Finishing Line Press

Congratulations Regina!

Congratulations to Sarah! Her book Stitches (Finishing Line Press) is a finalist for the Tennessee Book Award!

Folk music legend Noel Paul Stookey, (PETER, PAUL AND MARY) now 88, and his daughter AS Aubrey will perform music and poetry about listening at the Camden Opera House. AS will be performing poem from her new FLP book Hide & Seek: Poems for Being Found in a Lost World (Finishing Line Press): available for preorder now. https://www.midcoastvillager.com/life/camden-paul-and-anna/article_14f5912e-9c3b-4984-9d89-c7ceb13faa69.html

Anna, Paul and Camden Folk music legend Noel Paul Stookey, now 88, and his daughter will perform music and poetry about listening at the Camden Opera House.

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: HIDE & SEEK by A.S. Aubrey

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/hide-seek-by-a-s-aubrey/

In Hide & Seek, A.S. Aubrey writes into the places we often turn away from: grief, illness, mortality, and the longing for meaning and connection. At once fragile and fierce, Hide & Seek offers companionship for readers navigating loss, change, or spiritual seeking. This collection reminds us that within endings lie openings — and that in listening carefully, we may find ourselves met by life’s inevitable embrace.

A.S. Aubrey’s work has been seen or is forthcoming in The Plentitudes, POETICS (Bainbridge Island Press), The Bangalore Review, Querencia Press and as a winner of The Poets Corner’s Art & Ekphrastic Poetry exhibit, among others. She was longlisted for the 2025 Westword Prize and shortlisted for the 2025 Clarissa Dalloway Prize. She lives in Los Angeles, where the urban sprawl inspires humor and existential angst. www.aspages.com.

PRAISE:

“Such rapturous lyricism, such enthralling language, such deft metaphors. These poems exemplify what poetry does best. They transform and transfix us. They lift the proverbial veil from our mortal eyes, so that we can see what we have always seen through the senses of our (in)visible souls. Namely, that each of our lives is a poem, as intricate and complex as these poems remind us: full of questions and answers, full of beauty and harshness, full of convictions and doubts. But ultimately, full of hope and triumph.”
–Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of Homeland of My Body

“These poems bring to mind the intricate rhythms, sounds, and exquisite structure/form of Wallace Stevens, with the adventure, vision and bravery of Mina Loy. We are lucky to encounter these stunning poems as a chapbook; AS Aubrey is a rising star in the American poetry world. I dare you to put the book down, without finishing it.”
–Jose Hernandez Diaz; author of Bad Mexican, Bad American and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man

“A.S. Aubrey brings a lover’s tenderness to this gorgeous, intimately-observed collection, transforming the matters of daily life into found objects of great beauty. Sinuous, elegant, charged with emotion, these poems are a testament to spiritual survival in a world gone mad.”
–Mark Matousek, author of When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living, Founder of Inquire Within: The Writing to Awaken Community

“This debut collection leaves me breathless. Every morning, returning to the pages, I am awestruck by the skill of the pen, transported to places I have dared not venture alone. These poems have become my companions. Aubrey is a remarkable poet who has found a place in my heart. I will revisit them repeatedly.”
–Hannah Sward, award-winning author of Strip: A Memoir

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New from Finishing Line Press: Rift in the Universe by Lina Belar

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/rift-in-the-universe-by-lina-belar/

Lina Belar’s poetry collection, A Rift in the Universe, traces a journey from New York City roots to Midwestern skies, blending childhood memories, imagination, and roadside nostalgia with a philosopher’s eye. Written in warm, conversational free verse, these poems uncover quiet joy and meaning in life’s small ruptures and unexpected turns. Curated soon after the diagnosis of a serious illness, they are being published while Lina is recovering from a serious automobile accident. The final poem in the collection, Rift in the Universe, represents Linas pondering of what is to come in terms in her future poetry.

Lina Belar’s poetry blends her love for nature and all its creatures, including the human ones, with a foolish love of language. She has been featured in Talking Stick, Lake Region Review, and Poets Across Minnesota. In 2018 Lina received the first prize poetry award at the Brainerd Writer’s Alliance Festival and she published her first chapbook, Rural Score. In 2021 she received a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and in 2024 she published her second chapbook, At the Crossroads. A number of her poems have been translated into Slovenian and in 2026 were celebrated at an event at Triglav National Park in her honor. Most recently, the Northern Lights Library Network has named Lina as the recipient of its 2026 Life Achievement Award, recognizing more than 50 years of extraordinary service to libraries, museums, history and the arts throughout Minnesota.

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New from Finishing Line Press: Hi, It’s Me, The Love of Your Life by Caitlin Brady

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/hi-its-me-the-love-of-your-life-by-caitlin-brady/

Hi, it’s me, the love of your life follows a narrator whose identity, shaky from heartbreak, is stolen. As mysterious charges mount and new lines of credit open, the narrator grapples with simultaneous rejection and impersonation. All call and no response, their messages chart the disintegration of one reality, once very sure, into another – by turns bitter and effervescent, mutating, flecked with delusion, ecstatic emptiness, and possibly even truth.

