An experienced adventurer partners with an innocent nineteen-year-old to plan a journey on the most dangerous river in the world. What starts as one man's dream ends up as another man’s nightmare. It was a time when pushing our limits knew no boundaries and being nineteen had no restrictions.
Praise for Curious Men: Lost in the Congo by Bob Kunzinger
Bob Kunzinger as an especially gifted writer who is able to engage and keep his reader's thoughtful attention from beginning to end.—Midwest Book Reviews
Engaging… memorable to say the least. Sharon Dilworth, author of Women Drinking Benedictine
“How to Die in the Congo” [from Curious Men] is one of the best essays I’ve read in my life. Bill Thompson, former Editor of Alabama Literary Review
Bob Kunzinger is one of the finest non-fiction writers working today.—Amazon Reviews
A work which should be read by anyone coming of age or who has already done so.—S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders and Rumblefish
In “Nowhere to Be Found” from Curious Men, Bob Kunzinger laces beautiful prose and sentiment into some of the finest writing we have published. Palooka Magazine
Bob Kunzinger's work “Unfinished” [from Curious Men] deserves the Pushcart Prize for nonfiction. Matador Review
Praise for A Third Place:
I find in these times, I really need the prose and acuity and poetic soul of someone like Bob Kunzinger, who has mastered the art of turning time into the essay, which is his gift to his readers. A truly redemptive writer working at the top of his game.
Jackie Lyden, author, Daughter of the Queen of Sheeba, and former host and correspondent, NPR News
Bob Kunzinger is the author of a dozen non-fiction works, including The Iron Scar: A Father and Son in Siberia, and Out of Nowhere: Scenes from St. Petersburg. His work has appeared in many publications. He lives along the Rappahannock River in Virginia.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Dreaminations
Prose Poems by Jianqing Zheng
ISBN: 978-1-963695-49-6 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-50-2 ebook $9.99 January 20, 2026
Dreaminations is a collection of prose poems in haibun or tanka prose style. Haibun or tanka prose links prose and haiku or tanka to complement each other through juxtaposition to gain a new sensibility, an insight into a significant moment. The linked forms also stand independently with their complete meanings that present two views of each moment, inviting the reader to leap in between for an aesthetic appreciation. That’s the uniqueness of haibun and tanka prose and the fascination of writing them. This collection explores the self and the world through the working of the senses. It is a quest about where to posit the self and how a human being gains learning from nature and human nature.
Praise for Jianqing Zheng’s new prose poetry collection, Dreaminations
Dreaminations is a must-read for poetry lovers. His masterful use of language creates vivid imagery, bringing each poem to life. This collection blends lyrical brilliance with captivating storytelling, making every piece a delight to read. Whether you're a casual reader or a devoted poet, Dreaminations will leave a lasting impression. John J. Han, author of To the Hills and Hollows
Jianqing Zheng’s Dreaminations is an experience that will leave you breathless and inspired. This haibun and tanka prose collection is well crafted; it incorporates history, the natural world and spirituality. Zheng’s book unravels with allusions to Li Po, Langston Hughes, Franz Kafka, Richard Wright, and others. Yes, there is Delta Blues, too. The prose is lyrical with vivid imagery, fresh similes, and good details. Yet, the haiku is superb. And the tanka is polished. Whether haibun or prose poems, Dreaminations depicts what must be documented, what must be spotlighted, and what must become art. Lenard D. Moore, author of The Geography of Jazz
Praise for Jianqing Zheng’s previous poetry collection, The Dog Years of Reeducation
A startling collection of poems, a reliving of the author's experience, summons nature as companion.—Angela Ball, author of Talking Pillow
What I like best about Zheng’s poems is nearly every line has an image: I see what he’s saying verbal movies. He shows, rather than tells. I’m entertained by what he says and by the way he says his what. Unforgettable pictures: … “Straw hats float like life preservers / in a white sea of cotton” … and “Light recedes / field to field / into a big tomato / toothed in half by hills.” DC Berry, author of Yes, Cancer French Kisses
What will wake the reader here and keep attention from beginning to end is the series of original and important metaphors that reveal how deeply Jianqing Zheng’s memory was cast within the confines of his reeducation. Theodore Haddin, author of The Pendulum Moves Off
Jianqing Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation, A Way of Looking, and five poetry chapbooks and e-chapbooks; editor of seven scholarly books, including Conversations with Dana Gioia and Sonia Sanchez’s Poetic Spirit through Haiku; and coeditor of four scholarly books, including Dana Gioia: Poet & Critic. He received the 2019 Gerald Cable Book Prize, 2001 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Award, and three poetry fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, among other awards and honors. He is professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University, where he serves as editor of the Journal of Ethnic American Literature and Valley Voices. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Another Chicago Magazine, Birmingham Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, Mississippi Review, and Spillway
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
BC1, or Into the Land of the Woolly-Headed Washers
A Coda: The Go Love Quartet by Michael Gills
ISBN: 978-1-963695-51-9 paperback $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-52-6 ebook $9.99
February 18, 2026
Bringing Gills’ Go Love novel sequence to a fiery close, BC1 lays down the Harvell grudge of Mountain Meadows and aims, finally, at healing for all involved. Lara Luce Harvell has been charged with carrying her late father’s prized Martin D-28, handmade in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1998, the same year she was born, to Mr. Edgar Paris in Dinnehotso, Arizona. Such is repayment to him for saving Joey’s right index finger when it got bit off in an Arkansas fight. The resulting journey, part dynamite, revenge, and the tenderness of love, wanders into the lands of the woolly-headed Washers, a whole tribe of wandering relatives who “…inhabited the desert, living in trailer parks from Tuba City to Las Vegas, pumping five dollars’ worth of regular at a time into jalopies that overheated and ran on threadbare tires.”
Not unlike the rural south where this sequence all started, Rez land on the border of Utah and Arizona is dog-eat-dog. Life offers few legal ways to get by. Whites and Indians eye each other with mistrust, and young people either move to Las Vegas or Tucson or sunny California. Or they get reduced to doing whatever it takes. Yazz Begay and Louie Washer are no exceptions. When they stumble on a stash of newly buried dynamite while spray-painting graffiti in a burial cave, what else is there to do but find a buyer, ring the big bell, and move to Hawaii to drink Mai Tais on Waikiki? But the man’s ever out there sniffing them out, just like he had their mothers and fathers. High school dropouts with the taste of siphoned gas in their mouths, what else was there to do but meanness? Roll on down the highway to hell. Koyanisqatsi, the Diné called it, world out of balance.
Luce has no idea what she’s stepping into when she knocks on Big Rose Begay’s front door on Mother’s Day weekend, her own mom on the other side of the continent, ever staring off the beach access stairway to the sea mourning. Whatever Mountain Meadows had meant to her father, it had ended with his ashes back at the family cemetery in Solgahatchia on the Trail of Tears. She’d brought the Martin, made good on the promise. What Edgar and Rose, who was expecting, did with it was their own business.
In BC1, the dazed travelers like so many before them make one last run for California and its hope for renewal. They escape for the time being whatever it is that has dogged them all the way. Then, as in all great quests, Luce must turn back toward home, with little but prayer and the newly won knowledge of what matters most in this world as guide.
