Girl in the Cave: A Round-Up

Tasha Cotter's Girl in the Cave is finally available for pre-order! An exploration of the south-central Kentucky landscape and a journey through the caves that lie underfoot, Girl in the Cave delves into the land and how it shapes our perspective. To learn more about Girl in the Cave, visit our catalog. To secure your copy and take advantage of our pre-order discount, visit our online store.

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Tasha recently spoke with Black Fox Literary Magazine about her chapbook, the duality within her poems of being trapped and being free, and how the landscape of Kentucky and Mammoth Cave National Park inspired and influenced her work:

I liked finding ways of linking the past to the present, the land being a marker for something we share in common. It felt like recovering history.

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In an interview at Speaking of Marvels, Tasha discusses her writing process, chapbooks that influence her work, and delves into her passion for place-based writing:

I love reading the names of cities, looking at the blank spaces, and thinking about what’s there.

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At Tree Light, one of our favorite ways to engage with the chapbooks we publish is through music. Music is sacred, remember? When editing, designing, printing, trimming, and assembling our chapbooks, there's always a soundtrack to the madness, an emotional marker for the labor of love (and glorious time-suck) that is handmade publishing. We ask our authors to compile a soundtrack for their work, and above is Tasha Cotter's soundtrack for Girl in the Cave. Whether you've already read the chapbook or are anxiously awaiting your copy to arrive, we think listening to Tasha's soundtrack is a wonderful entry point to her work or way to reorient or accent your experience with Girl in the Cave.

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And finally, whether you're currently reading as a blurber, reviewer, or interviewer, whether you've pre-ordered the chapbook and are counting down the days to release, or whether you just want to put a pin it, you can add Girl in the Cave to your Goodreads shelf--then shortly after November 28, the official release date, you can add Girl in the Cave to your bookshelf IRL.

New Month, New Chapbook Sale!

Throughout the month of August, we're running a sale on our first two titles of 2016:

Free shipping, as always.

Now Available: child in a winter house brightening

Introducing Abigail Zimmer's child in a winter house brightening:

The chapbook, which shattered our previous pre-order record, is a hybrid long poem that re-imagines the story of the ugly duckling. Susanna Childress calls it "lyrically deft," and m. forajter says it is "gorgeous & necessary."

Speaking of gorgeous, Jennifer Burak & Dan Spielman of Zerobird Studio Chicago (along with some minor assistance and moral support from cover artist Jess McIntosh and author Abigail Zimmer) worked diligently to make the stunning screen-print covers seen above and below. Huge thanks to Jennifer & Dan for printing one of our favorite covers to date!

You can read more praise for child in a winter house brightening here, grab your very own copy here, add it to your Goodreads shelf here, and explore more work from our cover artist, Jess McIntosh here.

C.J. Opperthauser Interviewed at Chicago Review of Books

C.J. spoke with Chicago Review of Books about poetry of place, cultivating productive writing environments, and even bourbon barrel-aged beer.

C.J. said of the poems in Cloud the Shape of Bedroom: "I was writing these poems for the purpose of performing them." Read more about the chapbook and C.J's process at ChiRB.

Cloud the Shape of Bedroom

C.J. Opperthauser's debut chapbook of prose poems, Cloud the Shape of Bedroom, is now available for purchase! Printed, trimmed, assembled, and hand-sewn in-house, this beaut of a book is released in a limited edition of less than 100 copies. To get your hands on your own, order through our store and enjoy free shipping anywhere in the US.

Now Available for Pre-Order: Cloud the Shape of Bedroom

For the next two weeks, you can pre-order C.J. Opperthauser's Cloud the Shape of Bedroom for a discounted price!

The chapbook, which will officially release April 20, has garnered praise from poets we admire:

"Read this book seven times and call me in the morning." —Chad Sweeney, author of PARABLE OF HIDE AND SEEK

"This chapbook's color is silver, its spirit is flesh, and its storm is sonic pleasure." —Catherine Wagner, author of NERVOUS DEVICE

"Cloud the Shape of Bedroom insists on this capability to observe, to alter, to transform, to dream while pushing itself to risk, to push deeper into what's possible when it comes to shaping and exploring the poem." —Carrie Lorig, author of THE PULP VS. THE THRONE

Distilled above, you can read the full praise for C.J.'s chapbook here, take advantage of our pre-order discount here, add Cloud the Shape of Bedroom to your Goodreads shelf here, and explore more work from our cover artist, Mary-Ann Kokoska here.

Sneak Peek: "On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County"

Today's the final day to get a pre-order discount for our first title of 2016, On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County. For a final sneak peek, J. Scott Brownlee reads the title poem from his chapbook:

Sneak Peek: "Wine Cups"

We're just days away from shipping out the first orders of On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County. While you wait for your copy to make its way to your doorstep, J. Scott Brownlee reads his poem "Wine Cups" for your anxious ears:

Now Available for Pre-Order: On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County

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For the next week, you can pre-order J. Scott Brownlee's On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County for a discounted price! We've spent the last few weeks trimming, folding, and sewing our hearts out in preparation for the chapbook's March 1 release, and we're excited to finally get this book out of our paper-cut hands and into yours.

Our first foray into saddle-stitching with thread!

Pre-order On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County—a book D.M. Aderibigbe says "provides an indispensable understanding of what makes us vulnerable, and damned, and distinctly human—now through March 1!

Looking Forward / Looking Back

As we get set to print and assemble the first title in our 2016 publishing queue, we're doing plenty of reminiscing on all that's happened since our little chapbook press was conceived nearly 5 years ago.

Our first chapbook, Susan Slaviero's Selections from The Murder Book was a beaut, featuring unique end pages from vintage science textbooks, cover art that elicited oohs and aahs at conferences and bookfairs, and poems that were lauded over, landing a spot in Best of the Net and also winning us our first Pushcart Prize!

Our second title, Necessary Objects, we released in 2013, and Molly Gaudry named it among her favorite and most influential chapbooks. 

Our third chapbook, Bye Sea, won praise in PANK as an "absolutely gorgeous" example of "inspired typography and design" and from Barrelhouse's Dan Brady, who named it among the best chapbooks of the year.

The next year we released our fourth and fifth titles, Pedro Ponce's Stories After Goya and Alexander York's The Vanity House. Ponce's off-kilter flash fictions received lots of love from PANK and Sharkpack Poetry Review for being wildly imaginative and deftly written. York's collection earned the praise of many for its memorable, "beautiful darkness."

So what's next? We've got a publishing lineup for 2016/2017 that we're ecstatic about:

J. Scott Brownlee - On the Occasion of the Last Old Camp Meeting in Llano County
Abigail Zimmer - child in a winter house brightening
C.J. Opperthauser - Cloud the Shape of Bedroom
Tasha Cotter - Girl in the Cave
Duncan Campbell - Joysong Demarcation
Jennifer Hanks - gar child

We're thrilled to be working with such a talented group of writers, to give their piercing words a home, and to partake in the utter joy of editing, designing, and building beautiful books. Here's to another year of organized chaos and stunning art!