Slingshots and Love Plums, Wendy Videlock’s third full-length collection, sometimes evokes the lightheartedness of The Dark Gnu and Other Poems previous to it, sometimes enchants with the frolics and insights of her Nevertheless debut. It especially shines with the brilliance of its wit, its spirituality—as in Videlock’s fiat lux invocation for her “Dear Reader” “resembling the first, or the last word.” Harnessing proverbs, myths, paeans, execrations, riddles, and pithy odes to the natural world and the people around her, Videlock delivers an inspired collection that rollicks, startles and uplifts. PRAISE FOR SLINGSHOTS AND LOVE PLUMS: From its title to its last poem, Wendy Videlock’s Slingshots and Love Plums offers a delicious variety of treats, from witty send-ups of contemporary mores to somber reflections on mortality, love, and friendship. The pleasures include off-kilter rhymes, elegant turns, earthy revelations, and the skillful mockery of pretentiousness in its various forms. —David Caplan, author of In the World He Created According to His Will Videlock arrests because she arrests the complacent drift of sense. She is so good at it that what begins as a taste for her work can quickly turn into a craving—for deliciously cryptic spiritual riddles. —David J. Rothman, author of Part of the Darkness, from the foreword Wendy Videlock’s poems in Slingshots and Love Plums sometimes hint at their Colorado origins but are never pinned down by a locality or a life story. They are gleefully universal, taking delight equally in huge abstraction and intimate real-worldliness. Whether enchanting, imploring, or arguing, they always fascinate, concentrating their acrobatics of thought and sound on the knots of the human experience. —Maryann Corbett, author of Mid Evil Wendy Videlock is one of the few poets I can still read at length and purely for pleasure. Playfully wise, sharp-tongued, and surprising as ever, Slingshots and Love Plums is yet another treasure to be read and reread at your leisure. Thereafter you’ll find all your thinking is rhymed—but, don’t mind: it’s just dust from the master. —Timothy Green, editor of Rattle

The prison ship should have been dead when the final failsafe, Tristan 08 awoke. But Xander, the Evolved leopard spy had no intention of dying that day. That chance meeting would throw two civilizations into conflict across the stars. The Generator Sequence is a four short story collection: Twilight Rising - On a good day, an Autonomous Organic Emergency System remains in a twilight sleep and never sees another living human. Today is not a good day. Windfall - Evolved feline Xander escaped from the prison ship and escaped from Conclave space. Proctor Cathcart wants her kitty back. Overburdened - When the work he unknowingly sold to his mortal enemies is found on a spy, Gervais Moore finds himself overburdened by his own actions. Earthed - Curiosity doesn't always kill the cat, but it did frame Evolved feline Ella Ubeke for mass murder.

These extraordinary poems and the accompanying visual presences will haunt their way into the reader's heart and linger until compassion resides there, and knowledge, and healing. This is poetry as meditation, meditation as prayer, prayer as an act of resistance. Ms. Alston-Nero begins with the three million year-old bones of Dinkanesh, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974; enters into the ancestral world of the African Burial Ground in Manhattan; unearths ancestors in the songs of Nina Simone; and, finally, allows a poetic exchange between the enslaved ancestors and the world of our today. Kiss Me. creates an imperative to understand the present by deeply listening and bearing witness to the past. These are poems of reclamation that stand upright with ancient eyes proclaiming, "We survived the past, we will live to see eternity." "If our Black history and culture were garnished with the poetic imagery and metaphors that resonate in Stephanie Alston-Nero's poetry, we would all be better teachers and students. At the core of this remarkable book is an impressive use of language, a deft orchestration of voices, and let us hope that the shapes of the poems remain upon publication." -Herb Boyd, author of Baldwin's Harlem "Stephanie Alston-Nero creates a textured homage, an evocative narrative to the ancestors, conferring dignity and elegance upon their spirits." -Erika DeRuth, author of Yoruba Girls in Crinoline Dresses "These poems are dissonant, sharp and brilliant. No happy slave lives in these poems. They moan and chant up the ghosts of our collective past. Alston-Nero synthesizes image, historical fact and race memory to arrive at poems that offer a fresh and much needed retelling of American Slavery. She is unafraid to enter the burial ground, whipping post or hanging tree to rescue stories and the humanity of our slave ancestors. She casts an unflinching eye upon the lives of slaves and their contemporary descendents. It is a necessary read for generations to come." -Jacqueline Johnson, author of A Gathering of Mother Tongues