Coming 2024: New Poems by Franz Wright
Coming Spring 2023: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School
We’re excited to reveal the first title in our 2023 catalog: “Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate”: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School, by Leo A. Lensing.
Coming Spring 2023
Leo Lensing’s vivid and critical account of the poet Frank Stanford in high school.
Lensing was a classmate of the poet Frank Stanford at Subiaco Academy, a college preparatory school for boys run by Benedictine monks at Subiaco Abbey that towers over the hamlet of Subiaco, Arkansas, near Paris, Arkansas on State Highway 22 between Little Rock and Fort Smith. Stanford transferred to Subiaco from the public high school in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in 1964; he and Lensing graduated on May 27, 1966.
Vivid, critical, and erudite, this memoir draws on archival research, interviews with monks, classmates, and other contemporaries, the growing body of Stanford scholarship, and Lensing’s original close readings of Stanford’s poems. The book illuminates previously unexplored corners of the poet’s adolescence and early development as a writer and a thinker, especially in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation.
Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate will be available for pre-order in late winter 2023 and copies will go out in the mail in the spring.
To request a digital review proof, titles for resale or institutional collections, or other information, contact us: publisher[at]foundlingspress.com.
About the Author: Leo A. Lensing
Leo A. Lensing is professor of Film Studies emeritus at Wesleyan University and lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. He is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and writes occasionally for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His publications include The Anarchy of the Imagination (1992), a selection of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s essays and interviews, and Arthur Schnitzler’s Träume (2012), a German edition of the Viennese writer’s dream journal.
Pre-Order Strays Pack Six: Powell, Jarboe, Falck
We’re thrilled to announce the lineup for Strays Pack Six: D.A. Powell, Canese Jarboe, and Noah Falck.
Launched in January 2020, the Strays series comprises packs of original “stray” poetry, with three poets in each pack. Strays have included sequences, experiments, crowns, scraps, fragments, miscellanea, and more. Check out previous packs in out store.
Pre-order Pack Six and check out the original cover art by each of the poets below.
Orders will ship in September 2022.
D.A. POWELL
D. A. Powell's books include Repast, Useless Landscape or A Guide for Boys, and Chronic. Powell received the 2019 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at the University of San Francisco.
CANESE JARBOE
Canese Jarboe is the author of the chapbook dark acre (Willow Springs Books, 2018) and a 2022 Nō Studios Artist Grant recipient. Their recent work has appeared in Southeast Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. From rural southeastern Kansas, Canese splits their time between the farm and Wisconsin where they are a PhD student in creative writing and AOP Fellow at UW-Milwaukee. More at https://www.canesejarboe.com/.
NOAH FALCK
Noah Falck is the author of Exclusions (finalist for the 2020 Believer Book Award) and Snowmen Losing Weight. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Poetry Daily, Poets.org, and have been anthologized in Poem-A-Day 365 Poems for Every Occasion. He lives and works in Buffalo, New York. More at https://www.noahfalck.org/.
Teaser: Pack Six Covers
Our 2021 Wallace Award Winner: Rachel Stempel's Interiors
L to R: Rachel Stempel and Julie Molloy
The third biennial Wallace Award from Foundlings Press goes to the poet Rachel Stempel.
The Wallace Award—a prize we introduced in 2017—honors a chapbook and pairs the winning poet with a guest book artist to create original cover art for the publication. The award is named for Wallace “Wally” Canham, Art Director Darren Canham’s dog and our little band’s beloved mascot, lodestar, and occasional production assistant.
2021 Wallace Award Finalists
Submissions for the 2021 Wallace Award opened in late fall 2020. This year saw the largest-ever batch of entries. From this outstanding field, Foundlings Press recognized the following finalists:
Eric Benick
Shantha Bunyan
Selena Cotte (@selenacotte)
Kristen Steenbeeke (@ksteenbeeke)
Rachel Stempel (@failed captcha)
Rachel Stempel and Interiors
Rachel Stempel, winner of the 2021 Wallace Award from Foundlings Press, is a genderqueer Ukrainian-Jewish poet and educator. They are a staff writer at Up the Staircase Quarterly and EX/POST MAGAZINE and a poetry editor at MAYDAY Magazine. They are the author of the chapbook BEFORE THE DESIRE TO EAT (Finishing Line Press 2022) and their work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Porter House Review, New Delta Review, Penn Review, and elsewhere. They currently live in New York with their rabbit, Diego.
