News

Sommer Browning's Good Actors has arrived and will be available exclusively from Birds, LLC until 7/5!

Cover of Good Actors
Good Actors $18
Good Actors book launch at Dikeou Collection in Denver

If you're in Denver on May 27, run—don't walk—to the Dikeou Collection for a book release party for Good Actors and Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Aerial Concave Without Cloud, 6-8pm.

They will also be screening their short video, Soft Display.

Sommer Browning on Hobart | 1.30.22

Head over to Hobart, and check out Sommer's "Sex is Like Porn in Real Life," from Good Actors.

video

Sommer reading "Life: A Draft (Prologue), " from Good Actors, at The Volta.

Sommer's interview with Cinthya Arrieu-King

Listen to Sommer's interview with Cynthia Arrieu-King on WLFR's The Last Word.

Sommer's interview with Chris Moore

Sommer and host Chris Moore discuss the nature of reality, what makes comedy funny, the meaning of art & life, and what separates humans from animals on a recent episode of The Situation & the Story podcast.

If you're interested in reviewing Good Actors, adopting it for a class, or inviting Sommer to read or give an interview, contact us at editor@birdsllc.com.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING SMALL INDEPENDENT POETRY!!!

Love,

The Editor

Sommer and her daughter Georgia

Sommer Browning is an author, curator, and artist living in Denver. Her other books include two collections of poetry Backup Singers and Either Way I'm Celebrating (both with Birds, LLC), as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book You're On My Period (Counterpath), and others. In 2017, she founded GEORGIA, an art space in her garage in Denver. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Hyperallergic, Bomb, jubilat, Chicago Review, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a librarian.

Dear Friends,

Lucas de Lima's new book Tropical Sacrifice is now available for pre-order! Tropical Sacrifice will be available at a discounted price of $16 exclusively from the Birds, LLC site until it arrives from the printer.


*Cover and book design by Karen Sofia Colón.

Tropical Sacrifice is a wishbone against a fascist heart/a prophetic, dream-filled narrative based on the spiritual journey of a chicken. Used for sacrificial ritual in Afro-Brazilian religion, the chicken becomes a re-enchantment of the poet's ancestry. Her superior vision gives access to histories of genocide and ecocide, opening a portal to Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, queer and nonhuman worlds. From the favela to the Amazon to the astral plane, it is the half-winged bird who escapes the factory farm, inviting voices to bleed out of the sky.



Dear Friends,

Sommer Browning's Good Actors is now available for pre-order! Good Actors will be available at a discounted price of $16 exclusively from the Birds, LLC site until it arrives from the printer.

This is Sommer's third full-length poetry collection, and we are so happy to be working with her again!

Cover art by Liliana Porter

Cover design by Hollis Duncan

At birth we are given a role--it is our name. Good Actors is a side-eyed illumination of the artist as self-help guru, oracle, and sage, but more importantly as mother, lover, and friend.

Part psychological experiment, part conceptual art piece, part screenplay, Good Actors is 100% a joyful celebration of language and life. And because it is Sommer, the book is hilarious, melancholy, and existential.

Good Actors $16 (pre-sale)

Sommer Browning is an author, curator, and artist living in Denver. Her books include two collections of poetry Backup Singers and Either Way I'm Celebrating (both with Birds, LLC), as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book You're On My Period (Counterpath), and others. In 2017, she founded GEORGIA, an art space in her garage in Denver. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art has appeared in Hyperallergic, Bomb, jubilat, Chicago Review, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a librarian.

"Great Things From the Department of Transportation," from Good Actors, in a recent issue of The American Poetry Review!

Listen to Sommer and host Chris Moore discuss the nature of reality, what makes comedy funny, the meaning of art & life, and what separates humans from animals on a recent episode of The Situation & the Story podcast.

If you're interested in reviewing this book, adopting it for a class, or inviting Sommer to read or give an interview, contact us at editor@birdsllc.com.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING SMALL INDEPENDENT POETRY PRESSES!!!

Love,

The Editors

Art by Sanjeevan Tharmaratnam

Birds, LLC is thrilled to announce that we will be publishing Tropical Sacrifice by Lucas de Lima in 2021!

Tropical Sacrifice is a wishbone against a fascist heart/a prophetic, dreamlike narrative based on the spiritual journey of a chicken.

Typically used for sacrificial ritual in Afro-Brazilian religion, the chicken becomes a re-enchantment of the poet's mixed-race ancestry. Her superior vision gives access to genocidal and ecocidal histories, opening an ancestral portal to Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, queer & nonhuman worlds.

From the favela to the Amazon to the astral plane, it is the chicken who escapes the factory farm & sees voices bleeding out of the sky.

