welcome!
Why open a small press?
Someone once told me, “The greatest story ever told was probably never finished.” The idea might have manifested itself on the page, but for one reason or another never made it to publication.
I want to give those writers who have a great story to tell or stellar poems to share an outlet for their voice. I want to publish authors I believe in.
V Press LC is small. I like it that way. There’s more flexibility. I can publish works that are fresh and original, works that empower, educate, encourage or inspire–the best works are those that get into the bones. And I look forward to reading pieces that will live inside my marrow.
—Torie Amarie Dale, Director & Managing Editor
latest news
- “Change.”
Collaborative Poem by Room 230 entitled, “Change.” Performed on stage at Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center’s September “ReVIEWING” conference at the University of North Carolina at Asheville by Lee Lawson Stockdale, Chris Kamm, Allen Guest, Torie Amarie Dale and Molly Lena Silverstein.
- Queens Alumni Professional Development Weekend. Torie Amarie Dale taught Queens University of Charlotte’s MFA Alum how to write the sex scene and participated in a panel discussion along with April Ford, Wendi Berry, Mimi Milan, and Cliff Garstang on continuing education after the MFA and transitioning between genres.
- Search for the Words — Poetry & Word Art Workshop for Greer Relief and Resources Agency’s RENEW Program.
Torie Amarie Dale taught how some great poets used language to convey thoughts effectively. Then the class wrote poems that were turned into Art–Word Art to be precise.
- Special Guest Speaker at Safe Harbor Domestic Violence Counseling Center.
Torie Amarie Dale shared her story of overcoming abuse and recovery and taught a sketch journaling class that focuses on getting the negative feelings out and putting positive thoughts/ideas/goals in.
REBECCA BRIDGE
Our $500 Poetry Chapbook Winner for A Month’s Worth of Instructional Poems
How to Make Butter Like a Pilgrim
Pour a cup of milk into your pocket
and then visit the house of every
human you’ve ever met and tell them,
“It was a pleasure knowing you in this
lifetime, hope to see you once more in
the next.” Never look behind you,
just head out West at a slow churn.
“This little poem, along with all the others in Rebecca Bridge’s A Month’s Worth of Instructional Poems, seems the product of a marriage between Seneca’s wit and brevity and Emily Dickinson’s stunning lyricism. From each poem’s title to its last word, I found myself in awe of this poet’s ability to sustain such freshness of language and imagination, and to hold in perfect balance such profundity and lightness. Though her Instructions for How to Be Instructed suggest we read one poem a day, I dare anyone who opens this book to try to stop at just one…”
— Cathy Smith Bowers, V Press LC Guest Editor, and former Poet Laureate of North Carolina
Heather Mateus Sappenfield
Our $1000 Compilation Prize Winner
Lyrics for Rock Stars is a collection of seventeen stories―some historical, some contemporary—all set in the West. Involving skiers, ranchers, cyclists, suffragettes, tourists, super models, dead pigs, burro racers, religious beet farmers, immigrant miners, scorned lovers, penitent centenarians, and musicians, they are as varied as the region’s landscape. Some involve kids surviving the choices of the adults around them. Some involve those adults. Three of the stories are humorous. In one story, a fourteen-year-old girl’s sexual awakening takes form in a crush on an older cowboy as she starts to understand her parents’ rocky history. In another, an eight-year-old girl is forced to comfort her pregnant mother on the night her father has left for another woman. In the title story, a very pregnant gold-digger understands the error of her ways and, spurred by a meeting with a singing hippie, tries to start a new life. All of the stories explore how society’s values clash with our individual desires, and the ways we weave our lives through these opposing forces, often creating not of a lifeline, but a noose.
“[“Indian Prayer” is] finely observed…painstakingly crafted…Every element has been fitted in a way that rewards even an unpracticed eye turned to the hidden stitchery of fiction. — The Review Review
New Releases
A Month’s Worth of Instructional Poems
Lyrics for Rock Stars