Rachel’s chapbook Interiors will be available for purchase in winter 2021.
Follow: @failedcaptcha
2021 Guest Artist Julie Molloy
Julie Molloy is an illustrator, designer and art director at Block Club, an award-winning branding and strategy agency in Buffalo. Her gallery work debuted in 2014 in her solo show, Inside Voices, a series exploring the relationship between our public faces and private lives. She has since been featured in The Public and elsewhere, displayed her work at events with partners like Peach Mag, and taken on a wide variety of illustration projects, including designing the cover of Matthew Bookin’s chapbook Palace (Ghost City Press, 2018) and many private commissions. Based in Buffalo, she is currently living and working in Mexico City.
View: https://www.juliemolloy.com/
Follow:https://www.instagram.com/juleeclip/
Previous Wallace Award Winners and Guest Artists
2017: Lytton Smith—My Radar Data Knows Its Thing—Order Here
Guest Artist: Stephen Fitzmaurice
2019: Nicholas Molbert—Goodness Gracious—Order Here
Guest Artist: Edreys Wajed
Foundlings Press Announces 2021 Catalog and Subscription Service
OK, so we’re a little late. Although we’re almost four months into the new year, we’re pleased to announce our 2021 catalog. We hope you’ll agree that it was worth the wait.
Our 2021 lineup includes two full-length poetry collections, a bilingual anthology of poems and narratives from the Mexico-U.S. border, the 2021 Wallace Award winning chapbook, and the continuation of our Strays series with two new packs, featuring seven fantastic poets.
Additionally, for the first time, Foundlings is offering a tiered subscription model for book and merch purchases. While books, chapbooks, zines, and more will still be available directly on our website, friends and fans can subscribe through our Patreon page and automatically receive new titles as we release them: https://www.patreon.com/foundlingspress.
Full-length releases: Andrew Grace’s Sancta and Marta Del Pozo’s Hunger of Images
Our year kicks off in earnest in June with the release a new edition of Sancta by Andrew Grace, originally published in 2012 by Ahsahta Press, which ended its run last year. The book will feature a new cover design by our own Darren Canham, which we’re pleased to reveal today. Sancta is available now for pre-order and scheduled for shipment in June.
In August Foundlings will publish Hunger of Images by Marta del Pozo. The collection was originally published in 2016 a Spanish-language edition as Hambre de imágenes by Alhulia Press, and received the Antonio Gala poetry prize. Foundlings will publish a new bilingual edition of the book, featuring translations by the author. The book will also feature a new cover with original art by Claudio Abate, the late Italian photographer. Hunger of Images is available now for pre-order and scheduled to ship in August.
2021 Wallace Award Winner: Rachel Stempel’s Interiors
Foundlings Press has selected poet Rachel Stempel’s chapbook Interiors as the winner of the 2021 Wallace Award. Guest artist Julie Molloy will design original cover art for the manuscript, which will be out in winter 2021. We’ll be sharing more information about Rachel and their winning manuscript soon.
Anthology: Border poems and narratives
In December Foundlings will release a bilingual anthology of poems and narratives from the Mexico-U.S. border, edited by Gabriela Zavela and Peter Temes. Zavela is the Executive Director at Resource Center Matamoros and President and CEO of Asylum Seeker Network of Support. Temes the founder and president of the Institute for Innovation in Large Organizations (ILO) and the author of several books, including, with Gerry Crinnin, the poetry collection I Know You Know, and with Florin Rotar, We The People: Human Purpose in a Digital Age: A Guide to Digital Ethics for Individuals, Organizations and Robots of All Kinds. Together, Zavela and Temes have worked with migrant writers predominantly from the refugee camp at Matamoros, Mexico to collect poetry and personal narratives spanning over five years of migrant experiences.
