New from Finishing Line Press: The Medicine of Small Gods by Mobi Warren   On SALE:    finishinglinepress.com/produ…   This collection pays homage to the small, often unnoticed beings – insect, wildflower, lizard, bird — whose beauty offers solace, healing, and a way forward in a time of loss and broken-ness. The animacy of the interconnected world is celebrated here, often informed by science infused wonder, whether embodied in a moss spore or the fiery iridescence of a beetle. Insects hold a special place in this collection, the little beings that run the world, and if paid attention to, have the capacity to arouse both hope and gratitude. #nature #insects #wildflowers #plants #poetry   Mobi Warren is a poet-naturalist and eco-puppeteer from San Antonio, Texas. With poetry and handcrafted puppets, she leads walks and workshops in which direct experience of the natural world inspires writing and encourages advocacy for all species that share our planet home. She is especially enchanted by insects, the little beings that run the world.   PRAISE:   In The Medicine of Small Gods, Mobi Warren offers up a guidebook for finding joy and sanity in an increasingly turbulent world.  Through a series of parables involving crows, butterflies, beetles, and even moss spores, Warren encourages us to focus on nature’s smallest details to discover, “How we breathe/ so differently/ in this many-layered world/ and yet/ breathe as one.” As in all her writing, the poet draws upon science to support her quiet insistence that if we pay close attention, we can learn secrets of sustainability, for example, by observing how frostweed provides liquid sustenance to multiple species during the driest summers. She also reminds us that “sometimes a thin-shelled egg/ is enough to candle/ hope being/ a word for survival.”  A perfect interweaving of wisdom and knowledge, The Medicine of Small Gods is a must-read during these disturbing times. –Jean Hackett, author of Masked/ Unmuted. . Mobi Warren’s joyously conscious, aware poems in The Medicine of Small Gods seek, find and celebrate in the immediacy of the natural world, closely observed, ways forward through openness, sympathy, connection.  She asks “how can I not continue to love the world?” and “and doesn’t it make you want to dance?” And :”Don’t our hearts also break wide open after grief.” Through it all, the world and the wonder, Warren tells us “If insects have a future so might we”. Healing, hoping The Medicine of Small Gods is attention, response, and giving, affirmed – “hold my daughter’s hand / and with her swim forward.” –Jim LaVilla-Havelin author of Mesquites Teach Us To Bend  and A Thoreau Book . Don’t be deceived by the smallness of these poems and the creatures they hold in cupped hands (the “small gods” of the title). Like cracks in the limestone bedrock that grounds our lives in the watersheds and landscapes of South Texas, they obscure a vast aquifer of attention below, a chasm of care within “for so many small futures,” a whispered reminder: “If insects have a future, so might we.” –Marisol Cortez, author of The Bird Church and Luz at Midnight   Please share/please repost  #FLP #preorder #poetry #booktok #poetrytiktok

TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/produ… The poems in Questions of Loss traverse an arc of loss from youth to adulthood: relationship endings, death, fertility and infertility, intimacy, motherhood, changing health in middle age, intersecting with loss within wider communities and in concert with the earth. Layered into these reflections is an homage to Emily Dickinson, with respect for her steady gaze and artful rendering of the experience of loss. #loss #poetry #nature #motherhood Kaitlin Murphy-Knudsen is an author, editor, and book collaborator whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Peauxdunque Review, Epiphany Magazine, Ocotillo Review, Odet Journal, Newfound Journal, and other publications. She is the author of Oblation, forthcoming from Middle Creek Publishing & Audio and winner of the Osprey Award for Fiction. facebook.com/www.kaitlinmurp…; kaitlinmurphy.org Instagram:@kmurphyknudsenauthor

A Poem by Kaitlin Murphy-Knudsen paddockreview.com/2026/10/27… #life #poetry #motherhood #nature #Florida @kmurphyknudsenauthor

