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The title of this post comes from one of Jessie Janeshek’s poems from her latest chapbook, Channel U. The cover features Maila Nurmi (better known as Vampira) dressed as a witch for Halloween, with her companion dressed as a post-car-crash James Dean.

Our final chapbook of last year’s “season” is our third by Ms. Janeshek. At this point, what more can we tell you? Jessie describes her poetry as “feminist, probing the connections among sex, power, and violence—frequently explored through the broken promise of Hollywood’s ‘golden age’ and its shadow side film noir—while examining, challenging, and sometimes reappropriating patriarchal culture’s complex relationship with powerful women, especially when those women are too beautiful yet never beautiful enough.” I asked her to describe Channel U, and she wrote that it “fuses personal and cultural nostalgia—or maybe anti-nostalgia—to examine and disrupt girlhood and womanhood in small-town America from the ’50s through the ’90s. ‘Screaming relaxes me so,’ Vampira used to say, sipping from a smoking goblet as she introduced that night’s cheap horror flick.” Take a drink and tune in.

From “Bombshell Planchette/Why Can’t You Manage Platinum?”

“Makeup makes the lie and I’m afraid of your bleach
my legs/the trees open. To motivate myself
I dream Kim Novak
white lights in the clouds
the self-control suicide note.”

Check the title page and pick up a copy. It goes great with her other two chapbooks!

We’re finally back with the results of the open reading we had the first half of November. It turns out we only chose two manuscripts for publication . . . from basically that number of finalists. I know, what gives? (More details* below.) So because the six-week spacing between chapbooks has been working pretty well, Grey Book Press is now following the Wheel of the Year. GBP alum Jenny MacBain-Stephens’ chapbook, The Female Citizens of Sunshine Nation Face off with Light Sucking Demons, will appear around the Spring Equinox (March 22/23), and Chris Bullard’s chapbook, Continued, will appear around the beginning of May.

But before any of that, we’re having a reading here in Tallahassee next weekend (January 18) with some friends from Hysterical Books, and it includes Kristine Snodgrass and Brendan Walsh.

Our next publication is the long-awaited Channel U from Jessie Janeshek. In just a few short weeks! I’d better get to work!

* Most years, we get a whole mix of manuscripts in the open readings. There’s a score of 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10) or higher to be considered as a finalist, which means we feel that particular collection is strong and fits well with our “aesthetic.” And/or “feels right.” In reading the manuscripts, it seemed like several were falling just short, so there was a handful that were “on the bubble” for finalist consideration. I was pretty sure about the two we chose, but I did second reads of a few others to make sure and contacted some of those authors to let them know they were so close but not quite “there.” We have to feel comfortable with our picks, and only two of them felt completely “right.” That doesn’t mean the ones not selected were lacking. We’ve passed on manuscripts before, only to have them picked up by better presses than ours, or Finishing Line!