Praise for Michael Gills’
previous novel,
Before All Who Have Ever Seen This Disappear:
Michael Gills can flat out write fine sentences. His writing is part Old Testament prophet, part Cormac McCarthy. It’s not as violent as either, but it’s not without its moments of violence, betrayal, and the attendant tragedies those things bring. All of Gills’ novels are rooted in the Stepwell family’s history, which is dark and shiny in turns.… This novel will leave you a bit bruised and battered, but it also will help you find your way through the dark times, past and yet to come. Rick Campbell, author of Sometimes the Light and Gunshot, Peacock, Dog
Michael Gills’ novel begins with an avalanche and never slackens pace thereafter. These pages jangle with incident, present a pageant of unforgettable personages, and speak a language of ruefully humorous lament and celebration. Every phrase exhibits the generous outlook of its author. Every sentence reveals and affirms a surprising truth we already know. The ornery humor is truthfully mordant, energized by sprightly melancholy. Fred Chappell, author of I Am One of You Forever and Midquest
Arkansas native Michael Gills is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Before All Who Have Ever Seen this Disappear (Madville 2023), New Harmony (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Burning Down My Father’s House (Texas Review Press 2023). Other work has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Southern Humanities Review’s Theodore Hoefner Prize for Fiction, Southern Review’s Best Debut of the Year, recognition in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize Anthology, and inclusion in New Stories from The South: The Year’s Best. His undergraduate novel writing workshop has been featured in USA Today, and several of his students have gone on to publish books of their own, including Emi Wright’s Alegría (Madville Publishing 2021) and Katie Sayal’s Lady of the House (Madville 2025). Gills is a Distinguished Honors Professor at the University of Utah, where he lives in the hills with his wife of thirty-four years, Jill.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Twenty Years of PoemoftheWeek.com
edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
ISBN: 978-1-963695-59-5 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-60-1 ebook $9.99
February 14, 2026
Just as this title implies, this new title is a compilation of the best of the poems that have been featured by PoemoftheWeek.com over the course of the past twenty years.
PoemoftheWeek.com was founded in 2006 and is updated weekly in the Fall and Spring. PoemoftheWeek.com supports writers of all backgrounds quietly and without selfcongratulation. Each semester they have a “silent theme,” i.e. writers of color, indigenous poets, disabled poets/poets with disabilities, poets we just like, upon whom we shine a spotlight without the bullhorn. We don't announce what we are doing. We just do it. No tokenizing. No patting ourselves on the back. Over time, our audiences figure it out all on their own and are delighted by the discovery.
Each celebration includes interviews with the poet, reviews of the collection, readings from the book, and other supplementary material that broadens the scope of the conversation between the poet and their work with the general public. PoemoftheWeek.com is an essential resource for writers, teachers, and anyone interested in contemporary American (mostly) arts and letters. For more information, contact Andrew at Andrew@PoemoftheWeek.com.
Contributors:
Dilruba Ahmed - Dan Albergotti - Rick Barot - Dawn Pichón Barron - Zeina Hashem Beck - Sheila Black - Kimberly M. Blaeser - Tommye Blount - Kristin Bock - Dexter Booth - Sara Borjas - Mark J Brewin - Bill Brown - Derrick Weston Brown - Nickole Brown - J. Scott Brownlee - Linda Davis Bryant - Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello - Lauren Camp - Kara Candito - Cyrus Cassells - Jennifer Chang - Grant Clauser - Kai Coggin - Aaron Coleman - Nicole Cooley - Steve Davenport - Todd Davis - Tyree Daye - Linh Dinh - Camille Dungy - Martin Espada - Blas Falconer - Nick Flynn - CMarie Fuhrman - Ross Gay - aracelis germay - Hollay Ghadery - Eugene Gloria - Laurie Ann Guerrero - Tami Haaland - Forrest Hamer - Sam Hamill - Jeff Hardin - Gustavo Hernandez - Lee Herrick - Ishmael Angaluuk HopeLeAnn Howe - Terry Hummer - Major Jackson - Jessica Jacobs - Luke Johnson - Judy Jordan - Allison Joseph - Bridget Pegeen KellySuji Kwock Kim - James Kimbrell - Christine Kitano - Ruth Ellen Kocher - Jason Koo - Ed Bok Lee - Raina J. Leon - Mari L'EsperanceHugh Martin - David Tomas Martinez - Khaled Mattawa - Donovan McAbee - Nathan McClain - Campbell McGrath - Shivani MehtaWayne Miller - Deborah Miranda - Juan J. Morales - John Murillo - Angela Narciso - Frank Paino - Greg Pardlo - Ed Pavlic - Monica Prince - Octavio Quintanilla - Saara Myrene Rappanna - Khalisa Ray - Paisley Rekdal - Gerard Robledo - Steve Scafidi - Said ShaiyeEnid Shomer - Tim Seibles - ire'ne lara silva - Leah Silvieus - Mandy Smoker - Brian Turner - Connie Voisine - Mark Wagenaar - Michael Walsh - Sarah Rebecca Warren - L Lamar Wilson - Jen Yáñez-Alaniz - Matthew Yeager - Jake Adam York
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum an award-winning author, editor, and ghostwriter with numerous books of literary fiction, genre fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and nonfiction to my name. Named one of Writing Tips Oasis's top nonfiction editors and a Recommended Editor by the Nonfiction Authors Association, I possess an unusual editorial skillset I put to work for established authors; new voices; firsttime novelists; professionals writing copy, articles, and grants; journalists; students from high school to the MFA/PhD; businesspeople building websites and applying for loans; and degreed writers seeking a publisher for their thesis. Check out my edited & ghostwritten books here
Editor photo by Karen Carr
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Morning Edge of Midnight: Stories
Includes the Novella, After Allyson by Earl S. Braggs
ISBN: 978-1-963695-47-2 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-48-9 ebook $9.99
March 17, 2026
A collection of magically real stories and a novella set in the American South
If you can imagine a plot driven almost entirely by metaphor and cultural reference and then imagine that plot extended by wordplay that unveils deep complexities of character, then you have begun to understand the unique artistry of Earl Braggs’ amazing book of stories. Take, for instance how the metaphor in “ball-breaking noise regardless of the way the 8-ball spins rumors and bar fights” is used a bit later to explain “the broken hearts that were already broken,” but is later picked up at the end with “the night the three of them almost put a [pool] triangle around the moon,” the dynamics of a pool game being one element governing the plot. Or take, for instance his “The Perfect Game” which ‘plays’ off failed relationships (the slang of ‘getting to first base lurks in the background), especially his original lost love, mathematical equations that refer to anything from chances in relationships and losses, to baseball calculations, references to the White Sox scandal and John Fogarty’s baseball tune, and the escapist idea of ‘moving to Neptune.’ The narrator, we learn, is at home plate waiting for the third strike which is inevitable given his loss of 3 wives and 3 houses as he stands as the third batter in the last inning of a perfect game (the word ‘perfect’ also woven into the story here). The tension here, as in all these stories, is like the characters who, as he says in one story are ‘trying to find balance on a slope” or are like “hands holding onto a kite string night.” Which is exactly how a master storyteller like Braggs wants to leave you, turning with every syllable to new perceptions and emotions.
Richard Jackson, author of Footprints and The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems
Only a poet of Braggs’ talent and sensibility could bring us stories of such lively language and lost-and-in-love characters. He tells their truths but tells them at a slant that is joyful to read and heartbreakingly beautiful to apprehend.
