What Books Press Fall 2024 Launch

Join us at Village Well Books & Coffee for a celebration of What Books Press' Fall 2024 lineup!

What Books Press is an independent, Los Angeles-based press publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Come hear authors read and converse in an evening of poetry and fiction that might just change your life.

About the books:

How to Capture Carbon: In a dozen luminous stories, award-winning author Cameron Walker brings readers to the water’s edge, where the known world collides with magic and with the mysterious depths of the human heart. Here, a pandemic turns children into sea creatures, a baker kneads unusual pie crusts during a California mudslide, and a young man sets off to see the world in a flying coat. Lyrical and dreamlike, How to Capture Carbon navigates the seas of a changing climate and the transformative power of loss--and of love.

Dreamer Paradise: To be undocumented, to be America's shadow, can be the worst thing an adolescent can experience. Often undocumented immigrant youth will only know that they are undocumented once it is time to apply for jobs, a driver's license, or college applications because to apply means having a valid social security number.
The term 'Dreamer' is now claimed by the undocumented youth population. It redefines the experience of immigrant youth and validates their existence as an individual experience. Dreamer Paradise aims to tell that experience and serves as a closer look into Quiroz's life, from being denied entry at the DMV to wanting acceptance as an American citizen; and, at the same time, holding their Mexican queer identity close to their existence. Quiroz does not hold back and urges anyone who reads to listen.

The Manuscripts: After insinuating himself into the company of a famous philosopher, an art student finds himself with an unexpected job. Aided by a driver with obscure motives, the student must chaperone the philosopher around the countryside to retrieve manuscripts hidden during the recent war. These manuscripts, however, reveal more than expected. A road-trip novel about phenomenology and fascism, The Manuscripts careens headlong across terrain both comically and morally fraught.

Slow Return:“slow return” refers to Paul's slow return to his 20’s and perhaps a slow return to sanity from political turmoil of the 1960’s, drugs, and a romanticized notion of suicide, all prompted by photos he discovered in “Anarchy, Protest and Rebellion.” His humor, flirtations with art, women, characters, (some famous, some infamous) protests and his pursuit of acting find images and events in his third collection of poetry. it’s his point-of-view that’s so arresting, his ability to go beyond the ekphrastic, to parse his past, glean details, and ultimately translate into poetry his interactivity with this book. He not only describes photos, but enters them. His keen eye for his surroundings along with the keen eye of the photographer, Fred McDarrah set up a tandem that moves, surprises, and welcomes the reader to the complexity and intimacy of a life and time.

As If Scattered: Alternating between core poems and informal erasures, As If Scattered embodies, in highly imagistic language, the existential experience we have when we fall in love & as we age. The erasure form loosens & takes apart the core poem much the way our old sense of ourselves changes in times of great transition. These are love poems, poems about the mystery of being human and how our respect for this mystery directly relates to how we care for our planet. Mason’s poetry reveals authentic elements of these mysteries, pieces of the light within our vulnerability.

About the authors:

Cameron Walker is the author of the children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the essay collection Points of Light. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Orion, and The Last Word On Nothing. She lives in California with her family.

David Quiroz, born in Mexico, arrived in the USA in 1995. He is a product of the afterschool program The Boys and Girls Club of San Fernando Valley. As an undocumented first-generation college graduate, David was reenergized after each political battle. Upon receiving DACA, David utilized every opportunity afforded to him. Dreamer Paradise, his first book, tells the story of one dreamer, as the DACA/immigrant experience is not universal.

Kevin Allardice is the author of six novels. He received an MFA from the University of Virginia and has more recently been a Jack Hazard Fellow with the New Literary Project. Originally from California, he now lives with his family in Iowa and teaches at the University of Iowa.

Paul Lieber’s second collection, Interrupted by the Sea, was also published by What Books Press. His first book,Chemical Tendencies(Tebot Bach), was a finalist in the MSR poetry contest. He received an honorable mention in the Allen Ginsberg Contest. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Paul produced and hosted “Why Poetry” on Pacifica radio. He taught Poetry at LMU and facilitated the poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque. Paul teaches acting at AMDA in Los Angeles.

Holaday Mason is the author of five previous full-length collections & two
chapbooks. As If Scattered is her 6th volume. She is currently the poetry editor
of the online fine art zine Furious Pure. Multiple Pushcart nominee, her
publication include Poetry International, Spillway, Solo, The River Styx among
others.

Katharine Haake’s newest books are What Happened Was, winner of the 2024 Nothing Exists Alone climate change fiction award from 11:11 Press, and a forthcoming memoir-in-essays, The Heaviness of Ghosts, winner of the Wolfson Prose Prize. Recently retired from a long career at CSU, Northridge, she lives in Los Angeles.

Host or Publisher Village Well Books & Coffee