Table of Contents
FRONT LIST
Lost Sheep: Aspen’s Counterculture in the 1970s—A Memoir Kurt Brown
A Return to Emptiness: Stories Chris Ransick
Thread of the Real: Poems Joseph Hutchison
Crazy Chicana in Catholic City: Poems Juliana Aragon Fatula
No Stranger Than My Own: Poems Michael Henry
Let the Birds Drink in Peace: Stories Robert Garner McBrearty
CONUNDRUM CLASSICS BOOKS BENEFITTING ARTS AND YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
NOW AVAILABLE
Thin Blue Smoke: A Novel Doug Worgul
COMING SOON
Cinematic States Gareth Higgins
The Antichrist of Kokomo County Todd Skinner
The Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce Leslie Spencer
NOW AVAILABLE
Christian Jihad: Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America Colonel V. Doner
A Simpler Faith: Hope for Those Who Struggle With Church Ed Galisewski
Run Home and Take a Bow: Stories of Life, Faith, and a Season With the Kansas City Royals Ethan D. Bryan
Pray to Aliens: A Memoir Lexee Booshay
Aspen’s Counterculture in the 1970s—A Memoir by Kurt Brown KURT BROWN founded the Aspen Writers’ Conference and Writers’ Conferences & Centers. His poems have appeared in many literary periodicals, and he is the editor of several anthologies, including his most recent (with Harold Schechter), Killer Verse: Poems about Mayhem and Murder from Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series. He is the author of six chapbooks and six full-length collections of poetry, including Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Fables from the Ark, Future Ship, No Other Paradise, and A Thousand Kim, due out from Tiger Bark Press in 2013. A collection of the poems of Flemish poet Herman de Coninck, The Plural of Happiness, translated by Brown and his wife, was released in the Field Translation Series in 2006.
Welcome to the Pleasure Slum! Lost Sheep recounts Kurt Brown’s journey from the “real” world of 1970s America to the rollicking, freedom-loving, outlaw world of Aspen. Blending personal narrative, local history, dramatic interlude, and cultural analysis, the story begins as a literal journey but quickly evolves into the memoir of an entire town—a time and place many consider to be Aspen’s “Golden Age,” when artists, eccentrics, and outlaws took over the city and transformed it into an alpine bohemia. The noteworthy cast of characters— famous, infamous, and unknown—includes Claudine Longet, Jack Nicholson, Hunter S. Thompson, Steve Martin, and Ted Bundy. The local residents are even more colorful, from a woman who feeds her dog nothing but vegetables to a bookstore owner who believes in “psychic surgeries.” And everywhere, art is being made—along with a good deal of hay.
Excerpt i arrived in aspen in june, 1970. It was still a sleepy ski town just beginning to wake up from the long slumber caused by the silver bust of the late nineteenth century, when America shifted to the gold standard and the mines in Aspen were closed. In 1970, many of Aspen’s secondary roads and almost all of the alleys downtown were still unpaved, and you could walk along them on a summer day kicking up dust. After the orgiastic climax of Woodstock, the so-called hippie generation was beginning to break up, losing its focus—if it ever had one—and coming apart in subtle but defi nitive ways. We were drifting around the country looking for something else to do after the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s and the terrible punctuation point Kent State had put on the whole sad story. We had to get away from middle-America, which seemed to have won the day by gobbling up our art, our ideas and culture, marketing it so that tie-dyed T-shirts were sold in fashionable stores everywhere, and where even Sonny and Cher had their own television show. Who needed it? Many of us were seeking Shangri-La outside of mainstream culture, where we could carry on with whatever ideas of paradise captured our imaginations.
MEMOIR/HISTORY
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a return to emptiness stories by Chris Ransick CHRIS R ANSICK, appointed Denver Poet Laureate in 2006, is the author of four books, including Never Summer, which won a Colorado Book Award for poetry, and A Return To Emptiness, a Colorado Book Award fiction finalist. Chris worked as assistant to the editors of the defi nitive anthology, The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and has been teaching at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver since 2005. He has served as a member of PEN USA’s Freedom to Write Committee, and closer to home, spent eight years on his local public library board. His new collection of poems, Language for the Living and the Dead, is forthcoming in 2012 from Conundrum Press, which will also issue new editions of his previous books.
