What's Going on @ Steel Toe Books

November 24, 2008

Steel Toe Books Selects a Manuscript from its First-Ever Open Reading Period for Predominately Formal Verse

Steel Toe Books is pleased to announce that our October open reading period has resulted in the acquisition of Domestic Fugues by Richard Newman.  Mr. Newman has been sent a standard royalties contract, and will receive a $500 advance against royalties.  Please join us in congratulating Mr. Newman, whose manuscript was selected from fifty-two hopefuls.  In Newman’s poems, complex rhyme schemes and patterns of repetition feel natural and effortless; his diction is never strained, his rhymes are subtle and fresh, and the form always seems to perfectly suit the poem’s purpose.  We were charmed by Newman’s humor, which is often self-deprecating.  Poems from the manuscript previously appeared in fine journals such as Boulevard, New Letters, Pleiades, The Sun, and 32 Poems, as well as in Verse Daily and in the University of Georgia Press anthology, Seriously Funny: Poems About Love, God, War, Art, Sex, Madness, and Everything Else.

We did receive a number of excellent manuscripts, and as usual, we agonized and argued over the decision.  We would like to make honorable mention of the following manuscripts:  Ice-Cream Vigils by Philip Dacey; The Space of Whether God Exists by Amy Newman; Hart Island: Poems by Ned Balbo; Nothing More Happens in the 20^th Century: Haiku Dangers by Gary Hothan; My Body, Torn from Me by Anna Evans; The Breakthrough Ladder by Steven Reese; and From a Winter House: Ghazals, Haiku, and Renga by Jay Leeming.  If we had the resources (money, time, and manpower), we would want to publish all of those.

 

 

July 21, 2008

Steel Toe Books Acquires Two New Titles

Steel Toe Books is pleased to announce that our June 2008 open reading period has resulted in the acquisition of two fantastic manuscripts:  Nevertheless, Hello by Christopher Goodrich and Blue Collar Eulogies by Michael Meyerhofer.  Each has been offered a standard royalties contract, along with a $500 advance.  Please join us in congratulating these authors, whose works were selected from 252 submissions. 

We would also like to make honorable mention of ten other manuscripts that caught our attention:  A Dream of the Northwest Passage by Robert Cooperman, Speechless by Christopher Cunningham, The More Difficult Beauty by Molly Fisk, The Honey of Earth by David Graham, Dust Runner by Jessica Jewell,  Domestic Fugues by Richard Newman,  The Space of Whether God Exists by Amy Newman, Prometheus in Akron by Doug Ramspeck, Our Common History by Samn Stackwell, and To Make A Long Story Short by Matt Zambito.

To all those who sent manuscripts, thanks for seven weeks of stimulating reading; you fill us with tremendous optimism about the state of contemporary poetry.

December 14, 2007: We just learned that Garrison Keillor will be reading John Guzlowski's poem, "What My Father Believed," on The Writer's Almanac on December 28.  Be sure to catch it on your local NPR affiliate.

March 28, 2007: Steel Toe Books announces John Guzlowski's Verse Memoir Lightning and Ashes

For the last thirty years, John Guzlowski’s primary subject has been the experience of his parents before, during, and after the Second World War. Both were taken into Nazi Germany as slave laborers. His father was captured in 1940 outside of Poznan, Poland. His mother was captured near her home west of Lvov, Poland, and transported in 1942. They worked in concentration camps and the associated factories and farms until the end of the war. They met in those camps.
—Click here to read the entire press release.

February 26, 2007: Steel Toe Books Catches Prairie Fever

Bowling Green, KY—Steel Toe Books is proud to announce the launch of an exciting new title, Prairie Fever, by Mary Biddinger of Akron, Ohio.  This is Biddinger’s first book, and we consider it an auspicious debut, as strong as any first book of poems that the poetry world has seen in years.
—Click here to read the entire press release.