from the East Bay to West Bay, a brief twirl thru southern warm waters, riding slowhound Tucson to Mexico City, Mexico City to Oaxaca, San Cristobal & the big dusty clown homies, that East Coast, that West Coast, that down South--& one more loop for posterity's sake before relocating at the end of year to rural Missouri...
2018 Chapbook Series
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Thank you for your support! <3
4/10/19 UPDATE
PRINT COPIES ARE SOLD OUT! FREE PDF EDITIONS LINKED BELOW! 10/24/18 UPDATE
PRESALES HAVE BEGUN!! As 2018 comes to a close, we've changed a few parts of our yearly chapbook contest. For starts, Bob Sykora has joined the N!P crew, helping Christopher run things this year! We extended our flash submission window up to 72 hours, and were excited to see 135 submissions hit our inbox. Bob and Chris loved the work they read, sending along personal feedback to over 80% of the submitters.
As usual, this page will be our central hub to share updates in regards to this year's contest / publishing production, but Christopher has also started a N! Tavern series exploring under-the-hood details of how we're running this (plus thoughts from Bob!).
Like last year, winners are distributed online + taken across country with our traveling bookstore, Books & Shovels. Thru 2017, we hit the Kansas City Poetry Throwdown, Death Rattle Lit Fest, supported + coordinated a fundraiser w. No Más Muertes that was followed by another fundraiser for Tucson activist organization Flowers & Bullets. We took our chapbooks from Tucson to Detroit to Milwaukee to Minneapolis & St. Paul, & back down to Kansas City. We hit Cincinnati rooftops, St. Louis bus stations, & the Legit AF Michigan City Poetry Festival coordinated by Punk Hostage Press. We zigged, zagged, & zigged them again—& now, we're here, back between the Bay, Tucson, & Chicago, writing to you with gratitude for the trust y'all have put in Nostrovia!'s 4th Chapbook Contest <3
With all the above travels listed, it's important to mention our publications are distributed thru a 'pay-what-you-can' rate to better provide an accessible amp for our authors + avoid distributing good lit thru economically exclusive means.
& huge shout out to Craig Mullins of Bottlecap Press joining up with us again to print <3
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Lyd with their chapbook!
Laura with her chapbook!
Stephen with his chapbook!
No Mas Muertes Variety Benefit, 2017
Death Rattle Lit Festival, Boise, ID, 2017
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What loss taught me
by Stephen Furlong
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I want to believe I might come back new
Stephen Furlong received his M.A in English from Southeast Missouri State University. His poetry, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in Yes, Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Pine Hills Review, among others. He currently works at FIVE:2:ONE as a staff reviewer and can be found @StephenJFurlong on Twitter.
These are brave poems that have a remarkable immediacy of voice. They mourn; they bear witness; they warn. While about abuse, they transcend their topic. In the end they do what all compelling poems must – speak to what it means to be human in all its facets, both good and bad.
–Sue William Silverman, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (University of Georgia Press)
If you want to know what tenderness means, and what it looks like, and how it graces the lines of a poem, you should read Stephen Furlong's What Loss Taught Me. If you want to know the courage of tenderness, or the way it can be turned toward the self, you should read this. These poems take the hard risk of being honest, and vulnerable, of making out of deep, impossible hurt a kind of home. They inhabit and transcend the wounds that make up our everyday. When I lift my eyes from the page and look around, I see how everything is capable of holding some kind of violence, some kind of beauty, and some kind of love. Stephen's work is a work of grace in that way. "Eventually, love," he writes, and I say yes. But also: the love is here. In the aftermath of cruelty, violence, and fear, Stephen has brought it out. No more eventually. This book ushers love back into the world.
–Devin Kelly, In This Quiet Church of Night I Say Amen (CCM Press)
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i gave birth to all the ghosts here
by Lyd Havens
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if, in this story, I am supposed to be Samson, then
let me be the pair of scissors too Lyd Havens is a poet, performer and organizer originally from Tucson, Arizona. Their work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among others. They are the author of Survive Like the Water (Rising Phoenix Press, 2017), and the self-published chapbooks Eight of Resilience and peony summer (2018). Lyd is currently a second-year undergraduate at Boise State University, and one of the main organizers of the Boise Poetry Slam.
We begin with a question "I want a healthy coping / mechanism that still allows me to be / heard. Where do I find something like that?" and the search begins as the poet steps into a voice that is stepping into every light refracting from this prism in the center of their chest. this is giving birth to all one's ghosts. giving them voice, forms, breaks, breadth and breath. names are praised and names are named. the self is extracted from the darkness and the self endures. Havens' ghosts light the way ahead to help us see. To make us seen.
–Jess Rizkallah, author of the magic my body becomes (University of Arkansas Press)
Like a howl through a crowded room, this collection draws attention, an urgency unconcerned with politeness. An honest, youthful exploration of personal history and the queer body, I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here builds a world and invites you in. Lyd Havens is special, plain and simple. They are truly an artist to watch.
–Clementine von Radics, In A Dream You Saw A Way To Survive
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the cartography of Sleep
by Laura Villereal
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When I disappear, I only leave teeth
marks. I can hear whimpers & howls in the distance. Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships Key West Literary Seminar and The Highlights Foundation. More of her writing can be found at: www.lauravillareal.com
Villareal positions herself the cartographer in this short and poignant collection of poems. With each page she pushes her text to transform and so we encounter the map as text for guidance, map as data, map as myth. Each bit of movement expands the landscape Villareal’s poems define and, in doing so, charts wider territory for the reader to move into. I’m saying, with The Cartography of Sleep I stepped into a series of bound pages and stepped out into an expanse. How grateful I am for it.
–JR Mahung, Since When He Have Wings (Pizza Pi Press)
Laura Villareal's The Cartography of Sleep is a sublime map of dreams and a guide to the heart's darkness. Finding your way in her poetry is no easy journey. Villareal offers her readers new mythologies and seasons. The turns are sometimes bloody, sometimes funny, sometimes wild, sometimes surreal, but all the time enlightening. Make no mistake, these poems bite back, sweetly, vengefully, and with grace. Or put simply, these poems are dangerous.
–Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets)
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FINALISTS
These are not listed in any particular order. We have a lot of love for everyone here <3
Be sure to check our Featured Finalist page to read a piece from each of these chapbooks!
- Lucas Bailor - Rosed
- sally burnette - treatment
- TC Kody - The Summer We Lost
- Marlin Figgins - Prayers Before the Moon
- Samuel J Fox - There's a Universe Next Door
- Tyler Friend - U
- Stephen Furlong - What Loss Taught Me
- Lyd Havens - I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here
- Dena Igusti - Growth Response
- Laura Villareal - The Cartography of Sleep
honorable mentions
- Cassandra de Alba - The Animals
- E. Kristin Anderson - UPRIGHT AND EVIL
- Chris Corlew - LAKE FRAGMENTS
- Christine Higgins - Hello, Darling
- Jessie Janeshek - Channel U
- Jenny MacBain-Stephens - The Female Citizens of Sunshine Nation Face off with Light Sucking Demons
- Adrian Sobol - MEDIOCRITY BLUES
- Letitia Trent - The Ghost Comes With Me
- Roy White - Impossible Flower
proud dad vibes
Dig our chapbook contest:
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