The Gift of Words: Softly Glowing Exit Signs – Georgia Park

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Softly Glowing Exit Signs is a photo album of a life lived intensely and painfully, but really lived, and survived. As with any heroine, Georgia Park is who we look for at the end, walking through that fire, not intact, not okay, but absolutely capable of going on. Georgia Park is a woman growing up through these pages, into a survivor, someone you want to know because she’s damn clever, fiendishly smart, and desperately real. She doesn’t try to be cool or sexy, she’s so beyond the usual cults and tropes, her maturity lies in her willingness to tell it as it is.

“The takeaway from reading Softly Glowing Exit Signs is that the writing is real life, and that overall poetry is real life, and that real life can be measured and unmasked within writing itself. When reading Softly Glowing Exit Signs I felt I was left in a room with Georgia Park, and she is telling me everything with a vulnerability she has not shown many people. It left me needing to read more, or sit and listen because anything else would be unjust.

Conclusively, Softly Glowing Exit Signs feels exactly like spending hours, being up all night, with a person bearing their soul, to which all you can be is silent, and listen, and all you can say is, “Thanks for sharing all of this with me.”

-Timothy Gager

“You will quickly find when you get to the end of the first prose piece in this book, that Park is serving the imagery of her work without warning labels or protective coatings. Raw and visceral are the best words to describe how she delivers her amazing talent in Softly Glowing Exit Signs and it packs a very powerful punch early out of the gate.

She takes the reader on a journey of heightened emotions and unflinching looks into the everyday reality of our world. The settings and the props for the stage of this performance would seem to be mundane facets of daily life. But, with Park’s expert hand, they are arranged to form vast murals of expression that one would not normally consider when taking in such sights.

In short, Softly Glowing Exit Signs is a masterpiece work by Georgia Park and should be included in the library of all of those who admire the intricacies of human existence and the beautiful moments that can be found in even the most challenging of circumstances.”

-Eric Syrdal,  Pantheon

“Georgia Park is a natural at what she does, she breathes words out, right into your face. “

-Candice Louisa Daquin, Pinch the Lock

Softly Glowing Exit Signs is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Chapters/Indigo, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1951724023

About the Author

Georgia Park is the author of Quit Your Job and Become a Poet (Out of Spite) and Softly Glowing Exit Signs. Her work has been featured in several books and
literary magazines, and she has been asked to speak on the subject of creative writing at several educational institutions,
most recently Boston University.

Softly Glowing Exit Signs explores her wild romp from dysfunctional childhood to semi functional adulthood.

The Gift of Words: As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad

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As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad is an anthology of poetry, prose, essay, and art inspired by the unprecedented events of the year 2020. It embraces fierce and raw creative works relating to life during the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump, and the economic uncertainty and horror of the last eight months. One hundred and fourteen writers and artists spanning ten countries and 30 states are represented in this powerful volume. It is both a story of survival and an act of resistance.

“As the World Burns is an outstanding collection of prose, poetry, and art that brilliantly illuminates the monumental events weighing upon our world, it’s communities and families, friends, and neighbors. The anthology gives a voice to myriad emotions that have settled into hearts and souls worldwide, yet stick in our collective throats, unable to be spoken, leaving a wake of communal helplessness. As The World Burns has accomplished the difficult task of translating our grief, fear, anger, disillusion, and uncertainty, into a glorious tapestry shining with strands of hope. The commonalities feed our sense of community, optimism, and promise (Allie Nelson – Redbird “there is not much constant in nature but effervescent change, I am the bones of winter, and it’s only in planting beauty that we can hope”). 

Within each piece, I found a passion that echoed my perceptions, whether the subject matter was racial injustice (Robert Okaji – If We Burn “and which assemblage of words could reorder these deaths into comprehension”), pandemic (Aakriti Kuntal – Forward  “because sometimes just breathing again is moving on”), climate change (Rachel Tijou – I Don’t Recognize This World “earth crumbles with the weight of our greed”), police brutality (Erin Van Vuren – Revolution “You were never meant to be a tragedy. You are, and always have been… a revolution.”), greed (A. Shea Holding On “if we only held on to life every day like we do when we are afraid of losing it.”), or political division (Dustin Pickering – The Price of Power  “being is timeless and belongs to us all”).

