Since 2023, poets have gathered on the second Tuesday of every month at Black Rock Books, an independent bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Black Rock neighborhood, to share original work with their community. What began as a small, scattered group has become a close-knit circle that welcomes visiting poets, high school writers and first-time readers alongside longtime regulars.
The Poets of Black Rock Books: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems from Connecticut Poets collects 24 poems by 14 of those voices. There are wry looks at modern life (“On Finding Jesus Tote Bags at Brandy Melville,” “My Day in Numbers,” “A 21st Century Muse”), honest meditations on growing older (“Feeling My Age,” “On Being Asked If I’d Like to Be Young Again,” “Forgetting”) and poems of love, longing and the natural world (“I Can’t Love You a Little,” “Full Moon,” “Afternoon at the Beach,” “Tides of March”). Other pieces explore faith, home and the search for peace in titles like “The Lost Prophets,” “Sanctuary,” “Tranquility” and “We Could Get a Great House.”
Together they make a portrait of a community that writes across generations and isn’t afraid to be vulnerable. This anthology is for readers who love contemporary poetry, Connecticut and New England writers, and the community that grows around an independent bookstore.
Contributors: Lisa Seidenberg, Alexa Luft, Kit Briner, Haley Aguilar, Adam Weisblatt, Gwendolyn Gardiner, Tim Cox, Janet Kraus, Adair Heitmann, Vincent Covertito, Maura Satti, Ed Ahern, Jeff Schwartz and Dave Bebon. Introduction by Meg Flynn, co-owner of Black Rock Books.
As the introduction puts it: come to a poetry night, and remember,
What happens when missiles meet metaphors, and politics meets poetry?
November 3, 2026, Prolific Pulse Press is proud to release Warheads, the debut poetry collection from London-born writer Edwin Fairbrother. It arrives at a moment when the world may need it most: a sharp, irreverent and often darkly funny book that refuses to glorify war, and asks, again and again, who really pays the price.
About the Collection
In Warheads, Fairbrother takes aim at the machinery of modern conflict: weapons and propaganda, political games and culture wars, refugee crises and the human cost of fighting. The poems lay bare the paradoxical, foolish and ultimately futile nature of war, exploring its causes and consequences through human nature, partisan politics and the environment.
The collection speaks to many kinds of conflict. It moves from the left-right culture war to the plight of refugees, and to the infantry soldiers so often failed by the politics that send them to fight. Its targets range from the military-industrial complex to human nature itself.
Yet this is not a book of despair. Many of the poems return to one conviction: that recognizing our shared humanity matters more than the false promise of conflict as a solution. Alongside the critique, Fairbrother makes room for a hopeful vision of a world with less death and destruction.
The forms are as varied as the subjects. Readers will find simple couplets and haiku, limericks, free verse and longer narrative poems. The collection traces the poet’s own growth, pairing some of his earliest rhyming poems with more accomplished recent work. Several poems first appeared in literary journals including WayWords Literary Journal, The Page Gallery Journal, The Quasar Review, The Raven Review and Enfield Poets Second Anthology.
Warheadsalso includes discussion questions, making it a natural fit for book clubs, classrooms and anyone ready to talk about war, peace and politics with more than slogans.
Praise for Warheads
“Following the disillusioned path of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but armed with a distinctly modern voice, Warheads proves that poetry can confront power without losing its wit.”
— Munmun Samanta, author of Yellow Chrysanthemum
“A book of anti-war poems, a book for now, a time when war, with its nuclear weaponry, has never been so lethal … These are also peace poems. Warheads is a love poem to the world.”
— Peter Mladinic, author of The Whitestone Bridge
Meet Edwin Fairbrother
Edwin Fairbrother is a writer and poet born and based in London. He holds a bachelor’s degree in media studies and a master’s in music business. After finishing his master’s in 2021, he wrote about music for Alternative Press, Rave Report and Pipeline Artists.
He turned to poetry to voice his frustration with a volatile geopolitical landscape and our increasingly digitized, divided societies, while still finding room for the sparks that give the world its magic. His influences include poets Brian Bilston, Aja Monet and Hussain Manawer, along with George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker.
Since 2025, his poems have appeared in WayWords Literary Journal, The Page Gallery Journal, The Quasar Review, Scribbled, The Raven Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Masticadores Canada and Enfield Poets Second Anthology. Warheads is his debut collection, with more poetry and fiction on the way.
Prologue to summer, epilogue to summer, and every sun-soaked day in between: Prolific Pulse Press is thrilled to announce the release of Indelible Ink: Postcard Poems and Paintings from the 2025 Postcard Poetry Fest by Colorado poet and painter Jennifer Gurney, available October 30, 2026.
Thirty Postcards, Thirty Poems, Two Days
Every August, writers around the world sign up for the Postcard Poetry Fest. Each receives a list of names and addresses, and through the month they write a poem on the back of a postcard and mail it to a stranger, while poems from fellow poets arrive in their own mailbox.
Jennifer didn’t just write her postcards. She painted them. In a single day at her kitchen table, with music playing, coffee within reach and her curious cat keeping watch, she painted all thirty cards. The next day she wrote all thirty poems. Every poem in Indelible Ink is a true first draft, sent out into the world unrevised, paired with the bold, layered abstract painting it traveled on.
The result is a book of summer: watermelon, fireflies, thunderstorms, and a teacher’s wish that August would slow down just a little.
