Category: Kelly’s Cove Press News

New Release!

Dear friends,

Kelly’s Cove Press is excited to announce our first release of 2019: Aliens, a timely monograph featuring the work of celebrated Mexican-born artist and Stanford professor Enrique Chagoya.

Chagoya’s work, which encompasses drawings, paintings, etchings, lithographs and multi-paneled codices, wrestles with themes of immigration, borderlands, and cultural appropriation, often employing the centuries-old tradition of Mexican cartooning. The artist turns historical narratives about indigenous people on their head in his pioneering work in “Reverse Anthropology” and “Reverse Modernism.” With exquisite craftsmanship, Chagoya has Mickey Mouse and Superman mash-up with Chief Wahoo and Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god. His 2018 etching, “The President’s Xenophobic Nightmare in a Foreign Language,” features Trump’s head on a platter, his pompadour glazed in place, while a circle of savages nibble on his intestines.

Aliens features brief interludes of text by Chagoya offering pithy historical context and topical commentary. “I believe everybody is an alien,” the artist says, “I think that we all come from somewhere else.”

Aliens is divided in halves, one half, proceeding from left to right showcases individual works that fall on a single page; the other half unfolds from right to left, in the traditional manner of codices, and presents twelve codices in their entirety, with sixteen foldout pages for uninterrupted appreciation of the work.

Aliens is now available in our online shop for $25, with free shipping through April 15. Enrique Chagoya will appear in a series of events at local bookstores and museums to celebrate the book. Check our website for times and venues.

 

Happy Spring,

Bart and Catherine

Kelly’s Cove Press to Launch New Arts Magazine The Cove

 

 

Berkeley publishing house Kelly’s Cove Press is pleased to announce a new semiannual literature and arts magazine, The Cove.

The Cove will showcase poetry, fiction, essays and visual arts by both up-and- coming and established artists and writers from across Northern California, with each issue focused around a specific, broad theme. The free, online magazine will be accessible to audiences worldwide at thecovemagazine.com beginning with the publication of its first issue, Fire, on April 20, 2018.

The massive wildfires that burned throughout Northern California in October 2017 affected, directly or indirectly, countless individuals across the region. The inaugural issue of The Cove features a range of responses to this event by a diverse group of artists and writers working in a variety of styles and mediums.

The Fire issue of The Cove will include among its contents:

“Sixteen Bay Area Artists Paint Fire,” a collection of fire-inspired paintings by Tami Sloan Tsark, Stephanie Thwaites, Spence Snyder, Natasha Sharpe, Keith Wilson, Kristen Garneau, Linda MacDonald, Margot Koch, Michael Kerbow, Jude Pittman, James Brzezinski, Greg Martin, Deborah Seidman and Bill Russell;

“Poets on Fire,” a series of responses in poetry to the October wildfires by Susan Griffin, Lisa Summers, Katherine Hastings, and Gwynn O’Gara;

“Squeak Carnwath’s Fire Art,” a showcase of fire-themed paintings and prints by the celebrated Oakland-based visual artist;

“Where’s Willoughby,” a new short story by North Bay writer Daniel Coshnear;

New poems by San Francisco poet and essayist Genine Lentine;

Old poems by Monte Rio poet and novelist Pat Nolan;

And four very short stories by San Francisco writer Olga Zilberbourg.

Release Party for Chester Arnold’s “Evidence” – OCTOBER 1

Attend the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art event, celebrating the release of Chester Arnold’s Evidence:

Chester Arnold Reveals Evidence

Sunday, October 1, 2017
2pm – 4pm

On the occasion of the publication of his latest book, Evidence, artist Chester Arnold will be in conversation with publisher Bart Schneider of Kelly’s Cove Press. Arnold will show images from selected chapters of the book, describing the evolution of his subjects and his three decades of life (much of it in Sonoma) in the Bay Area art scene. Following the talk Arnold will be available to sign copies of Evidence in the Museum Store.
$12 svma members  $15 general public  $7 students

In remembrance of Mike Tuggle: poet, teacher, friend. 1939-2017

Kelly’s Cove Press mourns the passing of Mike Tuggle on June 18, 2017. During KCP’s first season, 2011, we published his chapbook What Lures The Foxes. We will miss Mike as a poet, teacher, and friend. See below Terry Ehret’s sensitive piece on Mike from the Sonoma County Literary Update, and a poem by KCP publisher Bart Schneider about his friendship with Mike dating back nearly 50 years.

