Join Indie Blu(e) Publishing for Stories with Sun August 6, 2023 at 2-3pm EST (1-2pm CST). Sun Hesper Jansen will read select pieces from her latest release, Fairy of Disenchantment, followed by a Q&A.
HOW: This is a virtual event. To join the Zoom call, CLICK HERE Meeting ID: 828 4010 9407
“This book is a spell. In Fairy of Disenchantment Sun Hesper Jansen weaves her pen like a needle through essays, poetry and prose poems, to stitch together the open wounds of invisible illness, tristesse and being human.”
—Amy Torok, co-author of Missing Witches and New Moon Magic
From Fairy of Disenchantment “I curb that side of my nature that wants to embellish. Storytelling has made trouble for me all through my life. I’ve avoided it for at least a decade. Until now. There’s a creeping Lovecraftian novel unfolding in my brain: the unfathomable nightmare future state of Multiple Sclerosis. The therapist, if she’s any good, should know that I’m playing her like I play everyone. Like I use mirrors. All my answers end with questions that shift the focus to the asker.” (Disenchantment: A Prelude)
“You never forget the first time you see the inside of your own head.
Nor your passion for the first radiologist who paints you beautifully in the language of science.” (Gradient Weighted Echoes)
Sun Hesper Jansen is a poet and writer of dark romantic fantasy who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in the Indie Blu(e) anthologies But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real Life Adventures of Fibro Bitches, Lupus Warriors, and Other Superheroes Battling Invisible Illness and As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad. Her stories and poems have also appeared in The Chamber Magazine and Gobblers/Masticadores. You can find her on Instagram @sunhesper, and on her blog, Fairy of Disenchantment, where she writes on/as literary therapy for Multiple Sclerosis.
“This book is a spell. In Fairy of Disenchantment Sun Hesper Jansen weaves her pen like a needle through essays, poetry and prose poems, to stitch together the open wounds of invisible illness, tristesse and being human.” —Amy Torok, co-author of Missing Witches and New Moon Magic
“Each poem and artwork in Sun Hesper Jansen’s erudite first book, Fairy of Disenchantment, is placed down like a tarot card. The readings, one moving smoothly into the next, tell the author something about herself but also about the rest of us. And you’ll wait eagerly, hungry for each new revelation.” —Suzette Bishop, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead
”Sun Hesper Jansen’s speculative and compelling reflections on the journey and cycles within chronic illness are a masterful and luminous mix of mythology, witchcraft, nature, trauma, goddess magic, and the turning wheel of life and death, ‘from the crack of menarche to the crone.’” —Beverley Butcher, Author of ‘Sisterhood of Broken Dolls’ included in the anthology Disturbing the Body, @boudiccapress, March2021
From Fairy of Disenchantment
“I curb that side of my nature that wants to embellish. Storytelling has made trouble for me all through my life. I’ve avoided it for at least a decade. Until now. There’s a creeping Lovecraftian novel unfolding in my brain: the unfathomable nightmare future state of Multiple Sclerosis. The therapist, if she’s any good, should know that I’m playing her like I play everyone. Like I use mirrors. All my answers end with questions that shift the focus to the asker.” (Disenchantment: A Prelude)
“You never forget the first time you see the inside of your own head.
Nor your passion for the first radiologist who paints you beautifully in the language of science.” (Gradient Weighted Echoes)
“I grit my teeth again, in a lupine smile, like all wild things once thought beaten, returning time and again, to diminish you.” (Sisyphe Aux Dents De Loup)
Sun Hesper Jansen is a poet and writer of dark romantic fantasy who lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Her work has appeared in the Indie Blu(e) anthologies But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real Life Adventures of Fibro Bitches, Lupus Warriors, and Other Superheroes Battling Invisible Illness and As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad.
Her stories and poems have also appeared in The Chamber Magazine and Gobblers/Masticadores.
You can find her on Instagram @sunhesper, and on her blog, Fairy of Disenchantment, where she writes on/as literary therapy for Multiple Sclerosis.
How to Purchase Fairy of Disenchantment Fairy of Disenchantment is available for wholesale purchase through the Ingram Group. Fairy of Disenchantment is also available for retail purchase through Amazon (print & Kindle editions), Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Books-a-Million, and other major online book retailers.
ABOUT INDIE BLU(E) PUBLISHING Indie Blu(e) Publishing is a progressive, feminist micro-press, committed to producing honest and thought-provoking works. Our anthologies are meant to celebrate diversity, raise awareness, and embolden our sisters and brothers to speak their truths. The editors all passionately advocate for human rights; mental health awareness; chronic illness awareness; sexual abuse survivors; and LGBTQ+ equality. It is our mission, and a great honor, to provide platforms for those voices that are stifled, and stigmatized.
