TS Press Books Archives • Page 4 of 5 • Tarpaulin Sky Press

Joanna Ruocco: Man’s Companions

Joanna Ruocco's first short-fiction collection, Man's Companions, from Tarpaulin Sky Press: "Find yourself warped from one world to another, transported by the flight of her words between languages" (THE NATION); "Ruocco's understated humor and irony have a playful, experimental appeal" (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY); "Early Lydia Davis seems not unfairly applicable, as does Amy Hempel" (ART + CULTURE); "Ruocco is consistently inventive. She tilts the world as we know it, challenging our senses" (TRIQUARTERLY)

Traci O. Connor: Recipes for Endangered Species

Traci O Connor's debut collection of short fictions, Recipes for Endangered Species (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010): "These stories constitute some tender, aching love stories. Connor's characters are curious specimens who don't quite fit in, but have rich inner lives.... Creepy, Hitchcockian..... Juxtaposes vivid descriptions of flowers with excerpts from the painter's late asylum notebooks to evoke the chilling stream-of-consciousness of a troubled narrator..... A kind of nut job's notebook, full of Lolita-like obsession (including photographs). Cocktail recipes conclude each of the stories in this varied and occasionally unnerving debut collection." (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)

Ana Božičević: Stars of the Night Commute

Ana Božičević's debut poetry collection, Stars of the Night Commute is 2010 Lambda Award Finalist for Lesbian Poetry. "Thought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended" (AFTER ELLEN); "heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary to the love and kindness (that can be) human beings" (JACKET); "Ana Bozicevic's poetry has everything—a mastery of language, a distinct and singular voice and a worldview so visionary and all-encompassing, so as to both terrify and astound" (NOELLE KOCOT); "Heart and eyes intact and hungry for the redemptive and the beautiful, after having experienced all that is contrary" (JACKET); "It’s either about silence or the racket of the world.... I trust it" (EILEEN MYLES)

Gordon Massman: The Essential Numbers 1991-2008

Gordon Massman's The Essential Numbers 1991-2008, from Tarpaulin Sky Press: "Unyielding monoliths of spit and tongue.... Fucked and ready to fuck your head.... Where so much ‘poetry’ can be yadda, these are words saying something hard and loud, and meaning it.... This is the kind of book you can’t ask for until you have it." (BLAKE BUTLER, HTML GIANT); "Gordon Massman is the kind of writer that guts you, revolts you" (SHELLY TAYLOR); "timid people be damned" (BRANDON SHIMODA)

Andrew Zornoza: Where I Stay

Andrew Zornoza's debut, Where I Stay (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) walks the highways and dirt roads of a landscape filled with characters in transition: squatters, survivalists, prostitutes, drug runners, skinheads, border guards and con-men. A meditation on desperation, identity, geography, memory, and love, Where I Stay is a story about endurance, about the empty spaces in ourselves, about the new possibilities we find only after we have lost everything: "Refreshing, pitch-perfect kind of steering that is innovative not only for the genre it might get called into, but for experiential and language-focused texts of every stripe.... Meditative and rhythmic in the mind of Mary Robison mashed with William Vollmann.... Unforgettable." (BLAKE BUTLER, HTML GIANT); "Squarely situated between the ethos of Jack Kerouac and Walker Evans" (REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY FICTION); "With a languorous but precise lyricism…. [Zornoza] is a cartographer of loneliness, doubt, and fear, one that fearlessly delineates the stark realms of disappointment, unrequited love, and unfulfilled dreams" (RAIN TAXI); "a gifted journey through borderlands between text and image" (LANCE OLSEN); "As haunting as it is gritty.... I hesitate to simply call it a book; its ambitions, beautifully realized, make it a hybrid of textual and visual arts" (SMALL PRESS REVIEWS); "expert" (NEWPAGES)

Mark Cunningham: Body Language

Mark Cunningham's first full-length collection of prose poems, Body Language (TSky Press, 2008): "Cunningham tests what allusions, anecdotes, punch lines you know, be they liturgical, canonical, numerical, numerological, historical, mystical, magical, simple, or other.... It’s funny, sad and serious. Ultimately, reflective.... Impressive.... Body Language is a great choose-your-own adventure. There’s something for us all. And that’s fun." (THE ADIRONDACK REVIEW); "Always thought-provoking, always enjoyable and unexpected, the combination of topics of math, language and symbolism via the alphabet and the body as a complex system, turns out to be an appropriate, engaging compendium." (PRICK OF THE SPINDLE)

Joyelle McSweeney: Nylund, the Sarcographer

Acclaimed poet Joyelle McSweeney's first novel, Nylund the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007) is a something like a baroque noir: "Campy-cum-lyrical post-Ashberyan prose.... Language dissolves into stream-of-consanguinity post-surrealism and then resolves into a plot again.... Recommended" (STEPHEN BURT); "Nylund is like interesting on steroids.... If you are looking for a typical, straight forward, good old fashioned yarn, you’d do best to look elsewhere; but if you want to experience something fresh, daring, creepy, and significant, this is the one for you" (BOOKSLUT); "a masterful redefinition of what constitutes prose.... A character who is the very embodiment of writing" (NEWPAGES); "Welcome to fiction's new femme fatale, Joyelle McSweeney" (KATE BERNHEIMER)

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson: Figures for a Darkroom Voice

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson passed a notebook back and forth, creating and trading poems and prose-poems. Then they handed these poems to artist Noah Saterstrom. This produced Figures for a Darkroom Voice (2007): "This book glitters" (TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN); "their voice comes across not as a warning, but as an ominous knell" (INTERIM); "These aren't just two guys with three names each; these are two of the poets to watch in the next generation" (POWELL'S STAFF PICK)

Danielle Dutton: Attempts at a Life

Danielle Dutton's debut short-fiction collection, Attempts at a Life, from Tarpaulin Sky Press: "Danielle Dutton writes with a deft explosiveness that craters the page with stunning, unsettling precision" (LAIRD HUNT); "Danielle Dutton executes expert, miniscule language slips that make us slide down the surface of her narratives like raindrops streaking the windows of the last un-gentrified house in an old Victorian neighborhood.... An important new literary voice" (RAIN TAXI); "It’s serious, but as many dramatists celebrate: comedy orbits a dark sun. Which is to say, this is also a very funny book" (AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW)