers you need to read.

"Clearly, MacBain-Stephens understands the texture of words, understands the need to feel them on teeth and tongue.  In one poem, she writes 'We are accustomed to the language of the torso.'  Her language is that of the synapse, firing off psychedelic sparks that invite, intrigue, and infiltrate."

      —Dianne Borsenik, editor at NightBallet Press

xx poems is hand assembled, saddle stapled, bound with white cover stock, black card stock end papers and ivory/cream parchment pages. Cover photo by Steven Smith. 8.5x5.5". ISBN 978-1-940996-30-1. Available beginning 11 February 2016 for only $4.99 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens went to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in the DC area. Other chapbooks are out or forthcoming from Grey Book Press, Dancing Girl Press and Shirt Pocket Press. Her first full length collection is forthcoming from Lucky Bastard Press. Recent work can be seen or is forthcoming at Jet Fuel Review, Pith, Freezeray, So to Speak, Entropy, Right Hand Pointing, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review and decomP.

Visit http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com.

Special Watch - by Richard M. O'Donnell (CC#77)

Crisis Chronicles Press is happy to announce the publication of Special Watch, a chapbook by Richard M. O'Donnell, on 31 January 2016. These prose poems are sensitive and often dark true accounts from the author's time working around maternity, pediatrics and the mentally disturbed at the nation's oldest naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. A compelling read! 

 

Special Watch is 24 pages, hand assembled and saddle stapled, 8.5 x 5.5", laser printed on white pages with black card stock end papers wrapped in pale charcoal cover stock. ISBN 978-1-940996-29-5. Limited edition. Nominated for a 2018 Ohioana Book Award.
 

As of 2024, this chapbook is currently out of print but copies may be available from Mindfair Books in Oberlin, Ohio.

O'Donnell [photo by Kathleen Horton]

Richard M. O'Donnell‘s works have appeared in many venues including Sniplits audio stories, Everyday Poets, Everyday Fiction, the North Coast Review and The Gamut, to name a few.  He is the co-founder and facilitator of The Oberlin Writers Group and the founder and facilitator of the Infinite Monkey Sci-fi/Fantasy Writers.  A link to his online publications and YouTube films is available at www.wormsview.com.

The Gravity of Chainsaws - by Azriel Johnson (CC#76)

cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Azriel Johnson's latest poetry chapbook, The Gravity of Chainsaws,  on 18 January 2016. This themed cycle of poems is being called Johnson's best work yet, and we agree. Get it while it's hot.

The Gravity of Chainsaws is 34 pages, hand assembled and saddle stapled, 8.5 x 5.5", laser printed on white pages with dark cream parchment endpapers wrapped in blue-gray cover stock. ISBN 978-1-940996-28-8. Limited edition. Only $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Choose Your Location

North America $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

author photo by Jen Pezzo

 

Join us for the official book launch (and author's birthday bash) on 18 January 2016 from 7 to 9 p.m. during Stark Knights at Cultured Coffee Co, 309 Cleveland Avenue NW in Canton, Ohio.

Azriel Johnson is a poet, novelist, and all around shady character; an ink spatter analyst by day and a serial writer by night; shaman of the International Temple of Self Expression; and the founder and director of Writing Knights Press. His other books include Hellfire, Heavensent thru Writing Knights, Poemaholic thru The Poet's Haven and his recently released fantasy / alternate history novel Sunset Red.