The purpose of doing this series of profiles on authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies is to highlight just how talented, hard-working and brilliant our contributors are. It’s not bragging if it’s real and they deserve the limelight because of their devotion to the themes of our anthologies, all of which are social causes and their brilliance as writers/poets and artists.
Anu Mahadev submitted to The Kali Project and is an outstanding poet and thinker. Perhaps because she’s an engineer, she has a wonderful combination of intellect and creativity that we think is show-stopping. Anu lives in New Jersey and has been in two Indie Blu(e) anthologies including; collaborating with her on a LIVE reading of Indie Blu(e)’s collection: Through The Looking Glass: Reflecting on Madness and Chaos Within.
This is a great LIVE read of poems in this anthology, including Anu’s work and her thoughts on the subject.
Given her prodigious talent and packed work schedule we were so honored for Anu to be one of our LIVE readers at the BIG BLUE MARBLE BOOKSTORE (held virtually due to Covid-19. It was a perfect platform to discuss the themes in Through The Looking Glass. Being an anthology of 158 writers and artists from across the globe, this collection sought to unveil the truth about life with mental illness. Diverse, raw, and urgent, the poetry, prose, and art work in this anthology dug deep into the experience of living with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and other neurodivergent conditions, as well as the challenges of loving someone who struggles with such an illness. Having contributors read their work and join in this meaningful discussion was priceless.
Having submitted beautiful pieces to both The Kali Project and Through The Looking Glass, Anu Mahadev has now published a stunning collection of her own work. ‘a mouthful of sky’ – with incredible cover art. She’s a respected talent in the writing world and this beautiful poetry book promises to collect together some of her most unforgettable work.
Anu Mahadev is a left-brained engineer who morphed into a right-brained poet. She is a 2016 MFA graduate of Drew University, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies as well as the Olentangy Review, Silver Birch Press, Sonic Boom, Bending Genres Journal, Tin Lunchbox review, DIN magazine, the Wild Word and the Electronic Pamphlet,.
Incredibly she fits into her busy schedule, time to serve as Editor for THREE literary publications:
The wonderful Jaggery Lit, where she’s Editor-in-Chief.
The very respected Woman Inc., where she’s Senior-Editor.
and the very cool Wild Word. where she’s the Poetry Editor.
Her collection of poetry titled “A Mouthful of Sky” is upcoming from Get Fresh Books LLC this month (April). You can pre-order her book HERE. and when preorders are finished you can purchase via Amazon and others.
“In Anu Mahadev’s A Mouthful of Sky, sensual and sexual pleasures, joys, and freedoms are woven together with gendered inequities, misogyny, and cruelty. The narrator is exceedingly matter-of-factly vulnerable and courageous as she shows the complexities, contradictions, cruelties, and depths of this relationship with complete self-acceptance. With a solid certainty in spite of circumstances. And with forthright insistence of her own pleasure. But it’s never simple. Mahadev’s voice is like none I’ve ever heard–complex, often heartbreaking, strong, and forthright into her lyricism.” — Sarah Vap, author of Winter: Effulgences and Devotions.
“These are poems of resilience, converging confidence and doubt, freedom and entrapment: the “desperate alphabet” of a “disposable heart.” Fraught with sexuality and distress, dualities mirror and split throughout these poems of hunger, ravishment, and, ultimately, discovery.” — Stacey Balkan, author of Oil Fictions: World Literature and our Contemporary Petrosphere.
You will surpass your ancestors. You will fix a leaking roof, cause a blue shadow to fall upon itself. You are in fact, the roof. Beams hold you up, shingles frame your structure. You have been firm for far too long. You sag with moss from the monsoon moisture. The children’s scribbles are blessings, you say. Collecting kerosene from the ration shop is an errand. The cool yogurt-rice is home. The banana is dessert. Like the wrought-iron gates that close together, so do your hands, folded in supplication. You could say, this is not a birthday wish. But a prayer that finds you before dawn rushes in.
Anu shared: “The poems in this book (a mouthful of sky) were written over the span of a year, my most fruitful, creative and prolific year. Perhaps Goddess Saraswati was watching over me, my muse, even as I rode the crests on a wave of mania. Yes, I suffer from bipolar disorder. While anyone observing me would have felt that I was in no way “suffering”, I knew that what I was going through was thoroughly unnatural. My body felt like a prison, my brain a cage, where my mind paced about restlessly like a hungry panther. I was here, there and everywhere at once. Catapulted thoughts from the past made me race into an imaginary future where I had no desire to settle into a present riddled with discontent. Adrenaline flowed freely inside me.”