Strays returns: two packs, seven poets
Strays, our scrappy series of hand-bound micro-publications, will also continue, thanks to the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts and its DEC Grant program, administered locally by Arts Services Initiative (ASI). Pack 4, out this summer, will feature original “stray” collections by Mary Ruefle, Julianne Neely, and Rachelle Toarmino. Pack 5, available for pre-order in December, will feature original poems by Derrick Austin and Jessica Fjeld along with Nicholas Rattner’s translations of the Spanish poet Juan Andrés García Román.
Strays Pack 4 is available now for pre-order.
Foundlings Press Subscription Service
All the titles mentioned above will be available for pre-order in our online store soon. Now, readers also have the option of subscribing to receive new titles automatically.
Since our beginnings as a magazine in 2015, Foundlings has been on an uneven journey toward a sustainable publishing model. As a small, volunteer-run operation without institutional backing or foundational grant support, we discovered that traditional small press publishing and distribution models would inevitably lead us to insolvency. We have been lucky, though, to welcome and grow a base of dedicated and supportive readers readers. To stay close to those readers, reach an even wider audience, and keep our book prices affordable, we’re now going to offer our titles via monthly subscriptions.
We’re debuting the following patron tiers through Patreon:
Fans - Chip in $2/month for our eternal gratitude and recognition on a new patrons and supporters page of our website (under construction).
Friends - For only $4/month, subscribe to our Strays series. That means you’ll get two packs a year - totaling six limited-edition original works by a wide variety of poets and writers.
First Readers - For $8/month, subscribe to the Strays series, all of our full-length poetry releases, and our chapbooks - and get free digital downloads of all the hard copies we send you.
Constant Strangers - For only $10/month, you won’t miss a thing* - we’ll send you every full-length title, chapbook, zine, limited edition release, Strays pack, and anthology or collection that we publish.
*Almost. This doesn’t include hardcovers or coffee table books. We’ve never published a hardcover edition or a coffee table book, but we might in the future.
Learn more and sign up to support at our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/foundlingspress.
Praise for Andrew Grace and Sancta
In Sancta, divinity irradiates. The afterlife approaches nuclear, dangerous and fascinating, a mysterium tremendum fascinans that can kill you with overexposure.
—Kascha Semonovitch in The Rumpus
Sancta dismantles the weighty abstractions of God, loss, redemption, and loneliness. And there, Grace finds himself standing in the middle of a wilderness. This is the book’s thrilling core—a space that does not dissipate after study, that is steadfastly interior and exterior, self and circumstance.
—Daniel Moysaenko in The Volta
Praise for Marta del Pozo and Hunger of Images
It is a collection that rewards multiple rounds of reading, lingering, holding lines in suspension, dipping. The effect of moving through the poems is like watching Marker’s San Soleil. There’s a mesmerizing drift into and out of stages of consciousness, and rich philosophical ruminations on the ravenousness of the eye, along with the vexed desire to represent, to seize and ingest the flux of experience as image(s).
—Jenny Xie
The Foundlings Press 2021 Lineup
Click through to learn more about Derrick Austin, Jessica Fjeld, Andrew Grace, Julianne Neely, Marta del Pozo, Nick Rattner, Juan Andrés García Román, Mary Ruefle, Rachel Stempel, Peter Temes, Rachelle Toarmino, and Gabriela Zavela.
About Foundlings Press
Foundlings Press is a literary publishing partnership based in Buffalo, New York. Foundlings earned a reputation as a pint-sized poetry powerhouse with the publication of the feted Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford (2018), a seminal anthology with over 30 contributors; and for Strays, an ongoing series of micro-publications that brings together work in packs featuring three poets twice annually. The press has also developed a robust catalog of full-length books of poetry and chapbooks. Foundlings holds a biennial chapbook contest that pairs the winning poet with a guest artist and book designer, and also facilitates the annual Ralph Angel Poetry Prize, honoring one poem with a limited edition broadside publication.
