Benu Press is an independent press committed to publishing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We believe in the transformative power of literature. To that end, we publish inspiring and thought-provoking books about social justice and equity.
January & February 2019—Open Reading
Throughout the months of December and January, Benu Press will open submissions for book-length manuscripts. We are reading fiction and essay collections with social justice themes. The author will receive a 20% royalty from book sales and 20 copies of the book. Books that have been previously published are not eligible. All work must be original work by the author.
Click here to submit.
Throughout the months of December and January, Benu Press will open submissions for book-length manuscripts. We are reading fiction and essay collections with social justice themes. The author will receive a 20% royalty from book sales and 20 copies of the book. Books that have been previously published are not eligible. All work must be original work by the author.
Click here to submit.
Item Title
Poetry. African American Studies. "This book of poetry presents a brilliant analysis which takes us through the brave history of the strength, commitment and passion of the people of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as they marched, struggled, and were jailed to win the victory of justice and freedom for all. Peggy Rozga joined protestors, participated in freedom marches, and was jailed for fighting and marching for the rights of poor Black children of the city of Milwaukee under the leadership of one of the great advocates of non-violence, direct action, and civil disobedience of our times: Father James Edmund Groppi."—Dick Gregory
Author City: WAUKESHA, WI USA
Margaret (Peggy) Rozga has published poems and essays in many journals and anthologies including Nimrod, Verse Wisconsin, Your Daily Poem, Wisconsin Magazine of History, and Love Rise Up. Her play about the Milwaukee fair housing marches, March on Milwaukee: A Memoir of the Open Housing Protests, has seen three full productions and three concert readings since its debut in 2007. Her book 200 NIGHTS AND ONE DAY was awarded a bronze medal in poetry in the 2009 Independent Publishers Book Awards and named an outstanding achievement in poetry for 2009 by the Wisconsin Library Association. At venues throughout Wisconsin and nationally, she offers poetry and journaling workshops. She lives in Milwaukee.
Reviews and Other Links Wendy Vardaman @ Verse Wisconsin
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Literary Nonfiction. LGBT Studies. Memoir. Murder attempts...missing umbilical cords...haunted quarries...fat camps...these darkly comic stories fill the pages of ALL SCREWED UP. Young, gay, and poor, Steve Fellner attempts to shed his trailer park past and seize a better life for himself. But coming from the sticks offers a certain kind of freedom: no one expects anything from you, so you can be as wild and ridiculous as you want. Fellner's humorous and touching memoir centers on his odd relationship with his mother, a woman who was once a championship trampolinist and is now a champion of the unpredictable.
Author City: Brockport, NY USA
Steve Fellner is the author of two books of poetry—THE WEARY WORLD REJOICES (Marsh Hawk Press, 2011) and BLIND DATE WITH CAVAFY (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007), the winner of the Thom Gunn Gay Male Poetry Award—and ALL SCREWED UP, a memoir. His nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, North American Review, among other journals.
Reviews and Other Links author blog
interview by Rigoberto González@ The National Book Critics Circle'sblog Critical Mass
Robert Julian @ the Bay Area Reporter
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Literary Nonfiction. Art. Psychology. Finally—someone is saying what successful artists have always known. This practical book helps the creative mind to thrive, not just survive, in the everyday world. A systematic approach to the fascinating and complex topic of the artist's imagination as revealed in ordinary situations is explored in Dr. Marianne Roccaforte's useful, honest, and encouraging book. Drawing on well-grounded psychological research and theory—and informed by years of direct experience counseling and teaching college-student artists—Dr. Roccaforte examines the realities, delights, and challenges of having a strong sense of wonder and an imagination that's constantly "on." In a tone that both honors and guides the reader, the author weaves in voices of successful writers, visual artists, musicians, actors, and dancers, and offers easy-to-practice techniques for such situations as transitioning from an absorbing session of art-making, communicating effectively in social and business settings, managing intense sensory and emotional experience, and sustaining a healthy and active creative life. Insightful and applicable for any person possessing an artistic sensibility—as well as for parents and teachers of young artists—this book enlightens, validates, and empowers, ultimately helping to build new bridges of understanding.
Author City: PHOENIX, AZ USA
Dr. Marianne Roccaforte has been a counselor and educator in college settings for 24 years. A lifelong musician, she specializes in the psychology of the artist.
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "We're born into a world already in progress, like arriving late at a movie. Erin Tocknell, born to Nashville, loved the city in a wide-eyed, child's way, before she had a glimmer of the history that had shaped what she took to be her world. CONFEDERATE STREETS recalls how it feels to wake up to history, to understand you are living right in the midst of it. Not all the lessons are easy, but in Tocknell's telling we come to appreciate the rewards of facing up to the hard facts, of refusing the false glamour of living innocent of history. CONFEDERATE STREETS reminds us what as a nation we seem always to be forgetting, just how far love and understanding and goodwill can take us toward the promised America."—Kevin Oderman
Author City: CHATTANOOGA, TN USA
Erin E. Tocknell grew up in Nashville but received all of her post-secondary education in or near Pittsburgh, earning her undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon in 2000 and her M.F.A. from West Virginia University in 2007. A winner of the AWP Intro Award in 2007, she has been published in the Tampa Review, The Southern Review, Ancient Paths, and the Oakland Review. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she has the daily privilege of introducing students at The McCallie School to the joys of literature, writing, and rowing.
