Michael McGregor, author of Writing the Northwest, reviewed Pulley Press’ We Had Our Reasons, and interviewed author Ricardo Ruiz to find out more about himself, his writing, and his community. Anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo will not be surprised that Michael was intrigued by both Ruiz’s poetry content and his demeanor.

Pulley Press is thrilled to announce that we’ve signed a contract with Tina Mozelle Braziel andJames Braziel for a book on The Glass Cabin, a home built by hand in Remlap, Alabama. Tina and Jim’ blog, Glass Cabin Diary, details the home that the duo has been building for the last couple of years. A good deal of the materials are salvage: decommissioned utility poles, cedars cut away from powerlines, rusted tin, and re-used windows.

As Pulley Press prepares for their next release, Glass Cabin, we sat down with the authors, James Braziel and Tina Mozelle Braziel, to discuss their work.

Ted Kooser’s, A Man With A Rake, receives praise from Kirkus Reviews! The review hones in on Kooser’s ability to capture the beauty of the in-between moments in American rural life. For Kooser, it was the creaks of a house settling or farm animals that turned into music. A time in our lives when everything felt like what stood in front of us was enough. 

Thirteen years ago, in a desire to live an affordable and creative life, Tina Mozelle and James Braziel purchased ten acres of land and began building a cabin made of glass in Remlap, Alabama. Through a constant bargaining of time, resources, and words, the couple created a home made of hand-me-down glass — and a book of poetry that lets us see inside. 

Ted Kooser, former US Poet Laureate, was the first poet to be published by Pulley Press with his 2021 chapbook, A Man With a Rake. Written from the 62-acres of wooded hills in rural Nebraska that he calls home, these selections of poetry draw raw and unexpected portraits from everyday country life. Known for the accessible, refreshing clarity of his language, Kooser pulls the reader in with his fluid observations, then uncovers new meaning in imagery that some would dismiss as pastoral.

I recently had a conversation with one of Pulley’s newest signees, Salaam Green, an Alabama native and poet in search of healing. Green was recently selected as the city of Birmingham’s inaugural Poet Laureate.

Although she was known mainly as the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation during her lifetime, Wilma Mankiller was also a gifted poet in her own right. In Mankiller Poems, Pulley Press brings together pieces of Wilma Mankiller’s poetry, nineteen of which were found posthumously by Frances McCue and Greg Shaw with the permission of Mankiller’s husband. These poems reveal an untold layer of Mankiller’s life, in which she found it necessary to turn to poetry for a deeper understanding while making important leadership decisions.

Most people know the term “documentary” through its application to film. Documentary filmmakers take interviews, photographs, news stories, and film footage and splice them together to give a creative slant on real events. Poetry, too, has experimented with documentary techniques to graft the real onto the imaginative. At Pulley Press, this type of collage work is pivotal to our approach to the poetic process.

Great news for Pulley Press! Ricardo Ruiz’s We Had Our Reasons has just won the 2023 Washington State Book Award.

The announcement came from the Washington Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book, administered by Washington State Library (a division of the Office of the Secretary of State).

What Pulley Press aspires to—celebrating literature from from rural places—is what Barbara Kingsolver does masterfully in Demon Copperhead, her new novel. We absolutely love it—for its depiction of Appalachia as a real and nuanced place, and for its main character, Demon, an orphan with a big voice.

In the hopes of connecting with poets in Alabama and Louisiana, Frances decided to take a trip to the South. Birmingham, Alabama is a city of 180,000 but unlike boomtowns in the American West, Birmingham is getting smaller as the days go by. Miles of abandoned warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and deserted homes lined the roads and train tracks limited access to different sides of the city. The trains came in long strings of freight and sat in the flats.

Michael McGregor, the writer of the review, talks about first meeting Ricardo Ruiz at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. With no surprise, he was intrigued by both Ruiz’s poetry content and his demeanor. McGregor highlights Ruiz’s accessibility in verse, comparing it to that of Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. He also mentions how the content and verse work in tandem together to paint a portrait of an overlooked community through its yearning, hardships, familial relationships.

The Association of Writers and Programs Conference came to Seattle and this meant that we saw thousands of writers and editors stumbling around downtown and Capitol Hill! Zaira Bardos, Kate Brackman, Krista Orejudos, and Julia park were running the booth and they worked enthusiastically from a humble table in a far-off corner speaking to passerbyers. Zaira says that they met people from New York City, New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, and other far-off places.