Books for Children
Jessica Curtis
Adult Fiction
Robin L. Martin
Adult Non Fiction
Piero Ribelli
Stephen Brewer and Donald Olson
Poetry
Amanda McBroom
Books for Children
Jessica Curtis
Jessica Lynn Curtis is a writer, singer, and improv comedian living in NYC. Her first children’s book, Papa’s New Home, was published by Tristan Publishing in November 2012. It received a Publisher’s Weekly Starred review, Oct 11, 2012. Her second book for children, The Thinking Tree is available for your consideration.
A Massachusetts native and die-hard Red Sox fan, Jessica’s writing has appeared on Boston Dirt Dogs, the Boston Globe’s online Red Sox site. She has also been featured on Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox website performing her song, Voice of the Faithful, which was the winner of the Red Sox.com Nation anthem contest in 2004.
Her short play, Everyday Wilcox, was recently performed in the Roy Arias Off Broadway Theatre.
Jessica is the founding member of the musical improv troupe, Song Form. She has performed at comedy clubs all over NYC, including Carolines, Ha!, the Broadway Comedy Club, and Gotham City Improv, where she wrote and performed her own one woman show.
A graduate of Ithaca College, Jessica performed at Carnegie Hall with the Ithaca College Women’s Chorale. Musical theatre and opera credits include Maria in The Sound of Music, Bonnie in Anything Goes, and Kate in The Pirates of Penzance. Other lead roles include Suzanne in Steve’s Martin’s Picasso at the Lapine Agile, Karen in The Night of January the 16th, and Leslie in the independent film, Marriage is a Farce.
Adult Fiction
Robin L. Martin
Out Like a Lion
“Congratulations on your exquisite novel. It’s so well -written and powerful and poetic and intimate and philosophical. Structure that is seemingly somewhat free-wheeling but never takes you away from the story being told. It’s captivating. The characters vivid and complex and moving and you pound the wrongness and tragedy of Guantanamo with a pin-pointedly damning sledge hammer. It is masterful.
Wow.”
Ed Harris–Director, Actor, Producer
“Out Like a Lion is gripping and fascinating from the start, with powerfully drawn characters and a message that is desperately relevant today – our own exchange of security for freedom, almost despite ourselves, can overthrow our ideas of what a ‘normal’ life is. Civilization’s veneer is a fragile thing. The horror of what happens as a result of Sam and Katie’s ‘experiment’ brings this home very movingly.
In a war-on-terror world, FBI Agent Crawley, scarred by the Manson murders in his youth, now faces a similarly inexplicable event – and tries to make sense of it. His quest interweaves with that of others also trying to make sense of the post-9/11 world, and the appalling fate of Sam. This is itself an attempt to come to terms with the new world the characters find themselves in. Along the way, there are themes of powerlessness and surveillance, the search for truth, and the need for its denial. A final resolution brings the characters together in a devastating revelation from beyond death.
“Out Like a Lion is an excellent and necessary novel, vivid and intelligent, and one that provokes the senses as does a brilliant film.”
Patrick Chapman–Pushcart-nominated author of six poetry collections, a book of stories and a Doctor Who audio play. He is also an award-winning screenwriter for film and television.
“Robin Martin’s spell-binding and extraordinarily original novel confronts the boundaries of mystery, the line between murder and suicide. It plumbs the psychological depths of family life. Against a backdrop that includes both Charles Manson and military interrogation, Martin explores the effects of exclusion, unconscious complicity, and scapegoating on children. Eclipsed by her fraternal twin, Sam, Katie’s inability to say no to him ends in disaster. Martin tackles the parent’s reaction without flinching.”
Kita S. Curry, Ph.D.
President/CEO
Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
Robin’s literary novel, Out Like a Lion, begins in 2008: FBI agent Frank Crawley, near retirement, walks into an unusual scene: Stanford University freshmen, twins Katie and Sam Lange, conduct their own investigation into the methods used to interrogate political detainees, resulting in Sam’s death. Frank must connect the dots of the Lange family tragedy, even as his own son, a discharged soldier, is unhinged by the cruelty and injustice that continues in the treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo.
The novel is complete at 308 pages.
“Page from a Gitmo Attorney’s Diary” a short-short drawn from Out Like a Lion will be included in the Adanna Tribute to Adrienne Rich, Women and War 2013 Winter Issue. Recently, her work Old Scores placed third in the 2012 RopeWalk Press Editor’s Fiction Chapbook Competition. Her story “1969″ won First Place in the 2009 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival judged by Richard Ford, and an Honorable Mention in the SF PEN Soul Making Competition and was published in The New Orleans Review. “Bob and Hope” won 2nd Place in the 2011 Eyes on Babylon Writing Contest, judged by Aimee Bender, HM in the 2012 SF PEN Competition and the Columbine award for conflict resolution in the Moondance Film Festival. “Same Initials as Jesse James,” a short-short drawn from Out Like a Lion, won First Prize in the 2010 Alabama Writers Conclave Short-Short category and Honorable Mention in the 2010 New Millennium Contest. She won the 2010 Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference Contest and was awarded scholarships to Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Wesleyan Writers Conference and Chatham Fiction Workshop. She was the recipient of the 2010 Eastern Frontier Fellowship Award Norton Island, Maine, and the 1998 Peripatetic Writer’s Colony Fellowship. Her short fiction has been published in The New Orleans Review, The Mangrove Review, Alabama Conclave, Quality Women’s Fiction, Rain Crow Literary Magazine, and Kerem Literary Journal. Her story Number 723, September 10, 2001 is published online Kristen Iversen & David Anthony Durham Award.