“Maybe all this sounds wonderful to someone who can’t keep a positive thought afloat, but I had a sinking feeling inside that all this would come to a grinding halt, and it did. You can’t climb forever. Somewhere there would be a snake after all those ladders, waiting to pull me down. “
“When people say that everyone has “mood swings“, I don’t think they understand the depths or the crests that a bipolar person experiences. Either everything is excellent and brilliant, or else the worst, the absolute pits. It took me a long time to get up after my fall from grace, and perhaps I lost a few friends along the way, maybe more. But life, in its infinite patience, continues to be a kind teacher. With talk therapy, the proper drugs and a healthy lifestyle, I am limping my way back to recovery.”
There is undoubtedly a price to be paid for burning so brightly, but let us not forget how many talented artists throughout history have been subject to this mercurial rise-and-fall. In some ways it is that incredible galvanized energy that permits the individual to create such powerful work and produce such excellence, when others simply cannot find the get-up-and-go. It may be a double-edged-sword but the sheer brilliance of those mercurial writers cannot be denied.
Anu’s courage as a writer of experience and truth, is particularly valuable. She doesn’t flinch from revealing her rawest experience. Surely this is the definition of what a poet must be in order to truly break through convention and trope and set fire to pretense. Her truth is something we can all in some way, relate to, and her candor helps us realize that when we too struggle, we are not alone, and we do not have to measure up to some false ideal. We can just survive and in doing so, thrive.
Clearly Anu does far more than simply survive, for all her genuine modesty over her talents, she writes electrically and charges the poetry scene with stunning verses that are utterly without guile. She isn’t just smart, she’s wicked smart. She isn’t just creative, she’s stunningly so. And her poems are individual testimonies to her willingness to go all in.
The Kali Project is available HERE: Amazon and via all good bookstores including Pothi in India.
Remember to pre-order and then order Anu Mahadev’s collection a mouthful of sky, when it publishes APRIL 1. It will be available nationally via all good bookstores. MARK THE DATE~
Indie Blu(e) Publishing is VERY proud of our authors / poets / artists and contributors to our anthologies. We love highlighting their accomplishments. If YOU are a IB contributor and wish to have a profile here, please get in touch (indleblusubmissions@gmail.com) including information we’d like to promote on our website such as: Bio, photo, live readings, links, interesting information and one short exert or poem. http://www.indieblu.netHERE.
During April, I am departing from my normal monthly Creativity Prompt format, and instead providing one phrase as the prompt for the month: We Will Not Be Silenced. However, I will be offering two different ways to approach the prompt. Feel free to respond in either way, or to respond to both. There is no limit to how many pieces of writing or art you submit for the challenge as long as I receive your submission by April 30th. I will accept previously published pieces of writing or art as long as you retain the rights to this work.
Response Option #1 – General
There is only one guideline for Option 1: We Will Not Be Silenced should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the phrase should be integrated into your piece somehow.
Response Option #2 – The Lived Experience of Sexual Assault/Abuse/Harassment
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) in the United States. SAAM is an educational campaign whose goals are to increase awareness about the causes and risk factors for sexual assault and to empower individuals to take steps to prevent it in their own communities.
In solidarity to SAAM, I will accept submissions of writing and art about the lived experience of sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, trafficking, rape culture, and misogyny. I am defining ‘lived experience’ broadly as we all are impacted by rape culture and political and social institutions that have support sexual assault. I will accept submissions sent in under a pen name will respect any requests to publish pieces under ‘Anonymous’.
I realize that submissions about the Lived Experience of Sexual Assault/Abuse/Harassment may not make for the easiest or most comfortable reading, but that in no way lessens their importance or impact. It can be incredibly empowering for survivors to tell their stories. It can be really impactful to share epiphany moments and insights into how this culture has shaped you personally.
There is strength in our stories and although we have seen the world begin to shift, there is much work still to be done.
It is an honor to publish your writing and art on Brave and Reckless. I welcome submissions of poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essay, and art. I will accept responses to We Will Not Be Silenced until April 30th, but will not start publishing them on Brave & Reckless until April 1st.
Email your prompt responses with a short bio (if you have not recently submitted to me) and a suggested image to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com.
You can also participate on Instagram by tagging your writing/art with:
#WeWillNotBeSilenced
#stitchypoet
Submit by email to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com for publication
Dr. Pragya Suman is another valued contributor to Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project. She recalls: “I came to know about Candice Louisa Daquin through social media and she invited me to participate in Indie Blu(e)’s anthology on Indian women poets, entitled: The Kali Project. Being an Indian it was quite a familiar topic to me and in my personal life, I am a devotee to Hindu rituals and mythologies.” (the notable poet Megha Sood, was co-editor on this anthology alongside Daquin).
