NEW! A Temple for Tomorrows by John Jeffire (June 2021)
Poet John Jeffire returns “home” to Aquarius Press to release his new collection.
John Jeffire was born in Detroit. His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was published by Detroit’s Aquarius Press and nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2009.
“John Jeffire writes with a scalpel, scoring and scarring with words precise and pointed. He ranges widely on these pages: absorbing the spoken bullets of a warrior son; conjuring funerals in Savaa and, at home, a father’s savage fist; haunting hospital elevators and hunting Suzi Quatro; probing Gene Rayburn’s spell upon his mother and Jefferson’s hollow declarations to Sally. Redolent and resonant, Jeffire reminds of Philip Levine and Jim Daniels when he writes of Detroit, Walter Reuther to Johnny Ace. This collection showcases a bright talent whose work echoes and lingers beyond the second reading.”
–Tom Stanton, author of The Final Season and Terror in the City of Champions
Aquarius Press Signs Detroit Music Awards Winner Carolyn Striho!
Nominated for nearly sixty Detroit Music Awards in recent years, Carolyn Striho is a two-time Outstanding Rock/Pop Songwriter of the Year winner. Other big award wins include Outstanding Americana Album of the Year 2014 for Word Attack and Outstanding Rock/Pop Album of the Year for Honesty. Besides her infamously charismatic live shows at many festivals, clubs, and art galleries in the Midwest and Canada, she has five tours of Europe under her belt, as well as a two-month stretch in Japan, opened for Steve Earle in England, and has performed in Detroit, Toronto and London with Patti Smith. Carolyn is best known for her new music and catchy, magically intense live shows and songwriting. Her live performances with her latest band, her legendary shows and writing fronting the well-known Detroit Energy Asylum band, with Patti Smith, and her punk/art rock years with Rough Cut and the Cubes, as well as performing with Don Was and the Was Not Was Band, Iggy Pop, the Ramones and the Slits. Carolyn’s latest projects include a brand new album and publishing a poetry collection with Detroit-based Aquarius Press’ Living Detroit Series later this year.
When the Swan Sings on Hastings (2016) by Thomas Galasso
Set in late 1950s Detroit, When the Swan Sings on Hastings becomes a short film! MORE
Previous Series
Wednesdays LIVE @ Bert’s
WONDERKIND Honors Music Icon Stevie Wonder
Curtis L. Crisler, Aquarius Press/Willow Books author, editor, and Pushcart Prize nominee, celebrates his most recent project, Wonderkind, a poetry collection on the musical genius of Michigan’s own Stevie Wonder, Motown artist, songwriter, record producer and Songwriter and Rock ’n Roll Hall of Famer.
Crisler, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award, is the author of two previous Willow Books titles, Pulling Scabs, a poetry collection, and the critically-acclaimed Dreamist. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). Crisler is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Soul Mountain. He has been a guest resident at Hamline University, as well as a recipient of the Sterling Plumpp First Voices Poetry Award, an Indiana Arts Commission Grant and was nominated for the Eliot Rosewater Award. His poetry has been adapted to theatrical productions in New York and Chicago and he has been published in a variety of magazines, journals and anthologies.
JULY 2015
BOOK RELEASE PARTY for KAHN SANTORI DAVISON, author of BLAZE
BOOK RELEASE PARTY for QIANA TOWNS, author of This Is Not the Exit
2014 LIVING DETROIT SERIES online celebration for our 15th Anniversary
2013 LIVING DETROIT SERIES @ the Carr Center
Special Guest: Tracy Kash Thomas Trio
The Living Detroit Series specializes in books about Detroit, Michigan. The series was founded in 1997 and continues to preserve and promote literary and nonfiction titles about one of the most fascinating cities in America.
Featured Living Detroit Series Titles
This is Not the Exit by Qiana Towns (chapbook)
Poletown Princes by James Nantau
Sometimes You Do Things by Sarah Zale
Stone+Fist+Brick+Bone by John Jeffire
aquarius press 