North Star Press

04/05/2024

We love a little more bling on our shelf!

🎉 Congratulations to the 2024 finalists of the in the Animal & Pet category! 🎉

⭐️ Brooklyn Goes Home: The Rise and Fall of American Greyhound Racing and the Dog that Inspired a Movement by Christine A. Dorchak and Carey M. Theil, Lantern Publishing & Media

️⭐️ The Canyon Wren: Stories of My Horses: Volume III by Martín Prechtel, North Star Press of St. Cloud

⭐️ Romeo the Friendly Wolf: A True Alaska Tale, by Nick Jans

04/05/2024

04/04/2022

This gem from Martín Prechtel comes out TOMORROW! If you've already ordered--THANK YOU! Tiny, good businesses exist because of real relationships, trust, and a bit of effort. We see you, and we appreciate you more than we can say! Please take a moment to review The Wild Rose on Amazon, request it at your local library and indie bookstores, share it on your pages, send it on to a reviewer you know, give it to a friend--all of it, every little bit is huge to us! ❤️🐎

“Carrying on from The Mare and the Mouse, this series, The Stories of My Horses, is not just a compendium of imaginative romantic narratives written to casually entertain the horse loving public.

As romantically remembered as they might seem to be, they are actually straightforward historical accounts of what happens when a life-loving fool like me, a native of that beautiful land-locked, cultural island called Northern New Mexico, who in the latter half of the 20th century, decides he must live his everyday life in direct defiance of the soul-shrinking threat of modernity’s earth-wrecking ugliness and mediocre existence, by keeping some modicum of the bright shine and outrageous living passion of our real souls alive by flying free and beautiful on the backs of flesh and blood horses over a live unpeopled, unmanicured land…

I’ll admit I’m a romantic and heroic. But to be honest, it’s not my fault: it’s the fault of all the horses I’ve ever known. For horses since forever, real horses I mean, have always been romantic, noble and heroic by definition of their very existence, and to be with them well, you too have to develop a soul that corresponds!

In my romantic struggle for beauty in an unromantic mechanical age, my horses, simply by how they were, and how we looked, and how we were together, although no more than a tiny broadside against the ghost ship of mediocrity of this crazy age was some kind of victory just by the fact that we still existed. Horses inspire courage against hopeless odds just by their courage and beauty.”

–from the Introduction to The Wild Rose

Available on our website and wherever books are sold.

03/02/2022

Oooooo, look what just came back from the printer! Have you preordered yet? Available straight from us, link in bio, straight from Martín www.floweringmountain.com, or anywhere books are sold.

It's a real good one, y'all.

11/11/2021

For Veteran's Day.

"Reading Jerry Hansen's poems in The Kontum Madonna is like standing in front of the black granite Viet Nam memorial in Washington, D.C., and reading the names of the men and women who died in the war. Hansen names and mourns his comrades, but the difference is that his poems also make us see the Vietnamese people, both soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children, who died in that almost-forgotten war. But Hansen was there, and he can't forget the awful realization of kinship: with the little boys, blown wide open on their way to school, or the old farmer whose animals and crops and seeds he and other Minnesota farm boys destroyed, or The Kontum Madonna, "a woman and her child soldered together" in a bombed-out field.

In these poems Hansen refuses to take comfort in the familiar cliches we use--Myths and Illusions, he calls them--to make war less terrible than it is. He has dedicated this collection to his friend Pappy, who died in Vietnam. But he resists making his friend's death heroic or his poem a patriotic eulogy. He writes instead:

If I let them say
that you were brave,
​that what we did was good,
they will use
their memory of you
to kill again and again.

These poems are stark, the rhythms jagged, almost like the line drawings by Dick Adair that accompany them. The images are unsparing and unforgettable: the dead, wrapped in ponchos, and lying side by side "like giant cucumbers/ in a great garden," or little boys, "spread thin, like strawberry jam/ onto a slice of Asian meadow."

The Vietnam war takes up a page, if that, in most U.S. history textbooks. But Hansen's poems refuse the comfort of forgetting or the illusion of a return to innocence. If we look carefully between the lines and among the images, we, as readers, may see our own faces among the dead, as we do when we stand in front of that polished black wall in Washington.

I highly recommend The Kontum Madonna for its courage and harsh beauty, its compassion, and its unflinching resistance to war--all war."

-Mara Faulkner, OSB
Professor Emerita of English, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University Author of Going Blind: A Memoir and Still Birth, a poetry chapbook.

07/02/2021

Congratulations to Michael Prelee for winning first place at the in the Mystery/Thriller category!

Available on our website and wherever books are sold.

06/24/2021

It finally happened! After yet more delays with this ridiculous printer (never again!) your books are finally on their way to you! Good grief, that was the most convoluted, overly complicated, unprofessional, and needlessly stressful printing run we've EVER done. Thanks Covid, and thanks giant businesses who don't really care about us little guys. Nonetheless, the books are gorgeous and on their way! I forgot to take a photo of our office completely filled with envelopes and boxes, and just got this little stack on the fireplace, but still, it's awesome! Thank you all, so much, for your preorders! I hope you love this book as much as Curtis and I do!