This collection deeply reverberates my spirit of hope, that together, we can lift one another up and work towards regenerating a world that values life, nature, peace, equality, reason, and truth.”

–Laurie Wise, blogger, A Wise Woman Writes

As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13: ‎978-1951724047

The Gift of Words: All the Beginnings of Everything – Kindra M. Austin

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All the Beginnings of Everything is a tour du force, one woman carrying the kaleidoscope of her family tree. In many ways, phantasmagoric in its debt to allegory, metaphor, and visceral self-talk. It’s a world outside of time, revealing how everything started and the patterns we never see tattooed beneath our skin, multiplying with every choice. All beg the questions, what is fate, and what is within our control? Can we save ourselves and others from prior outcomes? Will the tapestry of our ancestors dictate our own destiny, irrespective of our effort to be free?

“Austin has, yet again, created a masterpiece. All the Beginnings of Everything is a sensational collection which spans what feels like a lifetime. Separated into seven parts, Austin explores more in this collection than I feel she ever has done before, without sacrificing her trademark style. Her words remain sharp, raw and honest.”

-Kristiana Reed, Flowers on the Wall

“Intense, melancholic and at once, encapsulating love; Austin’s journey comes full circle. The entire book is testament to the strength of a feminine spirit this world cannot entice to stay quiet. For that, we are all better off.”

-Nicholas Gagnier, The Olivia and Hale series

“You couldn’t if you tried, categorize Austin’s ‘style.’ Not because she doesn’t have any, she almost gleams with it, but because she’s already danced away from the little box you were going to put her in before shocking you with another tongue. There’s something infinitely unpredictable and erotic about an unapologetic, hot-under-the-collar female writer who takes no prisoners; “I’ve defiled my own name.” (Slick).

Austin knows how much spice to add and swims between the blatantly sensual to the darkest coves, and then out into the light where she exposes her truths. Her voice doesn’t remain the same, there’s obvious influences, but she’s all things, the female Bukowski, the smart Joan Didion, then Tennyson takes over and gets epic. It never gets staid. Austin is a writer you want to befriend and talk to all night long over many drinks. You feel you’d find the riddle to the universe if you survived it.”

-Candice Louisa Daquin, Pinch the Lock

All the Beginnings of Everything is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Chapters/Indigo, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1732800090

About the Author

Kindra M. Austin is an author from Michigan, USA, and the co-founder of Indie Blu(e) Publishing. She is an advocate for mental health awareness, sexual trauma survivors, and for the LGBTQ+ community. Her debut novel was released in 2017; she has since written and published two other novels, as well as four poetry collections. A neo-noir novella, The Killing Holiday was released in October, 2021. Other written and editorial publications include contributions to We Will Not Be Silenced, SMITTEN, As the World Burns, Through the Looking Glass, and But You Don’t Look Sick. Austin has also written for The Mansfield Pride magazine, an annual periodical out of Ohio. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, and other major online retailers.

The Gift of Words: SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like: Poetry by Women for Women an Anthology

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SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like is an anthology of love poetry by 120 lesbian and bisexual women ranging in age from 15 to 87 from around the globe. This is a book that should be gifted. In spite of its implied audience, Smitten is not just for women who adore women. It is for those whose hearts twist and skin prickles at romance, who know the flight of butterflies in their stomachs, who long for the feeling of home in another’s heart.

“This is poetry that penetrates into the heart of not only the experience of lesbian love, but into what love means to the human psyche. These are emotions that live in each of us; that they are expressed here with a uniquely feminine interpretation truly enriches the palette of lesbian literature.

Women poets have here found a stage upon which they can present their passions and intimate feelings openly and in unison. SMITTEN brings the beauty and intricacies of women’s love for each other into a unique and captivating presentation. With the publication of this volume, Indie Blu(e) remains at the forefront of giving lesbian literature a new and important direction.

