Joshua Jones

The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ support line. Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby's arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment. Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, twenty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.

A Haunting Without Allegory consists of a series of transatlantic sequences exploring hope and despair in a time of consolidated state violence and unchecked viral transmission. Embracing the ambivalences that accompany attempts to persist under untenable conditions, the poems deploy a revolving and unresolved constellation of leitmotifs and refracting images that chart, awkwardly and unevenly, themes of escape and constraint. How do we kill for real the cops that linger inside of our heads and hearts? Can tenable ways to shape our resistances be found in the compelling and obstinate sounds of poetic language? Could the indignant music of distorted syntax hint at new paths to trace through the cruelty and tenderness of the world? At once accessible and perpetually insubordinate, the poems in A Haunting Without Allegory inhabit the present's ongoing mess, rejecting easy answers while modeling the vital importance, the important vitality, of poetry as a means of encountering the world in all of its contradictory beauty and dismay.

Six writers, three from Vi?t Nam and three from Wales come together in the Room/Ystafell/Phòng to discuss their queer identities and how it has been shaped by the world around them. Featuring discussion transcripts, poetry, photography, collages and prose.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024 Chloe enters the local talent show, seeking fame, fortune and a ticket out of town. Meanwhile, her mother, Angie, wakes up hungover on the morning of her fourth wedding day. William ponders his impending autism diagnosis through the lenses of Descartes and Hollywood heartthrob Clive Owen. Jimmy, the hot-headed proprietor of a firework shop, rages at the emergence of a rival store, as his ex-wife considers the existential ramifications of her uncanny resemblance to TV cleaning personality Kim Woodburn. Local Fires sees debut writer Joshua Jones turn his acute focus to his birthplace of Llanelli, South Wales. Sardonic and melancholic, joyful and grieving, these multifaceted stories may be set in a small town, but they have reach far beyond their locality. From the inertia of living in an ex-industrial working-class area, to gender, sexuality, toxic masculinity and neurodivergence, Jones has crafted a collection versatile in theme and observation, as the misadventures of the town's inhabitants threaten to spill over into an incendiary finale. In this stunning series of interconnected tales, fires both literal and metaphorical, local and all-encompassing, blaze together to herald the emergence of a singular new Welsh literary voice.

The chronicle of personal challenges in inner city daily life, advice, and messages ofpeace.

Nature teaches us everything we need to know spiritually. The observations of our Natural World instinctively produce understandings when observed by the human mind. I call them the Books of Our Natural World, and they are my bible. The more of these understandings a person has, the easier it is for them to figure out spiritual shit themselves. This book took ten years to complete, and is a collection of my thoughts.

Life among The People of Greensboro and Atlanta changes between poverty and hope in the blink of an eye.

True and insightful journal of a man's relationships and family and the homeless people and helpers he meets along the way.

A stunning inside story of a man determined to overcome issues in relationships, family life, and homelessness; told from the perspective of a summer in Atlanta.