Sugar Loaf Press

2010-05-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Homage was published in 2004 in a very limited edition. That was a very busy year; Ballad of the Confessor came out in 2003, but was not truly available until 2004 because of distribution issues. Riffs From New Id came out later that summer, and then a month after that so did Homage. There was virtually no marketing of the book.

Here are a few of the sonnets:

It's in the heady days of August wane,
Across my shoulders, against your aging,
Throughout the valley, ours, without complain,
I steal you, stripped, to youthful rut's raging.
You, who stood amidst the milo bounty,
And gushing waters far from providence;
A wood nymph, sea conch, sidekick, and mounty,
Spores fleeing on this bareback circumstance.
Give me all of it--all of it, I say!
What falls outside the circle--give me too!
Free is how I found you, and free you'll stay;
Give me former whoredom, what once I knew.
We've matted down the milo, now let's see
What you're made of, and what you hide from me.

And when I see your glist'ning twilight calm
In eyes of mine closed to yesterday's bliss,
God Himself must have formed you in His palm--
Your white-hot beauty makes me conclude this.
Where have all the days of summertime's heat
Run off with barely tastebud's speed bumps quenched?
Where, in endless hours of lips conjoined sweet,
As time, for bed squeaks, stopped round lithe legs clenched?
Your beauty in me strikes down all discord,
The sense--I say not senses--made with thought;
And makes me wish with heart and hands to ford
That impasse to Oneness all time has sought.
Look not for deity in logic's game,
But in the lines of flesh, woman, her name.

I saw your face as I asleep did fall
While on the bus from Galway's green today;
My eyes a flutter 'gainst that tugging wall,
Your sweetness lulling me along the way.
All bathed in light your cheekbone's breast held high,
A wreath of asters sprang out from your hair;
Upon your nape a spot did want to dry
From where my lips, enraptured, pressed you there.
A fortnight, this, my banishment agreed,
To give you time to resurrect your heart;
But know that I in bondage can't be freed
From what you say has driven us apart.
My love three thousand miles from you remains,
At a sea's loss at what this absence gains.

Greetings from the Field

2010-05-07T06:07:00.001-07:00

Dagoberto Gilb comments on William Zink's rise from obscurity to being one of the exciting new voices on the National Literary Scene

2010-04-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

"We are in a time not unlike the 30's when the need for job now rises high above the faraway dream of getting the right credentials from the right places. And so with literature, where a tide will be coming from the heartland, the boonies, and inner cities of brown, black, and white America. Its authors will be without proper literary pedigrees, they will have attended but done poorly in boring high schools, maybe gone to community college for a while, did or did not graduate from a four-year Institution of higher learning. Definitely not with laurels bestowed upon them by the top-tier universities, not fairy-dusted by a so-admired writing program, they will write about the common and the poor among us, those working more hours than they want, or much less than they need. William Zink is not the first, but he is certainly among the most ambitious of them in this coming wave."
-- Dagoberto Gilb

"Pieta is a true and generous wonder of a novel." -- Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

2010-03-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

Pub. date set for William Zink's new novel, Pieta. . . July 10, 2010.

Synopsis: Jim Priest's mother is dying. With his daughter beside him, he alternates caretaking duties with his sister. A year earlier his father died in mysterious fashion -- the head of the Virgin Mary from a lifelong sculpting project of The Pieta fell on top of him, killing him instantly. As days pass by, his mother falling in and out of coherency, the buried secrets of a bittersweet childhood re-emerge, forcing the four of them to accept, if not fully resolve, the limitations of their bonds.

Pieta is a story about personal ambition, the anguish of unrequited affection, and the redemptive spirit of a young girl. In concise, elegant prose, William Zink examines the singular, yet universal, forces tugging at the hip of a family in the midst of its most epic chapter.

"Pieta is a true and generous wonder of a novel. In sharp, beautifully written prose, William Zink takes on big themes -- love and devotion and family and death -- and makes us all the better for it."
-- Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

2008-06-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

On the Cusp - Recorded May 2008 - includes excerpts from Ohio River Dialogues, Ballad of the Confessor, The Hole, and Homage.