REMEMBERING MIKE TUGGLE

By Terry Ehret

It is with deep sadness that we note the passing of former Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Mike Tuggle. As a poet, a mentor, and a friend, he touched many of us in the literary community. He will be long remembered and deeply missed.

I first met Mike and his second wife, Susan Kennedy, when I began working with the California Poets in the Schools Program in 1991. Over the years, our paths crossed often at poetry readings and literary gatherings, especially during the years he served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate. Then in 2011, Mike’s book of poems What Lures the Foxes was selected for publication by Kelly’s Cove Press, coming out simultaneously with my book, giving us many more opportunities to read our poems together. Mike had a deep appreciation for music and rhythm, which he brilliantly harnessed in his poetry. He had a gentle wisdom, accentuated by his lovely Oklahoma/Texas drawl, and a calming presence I always appreciated.

Mike was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1939, and grew up in West Texas. He lived in Sonoma County from 1981 until his death on June 18, 2017. He taught with the California Poets in the Schools Program from 1971-2003. His publications include Cazadero Poems, co-authored with Susan Kennedy, Absolute Elsewhere, The Singing Itself, What Lures the Foxes, and most recently The Motioning In.

Susan Kennedy wrote this about Mike’s passing:

His last day was a full one, like his Sagittarius nature loved. First to his open mic in Guerneville, then to the Cazadero Farmer’s Market and the General Store, checking in with the lovely ladies. Then a visit from his grandchildren with Grandma Margo before they went swimming at the creek below his cabin. Then watching a movie with Jai, a favorite activity. That was the last time anyone spoke to him. When he was late showing up for Father’s Day dinner at Lilah and Ishi’s, Ishi and the kids drove up and found him, lying on his couch with an incredibly peaceful, profound look on his face. When I asked Jai what movie they had watched he said “It was about an old man who waiting to die and then he did.” He was suffering greatly with all his infirmities and we are ultimately grateful that he has been released from them although we are all grieving very hard, facing the big hole he leaves in our lives.

About poetry, Mike said “A good poem hurts you a little,” and while that is certainly true of Mike’s poetry, there is also a warm, honest, and guileless vision that takes you by the arm and walks you through our common human experiences of loneliness, coupling, uncoupling, grief, and pure animal joy. At the end of this month’s post, I have included two poems from his most recent collection.

Courtesy of Sonoma County Literary Update

__________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outlaws at the Photo Booth
For Mike Tuggle, 1939-2017

We scored a reading and needed photos.
Mike was thirty-two, I, twenty.
He’d been my mentor since high school.
Left hand at nine o’clock, right at three, he coached me, before I was ready to drive.

I came from a toney block but never had any dough; he drove cab and picked up spare meals,
stood me to Rainer Ales.
Short on authority, I borrowed some of his.

Beside being a curious and companionable slacker, I had little to offer.
I did turn him on the first time,
for which he credited me the next forty-eight years.

We ducked into a photo booth on Market Street
and froze like a pair of peasants dreaming of gangsters.
I’d always suspected I was a charlatan,
and the strip of snaps was indubitable proof.
Mike looked fiercer than the man I thought I knew,
who was kind and spoke a sexy poetry drawl.
And yet, his favorite topic was the void.
Look into it, he dared me. You might find out who you are. I fear my post-adolescent angst
was no match for his classical demons,
but he cheered my budding skill as a bullshitter.
Back out on Market Street, bright sun on grease stains,
girls in miniskirts sauntering by the dollar movie joints,
a wino nursing his pony of Thunderbird,
I awaited Mike’s response:
We’re clearly set, Brother Bart.
Soon as we commit a formidable crime
these outlaw photos will gild our glory.

Bart Schneider
21 June 2017

Just Published

Just published: Chester Arnold’s Evidence, a retrospective celebration of Bay Area artist’s long career. This wide-ranging collection surveys works from the past three decades, investigations rich with humor and penetrating visual commentary, along with a fierce love of the natural world and the art of painting.