Browse through our Shockwire Chapbook Series and choose any 1 for $3, any 2 for $5, or any 3 for $8! Please select the title(s) you want in the form section in checkout and we’ll send you a confirmation that we received your selection(s).

About the Series

Our new Shockwire Chapbook Series recognizes the need to raise the storytelling stakes in response to intimidation, fear, and inequality. Click here to read more

2019-2020 Collection:

• Gemini--Duality of Self by Osimiri Sprowal: Gemini is gorgeous group of poems chronicling this young Philadelphia writer’s experience as a transmasculine bigendered person. The collection deals with queer familial strife, the intersection of blackness and transness, and the intricacies of being a multi-gendered person healing from internalized transphobia and binary-existentialism. 

• US VS by Jeffrey S. Markovitz: When we decide to become parents—regardless of the time and space in which the decision is made—we also decide to enter into a social contract that makes it impossible to impose a dividing line between our values and the values imparted by others to their children. What happens when those values collide? A day trip to the zoo is the backdrop of one such collision, ordinary in its frequency and extraordinary in its individual impact. 

• Terrarium by Joe Baumann: Where does fantasy end and authentic connection begin? Nyle took the acting job at Hottie House under false pretenses, but his lie may open the door for another member’s deepest truth. When a plague of locusts descends, an event so bizarre that even porn experiences a “mini-slump” in site traffic, the actors trapped on location have no choice but to acknowledge that their audience has been reduced to one another. 

• Growth Response by Dena Igusti: This extraordinary series of poems discusses the aftermath of undergoing female genital mutilation in Indonesia, and how the act influences lineage, trauma, body dysmorphia, and diaspora. Dena Igusti, the Indonesian-Muslim poet who authored this collection, is the co-founder of Short Line!, an organization dedicated to connecting artists to their communities, to each other, to resources, and to themselves.

• Bedside Manner by Gemma Cooper-Novack: Edie Jarvis is a college campus enigma, known to all but truly seen by only a select few. Callie considers herself lucky to be one of the chosen in Edie’s wide orbit, and when their relationship is tested, she begins to understand just how far her insight into another person can extend. 

2018-2019 Collection:

• Debates, Defenses, and Dreams - Norman Cain weaves together the most poignant and formative moments of a life lived in service to education, civil rights, and his country in this brief but mighty work of memoir. From his account of a fiery Philly neighborhood debate between his mother and the most influential man on the block to his memories of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, Cain’s reflections shine a light on a remarkable span of American history.

• Salvaging the Dormant: On Language - How often, as English speakers, do we take for granted the freedom to communicate unencumbered, not only in person but on a multitude of platforms at any time? How often do we turn our thoughts to endangered, dormant, and sometimes revitalized languages and their speakers? Sarah Grey reminds us of the life, death, and uncertain futures of the world’s linguistic diversity in this beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking essay.

• Time Stamps - Briyanna Hymms’s work moves between poetry and gorgeous prose, meditating on the unique pressures of being a first-generation American. As a child of immigrants, how can you return your parents’ sacrifices? Hymms’s story is an honest and lovely exploration of this question that feels fiercely real.

• Some Old Houses - Through her story, Lauren Lowe offers a poignant look at the redevelopment of Chinatown. Lowe tugs at the lines of outsiderness and insiderness, revealing how gentrification makes strangers out of everyone. Lowe’s piece is a beautiful examination of mixed heritage, the power of space and being seen in that space, and the unshakability of home.

• Implosion - Finding a safe and affordable place to live can be challenging in the best of circumstances; Carol Richardson McCullough deftly pens the story of her journey with Philadelphia’s housing authority as she looks for a home for herself and her children, contrasting her experience with the ideals our city’s founders originally intended. McCullough writes with a stark honesty that carries the reader with her, every step of the way.

• No Clock Time, No Paper Money - Sara Ray’s tale of wilderness training is also a coming-of-age story, wherein the narrator finds her own strength and sense of self. Ray’s writing is simple and meditative; she easily weaves the narrator’s inner thoughts with the rich natural world, laid bare of modern conveniences and conventions.

• Introduction to The Communist Manifesto - This excerpt of The Communist Manifesto was chosen by writer and activist Nic Esposito for its prescient parallels to the economic challenges and societal shifts we face today. But whatever your impression is of Karl Marx and socialism’s ideals, Esposito's ultimate goal for you, Dear Reader, is to engage with what Marx and his comrades wrote by uniting theory with action.

• Opposite of Prayer - Douglas W. Milliken writes seven interconnected stories of power, entitlement, and privilege set throughout the northern subtropics. The Opposite of Prayer examines the pinprick where control intersects gender, language, and money, where one's body becomes a weapon and devotion becomes a crutch.

• House of Our Brothers - Patrick McNeil is a fiction writer based in Philadelphia who has worked with the homeless population for six years. Inspired by this work, House of Our Brothers is a series of vignettes capturing moments in the lives of men grappling with life, addiction, and survival; told with empathy, humor, and self-awareness..

• to the olive tree branches - Ndeen Al-Barqawi’s poetry unearths urgent truths about legacies of suppression, pain, and redemption, and how those themes interplay with being a queer Muslim woman in 2018. Some of the poems have been transcribed from spoken word performances while others were always destined for the page, making this collection a fearless lyrical hybrid.

• Aleppo Burning - Ann Struthers lived in Aleppo, Syria, for two years while teaching at the University of Aleppo as a Fulbright Fellow. Her collection is concerned with the stories of friends, colleagues, and students, so many of whom continue to live in peril. From delicately rendered elegies to defiant calls for a lasting peace, each poem is rooted in an abiding love for a place and people wracked by conflict.

• Report from the Streets: Voices of the Homeless - MK Punky embarked on a yearlong listening project with the intent to capture the stories of individuals who live on the street in Los Angeles. This simple goal--to engage when others are more comfortable avoiding eye contact, let alone starting a conversation--led to a collection of poems MK hopes will act as “a wakeup call from the mute.”