The altered volumes included in Book of Books by Tara Tavi contain stories nested within stories. The trapdoors are the books themselves, the stories they tell, the images they show and the physicality of a rectangular prism of printed tree leaves. We fall in, we envision the story, and we enter a third space - our experiences kinetically interacting with the ideas, our personal extrapolation on the words and the thoughts and images they conjure. The ideas resonate out into our daily life, creating new eddies of synchronicity.
Book of Books by Tara Tavi is available now.
Tara Tavi is a multimedia artist and musician who lives in Pomona, CA with her husband Sam McPheeters and cat Blitzen. She’s taught kindergarten and high school Art and believes, “We are all lanterns glowing briefly in the scheme of things. I want to know what illuminates us and what we are projecting out into the universe.”
Instagram: @taratavi
Email: taratavi@gmail.com
The fifty-two new poems in The Enormous Room by Richard Brown Lethem were written during the last two years as the author re-settled in Northern Maine after the Covid hiatus in Southern California.
This collection documents that transition, in particular, the radical quality of color in nature as an emotionally charged element as well as the inner movements in aging during this period.
The Enormous Room by Richard Brown Lethem is available now.
Richard Brown Lethem (b. 1932) has been living and thinking in paint on canvas since the 1950s, with results that have been categorized, more or less aptly, as abstraction, expressionism, figuration, social realism, surrealism, and allegory. Now in his 90s, Lethem’s imagery has become unified and direct, often consisting of a central form derived from nature, yet distilled by the visionary pressure of his attention into symbols directly drawn from his psychic landscape, and beamed into that of the viewer. Lethem’s first book on Bamboo Dart Press, Roots, Stones and Baggage, was a collection of paintings and poems spanning seven decades. A recent show of his paintings was on view at the Inman Gallery in Texas and he has an upcoming exhibit at The Claremont Lewis Museum in California.
An unnamed narrator attends an elite but perennially freezing private girls’ school in New York City during the 1960’s. At first almost invisible, she evolves from seven-year-old witness to fifteen-year-old actor as she navigates a Halloween party, observes a classmate’s sudden hair growth, and encounters two eccentric teachers. Zombies, fetal pigs, Shakespeare, and cigarettes make appearances in this linked set of flash fiction stories which weave in and out of magical realism and affirm the possibility of survival even under the most peculiar conditions.
The Warbler School Chronicles by Stephanie Barbé Hammer is available now.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer is an award-winning novelist, short fiction writer, and poet. She has published work in a bunch of places including The Chiron Review, Phantom Drift, The RavensPerch, and Spillway. Her most recent novel is the Foreword Indie recognized magical realist mystery Journey to Merveilleux City (Picture Show Press). Her other titles for Bamboo Dart Press are City Slicker: encounters with the outside and Rescue Plan. A former New Yorker, Stephanie moved to California in 1986 and has (mostly) been there ever since. She lives in Santa Barbara with her husband, writer and political organizer Larry Behrendt. Learn more about Stephanie’s books and her creative writing classes at her website or follow her on Instagram.
Substack: stephaniebarbehammer.substack.com
Facebook: @stephamm
Instagram: @stephaniebhammer
Website: www.stephaniehammer.com
