Books and Authors

Since 1993, Three Rooms Press has been a leading voice in the independent poetry, literature and dramatic fields, publishing more than 30 books of poetry, theater, and nonfiction and—in the coming year—fiction and memoirs. In addition, Three Rooms Press is produces and promotes a variety of events; in the past 16 years it has staged more than 400 events in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Europe.

DRUNKYARD DOG

by Peter Carlaftes

“A brilliant poetic voice, filled with drop-dead humor, searing insight and resilient originality, even while resonating with overtones of Bukowski, Baudelaire and Bogart . . .”

DrunkYard Dog by Peter Carlaftes is a long-awaited collection by a poetic master who honed his intense, insightful and inspiring poetic voice on the playgrounds of the Bronx, and, after seeing the world, moved onto the bars of Manhattan. Tales of bartender blues and bliss, injected with hope in a milieu of madness. Lush portraits of urban personas like Goodtime Charlie, the Battling Brothers, Ronnie the Cop and Uncle Willie. Cinematic swirls of downtown denizens in stark raving shades of shot-infused clarity. A poetic pub crawl that picks up the pieces of a dismantled present and puts them back together in a brand new cocktail. “If the sun set in the East, Carlaftes would be Bukowski.”

Carlaftes is the author of six chapbooks including The Bar Essentials, Sheer Bardom, Nightclub Confidential and Progressive Shots (all Three Rooms Press). Nine of his original plays have been staged to critical acclaim, including Anity, Spin-Dry, Handout, and Closure. He has also written and performed his one-man show, Lenny Bruce: Dead & Well, and is the author of two other books: A Year on Facebook (humor) and Triumph for Rent (three plays).

Contact: info@threeroomspress.com

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TRIUMPH FOR RENT
3 Plays

by Peter Carlaftes

Three inventive and thoroughly enjoyable dramas by a new master of modern stagecraft. “As with STRINDBERG, BECKETT, or even SARTRE, PETER CARLAFTES’ message seems to be something we intuit . . . like music.” —SF Weekly

Playwright Peter Carlaftes presents three compelling, funny and biting dramas in TRIUMPH FOR RENT: Three Plays (Three Rooms Press, 184 pages, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-9840700-6-0). The plays include SPIN-DRY: An hilarious wild ride through a 90s rehab center for celebrities; HUNGER: a heartfelt drama—inspired by the Knut Hamsun novel—about a starving writer trying to survive and keep his integrity alive as the borders blur between fantasy and reality in a world of rocker chicks, hookers and convicts; and FRONTIER-A GO-GO, a tragi-comedy in which a man living on a man living on the Nebraska plains circa 1872 uses a time machine to summon a hippie drifter and a budding feminist who have just conceived a daughter at a rock concert in 1972, and then summons the daughter, aged 25, from her 1997 date with a cybergeek.

Peter Carlaftes began his theatrical career on the playgrounds of the Bronx, and after seeing the world, branched out to Manhattan. Nine of his plays have been staged, to critical acclaim, among them Anity, Frontier A-Go-Go, Spin-Dry and Closure. He also created and staged a deconstruction of Knut Hamsun’s classic novel Hunger, and created and starred in a one-man rendition of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. He has recently written and performed his solo work, Lenny Bruce: Dead & Well, and starred in numerous Off-Broadway plays. In addition to his theatrical career, Carlaftes is the author of two other books on Three Rooms Press: A Year on Facebook (humor, see below), and Drunkyard Dog (poetry, see above).

Contact: info@threeroomspress.com

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BASEBALL KARMA AND THE CONSTITUTION BLUES

by Ronnie Norpel

A BEHIND-the-SCENES SCORECARD about BASEBALL, LUCK, LOVE and SUPERSTITION—from a young woman’s INSIDER perspective.

