The poems in Gregory LeStage s new book, Hope Is A Small Barn, refuse to accept easy answers to the all-important issues with which they deal. Nevertheless, they explore the human condition's most shared mysteries with an essential optimism that finds and reveals beauty in people and place. Hope is a lantern lit with words. As Fred Marchant notes, "Hope for this poet includes a deep commitment to assay both joy and sorrow, especially as these are met in family life unfolding over time. Underneath these is the hope that the shaping of words to express intense feeling is in itself worth our while and meaning-full. If, as LeStage tells us, hope is a small barn with a 'roof half open to the sky, ' here are poems that are crafted like sturdy beams, weight-bearing, reliable, and true." Richard Hoffman adds this: "In Hope Is a Small Barn, Gregg LeStage returns our poetry to sonic elegance. Each of these poems is an embodiment, a shapely figure for the poet's concerns, which are those of maturity: love and its responsibilities, mortality and its abiding questions. There is great nourishment to be found in these beautifully crafted poems. Ant this praise from Michael Ansara: "Each word in this intelligent collection of poems is precisely placed, each carefully crafted for sound, associations, beats, even, once, to form a visual image on the page. This fine new book takes us deep into the mind of an accomplished poet as he struggles to 'make my peace with all / that I could never understand / by reckoning through the archive of the inexplicable.' We are all the wiser for this poet's struggle and for the beautiful, thoughtful poems that have flowed from it."

WINNER OF THE 2016 BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 STELLA PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MILES FRANKLIN AWARD 'They were inescapable, the tensions of the adult world — the fraught and febrile aura that surrounded Ishtar and those in her orbit, that whined and creaked like a wire pulled too tight.' It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start. At Hope, Silver finds unexpected friendship and, at last, a place to call home. But it is also here that, at just thirteen, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world — and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences. Hope Farm is the masterful second novel from award-winning author Peggy Frew, and is a devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth. PRAISE FOR PEGGY FREW ‘In its exploration of maternal, sexual, unrequited and platonic relationships, Hope Farm is a finely calibrated study of love, loss and belonging.’ The Sunday Age ‘Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description … Silver is poised at the beginning of adult understanding and Frew handles the challenge with deftness. Silver’s insight and compassion are juxtaposed with naivety and the idealistic force of her first crushes.’ The Weekend Australian

The Journey of Hope - presents the authors struggles to uncover personal history long hidden by the Tennessee Childrens Home Society (TCHS). Beginning chapters describe why she was taken from her mother and handed over to Georgia Tann at TCHS in 1936 at the age of four. Early memories include riding in the "big black car" that took her from Memphis to Odessa, Texas to a family that added the name Patricia and gave her a new life. In 1987 she decides to confront her past and search for her birth parents and the truth behind her legal abduction and illegal adoption. What she discovers is both joyous and harrowing. She tells of the process of finding siblings and visiting the graves of her parents and Tann. Her work discusses her rejuvenated commitment to God and faith and how she forgave Tann who sold children for profit and the judge that facilitated her efforts. Crafted from personal experiences, this is a moving account that has a strong authorial voice that resonates throughout. The work is confidently written, drawing the reader into the fabric of the story. The pain and emotion is subtly woven into the richly textured narrative, making for affecting reading. From Tragedy to Triumph explores how her devotion has guided her through the emotional process and helped her see the hope in an unfortunate situation.

A sparkling debut collection from a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet that makes an ecstatic argument for living Containing joy and suffering side by side, Ramshackle Ode offers elegies and odes as necessary partners to bring out the greatest power in each. By turns celebratory, meditative, tender, and rebellious, these poems reimagine the divisions and intersections of life and death, the human and the natural world, the brutal and the beautiful. Time and again, they choose hope. From an award-winning young poet in the tradition of Marie Howe, Walt Whitman, Gerald Stern, and contemporary American bard Maurice Manning, Ramshackle Ode presents a new voice singing toward transcendence, offering the sense that, though this world is fragile, human existence is a wonderfully stubborn miracle of chance.

This writing includes Natalie’s personal reflections on life, faith, and horse stories lived. A relatable read that just might connect the dots as to what makes horses so special to begin with!

Consisting of fifty barn poems, 50 Barn Poems is an evocative yet accessible sketch of that old barn that haunts the back of your brain. Vague memories of road trips, skateboarding, the ocean, and ping-pong are all reconstructed in the shape of a barn and set on fire. We're not even sure they're poems. Maybe they are just: BARN. Go ahead, take off your shoes and drive off a cliff. The barn awaits.