Acclaim for Ransick
Excerpt
“Following Richard Hugo as much as John Wesley Powell, Chris Ransick is an exacting cartographer of the West’s vast landscapes, physical and emotional . . .” —Jake Adam York
rachael had come to know her sister through her letters, which came in a rush at first but more sparingly toward the end. They were infused with poetry and philosophy and the voice seemed too calm to be coming from a place inside her sister that before had harbored violent storms. Rachael didn’t understand the change fully because she hadn’t been close to her sister before Jenna left home. For years they had shared little except an unspoken knowledge about their mother, who in her pain and rage had kept everyone in a constant state of withdrawal. Jenna had left suddenly, with no good-byes, but almost immediately she began sending Rachael envelopes stuffed with dried desert plants she labeled with their local names and lore. Sometimes there were only twigs of aromatic sagebrush or dried blooms, but once, neatly packed in a box of tissue, was the rattle from a small diamondback. Rachael saw in these letters what had been lost between them, and what they might yet recover. Making this trip now was the best chance she would have to recover anything at all.
“Chris Ransick writes beautiful, spare prose. In ordinary lives he views profound humanity and our deeply shared need to matter. Creating often spell-binding lyricism, one reminiscent of Raymond Carver and James Welch, Ransick is a gentle, insightful and deeply respectful storyteller.” —Russell Martin “Ransick shares a sense of the human experience that is a part of and a part from the natural world.” —The Billings Outpost
FICTION/SHORT STORIES
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Thread of the Real
New Poems by Joseph Hutchison
J O S E P H H U T C H I S O N is the author of thirteen poetry collections, including The Rain at Midnight, Bed of Coals (winner of the Colorado Poetry Award), House of Mirrors, and The Undersides of Leaves. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including New Poets of the American West and Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined, and in over one hundred journals.
Acclaim for Hutchison
Excerpt
“Hutchison’s poems . . . are electric and disturbing.” —Bloomsbury Review
Mortality
“Hutchison’s voice is usually quiet, his phrasing precise, his analogical and metaphorical connections energetic and fertile. Without compromising the integrity of his voice, he adopts a variety of approaches to form, from the nearly traditional and metrical through unpunctuated free verse to paragraphs. He has a witty and sensitive touch with the juxtaposition of these forms, so that he can sometimes seem to give us, in successive poems, two different ways of thinking about the same question, enigma, or moment.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor in Poetry Magazine “For twenty-five years I have admired Joseph Hutchison’s poems. The Rain at Midnight shows him to be better than ever at touching our hearts. These fi nely wrought and imaginative poems deserve our close attention and our deepest admiration.” —Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Hard to imagine yourself in the ground . . . a shabby mess of broken spindles, the loom that cranked out the cloth of you smashed, scattered—and somewhere the ego sputtering its rage. You can hear it now—railing like a mill-town dowager piqued, let’s say, by the country’s fraying moral fiber. Her spotted fist gavels the tea-table, making the bone teacups clatter. “Oh! The very idea!”
POETRY
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crazY chIcana iN caTholiC citY Poems by Juliana Aragón Fatula Jul I a n a A r a gÓ n Fat Ul A is a fifth generation Southern Colorado Chicana/Mestiza. Her poetry has appeared in local and national publications including Open Windows III, El Tecolote, and Pilgrimage Magazine. She is a three-time winner of the Southern Colorado Women’s Poetry Competition, and her screenplay, Peaceful Sleep, co-written with Davon Johnson, won a screenplay writing award at the Gloabl Arts Film Festival Hollywood in 2007.
acClaim for fatuLa “Juliana Aragón Fatula writes histories so terrifying they feel as if they were written with a knife. She writes with craft and courage about what most folks are too ashamed to even think about, let alone talk about. Her fearlessness is inspirational. This is the kind of poetry I want to read; this the kind I want to write. She makes me feel like writing poetry!” —Sandra Cisneros “Fatula is one of those rare poets who can grip the smoke of myth and pack it with her two hands into clay. She offers us the tiniest artifacts of the most beautiful, unthinkable human experiences. Here is a poet of great skill and resilience. Here is a master of the lyric of sorrows.” —David Keplinger
exCerpt Bloody Cookies Mom once took a bullet for a cookie. Grandma had an apron full of cherries. Auntie hung the wash. Lee fed the chickens. Zeke cleaned his rifle. Mom searched the cupboards. She was only three feet tall. She stood on the sink, tried to reach high in the sky for oatmeal cookies. Crack - like a lightening bolt had hit a cottonwood tree. Her blood was everywhere: on the cupboards, floor, cookies, hands. Grandma ran down the hill but she fell. She rolled, she rolled, she rolled; just like a tortilla. She ran in the house saw Zeke had wrapped mom’s legs in torn sheets while mom ate cookies. The bullet went in the left leg, out the back, and through the right leg, four holes, total. That’s why you should never clean a rifle in the house: bloody cookies.
