The Winner of the Seventh Annual Chapbook Contest Is...

...The Kind of Girl by Kim Henderson of Idyllwild, CA. Contest judge Deb Olin Unferth selected The Kind of Girl out of a field of 113 submissions, and the chapbook will be published this coming July. You can sign up to receive the chapbook automatically when it launches by becoming a supporter here. 

Thank you to all the authors who submitted--we had a terrific field of entrants this year.

Our five finalists include:

Runner-up:

River Traffic by Emma Torzs of Missoula, MT

Reprieve and Other Stories by Amy Bergen of New York, NY
The 28 Mansions of the Moon by Lydia Suarez of Verona, NJ

This Is All the Orientation You Are Gonna Get by John Jodzio of Minneapolis, MN

What to Say to Aliens by Marc Sheehan of Grand Haven, MI

And our five semi-finalists include:

Basically People by Anji Reyner of Missoula, MT

Factories by Brandi Wells of Tuscaloosa, AL

Only Tourists Get Their Shoes Shined by Tyler Gillespie of Chicago, IL

Patient by Erika Mikkalo of Chicago, IL

The Measure Everything Machine by Mark Wallace of San Diego, CA

Congratulations to all of them!

Book Trailer for But Our Princess Is in Another Castle!

Check out the book trailer for B.J. Best's book of video game-inspired linked prose poems But Our Princess Is in Another Castle, publishing March 5!




Huge thanks to movie-maker extraordinaire Chris Weiher for creating this trailer!

About the book:
THE COLOR, NOISE, AND OFTEN CRYPTIC IMAGES OF CLASSIC VIDEO GAMES set the prose poems in B.J. Best’s But Our Princess Is in Another Castle in motion, but the poems soar far beyond their nostalgic springboards. And while Mario, Pac-Man, and pioneer families forsaken on The Oregon Trail populate these pixelated landscapes, this book translates the games and plays them in the real world, so an Asteroid becomes just one more star shot with lost love, Space Invaders might have communist sympathies, and God is just as bad at Tetris as the rest of us. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, the book’s levels explore how our past virtual lives can inform our present actual ones. A coming-of-age narrative turned love story turned philosophical journey, But Our Princess Is in Another Castle deftly combines two mediums into vivid poems as lyrical as they are imaginative.

Available for preorder in February and launching on March 5! 

Visit www.rosemetalpress.com for more details and to see where B.J. will be reading from the book this spring! 

There's a Sweet Review in Sweet: A Literary Confection...

...of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction edited by Dinty W. Moore. In it, William Bradley writes that :

Much has already been written about The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, edited by Dinty W. Moore. The general consensus is that the book is terrific, that Moore has assembled some great writers of flash nonfiction (including Jenny Boully, Robin Hemley, Brenda Miller, and Lee Martin) to write about this form, provide writing exercises to inspire the reader, and to present example essays. I wish, for the sake of being a contrarian essayist, that I could say I disagree with the popular assessment, but I’m afraid I don’t.

Then, he goes on to show the results of his attempts at three of the exercises in the book--so excellent. You can read the whole review and the resulting short short pieces here. Thanks, William!

Year End Round-up

2012 ended with a bang for Rose Metal Press!

For one thing, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction edited by Tara L. Masih made the annual Small Press Distribution year-end best-seller list for the fourth year running.

For another, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction edited by Dinty W. Moore made the annual SPD year-end best-seller list for the first time, and it just came out in September 2012!

And for a third, Shampoo Horns by Aaron Teel made Roxane Gay's list of 11 Favorite Small Press Reads of 2012 on HTML GIANT!

Stay tuned for more awesomeness and accolades in 2013.