Words From the Café, An Anthology (Apple Books Format)
Words From the Café, An Anthology (Apple Books Format)
Book Details:
ISBN: 978-1-7354780-0-5
Publisher: Raven Chronicles Press
Format: eBook/ePub (Apple Books format)
Publication Date: 4/10/2022
Page Count: 206 (approx)
Category: Anthology of prose, poems, fiction, essays
Language: English
Edited by Anna Bálint; Photos by Willie J. Pugh
This is an exciting and unusual collection of stories and poems written by people in recovery. Every Friday at Seattle’s Recovery Café, in downtown Seattle, people struggling with addiction, mental illness, trauma, and homelessness came together in Anna Bálint’s Safe Place Writing Circle to write and share writing. There they discovered their own unique voices and ways of shaping language to write stories and poems as part of reclaiming their lives. This collection, born out of that involvement, includes a literary range and breadth of human experience that flies in the face of prevailing stereotypes about some of the most marginalized members of our society. These are voices that need to be heard.
Praise for Words From the Café
As both a writer of poems and a psychiatrist practicing psychotherapy, I believe I’m a student of human nature. In this area of study, all experience is my university. And in reading the collection of offerings called Words From the Café, I find myself in an accelerated curriculum. Time in these pages is time for renewed wonder, especially about what we humans can do with a little reliable welcome into a space for safe narrative expression. I’m discovering what I thought I knew but with a sense of fresh revelation. The resilience in view through these poems, essays, and photographic portraits is innocent, timeless, beautiful, charming, and incredibly assuring. I’m learning, through Words From the Café, that what it takes to bring forth such insightful, forgiving, and hopeful formulations of serious life struggle is an essentially safe space—a space like The Recovery Café’s Safe Place Writing Circle.
—Jed Myers, author of The Marriage of Space and Time
“What’s so astonishing about this collection is the range of emotions and the quality of the writing: joy and grief, exuberance and ennui, as well as a host of other emotions, all dwell together in this compelling book.”
—Tod Marshall, Washington State Poet Laureate (2016-2018)
Praise for Words From the Café
“What’s so astonishing about this collection is the range of emotions and the quality of the writing: joy and grief, exuberance and ennui, as well as a host of other emotions, all dwell together in this compelling book.” —Tod Marshall, Washington State Poet Laureate (2016-2018)
“As I read Words From the Café, I find myself entering not only into the lives of others through their poems and prose, but into a whole range of physical, cultural, philosophical and psychological territories....” —Martha Linehan, Organization for Prostitution Survivors
“Speaking plainly, Words From the Café is a recovery program knocking on the door of mainstream American culture. Editor Anna Bálint has shaped an anthology that breaks down conventional definitions and boundaries.” —Jim Bodeen, Ed., Seeking Light in Each Dark Room/Buscando Luz en Cada Cuarto Oscuro
As both a writer of poems and a psychiatrist practicing psychotherapy, I believe I’m a student of human nature. In this area of study, all experience is my university. And in reading the collection of offerings called Words From the Café, I find myself in an accelerated curriculum. Time in these pages is time for renewed wonder, especially about what we humans can do with a little reliable welcome into a space for safe narrative expression. I’m discovering what I thought I knew but with a sense of fresh revelation. The resilience in view through these poems, essays, and photographic portraits is innocent, timeless, beautiful, charming, and incredibly assuring. I’m learning, through Words From the Café, that what it takes to bring forth such insightful, forgiving, and hopeful formulations of serious life struggle is an essentially safe space—a space like The Recovery Café’s Safe Place Writing Circle.
—Jed Myers, author of The Marriage of Space and Time
Anna Bálint is a London-born, Seattle-based poet, writer, editor and cultural activist of East European descent. Her editorial work for Raven Chronicles Press includes Take a Stand: Art Against Hate (Winner of the 2021 Washington State Book Award for Poetry) and Words From the Café. Her short fiction collection, Horse Thief (Curbstone Press, 2004), was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. A longtime teacher of creative writing, Anna currently teaches adults in recovery from trauma, addiction, mental illness and homelessness at Seattle’s Recovery Cáfe, where she founded Safe Place Writing Circle.