Anthony Grooms, author of Bombingham and The Vain Conversation
When language flows like water and stories form concentric circles, moving outward, character meeting character, lives overlapping, you have what Earl Braggs presents us in this gorgeous and unique collection. Each story becomes a sea of love, a sea of lives, a sea of our worlds converging, and it adds up to a voyage you won’t want to miss.
Luanne Smith, editor of Muddy Backroads, Taboos & Transgressions, and Runaway
Earl S. Braggs is the author of 14 books of poetry and a memoir, A Boy Named Boy. His website is earlsbraggs.com
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
The Hummingbird War
A Divine Comedy (Volume 2) by Michael Simms
ISBN: 978-1-963695-45-8 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-46-5 ebook $9.99
March 17, 2026
The Hummingbird War follows events of Bicycles of the Gods, in which Jesus returns to earth with two celestial pals with a mandate to destroy the earth. In that volume, Jesse (Jesus) and his two friends Xavi (Shiva), and Mikey (as in the Archangel) decide not to destroy the world quite yet. But the battle continues in The Hummingbird War
Critics went crazy for Bicycles of the Gods! Now read the sequel!
A devilishly conceived satire that mashes the soft-centered potato of religion with the ham-fisted yam of politics into a steaming mush of mock-turtle soup which might have easily been concocted by Nathaniel West had he heeded his doctor’s advice and cooked a bit more with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Ariana Mohajeri Petersen, The Minderbinder Review of Books
Bicycles of the Gods achieves a roaring finale no more spoilers will be given here in which the borders of Earth and the afterlife come down, brave and inevitable sacrifices are made, and much that has been hidden is revealed. Readers, buckle yourselves in for a wild ride. Angele Ellis, Cultural Daily
Simms has created a wild, syncretic ride refashioning old stories in a contemporary light. Will Jesse succeed? Will the world end? Spoilers: As the poet George Herbert wrote, “But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand / and built a braver palace than befor e.” Kristopher Collins, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Simms still expresses hope for humanity and so does Bicycles of the Gods. While he doesn’t consider himself conventionally religious, he does think we’d do well to follow some core teachings of Jesus, as they are laid out in his novel. Bill O'Driscoll, WESA
Bicycles Of the Gods is an apocalyptic saga that is always riveting, always thought provoking, and alternately funny and sad. It is refreshing to read a novel that, while satiric, takes seriously the spiritual journey. One of the truly surprising parts of the novel is that, while religion is satirized, it is never disrespected. It’s a real accomplishment. John Samuel Tieman, Live Encounters
If a send-up provides Bicycles … the needed spectacle, it’s the characters of all stripes that add sprawl and perspective as Iraq war vets struggle to adapt, and the Virgin Mary is a single-mom backed by the Sisters of the Piston, a gang of leather-wearing nuns on Harley’s. There’s even a scene where a pack of wild dogs attacks members of the Proud Boys. Perhaps, Simms is correct when he says, “After all, who wouldn’t love a story about badass vigilante nuns and the end of the world, right?” Praise be. Fred Shaw, Pittsburgh Quarterly
Michael Simms’s great American novel offers lessons and not just escapism. It substantiates the dream that all people are created equal, whatever the color or creed, that hope is not only eternal but also that the Second Coming can offset any Apocalypse if we are willing to pay a price that is worthy of our freedom and an integrally righteous way of living our lives. Wally Swist, Your Impossible Voice
MICHAEL SIMMS is an accomplished poet, writer, editor, publisher, teacher, blogger and entrepreneur. Seven collections of his poetry, three novels, and two widely adopted poetry textbooks have been published or are under contract with publishers. He has also been the lead editor of over 100 published books, including the bestselling Autumn House Anthology of Poetry, now in its third edition. Simms has taught at a number of universities, including Chatham University’s MFA program from 2005-2013.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
A Jericho's Cobble Miscellany
by Tom Shachtman
ISBN: 978-1-963695-57-1 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-58-8 ebook $9.99
April 21, 2026
An invitingly varied and intimate look at what makes a small town tick. Kirkus Reviews
A genre-bending work similar to Edgar Lee Masters’ A Spoon River Anthology, this "miscellany" is a portrait of a fictional New England small town over the past several hundred years, celebratory and insightful, its stories recounted by more than a hundred voices, those of the living white, Black, Native American, male, female, gay and of the dead, and also of inanimate objects a neglected upright piano, a bench along a nature trail in poems, dialogues, roadside markers, tombstones, business brochures, newspaper articles, a playlet, diary entries, oral history transcripts, a stitched sampler, and even a nursery rhyme. Some tales are of quiet happiness, others of roiling passions, moral quandaries, tragedy and comedy; above all they speak to the centrality of community and continuity in our lives
Praise for Tom Shachtman’s new novel, A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany
Shachtman’s literary novel chronicles life in a humble New England village. The fictional town of Jericho’s Cobble, Massachusetts, is a rural place, though not exactly a remote one. While Jericho’s Cobble is simply home to people who have grown up there (some refer to them as “Cobblers”), it also draws weekenders and retirees from places like New York City, interlopers who are referred to as “Gobblers.” In this narrative, the thoughts and struggles of various Cobblers, Gobblers, and other parties (including some inanimate objects) are brought to life. Jeannie Johnson is a local who works at the Get’nGo preparing breakfast items alongside other women whom she thinks of as “the sorority of the brown bags.” In Jeannie’s world, “Work is work not uplifting, not demeaning, just what’s there to be done.” Nathan Archer died in 1779; he reflects, from his grave in the local cemetery, on his experience as an enslaved person in the area. One of the arsonists who burned down the Jericho’s Cobble Town Hall in 1981 is a man named Hoke Klecko. Hoke discusses his experiences with A.A. meetings and his road to recovery following his release from prison. From a babysitter’s diary to the thoughts of an abandoned barn to a guitarist looking to make a go at the big time, the fun comes from seeing what each new perspective will reveal. Surprises abound, but some characters are less galvanizing than others; plumber Andy Borska, for instance, provides a dry, lengthy rundown of his family business, explaining that it was “started by my grandfather, Karol, upon his arrival from Gdansk after World War I, and was continued by my father, Pyotr, on his return from Korean War service.” Still, even characters like Andy have meaningful things to share, like the idea that “growing up means becoming dissatisfied some.” An invitingly varied and intimate look at what makes a small town tick. Kirkus Reviews
I loved it. Rich in detail, every turned page a surprise, the different voices animate and inanimate (I got a special kick out of "Lament for an Upright"), the vivid imagination, and much more. John G. Ryden, Director Emeritus, The Yale University Press
I really love it … The orchestra of voices, alive and dead, works very well in evoking the feeling of place, the history of it, the complexity. It is powerfully nostalgic for me but also feels true to how layered a place it is. I especially love the use of signs, epitaphs, markers, newspapers, transcripts, to evoke the whole community, and the richness of each part of the town. The form is experimental, and I can sense the complexity in that. But it hangs together well, and I feel curious and connected all the way through. It is the very movement between forms that keeps me reading. Each of the voices feels fully realized and fleshed out, even when brief. And the cumulative effect is that of a chorus, each holding a part of the story.—Eiren Caffall, 2023 Whiting Prize winner and author, The Mourner’s Bestiary, and All the Water in the World.
