Ra Press/Ra Films

Main Page | Book Reviews | Ra Films |

Welcome to the Home of Ra/Press Ra/Films

To contact RA PRESS RA FILMS:

email donahue.d@comcast.net

phone 802 399 2426

address RA PRESS

100 KENNEDY DRIVE #53

SOUTH BURLINGTON VT 05403

NOW PLAYING on RA presents:
Channel 15 VCAM BURLINGTON
MEADOW
SOLDIER in MOROCCO
Friday 10:30 AM and Sundays 9:30 PM

Where to find a book from Ra Press

In Vermont:
CROW BOOKSHOP Burlington
In the Adirondacks:
BOOKSTORE PLUS, Lake Placid
HOSS’S COUNTRY CORNER, Long Lake
CROSSROADS, Horicon
BLACK WATCH LIBRARY, Ticonderoga
INN ON LIBRARY LAWN, Westport
FRENCHMAN’S, Crown Point
SHERMAN FREE LIBRARY, Port Henry
OLD FORGE HARDWARE, Old Forge
THE VIEW (in Old Forge - the New Arts Center)
GREAT CAMP SAGAMORE BOOK STORE (Raquette Lake)
THE WILLOWS CAFE, Warrensburg
HUDSON RIVER TRADING, North Creek.


New from RaPress:
Before the Sun by David Parkinson A natural history novel highlighting the conflict between red foxes and farmers and gamekeepers in the moorland of Britain - the Penine Hills: where if left unculled foxes would seriously reduce the sheep (lamb) population, and red grouse stocks which are vital to the economy of the uplands.

UPDATE - SUMMER OF 2011
BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE Chuck Gibson, Mary Randall, Charles Watts and Dave Donohue accept Adirondack Literary Award for KARMA IN THE HIGH PEAKSas PEOPLE'S CHOICE BEST BOOK 2010 on June 12
MARY SANDERS SHARTLE one of the authors of TEAR IN THE CLOUDS at the Author's Fair in OLD FORGE July 26.
DAVID PARKINSON, one of the poets in KARMA IN THE HIGH PEAKS at work in his study July 31.
Charles Watts, Mary Randall, Judith Dow Moore, Chuck Gibson and Mary Anne Johnson all participated in a poetry reading at Caffe Lena's in Saratoga on July 6.
Our newest book of NEO BEAT POETS Christopher Ricker's CARPENTER'S DAUGHTER was released in July and is now available in CROW BOOKS. The work is a powerful collection with works including PURPLE HOURS and WHOA WINOOSKI.
Steve Coe's novel WE BE ICARUS about a man who purports to communicate with historical figures such as Daniel Shays, the son of Wampanoag sachem King Philip, and Florence Ballard of the Supremes is quite a ride into satire and politics!
To be released second week of AUGUST! Dave Donohue's ALEXANDRIA a pilgrimage, sort of, another in the Burlington Neo Beat Series

AND THE WINNER IS:

KARMA IN THE HIGH PEAKS! A collection of Adirondack Writings by Mary Randall, David Parkinson, Judith Dow Moore, Mary Anne Johnson, Charles Watts and Chuck Gibson won the People's Choice Best Book of 2010 Adirondack Literary Prize on June 12th at Blue Mountain Lake.

Also a congratulations to the Three Women Poets - Elaine Handley, Marilyn McCabe, and Mary Sanders Shartle - for their book WINTERBERRY,PINE which won the Prize for Poetry 2010 - their third win in this category over the years!

a review by Poet Roger Mitchell in Adirondack Daily Enterprise Saranac Lake
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/527899/Peak-poetry.html?nav=5230

RA PRESS is pleased to announce a new collection by the THREE POETS! Marilyn McCabe, Mary Sanders Shartle and Elaine Handley PRAISE FOR THE THREE POETS: "In this collection of poets we are treated to the wealth of their individual lives spent together. Handley is a poet of a natural cosmology, finding the personal in nature, and her poems are heart-breaking, searing with naked honesty and fraught with the hard work of the celebration of life. McCabe's work plunges into the natural world with a sense of the sensual and the mythological, all caught up in the tales of frozen women caught beneath ice, lumberjacks, and her ever-fine and fierce intelligence. Shartle is the historian of the three, and gives us poems full of the details of real lives lived, and of hers carefully observed and beautifully rendered. If you've never visited the Northwoods, you will in reading this book. If you have, you will never see them in quite the same way again. TEAR OF THE CLOUDS is one of those books that threatens to change you with its fearless embrace of nature, and with the thrilling spiritual and exacting emotional investment of the poets it contains." -- Naton Leslie, www.natonleslie.com The Three Poets once again mark their trails through the North Country, the region that McCabe identifies as "that borderland/ between sacred and profane. "In poems that are muscular, mystical and meditative, they take us along as the Adirondack world past, present and future swoops, swirls, screeches and sings around them. They show us, as the best writers do, what they see that we might have missed or perhaps forgotten. They craft language to name the deep and numinous responses that the region stirs in us. What connects these very diverse voices and visions is the profound sense of the place and our connections to it. It is a dazzling path to walk! --Kate H. Winter, author, The Woman in the Mountain
Read a review in "Seven Days", Vermont's Independent Voice http://www.7dvt.com/2010keeping-beat-burlington

All Ra Press books $12 plus $3 postage.....

KARMA in the HIGH PEAKS is Ra Press's newest book of Adirondack Writings. This book features six writers: British poet David Parkinson, West Coast Sixties counterculture writer and playwright Charles Watts, poets Mary Anne Johnson, Mary L. Randall, Judith Dow Moore and Chuck Gibson. This and COLD EARTH WANDERERS form a classic duo of reading material for any hike into the wilderness!