Haven't ordered yet? Head on over to our website. Now that we're caught up we're filling orders the same day!

06/04/2021

This masterpiece of a book is, at long last, finished, back from the printer, and in my hands! We were out in the fields, knives drawn, harvesting greens for the weekend markets at when the truck arrived with three sample copies! I totally cried. This book has been such a labor of love and faith in stories bigger than me--especially through that rollercoaster of a printing nightmare! (The printer had a Covid outbreak, a printing press went down, more Covid, perhaps managerial issues, infuriating communication, indifference to small business, etc, etc.) Thank you all for your patience with us while we all waited! Your preorders will be going out the same day the big truck arrives next week with the rest of the run! And even with all the delays, folks who preorder will still get their books a full month before they're available at your local bookstore!

05/08/2021

A little magic to share with you all, and an update about Martín Prechtel's new book, The Mare and the Mouse: our printer has been slammed with pandemic related delays! We should have books in a week or two, though they're not being great with getting us real timelines(a frustration for everyone), but rest assured, just as soon a we have books, we'll be sending them on to all you beautiful folks who pre-ordered--you'll be getting them about a month earlier than the general public! Huzzah! And, of course, if you haven't pre-ordered, there's still time!

03/17/2021

Hot off the presses! While I Wait is a new children's book by the immensely talented Yaghjian Family to help little kids understand the pandemic. Our Lulu fully approves. She asked to read it about 8 times in a row, then kept looking at it after I had to get up. So good! Beautiful artwork depicting really diverse angles of our common experience, and wonderful text sure to help little ones cultivate patience and understanding now, and long after these times.

Now available on our website--and in stores come fall--but get it from us now!

03/08/2021

Available May 4th wherever books are sold, The Mare and the Mouse by Martín Prechtel. Now available for preorder on our website: www.northstarpress.com

Publishing this book, by this man, is an honor of a lifetime for me. I’ve been reading books by Martín Prechtel since I was 20. His words have shaped me when this culture left me to drift, they guided me to the Earth, toward my heart, toward making beauty when I came to those great, foundational forks-in-the-road of my 20’s, and they offered me a lifeline when the losses and griefs of my recent years would have swallowed me whole.

This new book, the first in a three-book series, Prechtel wrote to give people “to understand that it’s never too late to start living in a more tangible, dusty way—maybe even flying over the ground on the back of a big furry animal—in a way that inspires life. If you want to have good memory, you have to do things that are worth remembering. Time to get busy!”

Please keep in mind that North Star Press is a TINY company. It’s just me and Curtis, that's it. Publishing this book is not just a big deal for us personally, but it’s a big deal for our little company. Small publishers are a dying breed, and more and more the giant publishing conglomerates are cutting off little companies’ access to raw materials and exposure. Martín, ever the antiestablishmentarian is stoked to be working with a tiny mom and pop business, but all our efforts to make something beautiful together will be for naught if we can’t reach all the lovers-of-beauty out there for whom this book will be both salve for the unseen and forgotten places within us, and the thing that swells your sternum with the heroism to keep going in this tragic, miraculous, and marvelous world.

Things you can do to help us signal-boost:

Follow

PREORDER The Mare and the Mouse either through our website, or any other bookseller.

SHARE! Repost my posts, or write your own!

When you get your copy, tell the world, tell your friends, buy them copies, request it at your library, leave copies in little free libraries--all of it!

WRITE REVIEWS! Online, on your social accounts, for little local papers, & big ones, too!

02/25/2021

When I think of the kinds of books I want to help bring to the world through North Star Press, this book, and anything by J. Vincent Hansen, is absolutely among them. His words hold the reader to that ever-sharpening edge between utter devastation, horror, and the sublime. War poems have their place among a certain set, for sure, but these, even for those who have never endured the impossible things that Jerry and his comrades were asked to endure in our name, will find guiding truths between these pages. Jerry’s language is deceptively simple, approachable, and unwavering in his skill to pierce the heart with first the wound and then the medicine--may we all have the eyes to see it. These poems do not aggrandize war, they are the accounting of a young man in an impossible situation, fighting in a damned cause, looking humanity’s shadows in the eye. These poems are not for the faint of heart, and yet, we live in a world that already looked away, much to our own suffering, and to the perpetuation of domination and violence. J. Vincent Hansen offers us a gift. A devastating gift. A warning. And solid argument for peace in a divided and violent time. 

The Kontum Madonna due out March 23rd, 2021--available wherever books are sold. Preorder now through our website.

Jerry's back catalog is also available on our website:

Blessed Are the Piecemakers
The Medicine of Place
Without Dividend in Mind

02/13/2021

For hours, as a child, hidden among the stacks of boxes full of books, the room smelling of warm wax from the paste-up board, cardboard, and the sweet smell of developer from the typesetting machine, I would listen to my mother, Corinne, and my grandmother, Rita, talking with Jerry Hansen. They would talk of the careful placement of words on a page (just a little to the left, indent the second line, move that whole poem lower on the page), the careful usage of commas or capitalization and how those things can subtly but dramatically change not just the meaning of the words, but the nuances of the imagery that is evoked when those words build connections and understanding in the mind of a reader, connections that may not even exist overtly in the bare meanings of the words, but is there, laid plain by the skilled hand of the writer. They would read sentences over and over again, making sure it was just so, their voices taking on the tones one's own mind uses to speak to itself, hunting for truth.

