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Notes on Madville Publishing’s 2023 Fall Fundraiser

Screencapture from Madville's fall fundraiser, hosted by Gianna Russo. Pictured are Kim Davis, Julie Bloemeke, Jeff Hardin, Sean Carberry, Gianna Russo, and more.

On November 16, 2023, Madville Publishing held its first Fall Fundraiser to help with operating costs. Tickets were available with a donation made through Eventbrite. The fundraiser was organized and hosted by Gianna Russo, author of One House Down and All I See Is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic. During the event, fourteen Madville authors, including Gianna Russo, read from their work.

Gratitude from Kim Davis, Madville Publishing founder:

Thanks to everyone who attended for your much needed, and much appreciated donations. We received just over $3000. Thank you.

Anyone who watches news of the publishing industry will know that we, as a small independent publisher face hard times right now. Book returns and fees are literally killing us. The business model for the industry has become very difficult to negotiate for the likes of a small press, but we carry on, believing we’re doing a noble thing by publishing really good, thoughtful literature by first-time authors and seasoned authors alike. We welcome voices that may fall outside the mainstream for reasons that have become quite urgent. So we also take delight in hearing from marginalized writers, and we want to share their thoughts, share their voices. For this, we believe there is still a place for us, and we thank all of you who believe that too. Our authors who read on the 16th made us very proud. They were all so good!

We recorded the readings, and we’re making those recordings available as bonuses for our Patreon subscribers. [I’m still working on this… coming soon!]

Warmly, Kim 😉

In attendance, in order of reading, were Dustin Brookshire, Julie E. Bloemeke, Sean D. Carberry, Gerry LaFemina, Wondra Chang, Jeff Hardin, Juan Ochoa, Pauletta Hansel, Brian Petkash, Linda Parsons, Susan O’Dell Underwood, Kate Sweeney, William Woolfitt, and Gianna Russo.

To learn more about these authors and purchase the titles read during the fundraiser, see the list below:

  • Linda Parsons read “Travels with my Father,” “Glimmer Trail,” and “Believe” from Valediction.
  • Kate Sweeney read “Why My Grandmother Reminds Me of Sylvia Plath,” “The Grief Orchard,” and “Advice for a Young Son in April” from Worrisome Creatures.

To view a recording of the fundraiser, consider joining Madville Publishing’s Patreon, where the recording will be accessible as a benefit.

To learn more about Madville Publishing, visit our About page or our Authors page. To check out what Madville has published and will publish in 2024, take a look at our Catalog.

Madville Publishing currently has one anthology open for submission: Plain Folk: Notes on American Folk Music.


To support Madville Publishing, a non-profit small press, and a community of authors, follow this link to donate.

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Sticks & Bricks: Stories from the Wrong Side of the Tracks

Cover from The Wrong Side of the Tracks: Stories, formerly known as Sticks and Bricks. Cover shows a girl peering through a chain link fence at boxcars sitting on a siding with graffiti painted on their sides.

So many people have been patiently waiting for news of the selection progress with Sticks & Bricks. At last, the editors, have given us the go-ahead to share a longlist with everyone, with heartfelt apologies because family emergencies intruded, and kept the selection process on hold for too long. We won’t be able to fit all of these into the book, but at least submitters can check this list to see if their submission is still under consideration.

Biographies for the three editors of this anthology, with small thumbnail photos for Luanne Smith, Michael Gills, and T.E. Wilderson

The Longlist (and a name change)

Submitted work for THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS: STORIES

  • Hallmark Town—Linda Heuring
  • A Day In the Life of a Five Year Old Pool Player—Francine Roderiguez
  • Paquete—Dan Timoskevich
  • Backyards—Catherine Alexander
  • All the Lonely People—Alex Stein (lyrics issue)
  • King of the Lake—Christine Rice
  • Dogs Always Bark—Melissa Chordas
  • A White Girl, A Horse, Two Cats and a Dog—Deborah Meltvedt
  • The Lesser Countries—August Tarrier
  • Witnesses—April Asbury
  • Human Statues—Leslie Johnson
  • Settle—Troy Bernardo
  • Diorama—Steve Tem
  • Street Sermon Annie—Vali Hawkins-Mitchell
  • Gonna Like It in the Jailhouse—Polar Levine
  • Whatever Happened to the American Dream—Don Robishaw
  • By the Grace—Gayle Bell (flash fiction)
  • Jets—R. Louis Fox
  • Gina and the Werewolf—Hadley Moore
  • Federico and His Boy—Victoria Ballesteros
  • Canary—Virginia Pina (pen name Watts)
  • Private Duties—Madeleine Mysko
  • The Angel of Lead Belly’s—John Mauk

Solicited Work for THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS: STORIES

  • Hunger—Pirette McKamey
  • Fast Hands, Fast Feet—Maurice Carlos Ruffin
  • Afterglow—Steph Post
  • Some Get-Back—Eric Miles Williamson
  • Leaving Early—Penn Stewart
  • Grit—Jesse Waters
  • Hard Shoes—Steve Gutierrez
  • The Short Story—Steve Gutierrez
  • Palette—Chavisa Woods
  • Kitty Rose—Jana Sasser (J.C. Sasser)
  • Flowchart—Kim Addonizio
  • Christmas Story of the Golden Cockroach—Ana Castillo
  • Old Dogs—Bonnie Jo Campbell
  • Amusement—Joe Haske
  • TBD—Elizabeth “e.” Stuelke
  • Tea Training—Zary Fekete (Zaqary)
  • The Bride Beneath my Bed—Lee Zacharias
  • TBD—Chavisa Woods
  • The Main Game—Chris Offutt
  • Barbie-Q—Sandra Cisneros
  • TBD—Manual Munoz
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Southern Festival of Books 2023

Map for the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee

We will be attending the Southern Festival of Books in 2023 It is in Nashville again this year, and we loved it so much last year, we can’t wait to get back. We look forward to seeing so many friends, especially, our wonderful Linda Parsons has a book that we published featured, Valediction. She’ll be there with us at booth number 27. Come see us there!

