Celebrating Anthony DiPietro’s new collection

Congratulations to Anthony DiPietro on his poetry collection kiss & release. We are delighted to see his poem “Self-Talk in End Times” – first published in Monday Night – given new life in this full-length book forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in February 2024.

“Anthony DiPietro’s kiss & release is a pleasurable, lovable book about love and pleasure. DiPietro’s approach to these poems, even to poems of grief and heartache, is endlessly playful, darkhearted, lighthearted, and resplendent with anti-heroic wit and sex that charms and stings. The delight of this text does not diminish its formal and literary acumen. There are references to Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Pasolini, Plath, and Marie Howe, all ribboned-through with music—pop, classical, hip hop, country—and although DiPietro makes ample use of the prose poem, there is also a sestina, a villanelle, a pop cento, an abecedarian, a sequence, and a poem arrived at via predictive text. I tell you, this collection is a romp and a grand buffet, a paean to the urban masq, the fuckboy, and hot, thriving, fleeting love.” —Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

Order at Bookshop.org or Unsolicited Press!

Anthony DiPietro is a gay sex poet and arts administrator originally from Providence, Rhode Island. He has lived throughout New England and in California, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, he also earned a creative writing MFA at Stony Brook University. Now deputy director of Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, he resides in Worcester, MA. He composed his 2021 chapbook And Walk Through (Seven Kitchens Press) on a typewriter during the pandemic lockdowns. kiss & release is his debut collection. His writing and readings are featured on his website, www.AnthonyWriter.com.

Heidi Kasa’s Split in 2nd printing

Monday Night Press is excited to share this best-selling chapbook in its second printing. If you missed fiction chapbook, Split by Heidi Kasa, you can still get your copy here!

Split is a story about the constancy of change, the inevitability of disruption, the roles that humans play as creators and destroyers in each other’s lives. Through inventive structure and language, Kasa pushes her characters through painful transformations that are told in personal, philosophical, and cosmic dimensions. Read praise for Split here. Also, don’t miss T.A. Niles’ review.

Congratulations to Valerie Witte

Congratulations to Valerie Witte on her latest book, A Rupture in the Interiors, recently published by Airlie Press. Valerie is Monday Night Press’ copyeditor and a former contributor to the Monday Night journal.

“The wonder of this book is how it makes one feel as though one is holding not page, not book, but the fine texture of skin itself. Ultimately, this book strikes the song of the body’s largest and most visible organ, where we are the most vulnerable, where we first appear, then finally disappear where ‘we are almost human anyway.’” —Gillian Conoley, author of Notes from the Passenger

Order at Small Press Distribution or Airlie Press!

Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015) and, in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal, The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), the first of a two-part project exploring the work of postmodern dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. The second book in the project, a collection of experimental essays, is One Thing Follows Another (punctum books, 2024). She currently edits education books in Portland, OR, where she lives with her husband, Andrew. More at valeriewitte.com.

Brittney Corrigan’s Solastalgia

Congratulations to Brittney Corrigan on her latest poetry collection, Solastalgia from JackLeg Press.

Camille Dungy on Solastalgia: “These poems are a requiem for what is lost and what we’re losing. They are also a rallying cry, refusing to erase the efforts of the many cries for climate justice ringing around the world.”

Two poems from this book appeared in issue 22 of Monday Night. We’re delighted to see them again in this beautiful book.

Brittney Corrigan’s other poetry collections include Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, and 40 Weeks. She is currently at work on her first short story collection.

new chapbook by Heidi Kasa

We’re pleased to present a new chapbook, Split by Heidi Kasa. Get your copy here!

Split is a story about the constancy of change, the inevitability of disruption, the roles that humans play as creators and destroyers in each other’s lives. Through inventive structure and language, Kasa pushes her characters through painful transformations that are told in personal, philosophical, and cosmic dimensions. Read praise for Split here. Also, don’t miss T.A. Niles’ review.

An excerpt from Split was published in the fall 2021 issue of Monday Night literary journal.

new site and new publication in the works!

Welcome to our updated website! Since we closed the doors to the online publication Monday Night in fall 2021, this updated site completes our transition from printed zine to online journal to a small publisher of poetry and prose chapbooks.

Currently, we’re wrapping up production on our next publication: Split by Heidi Kasa. Read an excerpt in Monday Night 24. This title should be available by fall 2022—sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know!

While Monday Night the journal is no more, its legacy remains in our archives, which you can still access to enjoy almost two decades of prose, poetry, and more.

Issue 24 | Fall 2021

The Fall 2021 edition marks final issue of Monday Night. We started as a small print zine in 2001 and over the past 20 years have published more than 250 writers. We are now sunsetting the journal to focus on making chapbooks through Monday Night Press and to have more time for writing, reading, sleeping, and general goofing off. 

Many thanks to the current staff—Marissa Bell Toffoli, Patrick Duggan, Sharon McGill, Della Watson, and Valerie Witte—for their efforts to help produce this farewell issue. 

The issue features an excerpt from Heidi Kasa’s chapbook, Split, which will be released by Monday Night Press this spring. Other contributors include Daisy Bassen, Miriam Borgstrom, Stanford Chen, Christine Choi, Richard Cochnar, Olivia Cronk, Barbara Daniels, Adele Evershed, Elliot Harmon, Tom Ipri, Kathryn Lipari, Kate Maxwell, and Andrea Rexilius. Each of their pages are linked below.

As we begin the next chapter in the story of Monday Night, we ask you to join us in honoring Elliot Harmon, who passed away from cancer in October. Earlier this year, he had agreed to let us publish a selection from his manuscript, “Gray and Something.” Sadly, he wasn’t able to see it in print. This final, farewell issue of Monday Night Lit is dedicated to Elliot. We miss you, friend. 

Jessica Wickens, editor-in-chief

Matt Tompkins’ Odsburg

Belated congratulations to Matt Tompkins on his first novel! Odsburg was published by Ooligan Press in fall 2019. Get a copy here.

About Odsburg: An eccentric writer and self-proclaimed “socio-anthropo-lingui-loreologist” ventures into the fictional town of Odsburg, Washington, to research the location’s unusual history and residents. Convinced the name of the town is no coincidence, Wallace Jenkins-Ross goes about uncovering its mysteries through shady (and sometimes illegal) means. He discovers one man contending with a family of mountain lions living in his basement, another who can’t stop hallucinating after getting laser eye surgery, and a corporate employee whose skin is gradually receding. He unravels the puzzle of Odsburg through recordings, flyers, radio ads, and his own eye-witness accounts. 

We’ve been delighted to publish Matt Tompkins’ stories over the years in the journal and in a recent chapbook, Failures. He is also the author of Souvenirs and Other Stories (Conium Press), Studies in Hybrid Morphology (tNY Press) and Topia (Red Bird Chapbooks).

Coming soon: chapbook by Tamer Sa’id Mostafa

We’re so excited for our next book: Which Way Will the Water Drag Our Bodies? by Tamer Sa’id Mostafa.

Tamer Sa’id Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his) is an always-proud Stockton, California, native whose work has appeared in over twenty journals and magazines such as Confrontation, Literary Orphans, and Zone 3, among others. As an Arab-American Muslim, social worker, and aspiring narrative therapist, he reflects on life through spirituality, an evolving commitment to social justice, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.