Going through these last few years of actively learning this trade, instead of passively being steeped in it, learning the computer programs and skills needed to make beautiful books (a far cry removed from the pen knives and light tables my mom used to use at the beginning of her career, or even the computer programs she used at the end), learning to quickly thumb the pages of the Chicago Manual of Style, all of it felt like a crash course in a whole new world until I was given the absolute privilege of following in the footsteps of my foremothers and working with Jerry Hansen on his latest collection of shattering and beautiful poems reflecting on his time in the Viet Nam War. Working with Jerry has been a return to the roots that bore me, the weight and freedom of commas, and the singsong accent of Stearns County, Minnesota.

I'm so proud to announce the March 23rd, 2021 release of The Kontum Madonna. In this volume J. Vincent Hansen's poems are paired with the line drawings of Dick Adair, a war correspondent and Navy journalist who captured the details of Viet Nam with ink and pen. Now available for preorder on our website. More sneak peaks coming soon. Stay tuned.

11/21/2020

We're out at for their pop up market with !! Come get some winter reading material!

11/07/2020

Now you can peruse a few of our books at our market booth at the winter markets! Come get your veggies, some incredible yarn, a luxuriously cozy sheep skin, and a new book to read! Sounds like the perfect things for the winter ahead! New books will be featured at each market!

10/28/2020

My name is Liz Dwyer and I own and operate North Star Press along with my husband, Curtis. About eight years ago we moved back home to Minnesota, to the land that raised me, to start a farm and make a life here, alongside my beautiful mother, Corinne. My mother began her work at North Star in the 1970s, working for my father's parents, Rita and Jack Dwyer, who started this little publishing company in 1969 to help give voice to the countryside, the unheard, and the underrepresented. My mother bought the press from my grandmother in 2001 when Rita retired and moved it from my grandmother's garage to a shed here on the farm. Pretty quickly after Curtis and I moved back home to start the farm, he started working with my mom, and soon enough, they were running the press together while I (and Curtis when he had time!) focused on the farm. We made a pretty stable and supportive little triad, feeding people and making books, and going through a heck of a lot of life together.

Then, two years ago, my beloved mother passed away after a sudden and fierce battle with brain cancer. And before I could blink, I was the new CEO of North Star Press, and the third generation to take up the mantle. My learning curve was pretty much a vertical wall, but it turns out that being steeped in book making all my life really did rub off. But, of course, we still also run a now-bustling little farm, Dancing the Land Farm, and have a three year old.

We've spent a good part of the last two years trying to fill my mother's immense shoes, realizing that wasn't possible (rightly so), and instead revisioning North Star to be us-shaped. We haven't slept too much, and have learned a ton about what resilience and adaptability actually mean. We have big visions for this tough little company and can't wait to share it all with you. North Star Press has a long history, with many chapters, and Curtis and I are so excited to be starting ours.

06/30/2020

Curtis and I are so delighted to announce thay next spring we’ll be coming out with a beautiful little book called The Mare and the Mouse by a man named Martin Prechtel.
🌱

Almost 15 years ago now, I read my first book by Martin, Stealing Benefacio’s Roses, shortly thereafter I’d read all books he’d written that were in the South Coast Library system. I remember closing Long Life Honey in the Heart and staring at Martin’s photo on the back cover and saying out loud, “Are you my teacher?” This coming from a defiant and rebellious kid who had dropped out of every school I’d ever come across--high school, art school, college--searching for an education that was about making a person out of me and not just getting a job. A year later I found out he actually had a school! So, since I was 23 I’ve been visiting a magical little spot in Northern New Mexico and sitting at the knee of a brilliant thinker, artist, storyteller, and a deeply spiritual man who gave refuge to this tender heart that I’d protected so fiercely for so long, and was on the verge of believing that hardening was just the next stage of being. It’s been a long time now, of learning the intricate particulars of this magnificent world, the horrors, too, and the magic that lies in thumb and throat. It’s with him that I first named the violence of whiteness across time and place, even inside my own body. It’s also with him that I learned how to make shoes, smelt copper out of azurite, smith silver, tan hides, carve soapstone, make Kyrgyz-style felt, paint, sew, hammer, ply, spin, cook, grow, and give a gift back to the world that makes all possible. And now maybe I’ll learn a little bit about horses as Mare and the Mouse is told through the stories of the beloved horses in Martin’s life. And, as with all his books it’s much bigger than that, of course. But you’ll just have to wait to read it yourself!
🌱

We’re humbled and delighted to be working with him, and he’s thrilled to have a publisher that actually works with animals every day. Together, may we make something truly beautiful. And may it sell millions!

01/20/2020

Coming September 2020!