RIBALD by Alina Stefanescu

(Bull City Press, November 19, 2020)

Cover art stitch: Kate Arden McMullen

23 pages. ISSN: 1932-6149

$3.99

“Some people watch birds. Alina watches the words they use to watch them.”
[Spouse to a neighbor in April]

Selected as the creative nonfiction chapbook for the 2020 Bull City Press Inch Series,
RIBALD includes six short pieces, each one dedicated to a word: how that word flexes
its little muscles, destabilizes meaning, trespasses into interior landscapes, seeks
acceptance, and lacks stable, non-commercial emotional referents.

“But I thought you were finished with kegstands.”
[Spouse to author upon meeting RIBALD}

order a signed copy from alina for $4.55

big gratitudes

Cross-stitching for the cover design was done by Kate Arden McMullen and the author wept when she saw it because love includes time and generosity is that which one doesn’t expect. Huge thanks to editor Maria Isabelle Carlos: not even Proust could sidewind a sentence that would do justice to Maria’s vision, close editing, and encouragement in the making of this little book. And for brilliant prose editor, John Shakespear, whose insights on lines and motion expanded the realm of possibility in the car crash of my writing. And of course, Ross White, whose basement competes only with the entire 90’s as a gift to American letters.

The author would also like to thank the first readers and editors of Bitter Oleander Review, GASHER Journal, and Hobart, where three of these pieces first appeared. I love you. Thank you for dancing with me.