SLOPE EDITIONS

We’re thrilled to announce B.J Soloy’s collection, Our Pornography & other disaster songs, is the winner of our 17th Annual Book prize!

“We can build a brain space more soothing to our anxieties, but we ourselves become spectral in the process. “

We at Slope Editions are thrilled to introduce FAMOUS TIMES by Thea Brown.  Rarely has the solipsism of our times been so beautifully articulated and, more importantly, so full of wonder. This is a collection that’s as full of Mulder and Scully as it is vital, incendiary poetics. Preorder yours and remember: 

The Body Beside Herself is available to order!

The winner of our 5th Annual Chapbook Contest, The Body Beside Herself by Julianne Neely is a stunning hybrid work that uses form & subject matter to explore the sexual female body in relation to culture, academic institution, & inherited cliches.

We couldn’t be more excited to bring you the next glowing addition to Slope’s family - Beautyberry by Cassie Donish.

This stunning debut collection is what happens in the aftermath of trauma large & small, personal & universal, relatable & unknown, of the mind & of the heart, of the lungs & of the legs.

These poems are what happens when you begin to look at systems as constraints & constraints as a form of death.

Slope Editions, an independent poetry press based in the Pioneer Valley, is currently looking for a new Special Projects Editor!

About Slope

Founded in 2001 by Chris Janke and Ethan Paquin, Slope was one of the very first independent presses/online journals in the country— we’ve since transitioned to only publishing books and chapbooks. Our most recent titles include this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all I had so i drew it  by Keegan Lester (chosen by Mary Ruefle) and Speech Rinse by Vanessa Couto Johnson. You can take a look at our website to see more of what we’ve done in the past: www.slopeeditions.org

Slope Editions is a micro-press. We publish, as volunteers, between one and four titles a year, mostly funded through our contests. As a tiny operation, our positions take the shape of the people involved. We have no office, and we hold weekly meetings during which editors check-in with the progress on their various independently-run projects, and we look forward to the individual and sometimes idiosyncratic contributions that individual editors make.

About the Job

This newly-created position will be even more in flux than other Slope jobs. While also participating in the editorial process of selecting finalists for our annual chapbook contest and book prize and releasing a new full-length in the fall, the Special Projects Editor will work on developing new creative projects in collaboration with the Managing and Assistant Managing Editors. The Special Projects editor will have wide discretion to propose and implement new publishing projects, including projects of their own creation. Two projects that the Special Projects Editor will be asked to investigate are: a political pamphlet series in response to the current political climate, and a resurrection of slope dot org, our currently dormant online journal. We are also open to planning Slope events or readings, managing reading tours for our writers, developing grant-based programs, and more.

The ideal candidate must be adept at taking the reins and working independently, as well as collaborating over long distances. Because we are a tiny organization, anyone in this position will be considered, should they desire, for other roles: Assistant Managing Editor, Managing Editor, etc, when those positions are open. Because each editor operates quite independently, we rely on and strongly emphasize skills of that allow for self-management and an ability to follow-through, to identify and complete tasks in a timely manner.

The Special Projects Editor should feel comfortable working remotely while also participating in a weekly phone or skype meeting to discuss different projects and creative directions.

Please indicate if you have any past experience working in an editorial position with a magazine or press. Grant-writing experience or experience working for a non-profit is a plus.

Compensation

Every job at Slope Edition is a volunteer position. While we expect regular attention to current tasks, the hours per week can vary widely, and each editor has control over their own hours. We expect this to be a very part-time position. In addition, Slope Editions is happy to work with existing internship programs with universities to provide oversight, reporting, and grades when necessary for academic credit. In addition, Slope will provide letters of recommendation to future job prospects. We consider ourselves to be participants in a large literary community which is more-often-than-not financially undercompensated. We are not blind to the ways in which free labor can be exploitative, and we strive to work with our volunteers that their own needs are met along with the needs of our organization. In the 15+-year history of Slope Editions, editors have often found that the skills built during one’s time at Slope Editions can lead to important entries on a CV or resume. We also find a reward in helping to shape the literary landscape, something that every staff member at Slope has an opportunity to engage in through our editorial meetings, manuscript screenings, and reading periods.

To Apply

Please send a cover letter and resume to our Managing Editor, Emily Hunerwadel, at [email protected] by February 15th.  We will begin holding interviews with prospective candidates in late January/February 2018.

Thanks,

Slope Editions is ecstatic to announce that we will be opening submissions for our 17th Annual Book Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, on January 1st!

