A bouquet of books from three small presses to make you cry, speak language aloud, remember why you love theater, are disillusioned with the theater, want more from theater!
Or all of it at once!

(Save $16 by buying all 3 titles together!)

IS GOD IS
3 Hole Press, 2017
By Aleshea Harris
Introduction by Dawn Lundy Martin
Blending epic tragedy, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk, Is God Is is a revenge tale about twin sisters. In this award-winning work by playwright Aleshea Harris, emotions are laid bare through dialogue and visual gaps in language.  Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award from the American Playwriting Foundation. Winner of a 2018 Obie Award for Playwriting.

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THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF VALERIE, LIVING ROOM EDITION
53rd State Press, 2019
by Kristen Kosmas
with cartography by Leon Finley
and an introduction by Daniel Alexander Jones
Part boot-camp space-travel memoir, part how-to manual for the construction of a real utopia now, The People’s Republic of Valerie, Living Room Edition is an attempt to transform feelings of despair, grief, and rage into positive action, into something of beauty that might create space and occasion for imagination and community.

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STAGES: ON WORKING, DYING, AND FEELING
Thick Press, 2020
By Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
Questioning the function of art, a young writer finds herself working in a nursing home making community theater. In the months leading up to the performance, the play and life converge in unexpected ways. Weaving between oral history and poetic prose, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has created a stirring work of hybrid nonfiction, hailed by Elif Batuman as "truly revolutionary," that shows us the intricate labor behind death and dying as well as making collective art.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Aleshea Harris’s epic western revenge play Is God Is (world premiere directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep) won the 2016 Relentless Award, an OBIE award for playwriting, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a ritualized response to anti-blackness, had its critically-acclaimed NYC premier (dir. Whitney White, produced by The Movement Theatre Company), then toured D.C. and Boston in fall of 2019, was featured in American Theatre Magazine’s April ’19 issue and won a rare Special Commendation from the 2020 Blackburn Prize. Harris was awarded the Next Step Award from Samuel French and is a recipient of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.

Dawn Lundy Martin was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for her first poetry collection, A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering. Her collection Life in a Box is a Pretty Life was published in 2015 by Nightboat Books. A founding member of the Black Took Collective, a group of experimental black poets, she is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kristen Kosmas makes contemporary performance. Her primary materials and concerns are language, presence, liveness, and collaboration. Kosmas has had new works commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater, On the Boards, PS122, The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, Seattle University's SITE Specific, Dixon Place, and the New City Theater. Her plays and critically acclaimed solo performances have been presented in Seattle, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and in New York City at numerous venues including the Chocolate Factory, PS122, La Mama, Dixon Place, Prelude, Barbès, the Ontological/Hysteric Downstairs Series, and the Poetry Project. Her writing has been published by Ugly Duckling Presse, PLAY: A Journal of Plays, and 53rd State Press, among others.

Leon Finley is a trans, interdisciplinary artist born in Seattle. His work crosses over performance, sculpture, and drawing. Leon was the recipient of the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust Prize, the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize, and the Dan David Prize Scholarship. He has shown work around New York and Seattle in such galleries as The Alice and the Jacob Lawrence and has performed in such venues as The Whitney Museum of American Art as a part of Kevin Beasley's Public Programs in Sonic Masses and Movement Research.

Daniel Alexander Jones’s wildflower body of work grows in relationship to a wide range of audiences. Black Lightpremiered at the Public Theater/Joe’s Pub for a critically acclaimed 6-week run. Duat premiered at Soho Rep in 2016. His other performance pieces and plays include Radiate, Phoenix Fabrik, Blood:Shock:Boogie, and Bel Canto, The Book of Daniel, made with musician Walter Kitundu and director Tea Alagic. Daniel was named a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2015 Doris Duke Artist in recognition of his risk-taking practice.

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff is a writer and educator working at the intersections of oral history, performance, and public health. She directs 3 Hole Press.