Tarpaulin Sky Press
GROWING SICKER EVERY DAY
Tarpaulin Sky Press
Summer Titles
Summer Titles
Descent
In 2013, poet Lauren Russell acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Wallace Hubert, a Captain in the Confederate Army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves. One of those children was the poet’s great-grandmother. Through several years of research, Russell would seek the words to fill the diary's omissions and to imagine the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, a black woman silenced by history. The result is a hybrid work of verse, prose, images and documents that traverses centuries as the past bleeds into the present. “A search for truths felt in one’s bones.” (Brenda Coultas) "An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering.... Russell speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.” (Douglas Kearney) “Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent—into a present shaped by the past—as descent from America’s true heroic figures.” (John Keene)
Womonster
"I was thrilled and moved by this wild book, which moves from an explosive rejection of narrative to the creation of a theater of home, that shabby, beautiful structure built with girly hope, our fortification against loss." (Suzanne Scanlon) "With Womonster, Olivia Cronk shows that we are other people as much as we are our various selves. We are the people who share our lives; we are our loved ones and our aggressors. If this makes us monsters, then everyone's a monster." (Jay Besemer) "Womonster is both a hyper-abject soap opera of beige underwear, dusty crystal, sinks full of bloodied dishes, and a redemptive horror story about the power of becoming the monster." (Laura Ellen Joyce) "Olivia Cronk is one of my favorite US poets over the past 15 years" (Johannes Göransson)
Hunting Season
Julia Brennan’s debut novel, Hunting Season, is part auto-fiction, part lyric essay, part lament, part film journal, part performance, and part exorcism. Challenging traditional victim/perpetrator narratives, Hunting Season is an intimate investigation into the ways we learn to love and wound. “A kind of fortress: elaborately constructed, designed to protect and to withstand the dangers that are everywhere around us. An imaginative, frightening and heartbreaking tour de force.” (Carole Maso) “You never know when her rifle will go off, leaving you bruised, cut in halves or quarters, or heartbroken. Hunting Season is ‘a slow amputation’ of love, film, disaster, agony, tamed or nonchalant sadomasochism and sexual fantasies.... Come here and let her destroy you. Tenderly.” (Vi Khi Nao)
Poetry Against All
"This slim journal contains multitudes. It’s a compulsively readable account of returning to a childhood home, a provocative meditation on artists such as Susan Sontag, Francesca Woodman, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and a radical reexamination of concepts like ruin porn, tourism, and translation. But mostly it’s an urgent manifesto. Göransson concludes: "This is written without hope." But paradoxically, Poetry Against All offers just that." (Jeff Jackson) "Moralists who find themselves clutching their pearls about this book of noir perversions should read less literally and see that Göransson's Poetry Against All -- for all its anti-libidinous interrogations of pornography, the Holocaust, and cadavers -- concerns some of the most relatably humanist emotions of all: grief, the meaning of home, and the protectiveness one has about one’s children. Göransson imagines pornography as the body at the edge of otherness, at once alluring and perverse, which is not unlike the lens through which he conceives his own role as immigrant, the contaminant in our body politic, alive to the sheer horror of America but never quite able to go home himself." (Ken Chen)
Descent
In 2013, poet Lauren Russell acquired a copy of the diary of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Wallace Hubert, a Captain in the Confederate Army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves. One of those children was the poet’s great-grandmother. Through several years of research, Russell would seek the words to fill the diary's omissions and to imagine the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, a black woman silenced by history. The result is a hybrid work of verse, prose, images and documents that traverses centuries as the past bleeds into the present. “A search for truths felt in one’s bones.” (Brenda Coultas) "An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering.... Russell speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.” (Douglas Kearney) “Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent—into a present shaped by the past—as descent from America’s true heroic figures.” (John Keene)
