An Imprint of Skywater Publishing Company
The lines in John Davis’s poems saunter and slide with a rhythm that shows music is the heartbeat and blood of his life. It carries him through youth in the `50s and`60s, through his work in a garage door factory, and even through a snowstorm as it keeps him from freezing when he helps a friend move. And [...]
While Frank F. Carden’s book, The Prostitutes of Post Office Street, did not win the grand prize for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, it was the winning selection for the General Fiction Category. Here’s what the judges had to say: “This book gives voice to what is usually shrouded in silence. Author Carden opens a [...]
Michael Loyd Gray’s latest novel, Well Deserved shares the same fictional small Midwestern town with his second, December’s Children: Argus, Illinois. There was an Argus the All-Seeing in Greek mythology. Gray could very well be referencing “Argus of the hundred eyes.” We readers are willing witnesses, as well. His choice offers some pleasing continuities, such [...]
“A son looks up to his father as a mentor, a provider, and shoes to fill. My Father’s Gloves is a collection of poetry from David Spiering reflecting on the unique relationship of father and son. Sure to make both parties look at their relationships and consider them. My Father’s Gloves is a unique read [...]
Argus, a small town in Illinois, is the home of four substantial characters whose lives are intertwined in this driven novel. I often find myself putting books into one group or another: character-driven or plot-driven. This book is an intriguing mix of both. Jesse, the small-time pot dealer, meets Raul, the just-off-the-docks Vietnam vet, both [...]
“Here, images proceed on their own journey to some place off the map. Here, metaphor leaps and grabs at the wind. An occasion for drama, pyrotechnics and language that pops and starts, Welvaert’s road trip West makes us want to do as its young and desperate protagonists and take off our shoes “to feel the [...]
Michael Gray and I were out of place together as middle-aged enrollees in the MFA Fiction program at Western Michigan University in 1994. We were both writing short stories and drawing about $7000 per year from our teaching assistantships. And trading on ten years as a newspaper reporter, Michael was already drawing praise for his [...]
Michael Loyd Gray is the quintessential Midwestern writer. In Well Deserved, he presents us with Argus, Illinois, during a time that was a crucible for the American people: the 1970s. With a keen sense of both time and place, Gray bores deep down into each of his characters, shoving aside all extraneous elements until we [...]
The characters in Scott Welvaert’s poems travel west, from Minnesota to Oregon, on a quest to reach the ocean before they die. No matter what began it, their journey enters the larger parade of American journeys, where landscape offers itself as a stage for ceremonies of escape, disappearance, forgiveness, rebirth. While the future “keeps the [...]
The infiltration of war into the daily lives of Americans, which was experienced during the Vietnam War is, in many ways, an ideal backdrop to explore the theme of justice. One could hardly avoid the bloody images of the conflict on their televisions. Nor could they escape the nightly body counts or the maiming of [...]