Tom Shachtman has published forty books, most recently Echoes, or The Insistence of Memory, and The Memoir of the Minotaur His histories include The Day America Crashed, Skyscraper Dreams, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, and The Founding Fortunes; his social analyses, Rumspringa and The Inarticulate Society; the classic coffee table book, The Most Beautiful Villages of New England; and an eclectic trilogy of short novels about sea lions, Beachmaster, Wavebender, and Driftwhistler. His awardwinning documentaries have aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and BBC. He holds degrees in experimental psychology and in drama and has taught writing at NYU and lectured at Harvard, Georgia Tech, the Library of Congress, Stanford, and other institutions.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Arts and Sciences
Poems by Allen Stein
ISBN: 978-1-963695-63-2 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-64-9 ebook $9.99 May 19, 2026
Arts and Sciences is a unique poetry collection in that all the poems in it deal with figures, works, or events in literature, music, painting, film, or the sciences. Its poems cover a wide range, from Hamlet and Emily Dickinson to Sinatra and Bessie Smith, from Edward Hopper and Invasion of the Body Snatchers to gene therapy and quantum entanglement.
Praise for Your Funeral is Very Important to Us by Allen Stein
“These engaging poems brim with memories and the images that rise up from looking back: wry, rueful, often wise, and sometimes very funny.”
John Balaban
“Stein forgoes the moral certitude and finger-pointing that characterizes so much contemporary poetry to let the imagination do its work and to remind us that we are all, finally, human. Here is a book that should be welcomed with raised glasses and huzzahs.”
Al Maginnes
Praise for Unsettled Subjects: New Poems on Classic American Literature by Allen Stein
“Stein wears his impressive erudition lightly, responding to these classic works with an artistic grace of the highest order. . Readers will never recall these canonical writers without hearing echoes from Stein’s marvelously nuanced and inventive poems.”
Timothy McBride
“Stein . . . gives new lives to major classic writers and works in American literature. . . . This collection creates, in every sense, a New World. It is the work of a master poet.”
David Middleton
“As he [portrays] brilliantly, and mercilessly, both vital and destructive drives visible in [these authors’] lives and their characters, they acquire added dimensions; indeed, they live anew for us.”
Catharine Savage Brosman
Allen Stein’s poems have been published in over thirty journals, among them The Hudson Review, Poet Lore, Willow Springs, Salmagundi, New Ohio Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His first poetry collection, Your Funeral is Very Important to Us, was a Semi-Finalist in the University of Wisconsin Poetry Series’ Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry competition and was published in 2019 by Main Street Rag. His second collection, Unsettled Subjects:New Poems on Classic American Literature, was published in 2020 by Broadstone.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Avalon Moon
by Michael Amos Cody
ISBN: 978-1-963695-67-0 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-68-7 ebook $9.99 May 19, 2026
In Avalon Moon, a local man has gone missing and then is soon found dead in a highland meadow, side-by-side with an unknown woman. When another man and woman go missing and a female deputy is found murdered, Gabriel Tanner, editor of Runion’s weekly newspaper, and Plumer Reeves, a reclusive local hawkshaw working for the niece of the first dead man, suspect a monster is hunting in their western North Carolina mountains. Two extraordinary young women, the Avalon community’s Ariel Anderson and Lonesome Mountain’s Livvy Goforth, join Tanner and Reeves to lead the attempt to discover and stop the killer.
Praise for Avalon Moon by Michael Amos Cody
In Avalon Moon, Michael Amos Cody has written a story that has the dark and haunted feel of an old-time Appalachian ballad. Literary echoes of writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Brockden Brown add to the novel’s richness and make Avalon Moon an exceptional addition to the genre of Southern Gothic fiction Ron Rash, author of Serena and The Caretaker
Michael Amos Cody’s Avalon Moon is a deliciously gothic tale stitched into a brutal murder mystery. As a serial killer stalks the mountains of North Carolina, Cody’s precise language shifts effortlessly like light through the trees – from lush gothic poetry to gritty Appalachian realism. Facing ancient gods and hungry beasts in the deep woods, the reader can’t help but dread a darker truth: evil is only ever a breath away. Andrew K. Clark, author of Where Dark Things Grow and Where Dark Things Rise
Michael Amos Cody delivers a thrilling and tense Appalachian noir in his latest novel Avalon Moon. By turns suspenseful and evocative, this story of a killer on the loose is exactly the kind of story that will keep you up at night. Deftly written, with a sharp ear for dialogue and a faultless sense of place, Cody affirms his place as one of the most exciting writers of crime fiction in Appalachia today.—Charles Dodd White, author of In the House of Wilderness and How Fire Runs
Praise for Cody’s previous novel, Streets of Nashville ... Cody is a talented new voice in Southern fiction whose stories will appear on bookshelves for many years to come. C.W. Blackwell, author of Hard Mountain Clay
An elegantly written, mysterious and electric crime novel. Michael Amos Cody’s experience as a Nashville songwriter and Ezra MacRae’s encyclopedic knowledge of country music bring Streets of Nashville to life. Alex Kenna, author of What Meets the Eye and Burn This Night
...a haunting tribute to the resilience needed to survive and thrive in the heart of Music City, solidifying him as one of the region’s most compelling voices. Christy Alexander Hallberg, author of Searching for Jimmy Page
Michael Amos Cody was born in the South Carolina Lowcountry and raised in the North Carolina highlands. He spent his twenties writing songs in Nashville and his thirties in school. He’s the author of the novel Gabriel’s Songbook (Pisgah Press 2017) and the short story collection A Twilight Reel (Pisgah Press 2021), winner of the Short Story / Anthology category of the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2022. Cody’s novel Streets of Nashville (Madville Publishing 2025) was named a Finalist for the Best Thriller Book Awards 2025 by bestthrillers.com and won the Independent Press Award 2026 in the category of Thriller. Cody lives with his wife Leesa in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and teaches in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
White Winged Doves
A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology
Edited by Collin Kelley and Megan Volpert
ISBN: 978-1-963695-61-8 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-62-5 ebook $9.99 June 16, 2026
The witchy goddess of rock has been casting a spell on music lovers for more than 50 years as a solo artist and a member of the iconic Fleetwood Mac. In this anthology, poets explore the myth, the music, and the enduring legacy of Stevie Nicks.
From haunting ballads of heartache to empowering anthems of liberation, this collection of poems in White Winged Doves embraces the wild spirit and introspective depth synonymous with Nicks' artistry. Poets channel her iconic imagery and fierce individuality, crafting an homage that resonates with both tribute and innovation. This book invites readers to wander through the witchy realms of dreaming and desiring, exploring the mystical landscapes and emotional depths that continue to define Nicks' legendary career. Each poem weaves a tapestry of resilience and enchantment that mirrors the timeless muse herself.
