Passager Press

Announcing Our Next Open Book Prompt

Kendra & Mary — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:27:08 +0000

Some of you participated in our Final Moments prompt last summer. We truly appreciated your involvement–the outpouring of heartfelt accounts was overwhelming. We were moved by so many pieces, but ultimately decided against publishing them on our website. It didn’t exactly fit our idea for Open Book, which we want to use as a free means of publishing and sharing with our Passager community. We felt the pieces, though raw and beautiful, were too emotionally charged for our first electronic publication. To those of you who submitted, thank you, and know that your pieces touched us.

But after much deliberation on the future of Open Book, we are excited to announce our next prompt- What The Flesh Is Heir To. In anticipation of the release of our newest book of poetry, Hot Flash Sonnets, by Moira Egan, we are printing one of her poems on Open Book. We encourage you to write a response to the poem. It can be another poem, a story, an anecdote, art, etc. A few of our favorites will be published online on Open Book!

Submissions must be emailed to editors@passagerbooks.com with the subject line “What the Flesh Is Heir To.” Submissions sent as email attachments must use .doc, .pdf, or .jpeg files. There is no word count limitation, though we advise you to keep prose to a length under 2,000 words. The deadline is June 1, 2013.

Click here to visit the Passager Open Book page.

Happy writing, and be sure to spread the word to your friends and writing groups!

upcoming events plus fun news from mychael

Mychael Zulauf — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:29:20 +0000

Greetings again, folks.
I have some things to bring to y’alls attention.

Firstly, please do not forget about Passager’s Poetry Contest! The deadline is a week away (submissions must be postmarked by April 15), so there’s still plenty of time to submit.
Information and guidelines for the contest can be found HERE. We’re looking forward to reading everyone’s wonderful poetry.

Secondly, for anyone in and around Baltimore, tis the season for CityLit Festival! Join us this Saturday (April 13) from 10-5 at the Enoch Pratt Library on Cathedral. Kendra and I will be in the first floor lobby manning the Passager and UB MFA tables, respectively. Passager will have books and the newest issue for sale, so please stop and pick something up…or just stop by to chat. We enjoy chatting like you wouldn’t believe.

Thirdly, I have some fantastic personal news. Thanks to UB’s Travel and Research Grant, I’ll be attending this year’s Haiku North America Conference! The conference runs from August 14-18 and will be held on the beautiful Queen Mary cruise ship in Long Beach.
If anyone will be in the area or is planning on going, please do not hesitate to find me during the con. I’ll be the guy who is overly excited and possibly sporting a topknot.

Poetry Contest Deadline April 15!

Kendra & Mary — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:44:28 +0000

Hello all! I hope everyone is having a great April first, with weather as good as we have here in Baltimore.We just want to remind everyone:

The DEADLINE for the Passager POETRY CONTEST is in TWO WEEKS: APRIL 15!

Don’t forget to submit!

(We had a great time at AWP, met some of you for the first time, and got to say hello to old friends. If you came to our table and wanted to buy some Passager books but had too much to carry, or ran out of money…..you can still get the AWP discount, as promised.)

Online Submissions? Pros and Cons

Kendra & Mary — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:40:58 +0000

We have been increasingly feeling pressure to move to online submissions. The problem is that we don’t want to read submissions online, and are fairly certain that we won’t make the best decisions. We can give a different kind of attention to words on paper. Aside from that, we love the beautiful cover letters we receive, some handwritten.

We’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. Is it becoming a hardship to send things through the mail?

Leave your comments, please!

Vermont’s Poet Laureate Gives Jean Connor a Glowing Review!

Kendra & Mary — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:38:12 +0000

Here at Passager, we love Jean Connor. She’s kind of our patron saint, our leading lady. She definitely epitomizes Passager’s goal of cultivating creativity throughout the lifetime, and, at 94, she is an inspiration to us all. She’s always on the go, too–(see the post about her poems being set to music by one of Vermont’s leading composers).

When we received word that she was being reviewed by Vermont’s Poet Laureate, Sydney Lea, for five Vermont newspapers, we were thrilled. It just seemed the next logical step for a poetry powerhouse like Jean. Lea wrote a beautiful, moving review of her first book, A Cartography of Peace, and calls her a “miracle…” He says, “her deep strength as a poet resides to no small degree in her quietness, her gift for contemplation, her utter lack of presumption. Hers is not a poetry of razzmatazz. It may be refreshingly accessible on first reading, but in order to capture its full resonance, the reader must take on the quietude of mind that is a hallmark of her work.”