Lesbian writers have long suffered the neglect of history and the close-mindedness of the world of literature and have yet somehow managed to rise above the indifference and the prejudice to express their distinctive creativity. The women represented in SMITTEN are strong voices confidently expressing their individuality. Perhaps Sappho verbalized it best when over two thousand years ago she wrote:

“May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.“

Yes, that is the kind of poetry to be found within the pages of SMITTEN.”

-Erik Klingenberg, blogger, nightpoetry

“Love doesn’t have just one “look” to it and I thank SMITTEN for reminding readers of that.

Love transcends race and gender.”

– Christy Birmingham, Versions of the Self

“Too often we sideline LGBTQ+ work as a genre of its own, when it should be mainstream; literary works which are written by people to be enjoyed by people, no matter what their race, sexuality, gender and/or religion.

Yet, until this happens, I applaud Daquin and Indie Blu(e) Publishing for brazenly making a stand. Until labels are but words and not identifiers, it is important that writers like those in this collection share their voices and stories, ever-lasting love and heartbreak, and their hopes and fears, to remind the literary world they will be heard, no matter what the response may be.”

-Kristiana Reed, Flowers on the Wall

SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like: Poetry by Women for Women an Anthology is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Chapters/Indigo, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13:‎ 978-1951724009

The Gift of Words: The Lithium Chronicles: Volume One – Nicole Lyons

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Bestselling Canadian poet Nicole Lyons weaves together beloved pieces from her previous volumes Hush, I Am a World of Uncertainties Disguised as a Girl, and Blossom and Bone with new writing into powerful documentation of her journey as a writer. Her poetry and prose are wholly relatable, taking us deep inside the heart, and the human condition. Unafraid to bare her soul, she shares her struggles skillfully crafted with every line, giving the reader permission to take a glimpse into their own. Her readers are sensitive and smart, and Lyons understands this. JUST YOU WAIT says it all, “Be patient, pretty little tragic one, the real suffering has not yet begun.”

“If we ever needed a poet laureate of brave, broken, real people who survive the darkness, Nicole Lyons would get my vote, as she is my queen of hearts. She’s a heart breaker, a heart mender, a best friend, a warrior, a solace, a rage against the dying light and a new element in the natural world that they haven’t yet named. Hell, I’m fairly sure she makes the sun shine and thunder roar. Such is her own, wild, untamed and brilliant voice.”

-Candice Louisa Daquin, Pinch the Lock

“Nicole Lyons is one of the most exciting, vital poets of our generation. The Lithium Chronicles is her most ambitious and brazen work to date, and she delivers above and beyond. Nicole’s ability to delve deep into the human psyche, unapologetic, is her gift to the world. Penning a full range of raw, honest, rage and brutal emotion in six lines is her mastery and magic.”

-Jacqueline Cioffa, The Red Bench

“Nicole writes with desire and hunger, and these passionate qualities show through every word she writes. Rainbow Rowell once wrote, “She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” That is how I feel about The Lithium Chronicles. It is art, a collection of writing that makes you feel deeply and also makes you feel understood on a level that is not always there in society or our day-to-day lives.”

-Allie Burke, Paper Souls

The Lithium Chronicles: Volume One is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Chapters, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13: ‏978-1732800045

About the Author

Nicole Lyons is a force of nature disguised as a writer, a social activist, a voice for the downtrodden, and a powerful poet with a delicate touch. She is an award-winning poet and bestselling published author.

Her work has been featured on CBC Books as well as numerous online magazines and print anthologies.

Nicole was inducted into The Mental health Writer’s Guild in 2015 for her work on The Lithium Chronicles, Psych Central, The Mighty, and the International Bipolar Foundation.

In her free time, Nicole volunteers as a speaker and event coordinator with a Canadian non-profit that focuses on suicide awareness and prevention in children and teens.

She lives a good life in beautiful British Columbia with her brilliant daughters and an amazing husband.

From a sunny porch in beautiful British Columbia, Nicole is enjoying a glass of wine and working on her next collection of poetry.

To connect with Nicole on social media, follow her below:
Facebook: @nicolelyonspoetry
Instagram: @nicolelyonspoetry
Twitter: @nicolelyonspoet
thelithiumchronicles.org