Edward Foster. History of the Common Scale. (US $5.00) “Foster is a master of tone; there is an elegiac and crepuscular charm in many of these poems reminiscent of Cavafy and William Bronk, but there is playfulness too. . . . The reader of this collection . . . is finally left with no solid ground on which to stand. . . . And yet there is delight in not knowing, delight in music that lures us so skillfully out over the abyss.” —First Intensity
Arlene Ang and Valerie Fox. Bundles of Letters, Including A, V and Epsilon. (US $14.00) The poems in Bundles of Letters Including A, V, and Epsilon contain many correspondences. They explore. They send messages. They include research and real life. They hope, naturally, to entertain.
Of it, Paula Cohen (novelist, critic) writes: Valerie Fox and Arlene Ang are latter-day surrealists, playing wantonly with words, charming us out of and into the everyday. There's no predicting where they will take off (Lake Como, the Joyce Kilmer Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike) or where they will land (a wishbone, a rainbow hanging from a noose). Their poems buzz like inspired flies. Emily Dickinson would take delight in them.
From the Heart of Europe: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovenian Writing. Slovenes, (the people who
form )a nation of two million in the heart of Europe, achieved independence
for the first time in their long history with the break-up of
Yugoslavia in 1991. Having settled in the Alps in the sixth century AD,
they succeeded in preserving their language, identity and culture
largely through poetry and fiction: their greatest national hero is not
a general but a romantic poet. With the arrivalof independent statehood and membership of the European Union and NATO,
Slovenian literature has been freed of its function as the guardian of
national identity and is now allowed to explore the realm of literary
imagination without the former burdens of
attendant duties. While not ignoring their great literary tradition of
the past centuries, contemporary Slovenian authors no longer concern
themselves predominantly with national issues; their writing is
personal, inventive and open outward, even cosmopolitan, yet without
losing its specific Central European flavor.
The thirteen stories by
thirteen leading Slovenian authors selected for this anthology have all
it takes to make the reader turn the pages: style, suspense, irony,
dark secrets, intellectual game playing, emotional charge, human
warmth, and more. US $ 16.00
Shiva Dancing: Poems by Van Hartmann Shiva Dancing takes the reader on a journey across a physical and
emotional landscape of loss, grieving, and renewal. The poems are
lyrical and elegiac.
They probe the multiple layers through which we
experience the loss that comes with living and the redemption made
possible by exploring that loss with honesty, concreteness, and
compassion. Each poem is set in motion by a concrete observation or
recollected moment that releases its own organic stream of poignant
associations. The result is an embodiment, in each poem and in the
collection as a whole, of the complex energies and perceptions that
define our most human experiences.
Van Hartmann teaches literature and film studies at Manhattanville
College, in Purchase, New York, and lives with his wife in Norwalk,
Connecticut. His poems have appeared in numerous journals. Shiva
Dancing is his first book-length collection.
US $ 16.00
ophelia's gold
Welcome to texture press!
The primary vision of texture press is to increase international cultural literacy through literature and education. Please note that some titles are now offered in audio book form, thanks to a partnership with LearningPortal.com
For press information, please contact susan@beyondutopia.com or fax purchase order to 405-310-6617
You may also order all titles directly from Texture Press (send purchase order) or through amazon.com
Mailing address: 1108 Westbrooke Terrace, Norman, OK 73072
Notable: For the first time, many of Evald Flisar's award-winning plays are available in English. Flisar, whose latest book, Tea with the Queen, was a finalist for Slovenia's highest literary honor, has seen his plays produced in many countries, where his themes of love, death, greed, identity, and community have made his plays controversial, provocative, and intensely engaging. This 600-page volume is an asset for libraries and serious theater groups. Also available: My Father's Dreams.
Anthology of Slovenian Prose -- various authors, translated into English for the first time. (December 2007)
The Blackness of Spring -- Michael D. Nash a harrowing story of adolescence, bullies, love and loss written by a young U.S. Marine while deployed in Afghanistan
texture press has recently published Cut and Run by Cydney Chadwick. Cydney's book is available through Small Press Distribution (spdbooks.org) and Amazon.com. Please check out the review at First Intensity.
In 1989, texture press began publishing chapbooks, broadsides, and photography. Many are now in the small press and special collections of universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brown University, Stanford University, SUNY-Buffalo, University of Connecticut-Storrs, Harry Ransom Library (University of Texas-Austin), and Ohio University.
Authors and contributors include Rochelle Owens, Mark Wallace, John Bennett, Valerie Fox, Evald Flisar, Karl Young, Renee Ferrer, Susy Delgado, Luisa Moreno, Buck Downs, Jack Foley, and many more.
Texture (the magazine) had a run of 5 issues. Texture Press publications include chapbooks, monographs, and full-length collections of poetry, plays, short fiction, and essays.
Awards received by the press include:
** Oklahoma Book Award Finalist -- Rochelle Owens / Rubbed Stones (1994)
** Oklahoma Book Award Finalist -- First Light: Anthology of Paraguayan Women Writers (2000)
** Trubar Grant Recipient - Evald Flisar - Tales of Wandering (2001)
** Trubar Grant Recipient - Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams (2003)
** Trubar Grant Recipient - Evald Flisar - Collected Plays (2006)
** Trubar Grant Recipient - various authors -- Anthology of Slovenian Prose (2007)
first intensity - fall 2005
Recent critical response to Texture Press Publications:
About Cydney Chadwick's Cut and Run, From First Intensity, A Magazine of New Writing: "The language in this little narrative (it is a slim and trim 55 pages) suits the narrator. It is smooth, impeccably clean, like Flaubert without any messy parrots." Cydney's work as a publisher and writer was featured in October 2005 in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Texture Press authors' recent activity:
Author Rochelle Owens recently participated in a reunion of the La Mama Theatre Company, where her controversial play, Futz, was first performed. An interesting note, the La Mama Theatre Company was also where the play, Hair, debuted. Futz was also performed at the Edinburgh Festival, where it created quite a stir in 1967: Futz, La Mama Theatre Company, 1967. In a tangentially related item, Barry Cowsill, a member of the group, The Cowsills, who recorded the title song to Hair, was killed in New Orleans in the flooding following Hurricane Katrina. His body was found on a wharf four months after he was declared missing. (see "This Cowsills Song Has a Sad Ending," Newsday).
Author Evald Flisar's novel,Tea with the Queen(Caj s kraljico), was a finalist in the 2005 competition for the Kresnik Award, the most prestigious award for Slovenian literature.
Slovenian literature is a focus of texture press, and in addition to publishing the work of Evald Flisar, the press will be publishing essays, fiction, and poetry by Slovenian writers.
