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Books! FREE BOOKS!

Whether you’re a student, or full-time member of the work force you deserve a little treat for making it through the month of September. Our treat to you is the announcement of our very first Instagram book giveaway!  Also a fun way to celebrate National Book Month, this will (hopefully) become an annual event that our followers can look forward to. We hope this will give us the chance to engage with you, our social media masses, and reach out to a wider literary audience. So, please hop on over to our Instagram, and get in on the free book action!

Here’s how you enter for the oh-so-coveted chance to win a free book of your choosing:

  • Make sure you are following our Instagram account: @newriverspress
  • Like the post announcing the book giveaway
  • Tag a friend in the comments (make sure they like the post and follow our page as well!)
  • Wait (impatiently) for the contest window to close (Deadline specified in the Instagram post)

We will enter your name, as well as your friends, into a blind drawing to decide the FIVE winners of the contest. We ask that there be only one entry per person. The winners will be announced one at a time via our Instagram account. In the posts following the announcement of the first winner, we will include a list of the remaining options for prizes.

The five books featured in the giveaway are titles from the last publishing season. The winners will have their pick of the following titles published at New Rivers Press:

Flucht by Michelle Matthees

It Turns Out Like This by Stephen Coyne

We Got Him by Elizabeth Searle

American Fiction Volume 15, and

Frozen Voices by Lynne Heinzmann

 

In the time following the announcement of the giveaway we will be releasing short summaries of each of the possible book prizes to let our participants get an idea of which book they would like to receive should they be drawn as a winner.

Happy National Book Month!

—Cameron S

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Tom o’Vietnam Cover Reveal

Bearing witness to the depths of eloquence and grief, anger and endurance, this upcoming release from Baron Wormser blends poetry, history, and dark wit. Coming November 10, 2017!

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AUTHOR BIO

Baron Wormser is the author of nine books of poetry and a poetry chapbook. He is the co-author of two books about teaching poetry and the author of a memoir along with a book of short stories and a novel. He teaches in the Fairfield University MFA program. He also is the Founding Director of Frost Place Converence on Poetry and Teaching in Franconia, New Hampshire. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He served as poet laureate of Maine from 2000 and 2005 and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Maine at Augusta in 2005. You can visit his website at baronwormser.com.

COVER DESIGNER BIO

Kendal Christenson is an undergrad at Minnesota State University Moorhead studying Graphic Design, Graphic Communications, and Art. She enjoys her puppy, spending time on the lake, and sandwiches of the toasted variety. When she is not working or studying, Kendal can be found telling jokes that are not funny and conjuring up sassy designs.

PRAISE for Tom o’Vietnam

“Baron Wormser has done something important with Tom o’Vietnam in the way that he has identified and precisely embraced a stunningly particular historical moment we casually refer to as ‘Viet Nam,’ as if the name was not a country but a dark shroud of moral collapse that hangs over us still. More remarkably, he has constructed this narrative from the point of view of a combat soldier, fighting in the American War in Viet Nam. Somehow there is a deep legitimacy to this soldier’s story because Wormser has been excruciatingly precise in his consideration and use of details—what Hemingway called ‘getting the words right.’ Built into Tom o’Vietnam‘s narrative is a clever, bright and engaging analysis of King Lear that parallels the primary narrative in richly imaginative ways. Inventive, immodestly challenging more than a few literary fictive conventions, and sometimes even beautifully written, Tom o’Vietnam is, at the same time, in a class by itself and resonant of great works about Viet Nam that have come before.”

—Bruce Weigl, author of Song of Napalm: Poems and The Circle of Hanh: A Memoir

EXCERPT

Endless swearing, a hoarse, braying wind of words, a weary, scornful, bemused reply to a war, swearing at those who were there and those who were not, at the army and the enemy, at death and life: everything blasted, withered, and coated by the tongue of injury. The question behind each insult and mockery being: What in the vast scheme of motley doings conspired to put me here? How did speeches spoken by gasbags of every stripe over decades come to endanger my modest network of blood? And if I wanted to be here, in my arrogance, manhood, confusion, enthusiasm, stupidity, patriotism, I must swear all the more. Who could have known?
Out, dunghill!
Swearing about food, rain, heat, women, officers, and, most of all, each other, each of us in the same unpredictable predicament. Swears coupled with other swears, vicious adjectives meeting nasty
nouns: motherfucking shithead, goddamn asshole. Semi-swears, the ritual male abusing of male anatomy: you worthless little prick, the voice measured—a judgment—or light-hearted, oh, by the way. Long strings of swears blurring into one run-on, guttural frenzy. Or sometimes a simple “look, bitch,” which starts a few shoves, shoulder pushes, and glares, the saying that you are a woman—a low blow. Swears for what seems like no reason, your voice mysteriously alive, proclaiming you are here in this faraway hell where, even on a good, un-murderous day, you are pissed. A reason can be found, if you want to go looking, but a lot of grim bile is in us already. Though not always bilious, everyone was once an infant gurgling, burping, unaffected by the droppings of time, though I think of guys like Briggs or Stone, who probably by the age of two were waiting to get bigger so they could get to Vietnam and start shooting people. Someone kicked them down the stairs early, the war on the home front. Or without the proclamation of reason or motive, like the tattoos: born to be bad, born to lose, born a conniving, chip-on-the- shoulder bastard.
Bastardy base? Base?
Briggs bought it, to use the lexicon you adopt when you see much random death. There wasn’t a lot of him left either. He was what they call “remains.” That doesn’t matter, does it? Whether there’s 98 percent of you intact or 32 percent. No open casket for him, if you like an open casket, and a lot of people do, death looking sort of rosy and peaceful, a time-out after the end of time. It’s hard to make up for the missing 68 percent, though you never want to underestimate modern technology. I remember a lot of deaths, some miscellaneous, some not. Some I heard about second- and third- and fourth-hand as facts became legends but they still got inside me.
Did you hear? Dost thou know me