POETRY
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No Stranger Than My Own
Poems by Michael J. Henry
Michael J. Henry currently serves as Executive Director of Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where he also teaches poetry, memoir, and essay workshops. A former recipient of a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship and a PlatteForum Fellowship, his work has appeared in such places as Copper Nickel, Threepenny Review, 5280, Many Mountains Moving, Pleiades, Red Rock Review, Rio Grande Review, Georgetown Review, and Bloomsbury Review. In 2008 and 2009, he collaborated with Garrett Ammon of Ballet Nouveau Colorado to create two ballets, both set to poetry, When the Power Goes Out and Intersection.
acClaim for henrY “Michael Henry’s poems are a skilled, luminous negotiation with the surfaces of life and the shapes of memory. His poems, shot through with feeling and perfectly crafted, are as happy sounding the dark classical themes of poetry as they are fi nding the saving glisten of the everyday.” —Eli Gottlieb, author of Now You See Him “This collection wanders an American landscape and an interior one with equal skill, the voice a witness without false promise. Go with Henry a while, and then, be grateful.”—Chris Ransick, author of Asleep Beneath the Hill of Dreams “Michael Henry has an unerring, delicious appetite for details. This is not mere nostalgia, but Henry’s profound engagement with the significance of the particulars, even the minutiae, of his country’s narrative, and of his family and their lost ones.” —Gail Mazur, author of Zeppo’s First Wife
exCerpt Light I sometimes picture myself a small boy looking out a vast glass window, waiting. I want to tell him you will be coming soon, he will be yours when you fi nd him, years away. I want to see this boy turn from the window, open the door to fi nd you—bright girl with golden hair and azure eyes— on his doorstep. Please tell him to be safe, the way you tell me now, when I’m driving into the mountains, into the dull light of falling snow. Tell him to be careful, to be happy, for you will soon be in his life, you will light it for him, making the world more vivid than he’s ever seen. All he must do is wait.
POETRY
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LET THE BIRDS DRINK IN PEACE stories by Robert Garner McBrearty
R O B E RT G A R N E R M C B R E A RT Y ’ S stories have been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize and widely published in leading literary journals including: North American Review, Missouri Review, New England Review, Narrative Magazine, Story Quarterly, and Mississippi Review. He is the author of two critically acclaimed short story collections, A Night at the Y and Episode, which won the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. His stories have been selected for performances at Stories on Stage in Denver, and at Arts and Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art. He teaches writing at the University of Colorado.
Acclaim for McBrearty
Excerpt
“[McBrearty’s] superb mix of the dark and comic, interwoven seamlessly into the fabric of his fiction, establishes [him] as a master stylist in his work as a whole.” —Prairie Schooner
before i drive the wagon into town, my wife makes me promise that I will not go into the saloon where NoNose Ed and the other bad men hang out. “Indeed I will not,” I say, and I have no intention of so doing, for it has been a year now since I’ve given up drinking and whoring and looting and stealing horses and robbing banks and shooting up the town and using foul language. This is a big day for us. The first day since I’ve reformed that I’m going back into town alone. In the bright early light, we stand in the doorway of our cabin and embrace like a couple of feverish teenagers. We’ve been happy, terribly happy, and peaceful, out here on the range. It is not always an easy life. The wind is high, the sun fierce, the soil hard, and all day there are demanding chores to perform. I am too wounded to do any of them, but sitting on the porch drinking lemonade, I call out encouragement and helpful bits of advice as my stoical wife goes relentlessly about her tasks, playfully drawing her revolver from time to time and firing some rounds in my direction.