Poet and essayist Ocean Vuong is the author of the best-selling, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, the debut was a winner of the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and was a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Vuong's writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 100 Leading Global Thinker, alongside Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-Moon and Warsan Shire, Ocean was also named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” PBS NewsHour, Teen Vogue, VICE, The Fantastic Man, and The New Yorker. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at Umass-Amherst. He is currently at work on his first novel.

We are thrilled to announce the winner of our 16th Annual Book Prize: The Rape Kit by Terri Witek, selected by Dawn Lundy Martin for publication in 2018.

Of the winning manuscript, Martin writes, “Terri Witek’s The Rape Kit is a powerful procedural collection of poems that unearths the obstructionist nature of the bureaucratic apparatuses that proclaim to attend to the trauma of sexual violence. But that’s just the beginning. The range and depth of this book is astonishing in its precision, and in its probing. The Rape Kit manages an unrelenting force of return to languages of steely repression, thereby stealing power from the gaze of the apparatuses and those behind it. It is a miraculous accomplishment. Witek’s collection is rare and necessary and a fire in throat of a culture that has no appropriate language for rape and its aftermath. Her approximation here strokes the aura of a pain that cannot be spoken. It takes multiple approaches—renderings of interior architectures, absences, diagrams, historical overlay, erasures, and language repetition—but in the end, Witek’s The Rape Kit is a grand success, the best we’ll get. Fresh, relevant, and heartbreaking.

  We would also like to congratulate our finalists, listed below in no particular order:

Miracle Marks by Purvi Shah

Echo’s Errand by Keith Jones

What It Doesn’t Have to Do With by Lindsay Bernal

Hard Some by Hailey Higdon

The Feminology of Spirit by Lynarra Featherly

FIDELITORIA: fixed or fluxed by Candice Wuehle

Too Numerous by Kent Shaw

Quite Apart by Krystal Languell

Negotiations by Paul Hlava

After June by Sara Renberg

Solastalgia by JM Miller

Jasmine Dreame Wagner’s chapbook Ask won our Annual Chapbook Contest in 2015. We are excited to announce that Ask is now available for purchase on Slope Editions’ website! Buy it here.

Wagner's poems are bold, precise, and lushly imagined. In Ask, she re-imagines the conventions of online venues such as Twitter, OKCupid, and Tumblr, infusing them with a persistent, inventive lyricism. The result is an exciting reconfiguration of the language of commercial culture. Slope Editions is thrilled to create a unique, interactive chapbook to match Wagner's delightful fusing of poetry and internet.

Jasmine Dreame Wagner is an American poet and musician. She is the author of the chapbook Ask (Slope Editions, 2016), Rings (Kelsey Street Press, 2014), Rewilding (Ahsahta Press, 2013), Listening for Earthquakes (Caketrain, 2012), Seven Sunsets, a split chapbook with Melanie Sweeney (The Lettered Streets Press, 2015), and an e-chapbook, True Crime (NAP, 2014). Her writing has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, New American Writing, Verse, and in two anthologies: The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and Lost and Found: Stories from New York (Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Books, 2009). Jasmine is a dog lover who eats avocados by the bowlful. Her collection of hybrid lyric essays on noise, silence, and aesthetics is due out from Ahsahta Press next year. She tweets enthusiastically: @jasminedreame.

Where do poetry and social media intersect? Jasmine Dreame Wagner’s long-awaited chapbook, ASK, offers an answer.

ASK launches August 18th at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, where Jasmine will be reading with five other poets (including former Slope editor Haley Thompson!) starting at 7pm.

“Falling in love while losing a loved one and watching the war news on TV? Life is difficult, and the poems in this marvelous collection ask a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Each poem supplies part of the answer--to go looking, to make mistakes, to be confused, to be wounded, to keep moving toward a new life." -- Mary Ruefle

Slope Editions is thrilled to announce the winner of our 15th Annual Book Prize: this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all I had, so I drew it, byKeegan Lester, selected by Mary Ruefle for publication in Spring 2017.

Ben Mirov's ghost machines has arrived!! So excited about this beautiful book!

Douglas Kearney: "ghost machines got in my space, lingered with me every time I set the manuscript down. Called me back to its shadows of shadows in ways I’ve rarely experienced taking my turns here, in the normal world. It’s your turn, now."

“There is a beautiful sadness in these poems. Mirov skillfully co-inhabits the realms of the physical and the metaphysical, the containment suit and the dark star. In a world both familiar and foreign, Mirov inquires as to the nature of the universe, as well as the absurdity of layering institutions over the void. We are keeping “busy all day.” We are running from something. What is it?”