Womonster
"I was thrilled and moved by this wild book, which moves from an explosive rejection of narrative to the creation of a theater of home, that shabby, beautiful structure built with girly hope, our fortification against loss." (Suzanne Scanlon) "With Womonster, Olivia Cronk shows that we are other people as much as we are our various selves. We are the people who share our lives; we are our loved ones and our aggressors. If this makes us monsters, then everyone's a monster." (Jay Besemer) "Womonster is both a hyper-abject soap opera of beige underwear, dusty crystal, sinks full of bloodied dishes, and a redemptive horror story about the power of becoming the monster." (Laura Ellen Joyce) "Olivia Cronk is one of my favorite US poets over the past 15 years" (Johannes Göransson)
Hunting Season
Julia Brennan’s debut novel, Hunting Season, is part auto-fiction, part lyric essay, part lament, part film journal, part performance, and part exorcism. Challenging traditional victim/perpetrator narratives, Hunting Season is an intimate investigation into the ways we learn to love and wound. “A kind of fortress: elaborately constructed, designed to protect and to withstand the dangers that are everywhere around us. An imaginative, frightening and heartbreaking tour de force.” (Carole Maso) “You never know when her rifle will go off, leaving you bruised, cut in halves or quarters, or heartbroken. Hunting Season is ‘a slow amputation’ of love, film, disaster, agony, tamed or nonchalant sadomasochism and sexual fantasies.... Come here and let her destroy you. Tenderly.” (Vi Khi Nao)
Poetry Against All
"This slim journal contains multitudes. It’s a compulsively readable account of returning to a childhood home, a provocative meditation on artists such as Susan Sontag, Francesca Woodman, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and a radical reexamination of concepts like ruin porn, tourism, and translation. But mostly it’s an urgent manifesto. Göransson concludes: "This is written without hope." But paradoxically, Poetry Against All offers just that." (Jeff Jackson) "Moralists who find themselves clutching their pearls about this book of noir perversions should read less literally and see that Göransson's Poetry Against All -- for all its anti-libidinous interrogations of pornography, the Holocaust, and cadavers -- concerns some of the most relatably humanist emotions of all: grief, the meaning of home, and the protectiveness one has about one’s children. Göransson imagines pornography as the body at the edge of otherness, at once alluring and perverse, which is not unlike the lens through which he conceives his own role as immigrant, the contaminant in our body politic, alive to the sheer horror of America but never quite able to go home himself." (Ken Chen)
TS PRESS NEWS
The Rumpus reviews Lauren Russell’s Descent
"Descent is a book about identity, about family—and a book about Black women and their erasure. How they were and in some ways continue to be erased from the historical record, from positions of power. From control over their own bodies. From what can be considered beautiful or joyful." -- Jesi Buell, The Rumpus
Verse features Lauren Russell’s Descent
Lauren Russell's Descent is a featured playlist at Verse.
Winner & Shortlist | 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award
At a time when happiness feels difficult to come by, we are happy to announce our short-listed manuscripts and the winner of the 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards.
Poets & Writers “Page One”: Lauren Russell’s “Descent” with Audio
Poets & Writers Page One -- "Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin" -- features Lauren Russell's Descent, including audio of Lauren reading an excerpt from the book.
Kenyon Review recommends Lauren Russell’s “Descent”
We are grateful to Kenyon Review Nonfiction Editor Geeta Kothari for recommending Lauren Russell's "necessary and urgent" Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2020).
Poets & Writers interviews Lauren Russell
Poets & Writers interviews Lauren Russell about her new book from Tarpaulin Sky Press, a hybrid of poetry and memoir, Descent.
Steven Dunn’s “water & power” named “Best of Denver”
Huge thanks to Westword for naming Steven Dunn's water & power (Tarpaulin Sky Press) to their "Best of Denver 2019."
BuzzFeed News spotlights Steven Dunn’s “water & power”
Our sincere thanks to novelist Wendy J. Fox for including Steven Dunn's water & power (TS 2018) among her BuzzFeed showcase of "books that prove indie presses deserve your attention."
Film Trailer: Steven Dunn’s “Potted Meat” adapted for film
Foothills Productions releases The Usual Route, a short film based on Steven Dunn's novel Potted Meat, published by Tarpaulin Sky Press.
