Fiction:
SPACE
A Collection of Essays and Images Curated
by Shana Mabari and Andi Campognone
134 pages, hardcover, 7.5 x 9.25 inches, 20 photographs
$39.99
“Children at play, artists at work, and scientists measuring quantum effects share this in common: they are all creating reality.” – LEONARD SHLAIN
ABOUT THE BOOK
An intimate meditation on an almost infinite subject, Space aims to explode an ordinary everyday word into a dazzling prism via an exploration of some of the many interpretations of the term. Artist Shana Mabari asked more than a dozen individuals from dramatically different walks of life—from an astronaut and a filmmaker to an art critic and a musician—what they think about when they think about space. Their answers, which alternate with exceptional work from contemporary Southern California artists selected by curator Andi Campognone, invigorate and inspire, and in turn become fodder for reflection upon our relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the universe at large.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Andi Campognone has over 30 as an arts and culture leader in the southern California region. She is the Executive Director of AC Projects, a non-profit consulting organization focused on promoting arts and culture. Projects include developing museum exhibitions, public engagement, mentoring programs and book and film publications of historically relevant southern California artists. Campognone is also the Arts Manager/Senior Curator for the City of Lancaster’s museums. She is responsible for the development and maintenance of partnerships and community engagement initiatives with artists, businesses, stakeholders, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Los Angeles County Supervisors office, California Arts Council and higher level institutions. She develops curatorial direction for exhibition, educational and engagement programming and additionally leads the public art initiatives for the City of Lancaster. She has previously served the City of Pomona as Cultural Arts Commissioner where she co-wrote and implemented the City’s Master Cultural Arts Plan and the adopted Arts in Public Places Policy. She is the cofounder of Kipaipai, a professional development workshop for artists in Hawaii, California and New York. Campognone is on the Board of the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation and on the Board of the Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture. She volunteers as a regular speaker and mentor to art students at both the undergraduate and graduate level and is on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Arts Association. She is a member of ArTTable.
Shana Mabari is an American contemporary artist with a studio practice based in Los Angeles and Ibiza, Spain. Previously she has lived and worked in Paris, Northern India, Southeast Asia, and Tel Aviv. Central to Mabari’s practice are her ongoing investigations of the intersections of art and science, as evidenced by her sculptures, installations, and immersive environments that explore the dynamics of visual perception and the ways in which we experience physical space.
Zen Psychosis
by Shana Nys Dambrot
Photographs by Osceola Refetoff
172 pages, hardcover, 5 X 8 inches, 33 photographs
$34.99
Congratulations to Shana Nys Dambrot & Osceola Refetoff for Zen Psychosis being included in the 2020 L.A. Taco Book Guide: 32 L.A.-Centered Books to Read, Gift, and Get Inspired On.
https://www.lataco.com/best-books-los-angeles-2020/
Paul Cummins: The Collected Poems
Hardcover
148 pages
6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 978-0-9998452-9-5
Available Spring 2019
$24.99
Cover Images: Thumbnail / For Print / For Web
Paul Cummins, a renown educator and social justice activist, entered the world of poetry in 1966 while writing a doctoral dissertation on the poetry of twice pulitzer prize winning Richard Wilbur at USC. This book, selected from the nearly 600 poems written between 1966-2017, since then, offers a clear and often inspiring voice, with brilliant and sacred imagery all the while allowing for uncommon accessibility. This volume includes sonnets, prose poems, odes as well as various metered, and stanzaic poems.
Cummins, likens the absolute quiet that he requires to create as his own mini temple. Where usually the act of creation is deliberate, sometimes it startled Cummins: “Sometimes, poems just appear, such as ‘Red Rover’ which wrote itself in the my head while driving, and I had to pull over on the side of the rode to capture it.”
In addition to poems about everyday life, the subjects of this selection occasionally delve into literature and history as in “HCE: A Son-Not (?)”, and “Endsandbeginsand,” each providing a nod to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, in addition to war poems featuring subjects from Buchenwald to Nagasaki to Vietnam.
Cummins offers a rare blend of depth and accessibility. These poems, besides addressing the core issues of human experience, offer genuine aesthetic treats – unusual forms, rhyme and rhythm in synch, assonance and imagery. Even in poems seemingly simple, there is artistry to enjoy.
Brazen, A Painting and Poetry Collection
Hardcover Linen, Gold Foil, Dust Jacket
122 pages
5 x 8 inches
24 Illustrations
ISBN 978-0-9993153-3-0
$30
Four Los Angeles-based poets write and perform original poems inspired by the recent exhibition of Los Angeles based artist Kimberly Brooks. Brendan Constantine, Rich Ferguson, Luivette Resto and Marie Marandola will be performing at the Zevitas Marcus Gallery at 2:00 PM Sunday Oct 29th where advance reader copies will be available for guests. The book will be available for release in the spring of 2018.
Brendan Constantine
Brendan Constantine’s work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. His most recent collection is ‘Dementia, My Darling (2016 Red Hen Press). He has received grants and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches poetry at the Windward School and regularly offers classes to hospitals, foster homes, veterans, and the elderly.
Rich Ferguson
Pushcart-nominated poet Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed artists. He is a featured performer in the film What About Me? His poetry has been widely published, and his spoken word videos have appeared in international film festivals. His poetry collection 8th & Agony is out on Punk Hostage Press. His debut novel, New Jersey Me, is available through Rare Bird Books.