Be sure to check out the review, order the book, and read some of her poems on our site.

To read the full review, visit Sydney Lea’s blog by clicking here.

Passager’s AWP adventure!

Mychael Zulauf — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:02:25 +0000

Passager will be trekking to Boston for this year’s AWP conference!
Come find us at Tables S-10 and S-11 durning Book Fair hours. Editors Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael will be table-side, as will assistants Saralyn Lyons and myself. We will be offering special AWP prices for our books, as well as hand-printed broadsides and all the latest info on our 2013 Poetry Contest.

Kendra will also be participating in panel discussion S246- Town and Gown: Partnerships between Literary Centers and University Creative Writing Programs, at 4:30 on Saturday, 3/9, in room 200 on level 3. She’ll be discussing how she balances the Passager community with the community of students she educates.

Saralyn and I will be out and about durning the other panel discussions, so if you see someone with a Passager pin wandering around, come say hello.
I’ll probably make an appearance at most of the translation-themed panels. You’ll probably find me at the Yoga panel, too (Friday, 10:30, Room 313).

If you plan on attending, drop us an e-mail and let us know.
We hope to see you there!

Book Arts Workshop

Kendra & Mary — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:53:56 +0000

Edit: The Bookmaking Workshop is now full, as of 10/25.

Passager and the University of Baltimore MFA Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program present The Thinking Hand: The Art of the Book, a workshop and presentation in book arts with Rebecca Childers.

The workshop will be Sunday, October 28, from 1-4 PM in room 208 of the LAP Building, located at 10 West Preston St, Baltimore, MD, 21201. Space is limited, so please reserve your spot. Supplies are $25.

The presentation will be Monday, October 29, at 7 PM in the Bogomolny Room of the Student Center, located at 21 West Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD, 21201. The event is free and open to the public.

Rebecca Childers, a “Play+Work=Plork” pioneer and former teacher in UB’s MFA program, teaches letterpress printing, artist books, and Writing for Artists in the Department of Art at the University of Oregon. She holds a MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa and makes sculptural and editioned book under her imprint, The Seedbed of Irony Press, in Eugene, Oregon. She was a Passager editor from 1996-2002.

Postal Service Lament

Kendra & Mary — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:33:51 +0000

here’s a great letter from a surprised Passager writer–

Dear Editors,

In the spring I submitted 5 poems for the contest. In June I moved from the town I had lived in for 94 years to be with my daughter in another town. As you may iimagine it was pretty difficult to break up my home with all the problems entailed and to get myself on the road. One thing I did was to fill out the form to have my mail forwarded. It did not happen and I am still missing about five weeks of mail including anything you may have sent me….I have not received anything from your publication which did not surprise me as I never really expect to be published. It always comes as a lovely surprise.

My daughter called the other day to say she had received her copy of Passager and checking it out discovered a short poem of mine right there on the page. I am sure my copy is in the bowels of the Post Office and wonder how I can get any mail you may have sent and a copy of this beautiful magazine…Thank you for publishing my Lamentation. I think I should write another about the Postal Service.

Christine S. O’Connor

Last Moments, Still Looking

Kendra & Mary — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 01:45:50 +0000

We’re so moved by the submissions for “last moments.” Thank you to all who have submitted. Several of you have told us how important it was just to write the story down. We hadn’t thought of that when we put out the call, and we encourage you, if you have an experience, to write it and send it to us. At this point, we’re not sure what we’re going to do with them–we don’t see a book yet–so we’re still collecting. Send on email or snail mail and let your friends know as well. We want to hear from as many people as we can till we see a picture emerge….

Featured Press: Little Patuxent Review

Kendra & Mary — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:48:47 +0000

Hello all! This week, we would like to talk about a journal that does what we love: the Little Patuxent Review has started the “Concerning Craft” series, which “introduces [LPR] contributors, showcases their work and draws back the curtain to reveal a little of what went into producing it.” Click the link below to watch the video of Passager author Shirley Brewer read her poetry at one of the journal’s events.

Concerning Craft: Shirley Brewer