Norilana Books

Reflection's Edge thoughtfully reviews, in an interesting "evolution of geek culture" context, the intense poetry memoir The Memory Palace by JoSelle Vanderhooft (upstart_crow):

"The Memory Palace says the most about genre by not emphasizing its author's genre background—by treating its genre influences as neither more nor less important than Vanderhooft's other cultural experiences. It is remarkable simply by the fact of its existence; in some other years, Vanderhooft would be barred from writing anything so personal, so literary, and so devoid of dragons." —Romie Stott, Reflection's Edge

Read the rest of the review...

Norilana Books congratulates our author and editor Mike Allen (time_shark) whose poem "The Thirteenth Hell" from his Norilana collection The Journey to Kailash has been accepted for inclusion into Best Horror of the Year 1 edited by Ellen Datlow (ellen_datlow).

Congratulations on this honor, Mike! :-)



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Fantasy author Paul Genesse does a fantastic and powerful review of the intense poetry memoir The Memory Palace by JoSelle Vanderhooft (upstart_crow):

"She might be a bisexual lapsed Catholic with emotional problems, but she has balls of pure steel, and the determination to reach for her dreams no matter what tragedy or challenge befalls her. It’s never easy for her, but why should it be? Life sucks sometimes, but do you let it grind you into dust or do you become mud and stick to life’s boots? Like the rest of us, JoSelle does a little of both."

and:

"The story of her life is mine now, and no one will read it exactly like I did. There is little doubt in my mind that when you finish reading, the work will simmer in your veins like it’s simmering in mine now."

Read the rest of the review...

Amal El-Mohtar over at SF Site reviews Mike Allen's (time_shark) The Journey to Kailash:

"Reader, it's brilliant.

[The] Journey to Kailash is a handsomely designed book that brings together the very best of Mike Allen's poetry, collecting almost fifty speculative poems published over the last ten years in a variety of venues, several of which have been nominated for or have won the Rhysling Award. In addition to the quality of the material, Allen puts his well-deserved reputation as a fantastic editor of the fantastic to work here, organizing these sometimes very disparate pieces into a coherent whole, worthy of the term oeuvre..."

Read the complete review...

The Clevelandpoetics Blog says:

"In this bitter season of negative degree weather, Mike Allen's The Journey to Kailash is a wonderful book to accompany a pot of tea before [of] a smoldering fire..."

Read the complete review...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Structured around the Renaissance mnemonic device of a building with rooms populated by thoughts and objects, The Memory Palace is a lucid dream, a remarkably powerful memoir, and a fantasy.

Norilana Books is proud to present The Memory Palace, a significant poetry collection by JoSelle Vanderhooft, dealing with the raw themes of youth, pain, the Catholic faith, and the challenges of growing up gay.


The Memory Palace by JoSelle Vanderhooft




"Inside The Memory Palace, JoSelle Vanderhooft constructs a painfully honest memoir in free verse, detailing one talented young woman's odyssey past the monsters of mental illness, through the brutal clash between faith and sexuality, always haunted by the terrible enigma of a father's suicide—yet these traumas are counterbalanced by earnest hope and the small, sweet moments life grants to fighters and survivors. Her eloquent and eminently readable story will resonate with any one who's ever found themselves an alien in their own world, peering in at society from the outside."

—Mike Allen, three-time Rhysling Award winner and editor of Mythic Delirium


The Memory Palace by JoSelle Vanderhooft
Curiosities (an imprint of Norilana Books)
January 15, 2009
Trade Hardcover
Retail Price:
$21.95 USD - £17.00 GBP
ISBN-13: 978-1-934648-87-2
ISBN-10: 1-934648-87-6
164 pages

Click for more information...

Order Your Copy:

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- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon UK
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Norilana Books is a Los Angeles-based new independent publisher, owned and operated by Vera Nazarian since 2006. With over 210 books in print, Norilana Books specializes in beautifully packaged hardcover and trade paperback classics of world literature, quality fantasy, science fiction, romance and women's fiction, and young adult titles. For more information visit http://www.norilana.com/

Contact:

Vera Nazarian, Publisher
Norilana Books, P.O. Box 2188, Winnetka, CA 91396
service (at) norilana.com - http://www.norilana.com/
Catalog of Books in Print: http://www.norilana.com/norilana-catalog.htm
Blog: http://norilanabooks.livejournal.com/

The Memory Palace by JoSelle Vanderhooft upstart_crow

A Poetry Memoir

Coming January 15, 2009 from Curiosities.

Click on images to see full-size... (Note, this is the ARC edition, not the final cover.)




Cover jacket flat:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Norilana Books presents The Journey to Kailash by Rhysling Award-winning poet Mike Allen (time_shark), a vibrant collection that gathers 57 poems that explore regions sometimes whimsical, sometimes terrifying, always off the beaten trail.

Sometimes drawing from mythology, sometimes extrapolating bizarre futures, and not at all afraid to blend the two, Mike Allen's poetry still addresses universal themes of love, loss and longing with candor and even humor.


The Journey to Kailash by Mike Allen



"Mike Allen pours everything he's got onto his poem-canvases. Mythologies, science-fiction scenarios, private memories and desires, and untestable ideas crowd and overlay one another upon the pages as if flung from an overloaded brush. Here is a vividly vertiginous collection of poems, all fun and mind-games."
—Fred Chappell

"Mike Allen is a poetic Shiva, whirling his thousand limbs to snatch gold from thin air and create these epics-in-miniature, each with its own metallic sheen."
—Catherynne M. Valente

The Journey to Kailash by Mike Allen
Imprint: Curiosities
Trade Hardcover
June 1, 2008
Retail Price:
$19.95 USD - £13.50 GBP
ISBN-13: 978-1-934648-44-5
ISBN-10: 1-934648-44-2
136 pages
Click here for more information...

