Inkwater Press

The Moon Lit the Owl’s Way, by T. J. Valenzuela, has been nominated in the Literary Fiction category for the 2010 Colorado Book Awards. Congratulations and best of luck, T. J.!

Spirit Unbroken

Writer’s Digest recently reviewed Spirit Unbroken: The Two Sides of Love, by Rick and Alice Garlock, with the following praise:

“Great cover design and overall package. It is very polished and professional. I liked the set-up of the book, particularly how you let the story unfold in both the past and present. Good job in telling a very difficult story. You have a great writing voice! Excellent work with grammar and proofreading.”

– Jessica Strawser, Editor, Writer’s Digest

Congrats to Rick and Alice!

Sonia and Alexandre Poussin, whose work details their amazing 39-month trek from the Cape of Good Hope to the Sea of Galilee, are currently touring the nation of South Africa to promote their Africa Trek documentary film and to launch the new, South African edition of Africa Trek. Inkwater Press was proud and excited to publish the North American edition of Africa Trek last year and to offer the public television series Africa Trek as a DVD set as well. The new edition is published by Jacana Media in South Africa.

Author Barry Smith will appear at several Kansas venues in the next month to sign copies of Only Milo, a dark and quirky thriller about the publishing industry. Catch up with Barry at these locations:

Thursday, Oct. 22
Town Crier Bookstore
716 Commercial St., Emporia, KS
Book signing, 5-7 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 30
Emporia State University Homecoming
William Allen White Library
New Seminar Room, Second Floor
Two readings/signings, 10:30 am and 1:30 pm

Saturday, Nov. 7
Hastings Book Store
5317 SW 22nd Pl., Topeka, KS
Book signing, 2-4 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 20
Hastings Book Store
23rd and Iowa, Lawrence, KS
Book signing, 3-7 pm

A group of dads–and Inkwater Press authors–who meet every Tuesday morning to discuss the grief of losing children were featured on the ABC evening news in Indianapolis.

Last month, members of The Dads Group jointly published a collection of their stories of grief and loss. Tuesday Mornings With the Dads, published by Inkwater Press, was their way of reaching out to other dads across the country.

“We sometimes say it’s a group we didn’t want to join, but were grateful that it’s here,” member Adolf Hansen said in the interview.

The group meets over coffee and acts as an informal support network for dads whose children have died. They can be contacted at www.tuesdayswiththedads.org.

Imagine a plateful of hamburgers and hot dogs springing to life, dancing and cavorting to the tunes of a live “oom-pa-pa” band.

The creators of a new Brooklyn arts organization did.

Using rod puppets of hamburgers and hot dogs, the nonprofit poetry and theater group Alphabet Arts has adapted the Inkwater Press children’s book City of Hamburgers into a puppet show, which will debut Sept. 12 and 13 in two Brooklyn neighborhoods.

City of Hamburgers, written by Simpsons writer Mike Reiss and illustrated by Xeth Feinberg, tells the story of an imaginative boy named Jeffrey, who asks his German grandmother to describe what it was like growing up in the city of Hamburg. She recalls her youth as a Hamburger and her eventual marriage to a Frankfurter.

Photo by Kirsten Kammermeyer

“The characters in City of Hamburgers are begging to be puppets,” said Kirsten Kammermeyer, a puppeteer, arts educator and co-founder of Alphabet Arts. “You want to see that little girl burger jump up and down and see her insides separate into the different burger toppings. You want to see the burger lady on the beach take her ‘top’ off.”

The show came about after a chance conversation with Rutgers professor Pheroze Wadia, who suggested Kammermeyer and her friends create a puppet show based on a book his grandkids loved. With a generous donation from Wadia, they formed Alphabet Arts and delved into the book with relish.

“A story as good as City of Hamburgers deserves to be brought to life through an art form as rich as puppetry,” said Amber West, a playwright, teaching artist and co-founder of Alphabet Arts. “We’ve adapted the story into a script but have left some room for improvisation and experimentation during the rehearsal process to develop the characters and bring out some of the important themes of the story, such as acceptance of differences, ‘interracial’ relationships, and what it means to become an American.”

The book, with its laugh-out-loud illustrations and clever wordplay, recently won ForeWord magazine’s bronze “Book of the Year” award.

“Probably 90 percent of everything for this show is made from scratch, including our ten-foot, two-panel wooden puppet stage,” West said. “We’re hoping to tour City of Hamburgers to other kid-friendly venues in and beyond New York in the future and to develop a post-show hands-on workshop in which our young audience members will create ‘puppet poems’ connecting their own stories, words and designs to themes in the play.”

Dave Fox, author of Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip!), was featured on the public radio show “Travel with Rick Steves.” The interview, the third segment of an hour-long show, will air in several markets throughout the week. Listen to the full show.

Globejotting is available from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and InkwaterBooks.com.

Inkwater Press announces with diabolical glee the publication of Barry Smith’s Only Milo, a twisted and darkly funny thriller about the publishing industry.

All his life, 62-year-old Milo has been overlooked and underestimated, despite the twelve brilliant manuscripts stockpiled in his closet. Fed up with being a nobody, he emerges from his retirement to become an unseen force in the literary world, covertly publishing his novels in another author’s name.

Milo’s illicit ghostwriting leads him down a path fraught with deception, forgery, theft, and murder. In a world of egotistical, no-talent authors and duplicitous, back-stabbing publishers, he becomes determined to get what he deserves.

“Milo was narcissistic and unpleasant with a strong sense of entitlement. That being said, he was so deliciously unstable that I really enjoyed reading his thoughts,” says the book review website Devourer of Books.

With dark, scathing humor, Barry Smith’s debut novel holds a grim mirror up to authors, publishers, the media, American mass culture, and, ultimately, itself as it delves into the shadowy side of both the publishing industry and human nature.

Smith, a finance professor at Emporia State University in Kansas, says it was the routine bloodbaths he watched on television that inspired him to write Only Milo.

“I have had TiVo for the last couple of years, and I’ve been watching more CSI, NCIS, and Criminal Minds than ever before. Last fall it really hit me that anyone watching this set of shows witnesses six to ten ‘murders’ every week,” Smith said.

“Watching those shows makes murder seem a fairly normal human activity.”

John Barrows, co-author of the Inkwater title How I Taught My Brother to Cook, was interviewed for The Oregonian’s “Taste” column Sunday, Aug. 30. The article included his mother’s recipe for “Cagoots,” an easy, peasant-style summer vegetable stew.

“I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, and I wanted to create one that gave home cooks permission to stop following recipes word for word,” Barrows said in the interview.

“I think a lot of people lack confidence and are afraid of making mistakes. They think cooking is a science, when it’s actually just a big, fun experiment that you get to eat at the end.”

Read the full article.

There’s a new literary venue in town, and two Inkwater Press authors will be the first to kick off its series of author readings.

Jeremy Benjamin, author of the short story collection, If I Catch You Reading This, will appear at The Clearing Café on Sept. 13. Benjamin, an actor and member of the Portland Fiction Project, writes stories that range from the supernatural to science fiction to absurdist humor.

S.W. Capps will read from his novel, Salmon Run, on Sept. 27 at The Clearing Café. His novel follows the journey of Woodrow Salmon, who loses everything after his wife’s attempt to have him killed goes awry.

Both readings will take place from 4-6 p.m. at The Clearing Café, 2772 NW Thurman St. in Portland.