2008-03-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

"Zink's character's are self-contradictory, arbitrary, generous, prejudiced, sensitive, self-pitying -- complicated, in other words. You end up liking them in spite of it, or more probably because of it."
-- The Pittsburgh City Paper

"William Zink's Ohio River Dialogues is. . . Not quite a novel. Not exactly a play. Not a stream of seemingly disconnected stories that somehow magically intertwine perfectly at the end. Instead, he presents us with a hybrid of these, and what emerges is revolutionary. Indeed, Zink might soon be credited with creating a new form of literature."
-- The Main Street Rag

Ohio River Dialogues is a Finalist for the 2008 Ohioana Fiction Award

2007-08-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Ohio River Dialogues, coming the fall of 2007

"Blood, water and the high lonesome sound of late night guitars; Ohio River Dialogues is a twisted, bumpy ride that shouldn't be missed."
-- Michael Stanley

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Lisa Gustin

SUGAR LOAF PRESS – Literature on the Move

Email: lgustin@sugarloafpress.com

FOUR HUCK FINNS GO ELECTRIC

Four men, a weekend of river fishing, the impending Iraqi war, global warming, scandal in the Catholic Church, the Israel-Palestinian problem, familial gossip, middle-age neuroses, the plight of single dads, cheap labor gone south, the origins of saviors, contempt for the 401K Generation. . . these topics and more are discussed in dialogue and presented in dramatic format in Ohio River Dialogues by William Zink.

Set in the summer of 2002 after 9/11, as the U.S. government considers war with Iraq, an ex-hippie, two software dropouts, and a Steady Eddie convene for a weekend of fishing, drinking, and fraternal debate. Pandora’s Box opens wide for the unadulterated, unedited sparring of ideas and fraternal dominance.

Four men go at it--leaving no white elephant unidentified, permitting no unclothed emperor to pass without howls of laughter, and no bounds of propriety left uncrossed. There are no sacred cows in the freewheeling minds of dreamers, as there are none in the souls of these beaten-down warriors--for they have seen love blossom in the historic flourish that was the 60's, watched as it was ground into meal for the disco dancing and empire coasting of the 70's, and pondered ever since what good has been taken and what lessons learned as we now enter an undetermined new phase of American culture and influence. The collective soul of a nation is mirrored in the bumbling, boasting, beautiful voices of four ordinary men.

Ohio River Dialogues is Huck Finn with some ganja in his pocket, a Gibson over his shoulder, and world destruction in the back of his mind. . . times four.

For more information contact: Lisa Gustin
343 N. Pearl Street Granville, Ohio 43023
email: lgustin@sugarloafpress.com

###

Ballad of the Confessor, 2003

"This is a muscular and gripping tale from inside the world of work. 'The Confessor' brings home the real shape of a reality nearly erased by television and statistics. Is this the start of that much-needed social realist fiction? Perhaps. Zink is one hell of a writer."
-- Andrei Codrescu, NPR's All Things Considered

"A genuine Southern Masterpiece."
-- The Charleston City Paper

"To anyone who says Southern literature has disappeared from the new South of of air conditioning and interstates, I say read this book. The characters in William Zink's amazing novel don't go inside when the heat hits 100 degrees -- they just keep working and dreaming as they dig the flowerbeds and cut the grass of all the intellectuals who moan about great Southern novels being a thing of the past."
-- Jason Sanford, storySouth

"Ballad of the Confessor is a world of work tale that grips the reader in the arms of the new South and doesn't let go until the final page. In passages terse and stark, in others strident and moving, this novel takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of emotions."
-- Curled Up With A Good Book

"Read this book with cicidas and beer, because that's how I suspect it was written. It is tight and beautiful and glazed with the good kind of sweat."
-- David Giffels, Akron Beacon Journal

2007-08-13T16:59:00.001-07:00

Riffs from New Id, 2004

"Riffs contains some pieces that are sincerely moving."
-- Rain Taxi

2007-08-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Torrid Blue, 2002

"Torrid Blue is an engaging anthology of brief, original free-verse."
-- Midwest Book Review

Isle of Man, 2001

2007-08-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

The Hole, 2000

"The Hole is a strange and magical love story that is a joy to read."
-- Larry Lawrence, Abilene Reporter-News

"This work is a surprising and unlikely treasure from an author using a surprising and unlikely pseudonym. . . Highly recommended."
-- Eric Robbins, Booklist