Driving Late to the Party: The Kansas Poems by Jeff Worley

Driving Late to the Party: The Kansas Poems by Jeff Worley


80 pages
paperback
2012
$12.00

ISBN-13: 978-0-9854586-7-6

Praise for Jeff Worley's Poetry

The Only Time There Is
"Jeff Worley has carefully seasoned his considerable talent and fidelity to his craft, and his poetic voice now rewards us with this fine and various volume of poems on the enduring subjects-the living, the dead, and the human events that move us through our time." -Paul Zimmer

"Jeff Worley's deceptively simple narratives evoke an affirmative generosity of spirit. This is an alluring and unforgettable first book."-Ron Wallace

"Though it's the delicate, yet hard-edged love poems that I love best in this wonderful debut, there are pleasures on every page." -Stephen Dunn

Happy Hour at the Two Keys Tavern
"Jeff Worley is a poet of uncommon precision, whose sense of detail reminds me of the 'perfect pitch' of certain musicians-so that his poems seem to glow with an inner light, with the aura of a thing looked at with such love and attention it becomes a projection of the speaker's most inner self. This fine collection evokes the exhilaration provided by only the most accomplished and serious art. -Michael Van Walleghen

"Each poem in this collection is carefully crafted, built on a foundation of vigorous diction, acute perception and quiet epiphany. Worley's voice is measured and sure . . . a voice worth hearing." -The Wichita Eagle

Click here to order from Woodley Press
Click here to order from amazon.com

Peggy of the Flint Hills: A Memoir by Zula Bennington Greene, Edited by Eric McHenry

Peggy of the Flint Hills: A Memoir by Zula Bennington Greene, Edited by Eric McHenry

260 pages
hardback
2012
$20.00

ISBN-13: 978-0-9854586-5-2

"Peggy of the Flint Hills" was a beloved Topeka newspaper columnist, dispensing common sense and uncommon insight six days a week for 55 years. But her true masterwork was this little memoir, now seeing publication for the first time - a breathtakingly rich recollection of her childhood in the Ozark foothills and her young adulthood in the Kansas Flint Hills. With a full heart and a matchless memory, Peggy writes of the people and places that shaped her, offering readers a crystalline window into a long-gone world.

Click here to order from Woodley Press
Click here to order from amazon.com

Manuscript Readings on Hiatus

Woodley Press is currently in a manuscript reading hiatus, as books published has outweighed funds available to publish them. Sadly, we will need to pass on outstanding work, but we hope all of those interested in submitting to continue checking back.

Thank you for your support,

Dennis

Save Your Own Life by Amy Sage Webb

122 pages
paperback
2012
$15.00

ISBN-13: 978-0-9854586-0-7

These are stories rooted in Kansas soil, in country roads and small towns, in characters you swear you have met before, men and women who tug at your heart and get under your skin. The landscape where they live is both familiar and exotic, deeply felt and vividly described, from a writer clearly at home in the natural world. Save Your Own Life is a strong and satisfying collection, with language that can punch you in the solar plexus-just the right phrase, just what you have always known. -Sharman Apt Russell, author of Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist and Hunger: An Unnatural History

In Save Your Own Life Amy Sage Webb establishes herself as a major Midwestern voice who is not afraid to both love and critique the people of her region. Webb cares about her characters, and she instills them with personality and heart-and with needs we can both feel and understand. She knows the world of work, and what she turns her narrative lens upon teaches us something about who we are and how we can live: fully, completely, intentionally. Her characters' struggles-for love, for appreciation, for success-mirror our own. Webb is a writer who knows her stuff. From the details within her stories to the architecture of story itself, her hand is steady, her gaze is sure. -Kevin Rabas, author of Bird's Horn, Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, Spider Face

Reading Amy Sage Webb is a delight. Save Your Own Life is full of mismatched people attracting and repelling each other. Brothers are in love with the same woman at different times. An LA artist and KC food writer meet in his mis-built studio. The husband of a mentally ill woman remains "fixed and ever-blooming," like dreams doomed in a desert. In "The Memory of Water" a woman older than any in her veterinary class has the task of running donor horses until they die, but dealing with death brings her warmth and romance. "The Wedding Gift" is a gift in itself. The robust stories in Save Your Own Life are full of surprises, are clear, open and singing all through. -Thomas Fox Averill, author of rode and Secrets of the Tsil Café

Click here to order from Woodley Press
Click here to order from amazon.com

Point of Departure by Marina Jaffe

82 pages
paperback
2012
$12.00

ISBN-13: 978-0-9828752-9-2

In her dazzling first book, POINT OF DEPARTURE, Marina Jaffe explores regions of place and regions of identity in a collection of poems that is so much more than a travelogue. The poet interacts with street kids in Central America, writing poems with heart, but also with a hard eye at the unfortunate realities these children face. The book also examines the lives of fellow continent hoppers, including the tough decisions they make, towards or against conformity, society, and stasis. Poems also examine family and its legacy, its identity blueprint in a postmodern age.

Click here to order from Woodley Press
Click here to order from amazon.com

Everything I Learned by Age 40 by G W Clift

122 pages
paperback
2012
$17.00


ISBN-13: 978-0-9828752-6-1


Short stories of a unique milieu. Some are humorous and others are hard-hitting portraits of the characters and settings in Kansas and other places.


Click here to order from Woodley Press

This Ecstasy They Call Damnation by Israel Wasserstein

94 pages
paperback
2012
$12.00


ISBN-13: 978-0-9828752-8-5


"The poems in This Ecstasy They Call Damnation walk a razor's edge, bristling with intensity as they tackle the hard work of survival, both physical and spiritual. In this wide-ranging collection, Israel Wasserstein tells and re-tells myths, legends, Bible stories, and his own brilliant poems of Highway 54. The speedometer's always broken in this life, Wasserstein reminds us, and how we cope with this knowledge, and this lack of knowledge, seems to be at the heart of this rich, sure-handed debut." -Jim Daniels, author of Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry and other books

"An evocative and lyrical storyteller, Israel Wasserstein takes on Bible stories and zombies, politics and myth. Like the angels that "we might entertain...unaware" these poems bless us with startling beauty and intelligence as they plumb the depths of the human condition. A deft and stunning debut that lingers long after the last page has been turned." -Lisa D. Chávez, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico, author of Destruction Bay and In an Angry Season


Click here to order from amazon.com
Click here to order from Woodley Press