Contributors
Amanda Killian – Amanda Powell – Amber Dodds – Anne Graue – Antony Lower – Bonnie Kaplan – Caridad Moro-Gronlier – Charles Jensen – Chris Wood – Cody Baggerly – Cody Draco – Collin Kelley – Daniel Barry – Danita Dodson – Devin Ware – Donna Vorreyer – Ed Madden – Eileen Porzuczek – Emily Perkovich – Eric v.d. Luft – Erin Murphy – Gale Thompson – Gerard Wozek – Gregg Shapiro – Hannah Baker-Siroty – Isaiah Vianese – JC Reilly – Jennifer Blackledge – Jennifer Rodrigues – Joe Oswald – Julie E. Bloemeke –Karen Head – Karen Paul Holmes – Karen Weyant – Kari Gunter-Seymour – Kate Marshall Flaherty – Kerry MacNeil – Kersten Christianson – Kristie Daugherty – Linda Sands – Lumina Miller – Maggie Felisberto – Maria Illich – Mattie Frye – Maureen Martinez – Megan Volpert – Melanie Duncan – Michael Montlack – Nikki Lee – nma dhahir – Patricia Caspers – Paul Flowers – Rebecca Titchner – Shannon Edwards – Sheema Kalbasi – Shylah Addante – Steven Reigns – Suzanne Mattaboni – Suzy Thomas – Terri Drake – Tiff Dressen & Alex Mattraw – Trish McEnulty – Valerie Smith – William Walsh – Wren Valentino
Collin Kelley is an award-winning poet, novelist, and editor from Atlanta, GA. His most recent collection is Wonder & Wreckage: New & Selected Poems, 1993–2023 (Poetry Atlanta Press). With Karen Head, he co-edited Mother Mary Comes to Me: A Pop Culture Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing), which was named a 2022 Book All Georgians Should Read by Georgia Center for the Book.
Megan Volpert is an award-winning author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including works on Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Alanis Morissette. She teaches Gender Studies at Kennesaw State University and Writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University, and she also serves as a Fellow at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. Volpert is a regular contributor at PopMatters and Salon.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
No Lace Fronts in Iowa City
Poems by Meghan Malachi
ISBN: 978-1-963695-69-4 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-70-0 ebook $9.99
June 16, 2026
FIRST RUNNER-UP FOR THE 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZE
In her debut collection, No Lace Fronts in Iowa City, Meghan Malachi explores how community, desirability, and notions of home influence the journeys by which girls come of age. These poems celebrate a South Bronx childhood and navigate a complicated womanhood in the Midwest through confessional musings on Black Latinx identity and intimate epistolary interludes. Favorite wigs, main character moments, and reimagined anti-heroines are all vessels for exploring girlhood in this love letter to female kinship. No Lace Fronts in Iowa City is ultimately a testament to the desires for belonging and tenderness that we all harbor.
Praise for No More Lace Fronts in Iowa City
Meghan Malachi's debut talks about wigs, but like any wig, these poems move as clever subversion atop perceptions of beauty, vulnerability, and bonds that women share. These quiet, deep admissions are delivered as odes, prose poems, Bronx memories, and most dearly, poems starting with “Girl, I...” because calling someone “Girl” can convey so much. These poems are relief unpinned from a tender scalp.
Tara Betts, author of Refuse to Disappear
You can often find what lies at the heart of a book by repetition, poem series that anchor us and pull us back toward that center. In Meghan Malachi’s No Lace Fronts in Iowa City, the “Girl, I ” poems constantly remind us of the sanctity of Black female friendship and Black womanhood. In a world that doesn’t prioritize the mental health of Black women, that cuts at the very fabric of Black women’s self-esteem, what is required for survival? A good wig that can be thrown on and off at a moment’s notice. A good, intimate gossip session. A friend on the phone, making sure we’ve eaten, watching us finally rise from our beds.
Taylor Byas, author of Resting Bitch Face
Say you open a book of poems and discover a voice so familiar that you’re certain you know whom it belongs to even though you’ve never heard anyone or anything speak about the world that way. Say you swear you know the cities and streets, sky and earth, nights and days, names and faces in the poems like the back of your hand, but the voice knows them in ways you’ve never imagined or noticed before. Say you believe you’ve seen, felt, thought, and said it all but maybe not as wildly, honestly, or unashamedly. Say you realize the voice is familiar because it is so humbly human. Then say the voice belongs to Meghan Malachi.
Mark Turcotte, Illinois Poet Laureate, author of Exploding Chippewas
No Lace Fronts in Iowa City is a homecoming: a celebration of girlhood, of women and their wisdom, of wigs, of the Bronx and Puerto Rico all at once. Malachi’s powerful poetic voice is real and raw in its honesty, its careful attention to the everyday, and its embodiment of femininity in all its richness and complexity. “Girl I ” poems braid the collection like sisters in each other’s hair: Malachi whispers secrets and consejos as she invites you to sit beside her on the plastic-covered couch and talk. These poems are beautiful offerings that you’ll want to read again and again.
—Janel Pineda, author of Lineage of Rain
Meghan Malachi is a poet and writer from The Bronx, New York. She Meghan Malachi is a poet from The Bronx, New York. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize. Her collection No Lace Fronts in Iowa City was selected by Allison Joseph as runner-up for Madville’s 2024 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Her chapbook The Autodidact was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. Meghan has an MS in Mathematics from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing from DePaul University. She is an associate editor at RHINO and lives in Chicago, Illinois.
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Still in the Universe: mother, brother, husband
a memoir by R. J. Lee
ISBN: 978-1-963695-77-9 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-78-6 ebook $9.99
August 15, 2026
A factual, detailed account of remarkable experiences the author encountered shortly after the separate deaths of his mother, brother, and husband over a period of thirtyone years, the book posits a metaphysical, spiritual thesis. Namely, that these three beloved people in his life found astounding ways to let him know that they were all still part of the universe we inhabit, and, therefore, that the same universe is far more surprising and complex than we could ever imagine. Without criticizing established belief systems or suggesting a dogmatic approach, this uplifting read advocates keeping an open mind and heart regarding continuing existence and purpose.
Praise for Still in the Universe: Mother, Brother, Husband by R. J. Lee
Some might wonder why R.J. Lee asked me to read and endorse his newest book Still in the Universe. After all, I write about faithful aging from a Christian perspective while the author holds to a somewhat different belief system. To be clear, my faith has been formed by a mainstream Christian denomination, not a church steeped in legalism or narrow thinking. Diverse perspectives do n ot frighten me or threaten my faith. I see big questions about life as divine invitations to explore spirituality alongside others.
R.J. Lee writes with an open heart. He shares his questions and experiences from a place of authenticity and wonderment. While reading the book, there were moments when I smiled, realizing that something he credited to Universe, I would have named as God. Especially in our divisive culture, the greatest takeaway is a reminder that we are all closer to one another than we might imagine. We are all exploring the deep mysteries of life and death, and not one of us has a lock on the answers.
I hope you will read the author’s words and think deeply. Learn from his life lessons. Lead with curiosity and humility. Hold sacred space for any differences, knowing that we are all trying to find our way on this journey of life.
Missy Buchanan, speaker and author of Feeling Your Way Through Grief
In Still in the Universe: mother, brother, husband, R. J. Lee offers a clear-eyed account of love that does not end when a life does. Writing with restraint and grace, Lee recounts the unexpected ways his mother, brother, and husband seemed to reach back to him after their deaths not to convince, but to be known. This is not a book of answers, but of attention and openness, one that asks readers to consider how much of the world we miss when we decide too quickly what is and isn’t possible. Gentle, steady, and quietly hopeful, this memoir lingers like truth often does.
