NightBallet Press is enormously pleased to announce
the publication of
Dear Youngstown by Karen Schubert!
the publication of
Dear Youngstown by Karen Schubert!
In Dear Youngstown, poet Karen Schubert delves into stories meant to convey emotional truths about living in Youngstown, Ohio. From the opening poem, "Reading at the Old Ward Bakery" to the ending poem "After the New Yorker Festival," Schubert gently leads you through reminiscence and recall, offers observation, appreciation, and tribute to a city she clearly loves. In her poem "Letter to Youngstown, " she celebrates its diversity (an excerpt):
Dear kids of Italians, Slovaks, Lebanese,
Greeks, Puerto Ricans, Russians,
Southern Blacks, Connecticut Yankees,
Appalachians, Hungarians, Irish, Indians,
eat your corned beef, pierogis,
latkes, meatballs, baklava, gyros,
falafel, greens, fish fry, tamales,
eat your wings, your ribs, your foot
long, pickled knuckles, blood
sausage, pasties, poppadoms, gelato.
Dear Youngstown boasts bold and exciting cover art by Cleveland-area artist Timothy Gaewsky. It contains forty-eight pages of poems, including "Ella Fitzgerald Marries Ray Brown Dec. 10, 1947," "Sculpture Near Bliss Hall," "I Miss You, Chicken in Every Pot," and "Autumn with Parker." In "Autumn with Parker" are the delightful lines:
Lasterday my grandson told me I like it when you're here
and
Now I'll be the vampire he says. Strike three. You're out.
Karen Schubert is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including I Left My Wings on a Chair (Kent State University Press, 2014), selected by Kathleen Flenniken for a Wick Poetry Center Chapbook Prize, and Black Sand Beach (Kattywompus Press, 2015). Her poems, creative nonfiction, and interviews have appeared in Artful Dodge, Water~Stone Review, Versal, diode poetry journal, Aeolian Harp, The American Literary Review, and many others. Her awards include the William Dickey Memorial Broadside prize, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Headlands Center for the Arts. She has an MFA from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts, and is Director of Lit Youngstown in Youngstown, Ohio.
Dear Youngstown will be released TODAY, February 28, 2019, at A&C Studios (above A&C Beverage), 45 South Avenue, Youngstown, Ohio, 4:30 to 8:00 p.m. Please join us for an evening filled with art, music, dance, and the poetry of the incomparable Karen Schubert!
If you are unable to catch Karen Schubert in person tonight, you can still obtain Dear Youngstown by ordering it right here through PayPal! It's only $15 plus s/h. Order your copy today!