“McBrearty is at heat a serious writer— and a compassionate one.” —Missouri Review “What threads through McBrearty’s work is a humaneness toward his characters and a gentle, sometimes sad irony. He is as adept at moving the reader with an understanding of life’s more poignant moments as he is at making one laugh.” —Chicago Tribune
FICTION/SHORT STORIES
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Help Us Support Literacy and Arts
POETRY
A collaboration between the youth of Ballet Nouveau Colorado and Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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from the introduction We’ve taken two different mediums, two different groups of young artists, and two creative arts organizations and we’ve pulled them together to communicate messages of hope and epiphany through both word and movement. Eleven young writers composed short vignettes on the theme of “Awakenings,” then turned these creations over to fifteen dancers, who created them anew. Then, they washed, rinsed, and repeated this process about twenty times before reaching their final result—In the Along. The title of this production comes from the last two lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “Speech to the Youth, Speech to the Progress Toward.” Brooks advises, “Live not for the end-of-the-song. /Live for the along.” This onstage collaboration showcases youth living well beyond the end-of-thesong as they prove that a common language can be found no matter our differences and distance from each other.
100% of all proceeds from the sale of these books are dona
s Training for Underserved Youth The homeless youth of Denver at Urban Peak talk about life, loss, and love through poetry and art.
POETRY
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dedication This book is dedicated to those youth who have faced the harsh realities of sleeping on concrete, bitter cold nights, a lack of supportive relationships, and the constant question of where their next meal will come from. Their strength and resiliency are sources of hope and springboards of inspiration. Through these writings, we honor their truths. May you discover certain truths about yourself through the words of the youth of Urban Peak.
ated directly back to the Ballet Nouveau Colorado, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and Urban Peak.
CONUNDRUM
With a foreword by Isabel Allende Winner, Colorado Book Award
Burton Raffel, best-selling author of Beowulf Finalist, Independent Publisher Award
Poetry Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-2-8, $17.50 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-3-5, $12.00
Poetry Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-6-6, $18.00 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-4-2, $13.00
With a foreword by Dana Gioia
Paintings by Michael H. Rothman and Cynthia Min
Poetry Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-9-7, $21.95 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-8-0, $13.95
Poetry/Children’s Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-9-7, $17.50 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-8-0, $12.99
BACKLIST
Finalist, Colorado Book Award Poetry Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-0-4, $10.00
A collection of some of Colorado’s finest poets. Poetry Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9657159-1-1, $11.50
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With a foreword by David J. Rothman Memoir Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9713678-1-4, $23.95 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9713678-0-7, $15.95
A Novel by Doug Worgul DOUG WORGUL was born in 1953 into a family of preachers, teachers, and writers, in the state of Michigan. He worked for ten years at the Kansas City Star as a features editor, senior book editor, and editor of Star Magazine. While at The Star, he authored two books of non-fiction A Table Full of Welcome: A Cookbook Celebrating the Ethnic Diversity of Kansas City’s Culinary Traditions and The Grand Barbecue: A Celebration of the History, Places, People, and Techniques of Kansas City Barbecue. Worgul has four daughters (and four grandsons) and lives in Leawood, Kansas, with his wife.
Acclaim for Worgul
About the Novel
“As Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It does for Montana f ly-fishing, Doug Worgul’s Thin Blue Smoke makes the poetry of Kansas City barbecue accessible to all readers. More than gorgeous prose and fully developed characters, this novel offers us catharsis.” —Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook
LaVerne Williams is a ruined ex-big league ballplayer and ex-felon with an attitude problem and a barbecue joint to run. Ferguson Glen is an Episcopal priest and fading literary star with a drinking problem and past he’s running from. A.B. Clayton and Sammy Merzeti are two lost souls in need of love, understanding and another cigarette. Thin Blue Smoke is an epic American redemption tale. It is a story of love and loss, hope and despair, God and whiskey, barbecue and the blues. Hilarious and heart-rending, sacred and profane, this book marks the emergence of a vital new voice in American fiction.
