EM Press Publishing

06/14/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16ksKPZ9z5/

Live at Elboroom : Chicago June 12 2010 Performing "Blurred" from the new 2010 release : "Eleventh Hour Grace" The new album features more…

06/14/2025

Tours, France - Summer place

06/09/2025

Ward Just - An Unfinished Season
251 Pages
2004
An editor at Booklist mentioned, with admiration, author Ward Just to me many years ago. I have had An Unfinished Season on my shelf just as long. It's a coming-of-age novel that any midwestern WASP can recognize, including his expansive description of the North Shore when it was wide open. Wils, the protagonist, grows up with a hard father, a good father. Lessons come by examples, and in brief interludes between nightly drinks. A father will respect a man who knows how to hold his drink, that's important when trying to date someone's daughter. Wils is reserved. He sees the lay of the land, and takes in more words and ideas than he is ready to produce. Later he identifies as a mediator. One of the many great attributes of Just' writing is his slippage of time. For the most part, it is linear. But he is able to parcel out similar ideas repeatedly through a flat history that echos throughout. Seamlessly, Wils parents leave on a cruise for Havana, but then appear in real-time several paragraphs later. It's a nice trope. The ending is the beginning, to some degree. I highly recommend both the prose, the tone, and the endless description of search in both the land itself, and the main character trying to understand what it means to live. "When you are trying to understand the way the world works and have so little to go on, you make what you can from the materials at hand, and so it's natural to infer quite a lot from almost nothing. Intuition is the subtitle for experience. You believe you have found someone to trust who will trust you in turn, no small hope. And when you give away a piece of your heart, you'd like to believe it's being safely kept, since you can never get it back."

10/17/2013

An interview with EM Press poet Joseph Arthur. EM-Press.com

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2013/07/joseph-arthur/

It would be appropriate to introduce this Q&A in free verse, but it would just become a crude imitation of what artist Joseph Arthur executes below. An

10/16/2013

Check out Joseph Arthur's recent appearance on The Tonight Show at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2tV3FQnKYQ

From their album "The Ballad of Boogie Christ" Subscribe to The Tonight Show for more Leno: http://full.sc/IbG1mW Watch The Tonight Show Weeknights 11:35/10:...

10/16/2013

I Miss the Zoo and Other Poetry Selections by Joseph Arthur is now available for purchase. Get your copy at www.amazon.com or www.em-press.com.

Praise for Joseph Arthur

[…] I remember encouraging …I t has been great to watch its evolution. Jo is a really unusual, interesting, and talented artist in music and art.
—Peter Gabriel, musician and artist

This guy is not wasting one element of the experience.
—Cameron Crowe, director

…lush, poetic, squalling, spiritual, and strange. Just like life.
—Boston Globe

Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, and PJ Harvey are all great examples…Joseph Arthur proves he’s part of that elite group.
—Alternative Press

A driven, visionary character…he might just be a genuine mad genius.
—Guardian

09/09/2013

Mark Roelof Eleveld REVIEW OF "NEXT TO NORMAL"


http://newcitystage.com/2013/08/24/review-next-to-normaldrury-lane-theatre/

RECOMMENDED An architecturally surreal house is the setting: bedrooms, neon lights, a kitchen. As the center spotlight comes up, a beautiful middle-aged woman, with a hint of fatigue on her brow, s...

06/21/2013

06/21/2013

About 'I Miss the Zoo' by Joseph Arthur, published by EM Press. (Blurbs by musicians Peter Gabriel, Michael Stipe and Jeff Ament, and artist Tony Fitzpatrick and writer Harlan Coben.)

It’s great to see some of his best written work assembled. His words rattle and rumble and prise open the cage. —Peter Gabriel, musician

Joseph Arthur writes, builds, paints, draws, and creates because he has no choice. It is our luck that he does so. —Michael stipe of REM

Being around Jo makes me want to create. That’s all. That’s everything. —Jeff ament of Pearl Jam and RNDM

The sublime “I Miss The Zoo” will make you wax nostalgic and rethink the obvious. Do not miss it. —Harlan Coben, NY Times best-selling author

Jo Arthur writes with a humanity and generosity of spirit that makes kin of us all. —Tony Fitzpatrick, artist

06/21/2013

Joseph Arthur signing copies of 'I Miss the Zoo' published by EM Press in Chicago. EM Press musician (Eleventh Hour Grace) John Condron opened the show.

06/21/2013

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno features a nightly monologue (the longest in late night), news-making guests, and ongoing comedy segments, including Headlines, and Jaywalking.

06/21/2013

EM Press musician John Condron (Eleventh Hour Grace available at EM-Press.com) at Lincoln Hall in Chicago June 15