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Poetry. With its many thematic riffs and harmonic phrasings, Lois Roma-Deeley's newest collection of poems invites the reader into the shadowy jazz scene of the late 1950s, where music and language fuse into a road of longing and desire. This book won the Benu Press Samuel T. Coleridge Prize. Benu Press awards The Samuel T. Coleridge Prize for "an outstanding work of literature, written by a contemporary author, that fulfills Coleridge's vision of the artist as a reconciling architect of the imagination. Such a work reconfigures our understanding of the world to establish new meaning in a future transformed by hope."
Author City: SCOTTSDALE, AZ USA
Reviews and Other Links Author Site
Patrick Michael Finn @ NewPages
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Literary Nonfiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Inspired by a story about an immigrant mother who walked the desert from Mexico to the USA with the dead body of her baby strapped to her own, Adriana Páramo immersed herself in the underground world of undocumented women toiling in the Florida fields. This fieldwork and the anonymous voices of the women she encountered while looking for the mother in the story are captured in LOOKING FOR ESPERANZA, winner of the 2011 Social Justice and Equality Award in creative nonfiction.
"A timely and stunning project, Adriana Páramo's LOOKING FOR ESPERANZA is a heart-wrenching collection of portraits of Mexican women whose lives and journeys illustrate the complexity and dignity of the undocumented immigrant. Páramo writes with admirable honesty and sensitivity, making visible perspectives seldom explored in either literature or journalism: the Mexican laborer in the American Southeast, the woman as border-crosser, and the stories of struggle that rise above tragedy and travesty to highlight perseverance and hope."—Rigoberto González
"Adriana Páramo's LOOKING FOR ESPERANZA is an essential window into the hidden world of undocumented female farmworkers struggling to maintain their health, their families, and their dignity in an unforgiving world. Páramo shines a necessary light on these defiant fearless women fighting for their own small morsel of the American Dream. The result is a book both powerful and unforgettable."—Dinty W. Moore
Author City: LAKELAND, FL USA
Adriana Páramo is a nonfiction writer born and raised in Colombia. After spending ten years in the oil industry as a student and as a petroleum engineer, she decided to leave her homeland and moved to Alaska. In 1992 she graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage as a cultural anthropologist.There, she conducted field work among Yup'ik Eskimos, an ethnochoreology, an innovative approach that linked their dances to their socio-cultural experiences. Adriana later moved to Kuwait where she taught young Muslim girls at a private school. She also engaged in advocacy of immigrant women's rights: specifically, Indian women working as servants but living in squalor in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The results of her fieldwork, along with explorations of the lives of more privileged women living in Kuwait, evolved into Desert Butterflies, an unpublished manuscript. After four years of research in the Middle East, Adriana returned to the USA and taught Humanities and Anthropology at a college in Central Florida. She is the author of My Mother's Funeral, (CavanKerry Press) which tells the story of a Colombian family of six women struggling to triumph among poverty and neglect. Interspersed between these stories are snippets of the present life of the author, now an immigrant in the USA. Adriana volunteered her time as a transcriber for Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series founded by author Dave Eggers, which empowers those most closely affected by contemporary social injustice. She co-produces LOL, Life Out Loud, the only reading series in Tampa Bay exclusively dedicated to nonfiction.
Reviews and Other Links author site
audio: interview by Claire Hart @ One WorldCafé
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Poetry. Introduction by Dale Davis. In LOVE RISE UP, readers will find genuine hope and inspired art in these lyrics, a desire to show the humanity behind the struggle for social justice. With courage, foresight, and even a good dose of humor, the poems in this collection address the causes and concerns of generations past and present, revealing ways to combat adversity with strength and integrity. Beginning with classic poets like Langston Hughes and highly-acclaimed, established poets including Sherman Alexie, Patricia Smith, and Martín Espada, LOVE RISE UP also celebrates new, emerging or never before published writers such as Gabriela Erandi Rico, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, and Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. With subjects ranging from the early Civil Rights movement to Occupy Wall Street and beyond, LOVE RISE UP offers a vivid portrait of resistance, triumph, compassion, and an eternal belief that our futures can be changed for the better.
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Item Title
Author City: WAUKESHA, WI USA
Margaret (Peggy) Rozga has published poems and essays in many journals and anthologies including Nimrod, Verse Wisconsin, Your Daily Poem, Wisconsin Magazine of History, and Love Rise Up. Her play about the Milwaukee fair housing marches, March on Milwaukee: A Memoir of the Open Housing Protests, has seen three full productions and three concert readings since its debut in 2007. Her book 200 NIGHTS AND ONE DAY was awarded a bronze medal in poetry in the 2009 Independent Publishers Book Awards and named an outstanding achievement in poetry for 2009 by the Wisconsin Library Association. At venues throughout Wisconsin and nationally, she offers poetry and journaling workshops. She lives in Milwaukee.
Available from the following links:
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
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