In Baseball Karma and The Constitution Blues,native Philadelphian Ronnie Norpel provides a play-by-play, behind-the-scenes account of a young woman’s education in life, luck, love and superstition while working for her hometown major league baseball team.The book stems from Norpel’s days as a front office representative for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Norpel’s ficto-memoir brims with insider insight, detailing the fastballs, curveballs and errors experienced by main character Mary Katharine “Mick” Carmichael when she gets involved with a rookie on the Constitution Blues team.  Baseball Karma and The Constitution Blues overflows with heart and humor, without glossing over the despair of karmic growing pains for both Mick and the Blues. Underneath it all, we discover how one woman’s real-life curse changed destiny—until it was finally lifted for good. Norpel’s rookie novel is must-have read for summer.

Ronnie Norpel has always been passionate about baseball, and the Philadelphia Phillies in particular. In this coming of age novel, she writes with religious fervor about an Irish Catholic girl from the suburbs who attempts to make it in a man’s world and discovers life outside the front office can be more diffi cult than expected. She has a wonderful way of combining her feelings about the Catholic church and the church of baseball, chronicling Mary Katherine “Mick” Carmichael’s seduction by the sport, personal fall from grace and eventual road to redemption.
—DICK WEISS, NY DAILY NEWS

Part personal history, part novel . . . a love letter to Phillies fans. Norpel’s debut novel embodies the mixed emotions that drive our national pastime.
—A.D. AMOROSI, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER

Ronnie Norpel’s debut fi cto-memoir tells a very brave, rollicking, ordinary yet extraordinary story of a young woman’s coming of age, at a time and place where baseball seemed to have redemptive powers. Just when she thought she was doing everything right, a curveball shatters her identity.
—CELIA INGRID FARBER, THE TRUTH BARRIER

Baseball Karma and The Constitution Blues by Ronnie Norpel, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-5-3, $15.95, 5.25” x 8”, Territory: WE, 210 Pages, April 2010, Trade Paper, Ficto-Memoir/Pop Culture/Baseball
Contact: info@threeroomspress.com

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A YEAR ON FACEBOOK

by Peter Carlaftes

Groucho Marx meets Kurt Vonnegut and they become BFFs in this irreverent, hilarious new book.

A Year on Facebook is a comical trajectory through modern American life via daily updates from the insightful and irreverent pontiff of pun—Peter Carlaftes.

In this day of the tell-all journal, Carlaftes’s book, exposing the foibles of our seemingly civilized sensibility, tells both how — and like — it is. Iconic from conception, A Year on Facebook is a one of a kind literary experience that raises the bar for the idealist in us all.

Through the hysterical daily Facebook status updates of the author— who became a viral Jonathan Swift through his irreverent social, political and just plain “out-there” observations—A Year on Facebook provides an hilarious book to thumb through at random or read page-by-ROTFL-page. It’s packed with side-splitting illustrations, and “interactive” pages that provide a multimedia experience for the reader in combination with the book’s namesake website.

The thousands of comments that have flooded Carlaftes’ online mailbox—many of which are included in this book—prove again and again: A Year on Facebook will leave readers howling with laughter. As one commentator summed up, “I wonder if you know, Peter, how many times you make me laugh out loud with your status updates. Guess it doesn’t matter. Just keep me laughing, please. ”

A Year on Facebook by Peter Carlaftes, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-3-9, $13.95, 6” x 9”, Territory: WE, 184 Pages,  January 2010, Trade Paper, Humor/Pop Culture/Social Networking
Contact:   info@threeroomspress.com

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RECREATIONAL VEHICLES ON FIRE

New & Selected Poems by Jane Ormerod

A fresh, fearless, new poetic voice that challenges and transfixes. An extraordinary first full-length collection.

Recreational Vehicles on Fire by Jane Ormerod is an extraordinary first full-length collection of poetry by a completely original modern voice. Daring and innovative, yet remarkably accessible, Ormerod explores the psyche and reduced position of humanity in a world increasingly overtaken by corporate greed and faceless machines. She invites the reader to examine with her how—of if—basic human emotions such as grief, joy and love fit into the present, and ponders their place in relation to past and future. Each poem is a stunning example of language and thought, delivered in a variety of unique forms. Ormerod is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Poet and literary critic Sarah Sarai notes: “I’ve seen her perform . . . and find her speech—not elite, not Cockney—like her poetry, arresting and uncommon. . . A little punk, a little reserved, a lot artist, [her work] swoops in to challenge and transfix. Her confident lines embody a surety that their existence is all the sense we need.”