—Robert Gwaltney, critically acclaimed author of Sing Down the Moon
R. J. Lee is a native of Natchez, Mississippi, now living in Oxford, MS, after several decades of being a resident of New Orleans. He graduated from Sewanee (University of The South) with a degree in English and Creative Writing, where he studied under Andrew Lytle, editor of the Sewanee Review. He has been published since 1992 and has written series fiction for Putnam and Kensington in New York with small-town Southern life and cozy mysteries being his chosen genres. Still in the Universe is his 18th published work and his second with Madville Publishing in Texas.
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Animal Psalm
poems by DeAnna Stephens
ISBN: 978-1-963695-65-6 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-66-3 ebook $9.99 August 18, 2026
WINNER OF THE 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZE
In this collection, love reveals itself at the thresholds of forests, at the frayed edges of language and heritage, reminding readers that the backbone of love is the assurance of the senses current of creek, texture of quartz, flavors of late summer the ever-presence of the natural world. In their exploration of the complexity of familial and romantic bonds and cultural identity, these poems reveal the significance of myth in articulating loss and longing.
Praise for Animal Psalm: poems by DeAnna Stephens
In the poems of Animal Psalm, I am struck by the intimacy with both the natural world and the bonds of family, family secrets, memories of youthful romance, sex, intense sensuousness, and ache of love. Who can forget high-tension lines such as: “Hearts became windows lovers broke for exit.”
Robert Morgan, author of Dark Energy
A central question of this ambitious poetry seems to be “How many eons can a body hold?” Indeed, one of the volume’s pleasures lies in never knowing just where, or to whom, these lovely poems will lead us. Within their brief, seemingly ephemeral confines, Stephens’ vibrant language sparks semantically across time and vast distances. And in that voice her dense domestic tableaus brim with mystery multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-tonal, their “hues,” as she says, that of “indistinct heritage.” If you love the music, energy, and surprise inherent in our language, you will appreciate this fine book.
Mark Cox, author of Knowing
DeAnna Stephens’ work has appeared in Cherry Tree, Pedestal Magazine, Feminist Studies, and other journals. In 2024, her poetry was a semifinalist for the Scotti Merrill Award for Poetry, and in 2023, her work won the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry. She was the 2019 recipient of the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest. Her poetry has received two Pushcart Prize nominations, and in 2022, she was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. She is the author of Heliotaxis from Main Street Rag. Stephens resides on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau where she teaches writing at Roane State Community College
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Titanfall
Poems by Noah Soltau
ISBN: 978-1-963695-73-1 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-74-8 ebook $9.99 August 18, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZE
Titanfall explores grief and relationships, becoming and dying. The book navigates questions of identity, mortality, and politics in places tinged by the mythical and theological. In the “Christ-haunted” tradition of Flannery O’Connor’s South, the speaker of the poems guides the reader on a hero’s journey out of Appalachia and into a metaphysical wildland where choices and personalities have cosmic consequences. Grounded in American and German literary traditions and steeped in popular culture and world events, these poems are by turns harrowing, hopeful, and darkly humorous.
Praise for Titanfall: poems by Noah Soltau
Noah Soltau's Titanfall is a testament to the generative possibility of perspective and sensation. He spins the camera until all is seen, webbing disparate parts until a coherent world emerges, one insistent on memory, history, the here and now, and the human feeling it all.—Willie Carver Jr., author of Gay Poems for Red States
In Titanfall, Noah Soltau writes, “My attention is not for sale / I am not for sale,” and he proves it by paying astonishing attention to the absurdities of our times. He blurs the political with the personal, while also calling up the ghosts of the past to remind us “that we are neither playthings / nor doomed.”—Denton Loving, author of Feller
These poems are an invitation to sift meaning from the ceaseless river of consumerism, to seek a relationship with the sacred that transcends the ideology of a cancer cell. May we not refuse this call. Clare Welsh, author of Chimeras
Soltau’s poems are acrobatic, experimentally daring, breathless as at certain turning points of revelation: “There is only one story // One day you are going to die.” But not yet, Buddy. There is abundant life here: “Blooming growing enthusiastic expectant.” Treat. Yo. Self.—Susan O’Dell Underwood, author of Splinter
Sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes beautiful, but always true the poems of Titanfall are wrought from our world, a little mortal, a little divine, all poetry doing what it's always been meant to do. Wesley Scott McMasters, author of In Which My Lover Tells Me about the Nature of Wild Things
Noah Soltau teaches about art, literature, and society to the mostly willing. He is managing editor of The Red Branch Review. His manuscript, Titanfall, was shortlisted for the Arthur Smith Prize, and recent work appears in Cutleaf, storySouth, and elsewhere. Raised in Chattanooga, educated in the South and Germany, he lives with his wife and two daughters in East Tennessee.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Interior with Poplar
Poems by Leatha Kendrick
ISBN: 978-1-963695-75-5 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-76-2 ebook $9.99 September 15, 2026
Threaded with rivers, birds, and trees, Interior with Poplar addresses transience and resilience the desire to lay everything down set against the will to go on. In this collection, Leatha Kendrick alternately celebrates the deep joys of a long marriage and the equal imperative of separateness and solitude. The poems in Interior with Poplar render roles the poet takes up and abandons, places she loves and leaves, and aging as shadow and as light, landing with jubilation in uncertainty.
Praise for Interior with Poplar: Poems by Leatha Kendrick
In Leatha Kendrick’s deft hands, the poplar tree stands as witness, sentinel, and placeholder to these resonant, rooted poems of love and memory. In these expertly crafted poems opulent in sound and cohesive in imagery the poet discovers a nexus of longevity and endurance by offering up the wisest “words that rise / through silence.” Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer
The poems of Interior with Poplar are deep & dazzling, personal & cosmic. Writing through yet another of life’s awkward ages, Kendrick looks back to where & who she has been & forward to the unknown, unplannable future. She gives us a testimony to this time of life, “this layering of loves” & questions as our children & grandchildren grow on without us, though, like trees, we still feed them through our roots George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate, 2015-2016, and author of Back to the Light
Verse memoir, chronicle of a happy marriage, reflection on the passage of time, a study of poplars from the writer's window Leatha Kendrick's Interior with Poplar is all of these things and more. They fulfill Jane Hirshfield's expectations of a good poem: “A good poem, then, is a solvent, a kind of WD-40 for the soul.”—Richard Taylor, Kentucky Poet Laureate, 1999-2001, and author of Elkhorn, Evolution of a Kentucky Landmark
Interior with Poplar is a life-study where we travel with Leatha Kendrick through many of the houses that have made up her own life. We read Kendrick and we learn how to love the world, love others, and love ourselves better. Jeremy Paden, author of How to Recognize God’s Chosen
Writer, teacher, and editor, Leatha Kendrick received the 2025 Judy Gaines Young Award, recognizing a body of work by an author from the Appalachian region. Author of five poetry collections, Kendrick’s recent poems and scholarly articles appear in Still: The Journal, Kansas City Review, Good River Review, Hood of Bone Review, and Appalachian Journal. Essays and poems also are gathered in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Volume XVII; Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky; The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia; and What Comes Down to Us: Twenty-Five Contemporary Kentucky Poets.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Gore, Lust & Kin
Stories of Women on the Brink by Suzanne Mattaboni
ISBN: 978-1-963695-80-9 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-81-6 ebook $9.99
October 20, 2026
Gore, Lust & Kin is a genre-crossing collection blending horror, dysfunctional romance, and familial obligations. Its 24 stories feature agonized women (plus a few guys) on the cusp of either finding themselves or destroying themselves. Meet murderous Charlene, who goes to explosive lengths to drum-up business for her family’s funeral home. And struggling researcher Jackie, forced to make a heartbreaking decision between her relationship and her own body. Or Aphrodite, a reanimated Goddess on a bloody rampage. And dramatic pixie dream girl Marena, who finally gets to tell a story from the pixie’s POV. These girls will thrill you or kill you.
