Wheelbarrow Books

Series · 4 books · 2018-2020

By William Orem, Brad Johnson, Gary Fincke, and more

Books in series

Our Purpose in Speaking

2018

In this debut poetry collection by an award-winning fiction writer, the longing for God and the poignancy of family life echo each other’s music. The traditional forms of sonnet, sestina, and villanelle punctuate more modern verse forms, this combination being only one of the strands binding past and present. Many of these poems may be read as confessions—of joy, of hurtfulness given or received, of awe at the inescapable reality of love. This volume comprises spiritual writing that remains firmly of this world, part apostasy, part song, reaching out for meaning from both the shifting landscape of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and the interior places of the heart.

The Infinity Room

2019

In The Infinity Room the reader will find polished, precise poems that are built around the author’s experiences of touring Nevada’s atomic bomb test sites, the Chernobyl disaster site, and Oak Ridge, as well as living for decades near Three Mile Island. These iconic landmarks of the threat of nuclear technology become more than talking points as they provide grounding for narratives of faith and skepticism from multiple viewpoints that employ science, religion, history, myth, politics, and popular culture, including a piece about the author’s experience as a student at Kent State at the time of the National Guard shooting. The poems here are tightly controlled but electric, dark yet vibrant with love and longing, and packed with memorable characters and places that are presented through a singular, lyrical voice that connects us to what it means to be human.

Toward the Wild Abundance

2019

Looking back, within, and ahead—while ultimately focusing on the here and now—Kristin Brace traverses landscapes of memory, dreams, and the imagination, exploring the fragments and shifting perspectives that shape experience and identity and reinvigorate the creation of meaning. With tenderness and wonder, these poems build their own stepping stones for the journey, moving from connection to disconnection, frailty to strength, and fierce love to intense isolation, depicting a whole that is enlivened by the coexistence of seemingly opposing forces, emotions, and experiences. Despite the darkness and uncertainty they embody, the poems in this collection insist on their existence, forever traveling toward moments alive with color and light. The poet draws from the riches of art, nature, and the quiet moments of every day in reflections often startling in language and content and unified by their voice-driven musicality. Fraught with illness, longing, and loss, these poems guide readers through the intricate geographies of the heart, sometimes hurtling, sometimes dancing, sometimes feeling their way through the dark toward the wild abundance of each new day.

Smuggling Elephants through Airport Security

2020

Nothing is off-limits in this ultimately American text. Smuggling Elephants through Airport Security attempts to position large academic ideas in shared public spaces, often discovering the absurdity and humor in making such connections. The poems herein take the dizzying influences affecting the post-postmodern American and make poetry of it all, skipping whimsically from the Pixies to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” from the Confederate flag to unisex public toilets, from eggplant emojis to Vladimir Putin stealing Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring. While the volume gives the reader a specific sense of voice and character, it also allows for identification with the author’s collected observations, all the while providing a succinct feel for the twenty-first-century American zeitgeist.

Authors

William Orem

Author · 3 books

William Orem writes about spiritual quest across different cultures and times. He also has a series of sub-interests, from modern science to the literary gothic. The book Zombi, You My Love, is set at a mission in Haiti during the last summer of the Duvalier regime; Across the River is a linked series of stories, each of which takes place in a different room of a Georgetown hospital; Killer of Crying Deer is a spiritual struggle set in 1699 in what are now known as the Florida Keys, while the poetry collection Our Purpose In Speaking alternates between formal and free verse in examining the different facets of a Catholic childhood. The common thread among them all is the authentic search for the soul. Miss Lucy, winner of the Gival Press Novel Award, is historical fiction about the life of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and examines the many ways in which books, and writers, can be haunted. Zombi, You My Love, won the GLCA New Writers Award in 2000, previously given to Sherman Alexie, Alice Munro, Louise Erdrich, and Richard Ford. Across the River won the Texas Review Novella Prize; Killer of Crying Deer won the Eric Hoffer Award and has been optioned for film, while Our Purpose In Speaking won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and William has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, poetry, and essay. William grew up in Maryland and on Capitol Hill, both of which figure regularly in his work. His play THE SEABIRDS, winner of the Manduzmar New Plays Award, takes place inside a lighthouse on Chesapeake Bay during the Civil War, and his other short plays have been performed both around the country and internationally. Currently he is a Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College. More info at williamorem.com.