Lambda Literary Award Finalist! Piper J. Daniels’s “Ladies Lazarus”
We are very pleased to announce that Piper J. Daniels’s debut essay collection, Ladies Lazarus, published by Tarpaulin Sky Press, has been chosen as a finalist for a 2019 Lambda Literary Award.
SPD Bestseller! Steven Dunn’s “water & power”
We are unsurprised, but nonetheless delighted, to learn that Steven Dunn's second novel with Tarpaulin Sky Press, water & power, is currently a Fiction Bestseller at Small Press Distribution.
Tarpaulin Sky author Jennifer S. Cheng awarded NEA Fellowship!
We are thrilled to announce that Jennifer S. Cheng (Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems) has been awarded a $25,000 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, from the National Endowment of the Arts. We'd like to congratulate all the other winners as well -- with a special nod to TS Magazine contributor Kiki Petrosino!
Piper J. Daniels’s “Ladies Lazarus” Longlisted for PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award!
We are delighted to announce that Piper J. Daniels’s debut collection of essays, Ladies Lazarus (TS 2018) has been longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Rebecca Brown’s “Not Heaven” makes Dennis Cooper’s year end list
Dennis Cooper's "Favorite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2018" includes Rebecca Brown's Not Heaven, Somewhere Else (TS 2018) -- among a million other must-reads and must-sees.
Granta Magazine features excerpts from Steven Dunn’s “water & power”
Steven Dunn makes his third appearance in Granta with an excerpt from his second novel, water & power (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2018).
Publishers Weekly: Jennifer S. Cheng’s “Moon” in “Best Books of 2018”!
We're grateful to Publishers Weekly for naming Jennifer S. Cheng's Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems (Tarpaulin Sky Press) among the "Best Books of 2018."
Rebecca Brown, “Not Heaven, Somewhere Else” (TS 2018) featured in The Stranger
Big thanks to Rich Smith for his wide-ranging Stranger feature on Rebecca Brown and her new book with Tarpaulin Sky Press: Not Heaven, Somewhere Else: "These updated and revised fables satisfied a desire for moral discussion that I didn’t even know I had…. Highly recommended and highly rewarding."
SPD Bestseller! Jennifer S. Cheng’s Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems (TS 2018)
We're tickled to note that Jennifer S. Cheng's hybrid masterpiece, Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems (TS 2018) is now officially a bestseller at Small Press Distribution.
The Rumpus reviews Lauren Russell’s Descent
"Descent is a book about identity, about family—and a book about Black women and their erasure. How they were and in some ways continue to be erased from the historical record, from positions of power. From control over their own bodies. From what can be considered beautiful or joyful." -- Jesi Buell, The Rumpus
Verse features Lauren Russell’s Descent
Lauren Russell's Descent is a featured playlist at Verse.
Winner & Shortlist | 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award
At a time when happiness feels difficult to come by, we are happy to announce our short-listed manuscripts and the winner of the 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards.
Poets & Writers “Page One”: Lauren Russell’s “Descent” with Audio
Poets & Writers Page One -- "Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin" -- features Lauren Russell's Descent, including audio of Lauren reading an excerpt from the book.
Kenyon Review recommends Lauren Russell’s “Descent”
We are grateful to Kenyon Review Nonfiction Editor Geeta Kothari for recommending Lauren Russell's "necessary and urgent" Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2020).
Poets & Writers interviews Lauren Russell
Poets & Writers interviews Lauren Russell about her new book from Tarpaulin Sky Press, a hybrid of poetry and memoir, Descent.
Steven Dunn’s “water & power” named “Best of Denver”
Huge thanks to Westword for naming Steven Dunn's water & power (Tarpaulin Sky Press) to their "Best of Denver 2019."
BuzzFeed News spotlights Steven Dunn’s “water & power”
Our sincere thanks to novelist Wendy J. Fox for including Steven Dunn's water & power (TS 2018) among her BuzzFeed showcase of "books that prove indie presses deserve your attention."