“[There is a] sort of Buechnarian tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale that laces this novel . . . . It reminded me of a couple of my favorite books: David James Duncan’s The Brother’s K and Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe. The characters of Thin Blue Smoke are not unlike most of us—sidetracked and puzzled, reaching for something they can’t quite name.” —Dale Brown, founding director of the Buechner Institute “Thin Blue Smoke is a wandering through a community bound by their shared histories, their dreams, and the food they love. It reminds me of the best things in life. And Doug Worgul has done what all great writers strive to do: make you crave for more.” —Rajiv Joseph, Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright and author
FICTION
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A Novel Burnside Books
coming soon from Cinematic States by Gareth Higgins Synopsis: If the character of a nation is found in its dreams, then it’s probably true America can only be understood on the big screen. Gareth Higgins grew up dreaming of America through the movies, but when he moved there, he landed in a cinematic nightmare. Caught between urban violence, an immigrant’s sense of dislocation, and the experience of a vibrant new city and emboldened by a mystical encounter with Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner, he decided to give his adopted country the best chance possible: he explored the terrain of America by watching a movie from each state, and wrote about what he learned. Along the way, he discovered the depth and breadth of the most recognized but least understood country in the world – the landscape of desire, crime and punishment, sex and death, baseball and farming, and the American Dream. (Not to mention celebrity encounters, an herbally-induced Kansas tornado fantasy, Jack Nicholson’s therapist, a talking shark, Brad Pitt having a bath, a lot of guns and an un-fingerprint-able cat.) He ended up writing a kind of pop culture history of the United States, which moves deftly between humor and irony, pathos and philosophical fascination. Higgins’ conclusions offer a fascinating insight and his conclusions offer a look into the future of the country as well as the past. Cinematic States is for everyone who loves cinema, is interested in America, or ever had a dream that came from the movies. Release Date: February 2013 For more on Gareth Higgins, visit godisnotelsewhere.wordpress.com
The Antichrist of Kokomo County by David Skinner Synopsis: If you were to ask him where everything had gone wrong, Frankie Horvath would say, without hesitation, it had been his twelfth birthday, when his father had revealed to him of the coming of the Great Horvath (a man of mighty words and deeds destined to be one of mankind’s supreme champions). That he’d interrupted Frankie’s favorite bear cartoon to share this was bad enough, but the worst part, the part that has haunted him ever since, was when the bastard told Frankie he had no chance to ever be this man. Now thirty-eight, a fat widower with a lousy career as a fork designer, Frankie has hit bottom. Every attempt to become the Great Horvath has failed, leaving Frankie one last option: destroy his one and only son. A boy who, at twelve-years-old, looks like a wrinkled old man; a boy who, at twelve-years-old, refuses to be housebroken; but a boy who, despite all this, might just be the Antichrist. So come to the tiny, forgotten town of Berry, Indiana. Come to the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building and the Church of Epistemological Emendation. Come see the showdown between humanity’s last hope and the forces of darkness. Come see Frankie Horvath save the world. Release Date: Fall 2013
burnside books The Christian Girls Guide to Divorce by Leslie Spencer With a wry wit, lacerating honesty, and a knack for cliff hangers, A Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce isn’t a guide at all, but a riveting chronicle of how our communities and expectations are prone to crumble in the face of reality. From the introduction: How did this HAPPEN? How could it happen? We had done everything right. We were Christians. We loved Jesus. We went to church. We had church friends. We had saved ourselves for each other. We even were virgins when we got married. We always had a lot of sex throughout our marriage. We were a month away from celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. We had been an example of marriage to other friends and family. People looked up to us. We were the attractive “power” couple, pursuing our dreams and able to maintain a strong marriage. Yeah, right. Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean you’re actually a Christian. I have wanted to write about my journey for quite some time. I have written many things down, mostly in my journal. I have talked, prayed and sobbed with my close friends, I have gone to marriage counseling and personal therapy. All the while, I have hoped that my story can help others — that my personal hell could serve as a portal to someone else’s freedom. Because, all in all, I have experienced full freedom. Besides the obvious freedom from the marriage that my husband willfully and proudly chose to desecrate, the new freedom I have found is my identity. I have found my identity apart from the once-happy marriage; who I am apart from the deceit and shackles of ugly sin, of terrible choices. I have found my identity apart from grief, shame and sorrow. I have found who I am apart from my old ideas of what a Christian, and a Christian marriage, should be. Best of all, I’m continuing to find my true identity in Christ. My journey is one full of searing pain, unbelievable grief and sorrow. Yet that is not all. It is mostly fi lled with amazing grace, love, tenderness, kindness, laughter and tears of joy. It is full of God’s goodness. Release Date: Spring 2013
For more information on these titles, please visit our website at:
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Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America
Christian Jihad
by Colonel V. Doner
COLONEL V. DONER was a founding member of the fundamentalist Christian Right in the 1970s and 80s and a leader of the radical Theocratic Dominionist movement at the end of the millennium. His work was featured on every primetime network newscast as well as on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Phil Donahue. His organization, Christian Voice, was infamous for creating Washington’s first “Congressional Report Card,” which informed concerned Americans of their Congressmen’s voting record. Doner worked on the campaign trail for Ronald Reagan from his first election as California State Governor through his second re-election to the White House. An ordained minister, he currently serves as Chairman of a non-denominational association of churches that provides over fifty million dollars in aid annually to needy children and families around the world. Colonel Doner can be reached at christian-jihad.com.
