TS Press Books Archives | Tarpaulin Sky Press

Rebecca Brown: Not Heaven, Somewhere Else

Rebecca Brown’s thirteenth book is narrative cycle that revamps old fairy tales, movies, and myths, as it leads us from where we are to where we might go. Praise for Not Heaven, Somewhere Else: "It feels dangerous and exciting, like if (Brown) puts her big brain to it long enough, she could completely rewrite the story of who we are." (Seattle Review of Books) "Highly recommended and highly rewarding." (The Stranger) Praise for Rebecca Brown: "Strange and wonderful...Brown strips language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need." (The New York Times) "Simply one of the best contemporary lesbian writers around." (Dorothy Allison) "America's only real rock ‘n’ roll schoolteacher." (Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth)

Steven Dunn: water & power

A Small Press Distribution Fiction Bestseller

Navy veteran Steven Dunn’s second novel plunges into military culture and engages with perceptions of heroism and terrorism. water & power is a collage of voices, documents, and critical explorations that disrupt the usual frequency channels of military narratives. "Dunn’s remarkable talent for storytelling collapses the boundaries between poetry and prose, memoir and fiction." (Nikki Wallschlaeger) Dunn unrelentingly captures the difficult, funny, abject, exhilarating, heartbreaking and maddening aspects of Navy life, both on and off duty. Read this book and understand the veterans in your life better ... complex and bold and conflicted and powerful and terrified and tough and human." (Khadijah Queen)

Jennifer S. Cheng, Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems

Publishers Weekly “Best Books 2018”
SPD Poetry Bestseller
Winner of the Tarpaulin Sky Book Award, chosen by Bhanu Kapil

“Exquisite imagination…” (Publishers Weekly “Best Books 2018”) Exhilarating…An alt-epic for the 21st century…Visionary…Rich and glorious.” (Publishers Weekly Starred Review) “If reading is a form of pilgrimage, then Cheng gives us its charnel ground events, animal conversions, guiding figures and elemental life.” (Bhanu Kapil)

Piper J. Daniels: Ladies Lazarus

Co-winner of the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction
Longlist, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Equal parts séance, polemic, and love letter, Piper J. Daniels’ Ladies Lazarus examines evangelical upbringing, sexual trauma, queer identity, and mental illness with a raw intensity that moves between venom and grace. “Beautifully written…. Daniels emerges as an empowering and noteworthy voice.” (Publishers Weekly) “ Ladies Lazarus is the best debut I’ve read in a long time. Daniels has resurrected the personal essay and what it is and what it can do.” (Jenny Boully) “A siren song from planet woman, a love letter from the body, a resistance narrative against the dark.” (Lidia Yuknavitch)

Elizabeth Hall: I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris

Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Bisexual Nonfiction
Small Press Distribution Bestseller

Elizabeth Hall set out to find all that had been written about the clit past and present. As she soon discovered, the history of the clitoris is no ordinary tale; rather, its history is marked by the act of forgetting. “Marvelously researched and sculpted…. Bulleted points rat-tat-tatting the patriarchy, strobing with pleasure” (Dodie Bellamy). “Freud, terra cotta cunts, hyenas, anatomists, and Acker, mixed with a certain slant of light on a windowsill and a leg thrown open invite us… Bawdy and beautiful” (Wendy C. Ortiz). “Gorgeous little book about a gorgeous little organ….” (Janet Sarbanes). “An orgy of information…. At once sexy and scientifically compelling.” (The Rumpus)

Amy King: The Missing Museum

Co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize
A Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller

"Sometimes the thrill of reading poetry is the sense one minute that you understand the poet so clearly you’re not just seeing through her eyes but, perhaps more importantly, breathing through her lungs. (Lambda Literary) A visceral stunner … and an instruction manual…. King’s archival work testifies to the power—however obscured by the daily noise of our historical moment—of art, of the possibility for artists to legislate the world. (Kenyon Review)

Kim Parko: The Grotesque Child

Co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award

The Grotesque Child is a story about being and being and being something else. It is about swallowing and regurgitating, conceiving and birthing. It is about orifices and orbs. It is about the viscous, weepy, goopy, mucousy, bloody state of feminine being and trans-being. It is about pain and various healers and torturers, soothers and inflictors. It is about what sleeps and hides in all the nooks and crannies of perceived existence and existence unperceived.

Dana Green: Sometimes the Air in the Room Goes Missing

Co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award

Sometimes the Air in the Room Goes Missing explores how storytelling changes with each iteration, each explosion, each mutation. Told through multiple versions, these are stories of weapons testing, sheep that can herd themselves into watercolors, and a pregnant woman whose water breaks every day for nine months. “I love Dana Green’s wild mind” (Noy Holland). “A tour de force of deeply destabilizing investigation into language and self” (Laird Hunt). “Dana Green’s bracing debut .. reminds us every ordinary moment, every ordinary sentence, is an impending emergency” (Lance Olsen).

Steven Dunn: Potted Meat

Finalist, Colorado Book Award
Co-winner, Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards
A Small Press Distribution Bestseller

"101 pages of miniature texts that keep tapping the nails in, over and over, while speaking as clearly and directly as you could ask…. Zero indulgence, all formative. Bone Thugs, underage drinking, alienation, death, love, Bob Ross, dreams of blood: This thin thing is flooded with power." (Blake Butler, VICE) "This book needs to be read." (Laird Hunt) "A remarkable piece of work. Rarely does one encounter a book so evocative of place and so bracing in its ability to transform the quotidian into revelation." (Kevin Powers) "I feel grateful to be alive during the time in which he writes books (Selah Saterstrom).