Many thanks to all those who submitted manuscripts during our open reading period in Fall 2009. We are excited to announce that Kelsey Street will be publishing An Atlas of Lost Causes, by Marjorie Stein.

Marjorie Stein was born in 1958 in rural southwestern Michigan. She traveled to San Francisco during Spring Break in 1978 and decided to stay. Marjorie lives in Santa Rosa, California, where she works as a Sustainability Analyst for green building design. She currently serves as an Assistant Editor for VOLT. Her work has appeared in The Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, VOLT, zaum, Phoebe, Poetry Motel, Pavement Saw Press, and other publications. Her chapbook manuscript “Flammable Histories” was a finalist in the Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Contest in 2002. A self-taught artist, she has always been moved by the power in simple line drawings. An Atlas of Lost Causes is Marjorie’s first book.

From An Atlas of Lost Causes:

Yes, there are many ways to look at a crime—a wing-slashed sky. You begin with a tincture of salt—an animal thirst. Next, the facts can be ground through an iterative process and new theories float out like stardust. Like the exhalations we share, and share again. How could I know what happened? You left and I have only photographs—the negatives—moisture has absorbed into the grains of the paper, temporarily resembling an unidentified body in the river.