This will be the 35th annual Southern Festival of Books–among the oldest literary festivals in the country. It is free to attend with performance stages, food trucks, publishers and booksellers. (We’ll be at booth #27.)

Festival weekend (Oct. 21 and 22) takes place in downtown Nashville. The Festival grounds include Bicentennial Mall State Park, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Read more at their website: https://sofestofbooks.org/schedule

At the sponsors dinner during the Southern Festival of books 2022. At back are Linda Parsons and Pauletta Hansel, and seated are Susan O'Dell Underwood, Kim Davis, and Jeff Hardin. All are glowing.
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Fantastic Imaginary Creatures

Fantastic Imaginary Creatures: An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina. Cover shows a clay figure painted in bright red and green. The creature has wings and pointy spikes that look like pens coming out of his head, and a big toothy grin.

An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina

2023 Acceptances Announced

Anthology publication planned for  Spring 2024.

This is the call Gerry LaFemina put out for this anthology: 

The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures seeks to collect the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows, previously published or brand spanking new. We’re not looking for short short stories, but rather work that explores the liminal space between story and lyric, the luminous spark of possibility in the form.

And of the many fine poets who answered Gerry’s call, these are the poets and the poems Gerry selected:

Valerie Bacharach“Momento Mori”

Ujjvala Bagal-Rahn

“Just Enough House”
Ned Balbo “O Christmas Tree,” and “That Which We Discard We Also Cherish”
Madeleine Barnes “Key Rock,” and “Self Portrait in My Mother’s Closing Lines”
Michelle Boczek Evory “Absolution,” and “Dislocation”
Rick Campbell “Parable of the Forest Pygmy,” and “Forgetting the Nicene Creed”
Joseph Capista “Room for Error,” “Myth,” and “Song”
Gary Ciocco “Being and Becoming”
TS Coody “Mimesis”
Jim Daniels “With Apologies to the Tom Tom Club,” and “At Last”
Anthony DiMatteo “Every Time”
gary fincke “The Hands”
Jeff Friedman “Giver of Gifts,” “Terrorists,” and “Lost Memory”
Molly Fuller “Home Again, Home Again,” and “Tale of the Flopsy Bunny”
Joy Gaines-Friedler “Daffodils,” “Act 20:14,” “Traveling with the Band,” and “The Children’s Ward”
George Guida “Trip Wire,” and “The story of a Life”
Luke Hankins “A Voice out of the Ruins”
Gretchen Heyer“Pasiphae Answers Questions,” “Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God,” and “Jute, Two Inches in Diameter”
Tom Hunley “My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)” and “Questions for Further Study”
Anna Jacobson “This is to That”
Peter Johnson “Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term,” “Crickets,” and “Nice Socks”
Richard Jordan “Jesus in the CafĂ©,” “With Feathers,” and “Mackerel Day”
Elizabeth Kerlikowske “At 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole,” and “Tabula Rasa”
Nina Kossman “Kharkiv”
Gerry LaFemina “Fantastic Imaginary Creatures,” “Happy Pigs,” and “Bad Medicine”
Joseph Lerner “The Black Egret”
Geri Lipschultz “Aphrodite in Manhattan”
Lorette C. Luzajic “Feathers,” and “January River”
Gary McDowell “Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy,” and “Another Apocalypse”
Kathleen McGookey “Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet”
Jennifer Militello “Identifying the Pathogen,” “Dear B,” and “Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis”
Robert Miltner “Wolf Dancing,” and “Hopeless”
Erin Murphy “Ekphrasis,” “Gerunding,” and “Hula Dancer”
kerry neville “Decade”
Robert Perchan “The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers,” “At Home with Marlboro Jones,” and “The Orgun Box Junkies”
Christine Rhein “Drone Pilot,” and “Sunday Night Retail”
Jane Satterfield “Latin 121,” and “Abbreviated Inventory”
Katherine Smith “Crossword,” and “Quilt”
Joshua Michael Stewart “Yellow,” and “Book of Love”
Virgil Suárez “Chinese Weather Balloon”
Matthew Thorburn “A Hundred Birds,” and “How it Starts”
Eric Torgersen “My Blindness”
Patricia Valdata “Mayfly”
Doug Van Gundy “Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975,” and “To Join the Circus”
Elinor Ann Walker “Object Impermanence,” and “Fugue State”
Greg Watson “Why I Live in a Cold Climate”
Cathy Wittmeyer “Max Beckmann, Still Life with Fallen Candles, oil on canvas, 1929,” and “Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, etching & drypoint, 1924”
George Yatchisin “Leap Year”
Michael T. Young “Quoting Blake to Mother,” and “Sweaty Palms”

About the editor, Gerry LaFemina

Gerry LaFemina’s flash creative nonfiction essay collection, The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness, came out in 2022. His poetry collections include Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping, The Story of Ash and Little Heretic. His essays on prosody, Palpable Magic, came out in 2015 and Kendall Hunt recently released his textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.