Praise for Gore, Lust & Kin by Suzanne Mattaboni
Suzanne Mattaboni spins real magic with this collection of feminist tales. Daring, insightful, heartfelt, and unflinching. Highly recommended… but buckle up!—Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of NecroTek and Ink
A riveting collection of shape-shifting stories that take us into dark hearts and bloodied trauma, all told with a lightness of touch and an insouciant literary flair. Simon Petherick, author of Jack and Barry and Like Fire Unbound
This absolutely fascinating collection of stories held me on the edge of my seat from the very start! Gore, Lust, & Kin provides a deep dive into the human condition while racing into the otherworldly like a runaway train full of desire, terror, and tales that stick with you long after you turn off the lights. Mattaboni has a devilish way of bleeding one story directly into the next that barely let me stop to catch my breath. Misty Simon, author of the Charmed Inn Mysteries, the Sunny Side Up Mysteries, and more
Gore, Lust & Kin is a collection with big themes, exploring a world where women have achieved professional and independent progress, but still find themselves dominated by men in business, in family, in interpersonal relationships. And how do women gain love and power under such conditions? … The heart of this collection is how through the experience of our deep alienation from each other we actually find an absurd connection. It channels other popular literary writers on the market like Karen Russell while maintaining the author’s own unique voice. Mike Hilbig, author of Judgement Day & Other White Lies
Suzanne Mattaboni writes horror and women’s fiction, is a Newsweek Expert Forum contributor, former Newsday reporter, pop culture podcaster, and a corporate PR professional. Her novel Once in a Lifetime won a PenCraft, an IPPY independent publishers award, and was an Eric Hoffer finalist, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction. Suzanne has been published in Seventeen, The Huffington Post, Mysterious Ways, Guideposts, and Child, plus anthologies including Madville Publishing’s White Winged Dove poetry anthology, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Howard Jones We’re in This Together fanthology, and the Pizza Parties and Poltergeists ‘80s-themed horror anthology.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
On Alaskan Fighting Bulls
by Derek Prall
ISBN: 978-1-963695-71-7 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-72-4 ebook $9.99 October 20, 2026
Directionless after college, Martin Lambert leaves home to work in an Alaskan salmon processing plant. He expects big paychecks and maybe some adventure, but finds brutal work, volatile coworkers, and an unshakeable feeling that something is wrong. Down at his core. When he sees a friend inexplicably murder a fishing boat captain, that feeling is confirmed. What Martin does with that knowledge, though, will be up to him. Will he continue to move aimlessly through his own life, or will this harrowing Alaskan ordeal force him to confront himself?
Praise for On Alaskan Fighting Bulls by Derek Prall
“On Alaskan Fighting Bulls pulls you in by all your senses. This hard-hitting coming-of-age story is effortless to read, and the connection you feel with the characters is palpable. I already cannot wait to read Prall’s next book.”—Christy Warren, author of Flash Point
“Prall writes prose with a razorblade's edge, and he paints a gorgeous portrait of a fraught, otherworldly landscape that we all somehow relate to. This book grabs you by the throat in the best possible way.”—Josh Green, author of Goodbye, Sweetberry Park (grand prize winner, 2025 Hollywood Book Festival)
If Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Saunder’s Pastoralia had a bastard love child, it would be Derek Prall’s debut novel On Alaskan Fighting Bulls. Set in a company fishing town outside of Anchorage during salmon season, it follows the down and out, ragtag group of workers who come to spend twelve hours a day, six days a week gutting fish while being ripped off by their bosses on the overpriced goods and supplies sold at the company store and food stand. The only thing more moving than the reader’s urge to vomit while floundering through the nasally rich descriptions of the slurry being processed out at the slime machine is the deep empathy Prall trains readers on for a cast of characters at the edge of the world dealing with both the most immediate and most remote grotesqueries of American capitalism. It is an urgent page-turner for this second Gilded Age we find ourselves in, one that will have readers laughing yelling, and crying all the same. Just don’t forget to keep a wastebasket nearby in case of emergency Mike Hilbig, author of Judgment Day & Other White Lies
Derek Prall spent most of his career as a journalist at newspapers and magazines, first writing for them then running them. His byline appears in numerous publications, with notable titles including Business Insider, Atlanta Civic Circle, Dark Reading, and American City & County, where he served as managing editor for many years. Today his primary focus is on fiction, but he still does freelance editing and writing work. When he's not writing, he lies about working on his motorcycle and shoots sporting clays poorly. On Alaskan Fighting Bulls is his first novel.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
Horses Purpled in Moonlight
poems
by
Steven T. Moore
ISBN: 978-1-963695-XX-X paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-XX-X ebook $9.99
January 19, 2027
[synopsis]
Praise for The Horizon Never Forgets: Poems by Steven T. Moore
Steven T. Moore leads us down into a painful labyrinth, to the heartbreaking things one human can do to another. Yet, just when all hope seems lost, Moore returns to the image of his mother. This is not a political work. It is a humanitarian work that only a poet of Moore’s caliber could do. This is the universal desire to open the heart that boundless, colorless, greater good that beats within us all. karla k. morton, 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate and author of Turbulence & Fluids
Steven Moore’s vision is clear, even as time and family and justice slip underneath him. In The Horizon Never Forgets, Moore writes for his mother and her “lifetime of fighting / for her sons to be free.” Here he is able to stay with pain personal and systemic and so allows his readers to do the same. Leah Naomi Green, author of The More Extravagant Feast and winner of the 2019 Walt Whitman Award
This unflinching collection of poems reveals the complexity of Black male rage, giving us insight into debilitating horrors of negotiating medical, educational, cultural, interpersonal, and structural racism. Perhaps this powerful collection opens up space for the possibility of transcendence for all who empathize with the struggle. Cherise A. Pollard, author of Outsiders
Steven Moore often says that his mother is the wellspring of his poetry. She read and recited poetry to him before his birth and through his growing-up years in locales as varied as Central America and Gurnee, Illinois. Moore received his B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and his M.A. and Ph.D. are from the University of Nebraska. The recipient of several teaching and scholarly awards, he is a university professor of English who often teaches poetry workshops and a class called Bon Appétit: Savoring Poetry & Good Cooking. While writing poetry, he immerses himself in jazz, the blues, and the spirit of Langston Hughes. Published widely in literary journals, he is also a bestselling children’s author and the author of two scholarly books examining Black rage.
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Original cover art by Emily Rankin
A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body
Poems by David B. Prather
ISBN: 978-1-963695-86-1 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-87-8 ebook $9.99
February 16, 2027
WINNER of the 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body centers on insects and arthropods, framed by the real-world crisis of global insect decline. Each poem blends natural history with memory, spirituality, family, and personal transformation. Species such as monarchs, mud daubers, cicadas, spiders, beetles, moths, and more become metaphors for grief, resilience, identity, and wonder. Scientific facts, folklore, and intimate storytelling intertwine, creating a meditation on fragility of insects, of ecosystems, and of human lives.