Marie Marandola
Marie Marandola is a badass feminist poet who received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is an editor for the literary press Meow Meow Pow Pow, and the former poetry editor of Lumina Journal. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, Fairy Tale Review, Lunch Ticket, and Dressing Room Poetry Journal, amongst others, and her poem “Poet Groupie” won the Academy of American Poets University Prize for Sarah Lawrence College in 2016. She now lives in San Diego, where she remains in the habit of picking up fallen bits of trees and giving them to people.
Luivette Resto
Luivette Resto, a mother, teacher, poet, and Wonder Woman fanatic, was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. Her two books of poetry Unfinished Portrait and Ascension have been published by Tia Chucha Press. She is a CantoMundo fellow and has served as a contributing poetry editor for Kweli Journal. Some of her latest work can be read in Entropy Magazine, Coiled Serpent anthology, Altadena Anthology 2015 & 2016, and an anthology of Afro-Latino poetry titled ¡Manteca! published by Arte Público Press. Currently, she lives in the Los Angeles area with her three children.
Keith Martin
Keith Martin is a community organizer and long time supporter of the LA literary community. He served on the Los Angeles poet laureate selection committee. He was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to the LA County Metropolitan Transit Authority Citizens Advisory Council. He serves on the Clinica Romero executive executive board as fundraising chair and homeless patient advocate. He is the Chairperson of the Golden State Bonsai Federation committee at the Huntington Library and Gardens bonsai pavillion. He volunteers as a Crossing Angel for CicLAvia and also at Beyond Baroque literary center in Venice.
Kimberly Brooks
Los Angeles based artist Kimberly Brooks integrates figuration and abstraction to explore a variety of subjects dealing with history, memory and identity. Brooks has solo exhibitions throughout the United States and her work has been showcased in juried exhibitions including curators from the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Brooks received her BA at UC Berkeley and studied painting at Otis and UCLA. www.kimberlybrooks.com.
Poems:
Red Sugar Blue Smoke
The Second Ovation Study
KABOOM
It’s been Thursday for two weeks
Just Moments After Eternity’s Musicians Had
Taken a Break to Retune Their Instruments
She
Side Effects
When Wilhelm Röntgen Visits the Farm
A World of Things
Talitha
In Advance of the Sage Smudge
If a Poet Writes About Herself in the Bathtub, and No One is Around to Care,
Can She Still Call It a Poem?
Angel/Mother/Goddess
The Myth of the Cave
These Violent Delights: A Novel
By Victoria Namkung
243 pages, Hardcover, 6.19 x 9.35 inches
ISBN 978-0-9993153-1-6
Publication Date: November 7, 2017
$29.95
At Windemere School for Girls, one of America’s elite private schools, Dr. Gregory Copeland is the beloved chair of the English Department. A married father with a penchant for romantic poetry—and impressionable teenage girls—he operates in plain sight for years, until one of his former students goes public with allegations of inappropriate conduct. With the help of an investigative journalist, and two additional Windemere alumnae who had relationships with Copeland as students, the unlikely quartet unites to take him down.
Set in modern-day Los Angeles, These Violent Delights is a literary exploration of the unyielding pressures and vulnerabilities that so many women and girls experience, and analyzes the ways in which our institutions and families fail to protect or defend us. A suspenseful and nuanced story told from multiple points of view, the novel examines themes of sexuality, trauma, revenge, and the American myth of liberty and justice for all.
Victoria Namkung’s journalism and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, and VICE, among other publications. She is the author of the romantic thriller, The Things We Tell Ourselves, and a contributor to the anthology, Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity. Victoria has taught courses at UCLA, UCSB, and 826LA, and resides in Los Angeles. Learn more at victorianamkung.com.
Upcoming Events
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Wine, Women, and Words “Literary Ladies” Panel
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Giracci Vineyard and Farms
16162 Jackson Ranch Rd
Silverado, CA 92676
Saturday, May 19, 2018
LitFest Pasadena “No More Mean Girls: A New Era For Female Friendship in Fiction” Panel
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Walter Girdner Studio
27 S. El Molino Ave
Pasadena, CA 91101
Listen to an extended interview with Victoria on LA Talk Radio (07:00 mark)
The Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association’s Q&A with Victoria
Victoria’s Op-Ed on stopping predatory teachers in Medium
Kirkus Reviews’ Book Report on These Violent Delights
PRAISE FOR THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS:
“… a worthwhile read. A sober, personable tale about the complexities of sexual abuse and its aftermath.” —Kirkus Reviews
“These Violent Delights is smart, suspenseful, unsettling, and only too relevant. I promise you won’t be able to put it down. Just don’t forget to breathe.” —Kim Askew, co-author of the Twisted Lit novels from Simon & Schuster
“A devastating yet empowering narrative of women banding together to bring the teacher who abused them to justice. It powerfully illustrates how the abuse affects them each differently, how institutions enable predators in order to protect their own liability, and the life-changing courage it takes to speak out. As more women refuse to stay silent in the face of sexual assault each day, These Violent Delights could not be more timely.” —Andrew Grant Jackson, author of 1965
“These Violent Delights is a deeply thought-provoking story about the ways abuse ripples through our lives. It’s for every woman who has ever been in a situation that could have ended with the question ‘but what were you wearing?’ In other words, this book is for every woman.” —Tiffany Hawk, author of Love Me Anyway
Press Contact: Holly Watson, holly@hollywatsonpr.com
Cover Images: Thumbnail, For Web, For Print
Author Photo: Thumbnail, For Web, For Print