Caitlin Brady is a writer from Texas. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, Writer’s Digest, Misery Tourism and elsewhere, and her first chapbook of poetry, Heartless Ambition Machine, was published by Dancing Girl Press. She lives in New York. Instagram:

PRAISE:

“This poetry is infinitely more potent than anything else out there. It should come with a warning label.”
–John Tottenham, Service, Hate Poems

“My identity was also stolen, and still this made me laugh.”
–Kat Giordano, Thumbsucker

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A Poem by Jennifer Weiss
https://paddockreview.com/2026/07/30/a-poem-by-jennifer-weiss/

A Poem by Jennifer Weiss …… This poem first appeared in Pinesong: Awards 2025, Volume 61, and can be found in the chapbook How Should We Dress to Spread Ash? by Jennifer Weiss (Finishing Line Press) at Jennifer Weiss, J.D.…

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Only Child by Freyda K. Libman

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/only-child-by-freyda-k-libman/

Only Child is a collection of poems which convey life from the perspective of an only daughter of Jewish immigrants, fiercely loved and fiercely protected. In love with words and the companionship of stories, her poems somehow become the inchoate dreams of her parents, a longing for agency and affirmation denied to them but increasingly hers through poetry. Her poems develop on the streets and fire-fly nights of Chicago. The collection proceeds through the emotional and sensual awakening of her early years, the European landscapes of the Holocaust and Israel, the inevitability of loss and relinquishment, and finally in an unlikely second blossoming in Arizona following retirement. Only Child traces the evolution of her artistic voice and consciousness, always joyful in its acceptance of the poetic mantle, the sheer delight of wielding images.

Freyda Libman graduated from Northwestern University where she also pursued graduate studies in American literature. A tenured professor in the English Department at the College of DuPage, she was honored as Outstanding Faculty Member by both students and colleagues. She made a lasting impact on her students through her courses on Holocaust literature, refugee studies, poetry, creative writing, and the works of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Now retired in Arizona, she leads poetry study groups for the charitable arm of Brandeis University. She has published poems in Prairie Light Review, The Thing About Love Is…, and The Thing About Second Chances Is… This is her debut collection. .libman
PRAISE:
Only Child is a journal, a symphony, and a painting of a life in a city in all its grit, anguish, beauty, and emotional tumult. A masterpiece. Freyda K. Libman’s poetic magic turns her past into our past, beaming us to Chicago on her journey of longing, isolation, love, heartbreak, and sublime joy.
–David McGrath, author of Far Enough Away and contributing columnist for the Chicago Tribune
Love is a rebellious bird,” Freyda Libman writes in her new collection, Only Child, suggesting the beauty and struggle of her upbringing in Chicago as the daughter of Jewish immigrants. She explores and carefully reassembles fragments of her memory with a rare emotional acuity, turning them into a moving portrait of a family, a city, and of her own life as a poet and teacher.–Tom Montgomery Fate is a retired English professor in Chicago. His most recent book is The Long Way Home, a travel memoir.
Freyda Libman‘s poems weave together a complex autobiography steeped in Jewish tradition and a childhood flavored by secrets and loss, a kind of bildungsroman that begins in earnest in the arms of the wilderness, comes of age in European cities, and transitions into a “season of severance.” As Libman’s mother fades into the fog of dementia, she posits the question, can a “poem prick…memory’s pale flesh” into remembrance? These poignant and beautifully crafted poems are themselves the act of remembering, a kind of modern-day Kaddish. The collection concludes in the Sonoran desert, where the speaker, once again, is wrapped in a kind of “wilderness comforter.”
–Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski, Poet Laureate of Phoenix

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New from Finishing Line Press: DANCING TO THE MOON by Laureen Summers

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/dancing-to-the-moon-by-laureen-summers/

DANCING TO THE MOON is the latest collection of poems that speak of the lived experiences of a 78-year-old woman with Cerebral Palsy. Laureen Summers’ poems reflect her determination to live as big and as full a life as she can. She expresses her love of nature, everyday occurrences, and some of the people who have mattered to her. She has tried to meet the many challenges, encountered as an individual with a very visible disability with humor, a bit of frustration, and a sense of adventure.

Laureen Summers, a woman with Cerebral Palsy, has been writing poetry since the 1960’s. Her poems reaffirm her story amidst a life of challenge, determination and love. Contender of Chaos, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020 was her first chapbook of poetry. Her poems have been published in the Symbolist, Old Friends, The Mid-Atlantic Review and WordsGathering. Summers lives with her husband of 50 years in Silver Spring, Maryland. They have a wonderful daughter and son-in-law, and two grandchildren.

PRAISE:

These deeply interior poems are centered in the world we most often pass through, though taking little notice — Laureen Summers does, over and over again. “The waters are dark and deep / reflecting somber trees,” she writes in “Prelude” “My soul touches the wind / as I feel my thoughts / blend with shadows of new awareness.” Reflective as these poems are, they are often set outdoors among gardens, paths, trees, sun, rain, the seasons — spring, summer, autumn, winter— walking solo or with friends, thinking of those who have meant so much to her. Never far is Laureen’s disability: “Is there any reason / an elderly disabled woman / cannot feel beautiful,” she writes, in “Just Another Day.” And in a self-defining poem, “I am the girl who walks funny and whose speech is sometimes hard to understand/ I am the girl who people .move out of the way for.” The poems of Dancing to the Moon bring us into a poetic sensibility of radiant awareness, inner and outer: “The fireflies appear late at night, she writes in “The Rain Garden”: “The few passersby don’t seem to notice// the moment’s loveliness, the busy fireflies / or their own tall shadows in the moonlight.”–Merrill Leffler, author of Mark the Music

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