Strays Packs 4 and 5 are possible through the generous support of NYSCA and ASI.
New Title: Blazes, Full-Length Poetry Debut by Zack Grabosky
Goodness Gracious Launch Reading and Reception Jan. 16 at Buffalo Arts Studio
Buffalo Arts Studio
Tri-Main Center, Suite 500
6pm January 16, 2020
Join Foundlings Press for the official launch of Goodness Gracious, a poetry chapbook by Nicholas Molbert, winner of the 2018 Wallace Award.
The event will include a brief reading as well as a pop-up exhibition of original work by Buffalo Arts Studio Studio Artist Edreys Wajed, guest book artist for Goodness Gracious.
Foundlings will host an informal afterparty at the Central Park Grill, a short walk down Main St. from the reading venue.
About Nicholas Molbert and GOODNESS GRACIOUS
Winner of the Foundlings Press Wallace Award, Nicholas Molbert's Goodness Gracious explores creation, distance, landscapes, and the passing of lives. As guest book artist Edreys Wajed puts it, "These poems are light as feathers, hit hard as bricks."
Charged with memory and desire, haunted by heaven and lineage, Nicholas Molbert's poems are sluiced with physical and spiritual longing, unexpectedly tender, sometimes funny, and always moving.
- Mark Wagenaar
Originally from Louisiana's Gulf Coast, Nicholas Molbert lives and writes in Southern Ohio as a PhD student in poetry at the University of Cincinnati. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in journals such as The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Missouri Review Online, Ninth Letter, Permafrost, and Pleiades Book Review, among others.
Blurbs and purchase information here.
Retail orders available through SPD.
Watch and listen to Nicholas Molbert reading here.
Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford Enters Second Printing
Pre-order, pitch in, or help spread the news
One year from its publication on the 40th anniversary of the poet Frank Stanford’s death, the earth-turning anthology Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford is coming back in a second printing.
Constant Stranger is the result of the incredible generosity and energy of contributors, advisers, donors, and friends. This second print run, however, comes in the middle of our production cycle for several exciting 2020 titles and surprise projects—putting a significant strain on our finances. If you’d like to help our all-volunteer staff share this work with a wider audience, here are a few suggestions:
Forward this news to a friend or listserv
Post about us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram
Recommend Constant Stranger as a class text to someone teaching a course in poetry or literature
Ask your favorite independent bookstore to inquire about stocking copies
Ask your university library to acquire a copy
Send a tax-deductible donation to Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, earmarked for Foundlings Press
A donation of $50 or more will get you a copy of Constant Stranger signed by the editors along with Strays Pack 1 and Pack 2 as soon as they are available.
Praise for Constant Stranger
The diverse voices assembled in Constant Stranger suggest the time is right for common readers to discover this “poet’s poet” as well.
- Leo A. Lensing, The Times Literary Supplement
Constant Stranger offers readers a place to explore and to problematize the wholly unique effects of his poems, and to grapple with the charismatic but flawed poet behind them.
- Jack Christian, Rain Taxi Review
Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford was released August 1, 2018, celebrated with a small event in Buffalo, NY that month, and officially launched at the second Frank Stanford Literary Festival hosted by Open Mouth in Fayetteville, Arkansas in September 2018.
Foundlings Press Releases I Know You Know by Gerry Crinnin and Peter Temes
I Know You Know marks the first reunion (on paper) of Crinnin and Temes since the poets studied under Milton Kessler at Binghamton University in the 80s. Designed to be read inward from either cover, the book is a collision of poetry spanning the full length of these poets’ storied careers, which saw them take up teaching and writing positions on opposite sides of the country.
Ansie Baird's Porch Watch Release and Reception
Foundlings Press is pleased to announce the release of Porch Watch, a chapbook of poetry by Ansie Baird.
Baird will read from Porch Watch on May 9, 2019, at Just Buffalo Literary Center, 468 Washington St. #2, Buffalo, N.Y., 14203. The reception starts at 7pm. Beer, wine, and snacks will be provided, and copies of the book will be on sale.