A Gift Economy in Book Form
What makes the Postcard Poetry Fest special, Jennifer says, is that someone writes a poem just for you, and you write one just for them. She calls the festival the epitome of authenticity and generosity. Indelible Ink honors that community of poets and brings its spirit to readers everywhere.
The vibrant cover painting is Jennifer’s own favorite from the collection, and, like the covers of all 16 of her poetry books, it comes from her brush.
Read the Interview
Want the story behind the book? In our new interview, Jennifer talks about painting thirty postcards in a day, the German and Irish voices in her head that argue over revisions, her Art Heals project after the Marshall Fire, what her fourth graders thought of the poems, and her advice for anyone nervous about sharing a first draft.
Jennifer Gurney is a Colorado-based poet and painter who also teaches and hikes. She has published 16 books and nearly 3,500 poems internationally, with work recognized in two international contests and featured in a choral performance, a D.C. yard sign, Australian theater screens, the Rx Poetry project, and a bus sign in Racine, Wisconsin. Her manuscript We Are Never Ready: A Collection of Grief Poems earned Honorable Mention for the 2025 Concrete Wolf Louis Award, and Curvature of Life was a semi-finalist for The Word Works’ 2025 Tenth Gate Prize. As a painter, she creates vibrant, experimental abstract acrylics that have appeared in magazines, anthologies, and local exhibitions, and she was GloMag’s 2024 Artist of the Month.
Find her on Instagram at @pelican6527 and on Etsy at Jennifer Gurney Art.
Get Your Copy
Indelible Ink: Postcard Poems and Paintings from the 2025 Postcard Poetry Fest by Jennifer Gurney Available October 30, 2026
The Search for a Star: A Crabby Abby Christmas by Ellen Kolman, illustrated by Kaelen Felix, is out today from Prolific Pulse Press.
It’s Christmas Eve in Ruby Reef. The ornaments are hung, the ribbons are wrapped, and the whole town is ready to celebrate. There’s just one problem: the town tree has no star.
If you’ve ever stood back to admire a Christmas tree and felt that something was missing, you already know how big a problem that is. And if you know Crabby Abby, you know she won’t sit still while it goes unsolved.
An Undersea Quest
Crabby Abby, the decorator crab who first won readers over in Crabby Abby the Decorator Crab’s Big Heart, sets off with her friends Daniel and Lavender to find a star for the tree before Christmas morning.
Their search takes them across the reef, past swaying kelp forests and glowing coral, under a bright Christmas Eve moon. Along the way, young readers will find plenty to point at, laugh about, and talk over together.
We won’t spoil where the search leads. But we will say that the star they find may not be the one anyone expected.
The Light That Shines Brightest
At its heart, this is a story about what really makes Christmas shine. As Abby, Daniel and Lavender search the reef, they discover that kindness and God’s love shine brightest of all.
That message is woven into an adventure, not tacked on at the end. Children experience it through the friends’ choices along the way, which makes it easy to talk about afterward: Who was kind? How did it help? Where do we see God’s love at Christmas?
Meet the Creators
Ellen Kolman, author. Ohio native Ellen Kolman is an award-winning author driven by a passion to teach children the love of Jesus. She has been teaching and entertaining children in church and Christian school settings for over 35 years. Her young students inspired her to write stories that help them understand kindness, forgiveness, empathy, and friendship. Ellen and her husband Andy have five adult children, five grandchildren, and a little white dog named Chip. Learn more on Ellen’s author page.
Kaelen Felix, illustrator. Kaelen Felix brings Ruby Reef to life with richly colored, hand-drawn art, from Abby’s mismatched shoes to every ornament on the tree. She is the author, illustrator, and designer of Wings and Whispers – Tales of Friendship, Volume 1, and has been creating children’s books for clients since 2018 in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a BFA in Illustration from Memphis College of Art.
Ways to Share It This Season
At home: Make it a Christmas Eve read-aloud, then let kids pick the star for your own tree.
In the classroom: Pair it with a lesson on kindness, or have students draw their own undersea Christmas tree.
In Sunday school or children’s church: Use the story to open a conversation about God’s love and the true light of Christmas.
As a gift: Tuck it into a stocking, an Advent basket, or a teacher gift bag.
Get Your Copy
The Search for a Star: A Crabby Abby Christmas is available now on Ellen Kolman. Order today and it can be under your tree well before Christmas Eve.
Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris received this message from International Impact Book Awards about her win!
Following a thorough review of your work against our Standard of Excellence, our panel has selected you as a Distinguished Author of the International Impact Book Awards for your book, Reflections of a Woman’s Life.
This distinction is conferred upon a limited number of authors, leaders, and voices whose work demonstrates genuine, measurable impact on the readers and communities they serve. Your work reflected precisely the caliber this honor was created to recognize.
To be recognized as a Distinguished Author is to be positioned among a global community of authors whose words carry weight and whose ideas leave a lasting mark. This recognition is not given lightly. It is earned on the strength of what you created and it now belongs to you. It is a mark of distinction you carry into every room, every stage, and every conversation that follows.
Please join us as we honor this esteemed poet for this recognition!
Additionally… We received notifications that Peter Mladinic’s richly written review of Reflections of a Woman’s Life has been published by the esteemed Compulsive Reader journal.
As a teacher, I will always remain a student. In the classroom of life, l wish to work with and educate others. Whether you’re a teacher, student, or just your average person, here are a few of my "TEACHERble" moments.