PRE-ORDER NOW

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Online Just in Time: Red Weather Taking the World by Storm

New Rivers Press partners with Minnesota State University Moorhead to teach students the ins and outs of publishing, but we aren’t the only literary thing on campus. Many of the staff and interns are also involved with Red Weather, MSUM’s annual journal for prose, poems, and visual art.

This year, Red Weather is doing something a little different. In the past, we’ve only done one (very rarely two) print issues a year. Each one is filled with poems, prose, and visual art. These are all good, of course, but we felt this only captures a small fraction of the artistic talent on our campus and around the world.

Times they are a-changing, and so are we. This fall, we started online editions of Red Weather. These monthly editions allow us to have submission windows open virtually all year and are open to writers and artists worldwide. This first submission window alone, we had submissions from Turkey, Nepal, Russia, and South Korea. We are incredibly excited to give a platform to voices from around the world.

We are also excited to announce that the online editions will accept videos. That’s right—we can publish online things we could never do in a book. If you’re in theater, film, music, animation, or literally anything, you can now film your video or record your performance and submit it to us for consideration. Even if your artistic passion is not one of the categories listed, you can still send us a video of it.

Spoken word? Check.

Pottery making? Check.

Cake decorating? Sure, why not?

The first online edition will be published on our website on October 1. Even better, it’s entirely free! Our second edition, which is Halloween-themed, is currently open for submissions until October 15.

If you would like to submit, you can do so here: https://redweather.submittable.com/submit

Now go make some art!

-Laura

To view the previous print editions of Red Weather go here: https://www.newriverspress.com/product-category/red-weather/

Final.2014Issue1.Spine.5625    thirty-five    red-weather-thirty-six-cover

Written by Laura Grimm
Originally posted Sep 19, 2017
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Meet the Interns 2017-2018

Meet the Interns

New Rivers Press prides itself on being a teaching press. Because of our partnership with Minnesota State University Moorhead, we have the opportunity to take on students as press interns, or “Printing Devils,” in order to show them the ropes and give them a taste of the publishing industry. Our interns are responsible for numerous areas of operation at NRP, from managing social media to promotion of our books to communication with our authors and supporters as well as day-to-day clerical tasks. We would like to introduce to you our six fabulous interns—divided evenly between new and returning faces—and our managing editor who is in charge of them. Here’s to another wonderful year at the Press!

 

lauras-bio-picLaura Grimm

. . . is a junior at MSUM. She is double majoring in English and Mass Communications and is pursuing certificates in publishing and professional writing. She grew up on a dairy farm in Waconia, MN. This is Laura’s third year as an Honors Apprentice intern for New Rivers Press, and she’s also the managing editor for the MSUM campus literary magazine, Red Weather and the variety editor for the The Advocate, the campus newspaper. She hopes to one day work at a publishing press as more than an intern.

 

annabowtiepic1Anna Landsverk

. . . is a senior at MSUM and is in her third year as a New Rivers intern. She is an English major with an economics minor and publishing and professional writing certificates. Anna also works for the The Advocate and Red Weather, so she spends most of her time wandering the halls of the English department muttering about story ideas and deadlines. In her breaks from muttering, she watches a lot of anime, reads a lot of children’s lit, and collects a lot of adorable miniature things she doesn’t need.

 

Mikaila Norman

. . . is an MSUM senior (who will likely go on to become a super-senior) majoring in way too many things all at once. Her areas of study include English with a Publishing Emphasis, Creative Writing, Cultural Anthropology, and Fine Arts. She is an Honors Apprentice intern, this being her fourth year at the Press. During this time, she has helped edit manuscripts and maintain the website. She has enjoyed her internship with the Press greatly, and hopes to one day work in the publishing industry scene in Minneapolis. In her free time, she enjoys reading manga, kicking butt in ‘dem vidya games, knitting hats (so many hats,) and creating artwork. She loves drinking coffee and wishes she could hug all the dogs.