*Artwork by Sanjeevan Tharmaratnam


Read excerpts from Tropical Sacrifice here published in Pen America, chosen guest editor Dawn Lundy Martin.

Stay tuned for pre-sale and more information about this book.

And if you're interested in reviewing or teaching Tropical Sacrifice, please email us at editor@birdsllc.com.

Love,
The Birds

In solidarity with and support of anti-racist movements and protests, and in response to the recent police murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, David McAtee and the long history of Black people murdered and terrorized by racist police and state sponsored violence, Birds, LLC will be donating all direct sales for June to the following Black-led grassroots collectives & bail funds: Black Visions Collective (an organization dedicated to Black liberation and to collective liberation), The Okra Project (a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People), and National Bail Out (a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration); and in July to: Black & Pink (a national prison abolitionist organization), The Frances Thompson Education Foundation (a Black trans education fund), and House of Tulip (housing for trans people experiencing homelessness).

FREE PDFs FOR TEACHERS & STUDENTS

Dear Friends,

During this period of social distancing, we want to offer all teachers and students in need of distance learning materials free PDFs of all our books. Email us at editor@birdsllc.com, and we'll gladly send you any files you need to teach and learn remotely.


FREE SHIPPING FOR ALL ORDERS

To make it a little easier for you to stock up on your reading materials, we have waved shipping costs on all our books.


SAVAGE PAGEANT NOW OFFICIALLY AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE

Our latest title, Jessica Q. Stark's Savage Pageant, is now officially available everywhere! Our friends at Small Press Distribution have handpicked Savage Pageantfor the month of March--get 20% off with the code HANDPICKED.


Savage Pageant is 20% off at SPD (code HANDPICKED)

JESSICA Q. STARK KICKS OFF THE IMMINENT VIRTUAL READING SERIES

Tune in for the first volume of Imminent Virtual Readings w/ Mary Kim Arnold, Valerie Hsiung, Becca Klaver, Rachel Kauder, and our own Jess Stark!

They go live Sunday 3/22 5:30pm EST on Twitter @ImminentSeries.


PRICKS IN THE TAPESTRY PRE-ORDER SALE!

Our favorite thing in the whole world is introducing authors to their books for the first time, and Jameson Fitzpatrick looks absolutely smitten! Pricks in the Tapestry is now available for pre-order.

Pricks In The Tapestry Cover

Pricks in the Tapestry Pre-Order Sale

Take care of each other, and stay safe out there.


Love,
The Birds

Congratulations to Raquel Salas Rivera, whose book while they sleep (under the bed is another country) was longlisted for the 2020 PEN America Open Book Award, along with many other terrific books, authors, & presses!!!

while they sleep (under the bed is another country) $16

We are also excited to announce that while they sleep (under the bed is another country) is now available as an audiobook read by Raquel!!! Download and listen to it now:

And thanks to Remezcla for this thoughtful, in-depth review of while they sleep (under the bed is another country)

while they sleep (under the bed is another country) $16

Congrats again to Raquel, and thank you for supporting their work!!!

Love,

The Editors

Dear Friends,

Jessica Q. Stark's Savage Pageant is now available for pre-order!!! Normally $18, we're offering it for $15 thru January 13!!! Books ship January 14.

Savage Pageant recounts the history of the defunct zoo, Jungleland, which housed Hollywood's show animals up until its closure in 1969. In it, Stark explores the concept of US American spectacle and its historic ties to celebrity culture, the maternal body, racist taxonomies, the mistreatment of animals, and ecological violence. With a hybrid, documentary poetics, Savage Pageant reveals how we attempt to narrate and control geographical space and how ghosts (remainders, the sketch, unfinished stories) collapse the tidy corners of our collective, accumulative histories.

Savage Pageant $15 (pre-order deal!!!)

Jessica Stark's Savage Pageant is a map, an "undulation," a "fold," something lightly sketched then traced on "something blackened, worn-out, and organized." Stark's brilliant move in this powerful new work is to problematize the paper itself: the surfaces that receive the many marks that a poet, an inhabitant, an animal, an archivist or an audience-member might make. What a brilliant writer. What a lovely and strange book. - Bhanu Kapil

Part poetry book, part collection of private, personal, and public histories, part summons, part rune, this book takes you headfirst into the other world where all you can do is swim past your own hurt and traumas into the sunshine hole of the unreal. It's a book we must remember as we begin to forget ourselves. I'll risk it all to say that we need this book for all of time, to take with us as a guide from here until the everlasting, because, as this book says to us, "We are only here for a/ short time." - Dorothea Lasky