“My poetry Amrapali is included in this project, which is based upon the great legend of Indian history. The Spiritual transformation of Amrapali from Nagarvadhu (bride of city) to a saint is a story of infiniteness, different shades of life representing an ocean included in drop. Vivid faces of deities like Kali, Durga, Laxmi, Saraswati are very much adorable to me. The Kali Project is a unique collection in it’s representation of various figments of womanhood, and it was this, which drew me to submit.”
“In my personal life I believe in mysticism and my literary likings are tilted towards postmodernism. Pluralism and relativism are more practical in comparison to any abstract truth. Spirituality is a personal belief and I believe we should not be indulgent in making it an open debate.”
“I like to keep my pen between two extremes of literary movements that are; art for art’s sake and realism. Acute and sharp observation are much more important for a writer.”
“Since beginning my work as a poet, I have written two books. My first bookLost Motherwas written during the first lockdown of corona. My second bookPhotonic Postcard(you can purchase this HERE) is written in the prose poetry genre.”
Death dipped in the Ganga
The limpid drops squirted
out of lip corner
As mother tried to put the spoon
Tepid eyes of father twirling
On the death bed
My mother saw–
Death in garmented flash
Exit – the orbit moat
And that day death dipped in the Ganga
(Footnote: In Hinduism it is a sacred tradition to put Ganga water in the mouth of a dying person. It is believed that after death a person would get salvation).
Some reviews of my books:
“I have really enjoyed reading Photonic Postcard. I especially liked the complex and beguiling play of ideas and images and the imaginative way Pragya uses the Prose Poem form.” – Paul Hetherington, Professor of Writing and Head of International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra University, Australia.
Dr. Suman’s book: Photonic Postcard.
“I love Photonic Postcard . There are so many poems I love in it –my favorite is “Mother’s Postcard” it’s beautifully crafted. I am so thrilled she is raising the profile of prose poetry in India.” Cassandra Atherton, Professor of writing and Literature, Deakin University.
“By following the language written by the Indian Author Pragya Suman, I always felt that she was whispering in her rhetoric and words. And this whisper takes many forms and images. It is nice to follow those pictures and forms to see this enrichment in this beautiful color and unique language.” Dr. Anwer Ghani, Author and Doctor from Iraq.
Dr. Suman is the Founding Editor of the respected ARC Magazine.
“Poetry is, among many things, the art of saying the unsayable. Pragya Suman’s poems achieve this challenge, inviting the reader to enter the space of her poetry and use their imaginations as a continuation of the ineffable. Her poems rely on diverse shifts of gestalt patterns, mysterious as paintings by surrealists. Enter wit and humor, hallmark features of her work, and her poems, oftentimes psychologically complex, become accessible to the average reader.” David Thane Cornell, American Author.
Arc Magazine, created by Dr. Suman and a valued addition to the literary world.
You can purchase the ARC Poetry Anthology via Amazon (by clicking HERE).
Biography
Dr. Pragya Suman is a specialist doctor from Bihar, India. She is a doctor by profession and a writer by passion. Her poetry, reviews, and fiction have been published in many magazines and anthologies. She has achieved certificates of excellence from many literary forums and the Gujrat Sahitya Academy. She won the Gideon poetry award summer 2020. Her debut book Lost Motherwas published in 2020. Her second book Photonic Postcard is published by Ukiyoto Publishing, Canada. Photonicpostcardis a collection of Prose Poems.
Dr. Suman’s first book Lost Mother. Gideon Poetry Prize Winner.
Dr. Pragya Suman is the founding editor of Arc Magazine. Arc Magazine is a triennial literary journal with spring, summer issue, and autumn issues of Arc Prose Poetry Anthology which comes in the fall of the year.
Writing is her passion which she inherited from her father. Her Father, the late Triveni Prasad Yadav was a civil engineer by profession who always kept his library up to date. Her mother was a housewife and a real motivator. Dr. Suman’s husband Dr. Bisheshwar Kumar is also a doctor. She is the mother of a daughter named Vatsalya.
Her poetry mentor is David Thanne Cornell, for whom she has high regards. Her poems are weekly broadcast from universal vision radio Mexico. HERE
Indie Blu(e) Publishing is extremely proud to showcase and highlight our anthology contributors including superb world poets. Sharing their accomplishments may speak for themselves but sharing their work and passion reminds us why we put together anthologies and the joy of working with multi-talented poets and artists throughout the world. http://www.indieblu.netTo read Dr. Pragya Suman’s valuable poetic contribution in Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project – get your copy via Amazon HERE or any good bookseller.
Indie Blu(e) Publishing 