Welcome to Workwomans Press!

WORKWOMANS PRESS

Seattle WA

Our Books

	THIS IS HOW HE LEFT ME. Jennifer Hook. A book of poems. Jennifer met her husband, Gary Ayres, in 1975 as freshmen at UC Santa Cruz. They founded Hook-Ayres Design in Philadelphia in 1991, selling porcelain and silver jewelry at crafts fairs and museums throughout the northeast until Gary’s death on October 21, 2010. Since then Jennifer has studied with the poet Leonard Gontarek and is a member of his Osage Poets group. She has read her work at Baltimore Avenue’s Green Line Café as one of “Nine Philadelphia Poets for Change” and at Philly Poetry Day. This is her first book of poems. October 2014. 36 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-8-9. Amazon \| Barnes & Noble
	UNA CITA EN SANTIAGO: Luis Garcia en Chile. Gail Chiarello. A tale of love, sex, and poetry, with some politics thrown in. The young Berkeley poet Luis Garcia spends the year of 1963 in Santiago, Chile and is befriended by Nicanor Parra, Stella Díaz Varin, and Miller Williams, among many other literary luminaries. His love life goes awry but the publication of his first book of poems launches his career. This bio-novella combines real characters and real events alongside imaginary ones. March 2014. 112 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-5-8. Amazon \| Barnes & Noble
	FLORA IN HER KITCHEN. Flora Chiarello Menges. A collection of almost 100 recipes as prepared by Flora Chiarello Menges of Albany, New York. Born in 1913 to an Italian immigrant family, Flora learned the southern Italian dishes of her mother, Lucia Longo Chiarello, and also German-American recipes such as sauerbraten and apfelkuchen beloved by her husband, Theodore Menges. This is basic home cooking—comfort food; no fusion cuisine here—as practiced by a woman whose cooking has been an inspiration for decades to her large extended family. June 2010. 112 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-4-1. $10.00. Amazon \| Barnes & Noble
	DAUGHTERS & MOTHERS in Alice Munro’s Later Stories. Deborah Heller. Toronto literary scholar and critic Deborah Heller describes Alice Munro’s treatment of mother-daughter relationships in four recent stories: “My Mother’s Dream,” “Family Furnishings,” “Soon,” and “Silence.” She shows how these later works transform the earlier autobiographical material in surprising ways. August 2009. 50 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-3-4. $12.00. “A fascinating exploration of the uneven terrain of mother-daughter relationships … This raw territory, including the mutual hatreds and resentments that Munro portrays so painfully, is perhaps best dealt with in fiction. The emotional landscape is mapped carefully in Deborah Heller’s thoughtful and provocative essay.” — Pamela Hook, Los Gatos, CA “Ouch! … really touches a nerve!” — Beverly Marcus, Seattle, WA “A gratifying analysis of complex daughter-mother relationships …” — Claudia Singer, Malden, MA Amazon \| Barnes & Noble
	GRACE. Susan Sherrell. Summer 1972: twenty-three-year-old UC student Leah DeMartino is working at a race track north of Berkeley. She befriends a slightly older co-worker, beautiful Grace Neville. When Grace’s body is found floating in San Francisco Bay, Leah’s life takes an unsettling turn. She comes into contact with fanatic but charismatic James Ferguson, head of Security for Oakland’s Black Panther Party, and meets good-looking, unpredictable Ronnie Xavier Jones, recently back from Vietnam. This story weaves together post-sixties Bay Area themes—the quest for human dignity on the part of African-Americans, the anger and rage of returning Vietnam vets who feel disrespected in their own country, the ambiguous role of the US government, and, above all, exciting new freedoms in love, sex and relationships. July 2009. 305 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-1-0. $18.00. “Engrossing—brilliant… GRACE captures an entire era in a suspenseful, fast-paced thriller that had me on the edge of my seat… couldn’t put it down!” — Deborah Caplow, Seattle, WA “An irresistible tale of murder and racial politics. This just might be the Great American Novel.” — Alan Singer, Seattle, WA “Takes the murder mystery genre in a whole new direction with its powerful portrayal of love/hate relationships between black and white Americans.” — Rick Keck, Ashland, OR Amazon \| Barnes & Noble
	NINE LOVES. Oriana Lewton Leopold. Prose poems and paintings by the young Portland-based artist. 44 pp. ISBN 978-0-9820073-0-3. $15.00. Limited availability. “Oriana Lewton Leopold bestows an astonishing gift to readers in her debut book, Nine Loves. Edged with a clairvoyant vision of the artist’s journal toward self-discovery, her paintings and poems electrify and terrify us simultaneously…” — Jim Thurber, Reedsport, OR Contact publisher to order (see below)
	THE PENTAMERON: Tales of Fell Street and Beyond. A Collective Sixties Memoir. Jerry Butterfield, Gail Chiarello, Jaime Leopold, Michael Shepler, and Jim Thurber tell how it was coming of age in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s. A unique volume and Workwomans Press’s first publication. Cover art by Jerry Butterfield. 202 pp. Limited edition of 50 copies, December 2008. ISBN 978-0-9820073-2-9. $20.00. Contact publisher to order (see below)