Praise for David Prather’s new poetry collection, A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body
David Prather’s A Heart That Stretches the Length of the Body does what a good book of poetry does: it provides an opportunity to resee, to reimagine, and to rededicate ourselves to the wonderful strangeness and the strange wonderment that is the world we think we know. Part insectarium, part sanctuary, part garden of Eden, and part Waste Land, Prather’s collection is both a testament to and a testimony on behalf of the mud dauber, zombie spider, hummingbird moth, goliath beetle, and more than fifty other insects and arthropods, each poem like “a piece of honeycomb adrift / in amber.” “Let me be surprised in the garden,” he says, spanning, somehow, both beginning and end times an entomological Adam/Apocalyptic John of Patmos “clinging to this world in disbelief” yet still convinced that there is “a bit of the sacred / in all of us.” How fortunate for us his heart stretches, also, the lengths of the Earth.
Jeff Hardin, author of A Clearing Space and Watermark, and 2025 Judge of the Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
In A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body, David B. Prather transforms the imperiled insect world into a map of grief, confession, and wonder. Each creature stands as a portal to something unbearably human. A firefly guides souls through mourning. A woolly bear caterpillar reads winter in its stripes. A garden spider stitches the world back together overnight. Prather’s eye is unflinching: “How long have I hurt / the beauty I touched?” His tenderness is equally fierce. These poems carry fathers and grandmothers, childhood cruelties and adult sorrows, and a body that has known both breaking and becoming. The vanishing of insects becomes inseparable from the vanishing of everything we love. What remains is “a heart that stretches the length of the body,” wide enough to hold it all.
Phillip Shabazz is the author of Moonflower and Middle Ground
A lifelong observer of the natural world, David B. Prather brings together scientific curiosity and lyrical imagination, crafting work that resonates with readers of eco-poetry, memoir, and contemporary nature writing. He lives in Parkersburg, WV, where he continues to explore the intersections of ecology, spirituality, and the human heart. www.davidbprather.com
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The Canticle of Light and Dark
A Divine Comedy (Volume 3) by Michael Simms by Michael
Simms
ISBN: 978-1-963695-84-7 paperback $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-85-4 ebook $9.99
March 16, 2027
The Canticle of Light and Dark follows events of Bicycles of the Gods and The Hummingbird War into a post-apocalyptic world. Where only indigenous people have survived, and the center of Hell is a high rise in downtown Houston, Texas. Jesse (aka Jesus), his mother Mary, Xavi (aka Shiva), the Sisters of the Piston, and two incredible teenagers raised among the Yaqui’s who survived the great destruction, fight to wrest control from the Luke Ferris (aka Lucifer).
Critics went crazy for Bicycles of the Gods and The Hummingbird War
A devilishly conceived satire that mashes the soft-centered potato of religion with the ham-fisted yam of politics into a steaming mush of mock-turtle soup which might have easily been concocted by Nathaniel West had he heeded his doctor’s advice and cooked a bit more with hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Ariana Mohajeri Petersen, The Minderbinder Review of Books
Bicycles of the Gods achieves a roaring finale no more spoilers will be given here in which the borders of Earth and the afterlife come down, brave and inevitable sacrifices are made, and much that has been h idden is revealed. Readers, buckle yourselves in for a wild ride. Angele Ellis, Cultural Daily
Simms has created a wild, syncretic ride refashioning old stories in a contemporary light. Will Jesse succeed? Will the world end? Spoilers: As the poet George Herbert wrote, “But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand / and built a braver palace than before.”
Kristopher Collins, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Simms still expresses hope for humanity and so does Bicycles of the Gods. While he doesn’t consider himself conventionally religious, he does think we’d do well to follow some core teachings of Jesus, as they are laid out in his novel.
—Bill O'Driscoll,
WESA
Bicycles Of the Gods is an apocalyptic saga that is always riveting, always thought provoking, and alternately funny and sad. It is refreshing to read a novel that, while satiric, takes seriously the spiritual journey. One of the truly surprising parts of the novel is that, while religion is satirized, it is never disrespected. It’s a real accomplishment.
John Samuel Tieman, Live Encounters
MICHAEL SIMMS is an accomplished poet, writer, editor, publisher, teacher, blogger and entrepreneur. Seven collections of his poetry, three novels, and two widely adopted poetry textbooks have been published or are under contract with publishers. He has also been the lead editor of over 100 published books, including the bestselling Autumn House Anthology of Poetry, now in its third edition. Simms has taught at a number of universities, including Chatham University’s MFA program from 2005-2013.
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
My Out-Migrations
Poems by Elaine Fowler Palencia
ISBN: 978-1-963695-82-3 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-83-0 ebook $9.99 April 20, 2027
1st RUNNER-UP for the 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Home: Where we come from, where we end up, a concept, a memory, a state of mind, “a place where we can wear our own faces.” My Out-Migrations journeys with earlier generations down the Great Wagon Road into Appalachian Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, then turns north into the Midwest, as so many families have done, before returning in spirit to the mountains the author’s heart never really left. Along the way there are powerful side journeys into the thisness of everyday life, as well as into the undiscovered country of caring for a son with disabilities.
Praise for Elaine Fowler Palencia’s new poetry collection, My Out-Migrations
In Elaine Fowler Palencia’s My Out-Migrations, she reminds us that borders are not just national but are also regional, familial, educational, economical, even theological, and that it’s possible to remain “permanent immigrants in a country / where we have never felt quite at home.” What does belonging or home even look like to those who are descendants of lost farms, wandering through family secrets, unable to “save all who got lost,” while l iving in the “ripple of the incarnation”? Heart-split, reckoning with “an unforgiving religion,” still seeking “connection when / everything is and always has been / on the move,” Palencia’s poems are high lonesome longings on the verge of exhaustion, but there’s a grit to them, too, even as they struggle to delay at least for a while the “horizontal sucking the vertical into itself.”
Jeff Hardin, author of A Clearing Space and Watermark and judge of the 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Elaine Fowler Palencia’s felicitously woven collection My Out-Migrations is a study of wonder diligent in its preservation of remembrances and steadfast in standing up for a land steeped in honky-tonk winds, waffle fries, buzzcut fields and fine-looking men dressed in denim and plaid flannel. Palencia has tightly honed the skill of listening, which has become her super power: “[The] hills have stories/ and poems pouring out of them.” Believe me when I say, she has the ability to make all she hears stand at attention and sing across the page.
Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate 2020-2026, author of All That Teethes Within
Elaine Fowler Palencia grew up in Morehead, Kentucky, and Cookeville, Tennessee. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University, she is the author of six books of fiction, including two collections of Appalachian short fiction (Small Caucasian Woman and Brier Country), and four poetry chapbooks. Her nonfiction includes The Literary Heritage of Hindman Settlement School and On Rising Ground: The Life and Civil War Letters of John M. Douthit, 52nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. She is the book review editor of Pegasus, journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society, and moderator of the Red Herring Prose Workshop, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
All titles available through Ingram, all online retailers, and direct from Madville. Contact: Kimberly Davis, info@madvillepublishing.com for wholesale orders and information about translation rights. https://madvillepublishing.com