Acclaim for Colonel V. Doner
About Christian Jihad
“Christian Jihad...gives us an inside view of the religious right while humanizing its participants. It proposes a way forward in the culture wars while transcending warfare rhetoric. It gives a fi rst-hand account of an important and ongoing movement in American political and religious history while suggesting both the appeal and weaknesses of that movement.” — Brian McLaren, author, speaker, blogger (brianmclaren.net)
Political pundits and cultural commentators alike are at a loss to suggest a way out of our rapidly escalating culture wars and the visceral loathing spilling into Congress, the White House, the media, college campuses, and even (or especially) our churches. The way out requires a deep understanding of the polarizing world view of both sides of the battlefield, who remarkably share the same characteristics of the Neo-Fundamentalist mindset. In Christian Jihad, Colonel V. Doner presents an authoritative and extraordinary dissection of the Neo-Fundamentalist mind, focusing primarily on its manifestation within Christianity. Doner provides an inside look at what drives the culture war with all its fear and paranoia, its “God-given” mandates, its “biblical” vision for God, country, and family, and how someone like Sarah Palin has become possible. But after showing us how we got into this mess in the first place, Doner provides a strategy for discovering a civil and peaceful way to disagree, even to find reconciliation, and finally end the vitriolic rhetoric and polarization that continues to cripple our country.
“Fascinating...A suberbly detailed insider’s account of the war waged by much of the Christian Right against the rest of us—and against American values, and against the heart of the Bible.” —Marcus Borg, bestselling biblical scholar “Doner...shows how humble Christians, who give up false certitude for the love of Jesus can actually help create a culture rooted in God’s love, one that results in healthy pluralism and human respect.” —Dr. John H. Armstrong, author of Your Church is Too Small, President - ACT 3
RELIGION/POLITICS
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a simpler faith HOPE FOR THOSE WHO STRUGGLE WITH CHURCH
by Ed Galisewski Ed Galisewski is a real life “Joe Palooka”—a big, good-natured guy. A mens ministry leader for fifteen years, Ed has ministered to literally thousands of people. He’s been in and out (and in again) of church, learning to overcome his own struggles with the institution while still loving the body of Christ. Ed and his wife Lynette have two children, son Braun and daughter Bryn, and live in Littleton, Colorado.
Acclaim for Galisewski
About A Simpler Faith
“Faith can at times seem so confusing. A Simpler Faith...seeks to inspire faith in those who may have been turned away in recent times. [It is] a strong pick for those who are strongly contemplating abandoning the church.” —Midwest Book Review
Are you thinking of leaving your chruch? Maybe you’d like to, but you feel stuck. You’re not alone— millions of people, especially men, are fleeing their churches or mentally checking out. Ed Galisewski offers a witty, hard-hitting view from the pew as only a “Joe Palooka” from Jersey can. Galisewski pulls back the curtain on the divisive nature of denominationalism and spiritual abuse in many churches and encourages pastors and lay people alike to return to the simple gospel of faith in a Creator, Savior, and Guide. He says you might even need to take a temporary break from church while you heal and reconnect with God. But don’t stay away—when you’re ready, reconnect with a faith community and bring a simpler faith back to the Church.
“Ed has lived in the trenches with people who have become injured or disillusioned with professional religion. He calls everyone to return to the heart of faith which was the part of our spiritual lives that resonated in the fi rst place. A Simpler Faith will make you laugh, cry, and long for renewal.” —Brian Boone, Senior Pastor in Edmonds, Washington
CHRISTIAN LIVING
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A Simpler Faith: A Leader’s Guide For Reaching Out to the Wounded is also available with bulk discounts for groups.
With 17 original illustrations by famed sports cartoonist Drew Litton!