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: The Whale Gaze by Kathleen Holliday   On SALE:    finishinglinepress.com/produ…   The Whale Gaze is the fourth chapbook by this award-winning poet. As in previous works, Holliday demonstrates a love of language; irony and wit; succinct and deft imagery. These poems lean into the writer’s relationship to island and sea. The title poem emphasizes wonder and mystery: “a shadow spreads under the boat/a pooling indigo.” In Rogue Whales, the poet imagines the thuggish personae of orcas, killers who, “ram & sink those boats./ Rattle some cages.”The haiku exemplify how much can be said in few words: “once there were trees here/still at night a soughing sound/susurrus of souls.” These are poems that should be read aloud for full effect. The final poem, “Waving, not Drowning,” was a semi-finalist in The MacGuffin/Poet Hunt 29 Contest 2024. The Whale Gaze is another venture by a poet well worth reading. #poetry #memory #whales #haiku #salishsea   Kathleen Holliday lives on an island in the Salish Sea. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals including Cathexis Northwest Press, CIRQUE Journal, Common Ground Review,Poetry Super Highway, SHARK REEF, and The Write Launch. She is a graduate of Augsburg University, Minneapolis, MN. Her chapbooks, Putting My Ash on the Line (2020), Boatman, Pass By (2023) and A Cage in Search of a Bird (2025) were published by Finishing Line Press.   PRAISE:   With poignancy, wit and humor, Kathleen Holliday’s fourth chapbook of poems takes us on a pilgrimage to the sea where we meet an assortment of whales, these massive cetaceans which, like humans, are mammals.As always with her work, each poem is beautifully crafted with just the right words and with humor, sometimes when we least expect it, as in Rogue Whales. Her imagery and insights are stellar, as in the title poem, The Whale Gaze, with its startling and vivid metaphors: “a rolling mountainside;” a “heart as big as a car.” Or “sails taut as pterodactyl wings; brigantines built of hearts of oak.”There’s playfulness, too, but under the playfulness lies a deeper truth about how we’ve failed these colossal beings and sorrow at how we’ve treated mother earth and all its creatures (not just us). There’s a profoundly solemn apology, too, in “Forgive Us.” This is a writer in love with words, and I encourage readers to recite the poems aloud to savor the delicious sound of them These poems are alive. Dive into The Whale Gaze and see for yourself. –LORNA REESE is a founder and editor emerita of SHARK REEF Literary Magazine, one of the first online literary journals   Like the sea, Kathleen Holliday’s chapbook, The Whale Gaze, shimmers with shifting depths and registers. Classical references—Persephone, Icarus—swim past simple figures of the natural world: a fox, a fallen tree. Wordplay waves and rollicks: “…galleons golden in the sun/feluccas, sails taut as pterodactyl wings,/brigantines built of hearts of oak…” (“Flotilla”) The dark depth of poignancy in “Forgive Us”— “…stiffened corsets, made buttons/from your bone,/and orphans of your children”—gives way to sparkling humor in “Haiku #4”: “a whale rider, me?/surely, I’d have fallen off/dolphins would snicker”. Through the entire collection, Holliday celebrates a lifelong love affair with words: “In the flaming foliage of words,/brilliant colors and undergrowth,/the hedges and briers,/the gorse, the furze of it,/the scratch and tear of it,/the brief flowering amid thorns…” (“Foliage”) This ocean of words and images is where Holliday plays and dives deep. Take a good breath and wade in. –GRETCHEN KLOPFER WING, author of The Flying Burgowski Trilogy    Please share/please repost  #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook

Glowing Midwest Book Review for On the Lip of Night Julie Esther Fisher’s poetry chapbook, On the Lip of Night, published by Finishing Line Press, has received an exceptional review from Kathryn Atwood in the October 2026 issue of Midwest Book Review. Calling Fisher a “prodigiously talented poet,” Atwood praises her extraordinary gift for imagery, metaphor, and musical language, observing: “Julie Esther Fisher is a prodigiously talented poet who handles the English language like an artist utilizes paint.” Atwood concludes that lovers of good poetry will find themselves returning to these poems again and again, seeking the truths beneath their beautiful lines. Read the full review: midwestbookreview.com/mbw/oc… #bookreview #poetry #recommended

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Underfoot by Brenna Mead   On SALE:    finishinglinepress.com/produ…   Underfoot, Brenna Mead‘s publishing debut, is a collection of brief love letters to objects, experiences, and memories that serve to both interrupt and ground daily life. Each poem reminds us that our attention is currency, and that paying it carefully, curiously, and intentionally during moments otherwise easy to overlook yields an abundant wealth of understanding and enjoyment. #poetry #love #memory #attention #presence   Brenna Mead is a poet living and writing in Vermont. Her poems are love letters to objects, experiences, and memories that serve to both interrupt and ground daily life. Though she studied and taught literature at both the University of Utah and Columbia University, this chapbook marks her creative publishing debut.   PRAISE:   We tend to notice what is underfoot when it bothers or hinders us. A crumb, a fold in our sock. Underfoot treats experience, however subtle or uncomfortable, with revelatory tenderness and gratitude. Mead’s poems open the aperture of your heart and mind. They propose that no matter where we are in time or place or relationship, the sacred practice of observation is our lifelong home. –Lesley Finn, author,  essays “Final Girl, Terrible Place” in Longreads and “Book, Escape, Sanctuary” in Sunspot Literary. Creator and author of Collage Mind, a Substack newsletter on lateral thinking and creativity in written and visual art. . “Perfectly quotidian engines of joy and hardship, these tiny poems are so memorable that every moment is a masterclass.” –Sara Guest    Please share/please repost  #flp #booktok #poetry #chapbook

TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/produ… In her debut chapbook, Sogni d’oro, Elizabeth laments the death and dying of close family members through the natural and physical worlds to create space for vulnerability and explore the nuances of grief. Can a person be prepared for death or the loss of a loved one? The poems ask questions and, when not sufficiently answered in Catholic teachings or Italian traditions, Elizabeth seeks refuge in nature with the hope for spring despite a seemingly lasting season of winter. Through observation, Elizabeth transports the reader as she draws on the strength from these natural elements, music, and everyday objects holding meaning and recording time. Tankas, haibuns and tanka prose are the chorus throughout the chapbook. Here is a place of remembrance, to pause on the details of a life, and ask for forgiveness. #grief #loveandloss #italianheritage #nature #diversifyyourbookshelf Elizabeth Alfonzo is a poet, reader, cinephile, appreciator of art and authentic connection. She is a practicing physical therapist in Connecticut. Her poems have been published in Caesura, Please See Me, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Here, Waking Up to the Earth Anthology, Connecticut River Review, Connecticut Literary Anthology, The Paddock Review, Two Cardinals Literary and The Northeast Coast.