The body of poetry needs a new script, and Jessica Q. Stark is more than happy to oblige. At the height of her multi-tasking, birthing simultaneously son and book, she holds you captive with her carnival performance of ingenious gestures, where language and motherhood play informal games of anatomic brilliance and take you through her sanitary mayhem of pandemoniac beauty and birth. - Vi Khi Nao

Jessica Q. Stark is a mixed-race, Vietnamese poet and scholar originally from California. She received her PhD in English at Duke University, a Master’s of English from Saint Louis University, and a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the latest titled Vasilisa the Wise (Ethel Zine Press, 2018). Her chapbook manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for Heavy Feather's Double Take Poetry Prize in 2016. Her poems have appeared in HobartTupelo QuarterlyPotluckGlass Poetry Journal, and others. She writes an ongoing poetry zine called INNANET and works as an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI. Find her on Twitter @jezzbah.

Savage Pageant $15 (pre-order deal!!!)

If you're interested in reviewing this book, adopting it for your class, or inviting Jess to read or give an interview, please let us know and we'll be happy to help: editor@birdsllc.com

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING SMALL INDEPENDENT POETRY PRESSES!!!

Love,

The Editors

Dear Friends,

Happy Pub Day to Raquel Salas Rivera for their new book while they sleep (under the bed is another country) officially out today!!!

And double congrats and celebration of Raquel for winning the LAMBDA Award for their book lo terciario / the tertiary (Timeless Infinite Light, 2018) last night!! (look out for the new edition from Noemi Press forthcoming 2019 with an intro by Urayoán Noel and images by José Ortiz-Pagán)

Raquel's book is the HANDPICKED Book of the month of June at Small Press Distribution. Get while they sleep... at 20% off w/ the code HANDPICKED. 

while they sleep (under the bed is another country" is also recommended as Books to Read in June by Literary Hub

"Raquel Salas Rivera’s new collection while they sleep (under the bed is another country) confronts the aftermath (duringmath?) of Hurricane Maria and the ongoing imperial violence of the U.S. in its territory/colony Puerto Rico. In English in the main body, and in Spanish in the footnotes, the book offers fragments, shards, from two parallel narratives—the view from the U.S.,  which passively observes the chaos from afar, where “64=4,645” and throwing paper towels is “a humanitarian gesture”; and the monster under the bed, the suppressed demonstration of pain and active survival in Puerto Rico, where there’s no use for health insurance because the hospitals still have no electricity. Critical, clear, crucial, while they sleep shows how America has made its bed and forces us to sleep in it."

–Kevin Chau, Lit Hub

Watch Raquel reading at their amazing launch event for while they sleep... at ICA Philadelphia!!!

If you're interested in reviewing this book, adopting it for your class, or inviting Raquel to read or give an interview, please let us know and we'll be happy to help: editor@birdsllc.com

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING SMALL INDEPENDENT POETRY PRESSES. 

Love,

Birds


Join Birds, LLC authors and friends Thursday, March 28th from 6:30 pm to 10 pm for a reading at1122 Gallery featuring:

Tommy Pico
Raquel Salas Rivera
Harmony Holiday
Khadijah Queen
Chase Berggrun
Elisa Gabbert
Su Hwang
Monica McClure

Free and open to the public. There will be books, snacks & drinks on hand. 1122 Gallery is located at 1122 SE 88th Ave., Portland, OR 97216. Join or share via the Facebook event here.


Small Press Distribution 50th Anniversary Reading Party & Karaoke

Friday, March 29 at 6:30 PM, Birds, LLC will celebrate SPD’s 50th Anniversary with reading from Harmony Holiday and Raquel Salas Rivera followed by a karaoke party.   at McMenamins Kennedy School 5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland, Oregon 97211

Join or share the Facebook event here.


NO FAIR / FAIR Reading

Fri, Mar 29 at BAKERY BUILDING / 2222 NE Oregon and at OUTLET PDX / 2500 NE Sandy Birds, LLC authors will read at the No Fair / Fair reading: Raquel Salas Rivera, 9:00pm Outlet PDX Chase Berggurn, 9:20pm Outlet PDX Tommy Pico, 9:30pm at Bakery Building Harmony Holiday, 10:20pm at Bakery Building Check out the full schedule here! Join or share on Facebook here.


Birds, LLC at AWP BOOKFAIR

Find Birds, LLC at AWP Conference Bookfair at Table: T5046
Thu-Sat, March 27–30, Portland, OR, Oregon Convention Center

Birds, LLC will be at NO FAIR/FAIR, a 2 day + 1 night literary festival celebrating small independent presses that will take place alongside the 2019 AWP Conference in Portland, OR. Fri-Sat, Mar 29-30, noon to 5PM at Bakery Building / 2222 NE Oregon.