Stories of Life, Faith, and a Season with the Kansas City Royals
by Ethan D. Bryan E T H A N D. B RYA N is is an author, musician, and story-teller. He self-medicates with Dr Pepper and Chick-fi l-a. Ethan and his wife, Jamie, have two girls and live in Springfield, Missouri.
Acclaim for Bryan
From the Introduction
“Ethan’s book is as life-giving as Opening Day and it’s as sensory as pounding your glove and smelling the leather. If you are passionate about baseball you will love this book. If you are not a baseball fan, just a lover of great stories, then read this book and you will be inspired.” —Mike King, President of Youthfront, author and editor of Immerse Journal
ten years after quitting baseball . . . I had just graduated from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University and was hired by a young church to lead worship and work with the youth. As part of the job interview, Jamie and I attended a Royals game. The Royals won in the bottom of the thirteenth inning on a Mike Sweeney home run. I took it as a sign from above. My passion for the game and the boys in blue returned almost immediately . . . The more I followed the Royals, learning the stories of the players and the organization, the more joy I found in my life. Sure, I was disappointed with 100-loss seasons and when players left for other teams, but there was a concurrent hope and simple delight from once again listening to games on the radio, sitting in the stands on a summer’s eve, or catching a few innings of a getaway-day game over a late lunch break . . . It took me a long time to realize that baseball in and of itself is one of the ways in which God speaks to me. Watching the Royals play this season led me on a journey of faith and reflection, one that softened my heart to hear God share His Story through this marvelous game.
“I’m not a big sports fan, and care little about the K.C. Royals, and I loved this book! You will too, I’m sure. This is light reading that pitches some serious life lessons, is as entertaining as peanuts during the 7th inning stretch and, like a last-ditch homer in the bottom of the 9th, has you on your feet, leaving truly inspired.” —Byron Borger, Hearts & Minds Books, Dallastown, Pennsylvania
RELIGION/SPORTS
paperback isbn: 978-1-938633-00-3 $12.99 us 45% wholesale discount 5.5 x 8.5, 186 pages September 2012
A memoir by Lexee Booshay
Lexee Booshay, (a nom de plume for her protection), runs her own business and has a strong marketing background, that in addition to her tough spirit, has helped her fi nd footing and achieve success. Lexee’s drive to help mortals fi nd solid ground has given her the courage to tell her story. She continues to work at the writing craft with the goal of completing memoir number two, which will include the same forthright voice readers will have come to love in Pray to Aliens.
About Pray to Aliens
Sample
Brace yourself. In her memoir, Lexee Booshay forces the reader to grow up as fast as she did. Her story begins in early childhood when her parents pitch Lexee and her younger brother into the cauldron of their own struggles of domestic violence, addiction, infidelity and poverty. Lexee watches over her brother, while believing that the rocks, trees and birds around her will keep watch over her. She rips off the proverbial Band-Aid, revealing the ugly wounds of childhood neglect, but Lexee also ignites the fires of hope and strength with her unyielding resilience and perseverance. Her innocence, wonder and faith prevail even when circumstances tear Lexee and her brother from their parents’ chaos and toss them into the care of relatives, who merely view them as hefty government paychecks and free live-in slavery. As she grows, Lexee finds solace in her beautiful imagination and her amazingly adaptable and evolving belief system, but life’s cruel twists continue to wreak havoc. Can Lexee create the life she imagines and save her brother? Or will fate lead the siblings to repeat the patterns of their mother and father?
momma comes to school and insists she has no idea where my morbid imagination comes from. I already confessed to the counselor that I stay up late at night, watching scary movies, while Momma works. “Mrs. Booshay, where is it that you work?” the counselor asks Momma. “I don’t work.” “Lexee, I thought you said your Mom worked late at night,” the counselor turns to me and asks. “Momma, you said you worked and I thought that’s why you come home late.” I see Momma’s lips clench and her eyes grow beady glaring at me and I know—I know I’m in trouble. I’m asked to leave the counselor’s office and wait outside the door. Eventually, the door opens and Momma storms out. “Don’t judge me! You have no idea what I’ve been through,” she yells as tears fall down her face. “They’re all I got! All I got! You understand?”
memoir Paperback ISBN: 978-1-938633-00-3 $14.99 US Hardcover (printed case) ISBN: 978-0-9852953-6-3 $26.00 US
50% wholesale discount 5.5 x 8.5, 334 pages Now available!
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