Order Your Copy:

- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon UK
- Amazon CA
- Amazon FR
- Amazon DE
- Amazon JP

Norilana Books is a Los Angeles-based new independent publisher, owned and operated by Vera Nazarian since 2006. With over 160 books in print, Norilana Books specializes in beautifully packaged hardcover and trade paperback classics of world literature, quality fantasy, science fiction, romance and women's fiction, and young adult titles.
For more information visit http://www.norilana.com/

Contact:

Vera Nazarian, Publisher
Norilana Books, P.O. Box 2188, Winnetka, CA 91396
service (at) norilana.com - http://www.norilana.com/
Catalog of Books in Print:
http://www.norilana.com/norilana-catalog.htm
Blog: http://norilanabooks.livejournal.com/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Norilana Books presents A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects by award-winning author and poet Catherynne M. Valente, a delightful collection of poetry, short fables, and fairy tales that explore myth and wonder, ancient and modern, with an introduction by Midori Snyder.


A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects by Catherynne M. Valente



"Structured around a series of folktale motifs, Valente's eloquent second full-length poetry collection dissects the perceived roles of women in Earth's and otherworldly fable and myth.... enlightening and enthralling."
­—Publishers Weekly

"Catherynne Valente writes in the language of dreams... A brilliant, beautiful book."
­—Theodora Goss

Click here for more information...


A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects by Catherynne M. Valente
Imprint: Curiosities
Trade Hardcover
May 23, 2008
Retail Price:
$22.95 USD - £15.50 GBP
ISBN-13: 978-1-934648-34-6
ISBN-10: 1-934648-34-5
168 pages

Order Your Copy:

- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon UK
- Amazon CA
- Amazon FR
- Amazon DE
- Amazon JP

Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the Orphan's Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and four books of poetry, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and Oracles. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award and the Million Writers Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the World Fantasy Award, the Rhysling Award, and shortlisted for the Spectrum Award. She currently lives in Northeastern Ohio with her partner, two dogs, and two cats. Her sixth novel, Palimpsest, will be released by Bantam Spectra in February of 2009.

Norilana Books is a Los Angeles-based new independent publisher, owned and operated by Vera Nazarian since 2006. With over 150 books in print, Norilana Books specializes in beautifully packaged hardcover and trade paperback classics of world literature, quality fantasy, science fiction, romance and women's fiction, and young adult titles.
For more information visit http://www.norilana.com/

Contact:

Vera Nazarian, Publisher
Norilana Books, P.O. Box 2188, Winnetka, CA 91396
service (at) norilana.com - http://www.norilana.com/
Catalog of Books in Print:
http://www.norilana.com/norilana-catalog.htm
Blog: http://norilanabooks.livejournal.com/

A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects by Catherynne M. Valente

Coming May 23, 2008 from the Curiosities imprint.

Click on images to see full-size...

Trade paperback:



Hardcover wraparound jacket:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Norilana Books has acquired a striking poetry collection The Memory Palace by critically acclaimed poet and author JoSelle Vanderhooft (upstart_crow), a poetic memoir dealing with the raw themes of adolescence, pain, and the challenges of growing up gay, structured around the Renaissance mnemonic device of a building with rooms populated by thoughts and objects. The title is scheduled for a trade hardcover release from the Curiosities imprint in January 2009.

JoSelle Vanderhooft is the author of poetry collections The Minotaur's Last Letter to His Mother (Ash Phoenix), the 2007 Stoker-nominated Ossuary (Sam's Dot Publishing), Desert Songs (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2008), Tales Twice Told (Sam's Dot Publishing, 2008), Fathers, Daughters, Ghosts and Monsters (VanZeno Press, forthcoming) and Death Masks (Papaveria Press, 2008), the novels The Tale of the Miller's Daughter (Papaveria Press) and Owl Skin (Papaveria Press, 2008) and a collection of short stories from Drollerie Press to be released in 2008.

Her poetry and fiction has appeared online and in print in a number of publications, including Cabinet des Fees, Star*Line, Mythic Delirium, Mythic, Jabberwocky, Helix, The Seventh Quarry and several others. An assistant editor of a newspaper by day, she lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Official website: http://www.joselle-vanderhooft.com/

Norilana Books is a Los Angeles-based new independent publisher, owned and operated by Vera Nazarian since 2006. With over 150 books in print, Norilana Books specializes in beautifully packaged hardcover and trade paperback classics of world literature, quality fantasy, science fiction, romance and women's fiction, and young adult titles. For more information visit http://www.norilana.com/

Contact:

Vera Nazarian, Publisher
Norilana Books, P.O. Box 2188, Winnetka, CA 91396
service (at) norilana.com - http://www.norilana.com/
Catalog of Books in Print: http://www.norilana.com/norilana-catalog.htm
Blog: http://norilanabooks.livejournal.com/

The Journey to Kailash by Mike Allen

Coming June 2008 from the new Curiosities imprint...

Click on image to see full-size... Note, this is the ARC edition, not the final cover.

Cover design by Mike Allen (time_shark).

We have acquired THE JOURNEY TO KAILASH, a poetry collection by Rhysling award winning poet, writer, and editor Mike Allen to be released from the Curiosities Imprint in June 2008.