Since 2001 she has worked as the assistant to the President of a non-profit legal human rights and constitutional law organization that has been in the forefront of the legal battles in the post 9/11 world. She spent a decade as a working actress, most notably on Knots Landing and most proudly on new plays—a favorite was “Cowboy Mouth” by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith. She lives in Brooklyn with film projection artist, Bruce McClure.
Adult Non-fiction
Piero Ribelli
Piero Ribelli’s fourth book, 50 Main Street, The Face of America, was published July 4th, 2012 by Cameron+Co. See more about this beautiful book.
Piero is a professional photographer. His earlier titles are: Zoo York: An Animal Lover’s View of Manhattan, Jah Pickney, Children of Jamaica, Gay and Lesbian Weddings: Planning the Perfect Same-Sex Ceremony.
His work can be viewed at www.pieroribelli.com.
Stephen Brewer
and Donald Olson
25 Best Day Trips from New York City
WHY DAY TRIPS?
Because New York City is surrounded by an incredible wealth of sights that can be visited and enjoyed in a single day. Every one of our day trips enhances the New York experience. For visitors and residents alike, these trips add to the enjoyment of the fascinating history and scenic wonders of the New York region. In a handy, easy-to-use format, The 25 Best Day Trips from New York City introduces users to the top sights within two hours of the city and provides all the specifics necessary to visit them easily, enjoyably and inexpensively.
A full proposal is available for your consideration.
Donald Olson is a travel writer with more than 30 years of experience writing about U.S. and European destinations for several major travel publishers. He has written or contributed to dozens of travel guides, including several related to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Frommer’s Vancouver & Victoria, London for Dummies, England for Dummies (winner of Lowell Thomas award for “Best Guidebook”), Germany for Dummies, and co-author of Frommer’s Best Day Trips from London. In addition, he has written or The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Sunset, and Diversion. He is also the author of seven novels (most published under the pen name Swan Adamson) that have been published in the U.S., U.K., France, and Russia. His plays have been produced in London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, New York, and Portland. Donald lives in Portland, Oregon, and New York.
Stephen Brewer has worked in magazines, books, radio, and corporate communications for almost three decades. He is the author of several travel guides, including the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide to the Pacific Northwest, Frommer’s Venice Day by Day and Athens Day by Day, Insight’s Eating in New York and Insight’s New York Select, the Unofficial Guides to England and Ireland, and the co-author of Frommer’s 25 Best Day Trips from London. He is also the author of One Hundred and One Beautiful Small Coastal Towns of America (Rizzoli) and for three years wrote and produced the Fodor’s Travel Show for WOR radio in New York City. He is proud to be a contributor to the recently revised 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, by Patricia Schultz. His articles have appeared in many national magazines, including American Health, Better Homes and Gardens, Diversion, Esquire, Family Circle, and Good Housekeeping. Stephen lives in New York City.
Poetry
Amanda McBroom
Mary Oliver meets Frank O’Hara in Amanda’s first collection of poetry, Alchemy.
Cottonwood Autumn
What time is it?
Someone will ask,
And I will say, “It’s Autumn.”
Just autumn…
Somewhere by a river,
Somewhere in Montana.
And the cottonwoods are turning gold,
Leaves shivering
In the crisp of the breeze,
Age-spotted,
Brown dotted,
Falling, floating,
Whispering to each other,
“What time is it?”
Time to fall,
Time to die gracefully and drift,
Not toward a shining light,
But a soft sand bed,
To carpet the ground with fragile paper
For the winter to compose upon.
And I promise myself
To think only in seasons,
No days…no dates…no minutes…
Only in winter-thirty
And quarter-past-spring.
What time is it?
I wish someone would ask.
I would say,
“It’s Autumn.”
Lunch
“It’s wonderful,” she said
Over coffee and a salad,
As we stole time from the children
And the laundry and the duties,
Like two small-time cons in Vegas,
With a pocket full of quarters
And huddled in the harbor
Of the salmon-colored table
And the clatter of the dishes
And the chatter of the waiters
In the monthly sanctuary we called
Lunch.
“When you realize that we
Are growing younger by the second.
And so much more can happen now
Than ever we imagined
When we thought that we knew everything,
When thirty was impossible,
And we were tight and beautiful
And passion was immutable
We had to work our butts off
Just to keep up with our
Greedy and demanding and ambitious teenage
Hearts.”
“And when we said at twenty,
‘I can do that’, we were running on
Blind instinct and the guts
Of being terminally young.
Now when we say, at forty,
‘I can do that’, it’s because
We learned the lessons,
Bought the t-shirt,
Paid the dance band.
Did the tango,
Took the chances,
And we can.
Amanda McBroom has been called “…the greatest cabaret performer of her generation, an urban poet who writes like an angel and has a voice to match.”
Her name first came to the attention of the music public when Bette Midler’s version of Amanda’s song “THE ROSE” hit number one all over the world in 1979.
Her latest theatrical endeavor has been as lyricist for the musical DANGEROUS BEAUTY, which had its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2011.
AMANDA lives in Ojai, California, with her husband, three dogs and three cats. She attributes her success to divine inspiration and a lot of caffeine.