 

 

lauren-staff-bioLauren Phillips

. . . grew up in a small town in northern Illinois, but is originally from Iowa. She is currently a “University Studies” major at Minnesota State, Moorhead which basically means she’s exploring all the subjects that interest her. Her interests span the wide range from English to Neuroscience, so her freshman year will be used to find her niche. She loves to read, especially if it’s out on the lake or in front of a crackling fire. Anytime she’s not jamming to music or eating snacks (preferably Funyuns), she’s playing soccer, and will be part of the woman’s soccer team at Moorhead this year.

 

13315338_10209305542217081_9051698023330869880_nNayt Rundquist

. . . is New Rivers Press’s managing editor and the one in charge of all the aforementioned Printing Devils. He is a graduate of MSUM’s (now defunct) Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, and this is his third year as managing editor. When he is not too busy teaching classes, editing books, juggling all the things, and being the boss, he enjoys reading, being overly critical of movies adapted from print, and visiting the worlds he’s invented in his head. He is fond of comic books and prose books alike, and has recently become obsessed with novella-length works (the Binti trilogy, Like Hammers on Bone, The Ballad of Black Tom, and Grief is the Thing with Feathers to name a few). He lives with his jeweler/artist wife and their spaz of a tiny dog.

 

cameronCameron Shulz

. . . is a Senior at MSUM this year, majoring in English with an emphasis in Publishing. Her hobbies include reading, sleeping, eating, making the occasional sarcastic comment, and looking at cute baby elephant photos. Her favorite color is black, or grey, depending on her mood. Her favorite novel is The Girl who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen. Whenever she can, she makes the long trip home to Southeastern Minnesota to unwind and spend time with her family and friends. She is elated to be interning for New Rivers Press in her final year here and hopes that it will (somewhat) prepare her for life after graduation.

 

rachael-staff-bioRachael Wing

. . . is a senior at MSUM and is majoring in English with an emphasis in Publishing with a minor in English Writing. She aspires to work in marketing at a publishing house after graduation. This is her first year at New Rivers Press, and in addition to her internship, she is the head publicist for Red Weather, MSUM’s literary magazine for the second year. If Rachael is not curled up next to her mountain of books she has not yet read or watching Friends re-runs, she can easily be spotted jumping in puddles around campus and attending local theater productions. She looks forward to an exciting semester at New River’s Press!

 

Written by Mikaila Norman
Originally published Sep 7, 2017
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Design Interns

As part of New Rivers Press’s mission as a teaching press, each year, in addition to the student editing interns working on our books, we have a batch of student design interns designing the covers and interiors of all our publications. This year, our designers have been working hard since last fall to get our 2017 publications ready to print. Learn a little more about our amazingly talented designers below! Stay tuned, cover reveals are right around the corner!

Phuriwat Chiraphisit (American Fiction Volume 16) chiraphisit_amficis a Thai-born graphic designer, photographer, artist, and musician. After attending middle and high school in Northern India, he is pursuing a degree in graphic design and a minor in art therapy at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

christenson_tom-ovietnamKendal Christenson (Tom o’ Vietnam) is an undergrad at Minnesota State University Moorhead studying Graphic Design, Graphic Communications, and Art. She enjoys her puppy, spending time on the lake, and sandwiches of the toasted variety. When she is not working or studying, Kendal can be found telling jokes that are not funny and conjuring up sassy designs.

nagel_twsthsChristen Nagel (The Way She Told Her Story) will be graduating from MSUM with a B.S. in Graphic Communications and a Minor in English Writing. She is very passionate about art and writing and has wanted to be an author/illustrator since she was a kid. She have a big orange tabby cat that she is currently writing a children’s book about, which she will be illustrating in the spring. Nagel also really enjoy advertising and is currently helping out nonprofit organizations. Some of her other favorite things are tacos, puzzles, pandas, and crochet.

Brittany Schultz (Boy Into Panther) grew up in Reynolds, a small town in North Dakota. She is majoring in Graphic Communications with a minor in Marketing at MSUM. She loves being able to express emotions and feelings through her imagery and enjoys doing photography as a hobby.

Mandi Wahl (Man of the House) grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and has lived there her whole life. She has two brothers, one older and one younger, landing her wahl_man-of-the-houseright in the middle. Family is everything to Wahl, so most of her free time is spent with them if she’s not designing or hanging out with some friends. She has always been a creative and crafty person, so designing isn’t so much a job, but more of a hobby to her. She enjoys spending time outdoors, especially in the summer. She am always up for an adventure.

zaharia_deepEmily Zaharia (Deep Calls to Deep) is a third-year graphic design student with minors in Studio Art and Advertising. She aspires to be a graphic designer at an ad agency when she graduates.