A Poem by Elizabeth Alfonzo paddockreview.com/2026/10/26… #poetry #life #death #hope

FLP SHORT STORIES BOOK OF THE DAY: MICRO-STORIES by Pamela Gay   On SALE now:  finishinglinepress.com/produ…   Pamela Gay is professor emerita at Binghamton University, State University of New York, where she taught creative writing after receiving a PhD at New York University. Her writing has been published in Iowa Review, Brevity, Midway Journal, Grey Sparrow, Vestal Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and many other literary magazines. She is also the recipient of a Saltonstall Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Homecoming that combined text, images, and artifacts, and two award-winning books: Developing Writers: A Dialogic Approach (Wadsworth) and I’m So Glad You’re Here (She Writes Press), a memoir that received Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews.   PRAISE:   Tender, poignant, playful at times, Gay’s micro-stories offer a compassionate glimpse into the unique varieties of human emotion: longing, loneliness, love. An incisive, heartwarming, even heartbreaking at times, collection, Pamela Gay is one of our very best flash fiction authors. –Jaimee Wriston Colbert, author of How Not to Drown and SUNY Distinguished Professor of English & Creative Writing at Binghamton University  . In Pamela Gay‘s new fiction collection, Micro-Stories, we are confronted with a world made small by daunting, incalculable conflicts. The private lives of the characters in these stories are made smaller by their interactions with the outer world, by scarcity, by well-meaning relatives and friends, by battles with cancer. And we can’t help but cheer them on despite the vastness of their woes, as they attempt “way[s] of healing after confronting death” in all its guises, even when death is “some person with some story that is not [our] story.” We recognize our woes in theirs and our lives are made more abundant for it. Each piece in this collection is rich and of the earth, all while aspiring to spirit. Gay’s mastery of the short form is once again on full display and demands our full regard. –Ralph Pennel, author of A World Les Prefect for Dying In and Editor-In-Chief at Midway Journal . With a compassionate and unswerving eye, Gay explores instability and the various ways in which her characters cope. A pleasure to read. –Roberta Allen, Author of The Princess of Herself and Fast Fiction   Please share/please repost   #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt  #prose #Shortstories #read

TO ORDER: finishinglinepress.com/produ… For anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a breakup, the five stages of grief may not be enough. Sometimes you have to rage against the dying light, express every hidden thought, say goodbye several times, and fall in (and out of) love all over again. No platitudes or vague promises can soothe the raw wounds—and maybe that’s ok. In defiance and encouragement, this collection explores what it sounds like when you feel the entirety of your feelings and allow yourself to wallow in the tender places. Turning a lens of frank honesty on both the writer and her subject, Dumpster Fire Heart is a journey of one person trying to define what living looks like after her heart has stopped beating. It’s about recognizing the ugly ways in which we hurt each other and the lengths we must crawl to in order to heal. #grief #heartache #love #healing #poetry Allie Coker holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her works have appeared in various publications including the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. She has also had the pleasure of participating in residencies, retreats, and conferences with VCCA, Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, Writeaways, and NCWN. Dumpster Fire Heart is her third book. She lives in Chapel Hill.

phillychapbookreview.org/poe… #poetry #books #recommended

Nicole Zwolinski, author of Motherhead published by Finishing Line Press, will be signing books at an event at Open Book in Minneapolis, MN. The event will be Saturday, November 28 from 1-3 p.m. and feature readings by local poets. openbookmn.org/events/book-l… #poetry #event #recommended #booksigning

Mercilee Jenkins will present selections from Words You Can’t Eat in Public, her debut poetry chapbook, at Tell It On Tuesday, a monthly storytelling event, on October 27, 7:00 PM (PT) at The Marsh, Berkeley, CA. Tickets are available for the in-person show and also for the live-stream online (live-stream online tickets). This collection is soon to be publish by Finishing Line Press. Words You Can’t Eat in Public is a poetic memoir composed of twenty poems. As a queer feminist, Jenkins takes us on an emotional journey from instructions on how to find a poem in nature to the joy of sharing a last moment with a dear friend. Dr. Mercilee Jenkins is an award-winning poet, performance artist and playwright. “Words You Can’t Eat in Public meets the promise of such a title. M. Jenkins leaves us small surprises in all kinds of places. Read the poems out loud because they should be in the air, winking at us, like raindrops.”—K. Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Author of Pick a Garnet to Sleep In tellitontuesday.org/index.ph… #poetry #evnt #booksigning