Recreational Vehicles on Fire; New & Selected Poems, by Jane Ormerod, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-1-5, $15.00, 6” x 9”, Territory: WE, 112 Pages,  October 2009, Trade Paper, Poetry
Contact:    info@threeroomspress.com

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POPPIN’ JOHNNY

New American Poems by George Wallace

A post-modern poetic “On the Road” that feels like music and offers a surreal trip into what’s left of the American heartland.

Poppin’ Johnny: New American Poems by George Wallace is a stunning collection by a poet whose work recalls the conversational diction of the Beatniks, but with an absolutely contemporary flavor. Known worldwide due to his broad-based internet following (for years, Wallace has posted his poems online almost daily), Wallace has selected more than 70 poems for this collection, presenting a panorama of modern-day Americana. As original Beatnik musician David Amram notes, “Jack Kerouac would have loved him.”

This new book has already received widespread critical praise throughout the online literary community. Zvi A. Sesling (dougholder.blogspot.com) notes, “Nitty-gritty, down in hole, Wallace rips life as if it were a piece of paper, leaving the edges jagged and the paper crumpled like so many lives he observes.” Jack Foley believes, “A George Wallace poem is a burst of articulation that carries us into the country of Talk. These poems—brilliant, funny, dangerous, cantankerous—announce the pure pleasure of speaking.” And Robert Peake sums up, “These are poems as rough and vulnerable as manhood, as full of hope and heartbreak as the new world. If you want to know what America feels like in your mouth, read George Wallace out loud.”

This just in: Greenwich Village Gazette loves Poppin’ Johnny!

“George Wallace has written the quintessential American book of poetry. The poems in his new book Poppin’ Johnny New American Poems lift off the pages like so many warm-colored hot air balloons in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. And while they glide over the American checkerboard of fields and farms, these poems also hover over the urban streets of American cities where they take in the smells of restaurants brimming with working people as the sun rises, the rough textures of alleys at night and the blue-denimed boys who ride subways, and others who fling fish guts for a living.” by Lenny DellaRocca. Read the full review of Poppin’ Johnny at Greenwich Village Gazette.

Poppin Johnny; New American Poems, by George Wallace, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-2-2, $15.00, 6” x 9”, Territory: WE, 116 Pages,  September 2009, Trade Paper, Poetry
Contact:    info@threeroomspress.com

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YO QUIERO MAS SANGRE

Random Acts of Poetry, by Ryan Buynak

A gripping collection of poetry
written by and aimed at members
of the Twitter generation.

Ryan Buynak takes a new look at the underbelly of modern American life, traveling from coast to coast and hooking up with an eclectic collection of characters, all the while searching for freedom, heart and soul in a world ruled by technology. His gripping first full-length collection of poetry is written for “people who don’t know shit about poetry” by a man who clearly does.

Yo Quiero Mas Sangre has met with widespread and heartfelt praise from members of the online poetry community. Mona Pierpaoli regards it as “A beautiful first book of poetry which has as curt and concise a voice as it has vivacious and interesting subjects and scenes. The elements of this book, while seemingly quite disparate, come together to make an effective and enduring movement. Great read.” Justin E. Foyil adds, “With tongues and twists from an imagination and experience one could only wish to speak about. This was an indescribable work/message, I couldn’t put down until its resolution. This was the most “real” indirect advice from a friend/stranger, I’ve ever read.”

Yo Quiero Mas Sangre; Poems, by Ryan Buynak, Three Rooms Press
ISBN: 978-0-9840700-0-8, $15.00, 5.06″ x 7.81”, Territory: WE, 84 Pages,  June 2009, Trade Paper, Poetry/Pop Culture
Contact:    info@threeroomspress.com

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