UPDATES SUMMER 2010

BURLINGTON NEO - BEATS Last summer we kicked off a new group of writers in the Queen City with our Beat anthology WAKE-UP CALL. Since that time we have published Sean Tierney's MY ILL-READ OPHELIA POEM - a great little book of verse that is truly clever, lyrical and smacks of genius all in one. It is currently on sale in CROW BOOKS Burlington and CAROL's HUNGRY MIND CAFE Middlebury. A huge thanks to John at CAROL'S (where all our titles are available) and Keith at CROW for their support of our works...

Sean Tierney's second book for the neo-beat poets Burlington series is a series of cosmic poems he wrote while on a camping trip in Paul Smiths. Once again Tierney demonstrates his ease with lyrics and gift for poetic insight.

FOREIGNERS

I have recently published a travel memoir on teaching in Turkey in the 1970's. It is entitled YABANCI. It is one of three proposed books with the same title but with different authors. Boston area writer Steve Coe is working on his memoir about teaching at the school in Tarsus and that will be out this summer. Margie Arnold of Colorado Springs is shooting for a 2011 publishing date on the YABANCI finale. (Yabanci means foreigner in Turkish.)

MOVIES:

June 2010 marks 40 years of independent film-making from Ra Films. This also marks the premiere of Zach Donohue's THE DANCE at film festivals around the country. It has been so much fun over the years working with so many people, making films in the Champlain Valley and beyond that there are no words to express both my gratitude and my happiness.

Thanks again to the folks at Reprodigital in Winooski who have given our books a look all their own. Thanks to North Country books who have picked up four of our books for distribution and are currently considering another five. Thanks to Hoss's Country Corner in Long Lake (a very cool place), the Sherman Free Library, the Black Watch Library and the Inn on the Library Lawn for their support...

Update Fall 2009 David Parkinson and Judith Dow Moore have created a shared work of verse entitled TWO HEADS. A beautiful book now available at our website and at the Carol's Hungry Mind Cafe in Middlebury.
THE POETS OF PORT HENRY HIGH SCHOOL is a book about a small Adirondack school during the first three decades of the 20th Century as seen through the eyes of its students. This unique look into the past is now available at Hoss' Country Corner Bookstore in Long Lake, The Inn on the Library Lawn bookstore in Westport and the Hungry Mind Cafe in Middlebury. The entire history of the school is available in three parts at the Sherman Free Library in Port Henry.
THE BEATS ARE BACK AND IN BURLINGTON! NOW AVAILABLE AT CROW BOOKS - BURLINGTON! Esteban Folsom, Jodhi Reis, Devin Michael Courtney, Mary Randall and Dave Donohue have joined forces to create a very beat book of poetry, art and photography! The book is called WAKE UP CALL. Coming this October and hopefully available in many Burlington locales as well as our website and our main store of CAROL'S HUNGRY MIND CAFE in Middlebury! Esteban Folsom Neo-beat poet

Update June 2009
Click on the images for more details.

Judith Dow Moore's first collection of poetry with RA PRESS is appropriately titled 12993 - the zip code of Westport NY, the location of so much of her work. Ms Moore is a Montreal born poet who spent her life teaching in the Westport schoolsystem. These poems are a refreshing burst of verse filled with life and energy.

David Parkinson's third book of poetry with Ra Press is entitled BRIDGES, further proof of Mr. Parkinson's skill with verse. His other two books are available from Ra Press - SEEKING and CLUTCHING AT STRAWS.

A few pages into Between Iraq and a Hard Place (Ra Press, 2007), Dave Donohue asks of President Bush's departed advisor, "Do you sleep well at night, Karl?" Later, Joan Frost posits, "There is no right or wrong anymore, just terror." This collection of poems from a half-dozen writers living in and around the Adirondacks takes on the war in Iraq and the politicians who decided to wage it with heaps of vigor. It is the only book to come through our office this year to approach the topic and it does so relentlessly, lobbing cutting questions at the administration and sending compassion to the soldiers. "I heard that war is when old men talk and young men die," Cathy S. McDowell writes in a letter to her nephew, in Iraq. "It troubles me."

-Ned P. Rauch

ADIRONDACK LIFE

RA UPDATES: WINTER 2008

A new book of poetry entitled BRIDGES by David Parkinson is in the final draft and should be out sometime in March. This is the British-born, Ferrisburgh poet's third collection with Ra Press (CLUTCHING AT STRAWS and SEEKING). David is one of the most active and celebrated poets in the Champlain Valley.
Also in its final draft is Cathy S. McDowell's WINTERING GERANIUMS - a collection of poetic narratives describing her childhood years. This follows her acclaimed first work THE WAITING PLACE.
Zach Donohue's student film (and NYU's Oliver Stone Screenplay Award Scholarship winning film) BITTER has been showing in different Adirondack venues - Ticonderoga, Port Henry, and, most recently in Willsboro as part of the Champlain Valley Film Series. The film also won praise in last fall's ED WOOD FILM FESTIVAL in Albany. Zach's new film THE DANCE is now in pre-production in New York.

Ra Press Ra Films is now in the process of relocating in South Burlington, while at the same time keeping close ties to the Adirondacks.

Treatments for new film scripts are in the works. There are several ideas being played around with our cast of actors from ROCCO's NIECE and RA writer Mary Randall is working on yet another script - tentatively called 12 HAPPY WOMEN.

ROCCO's NIECE premiered at the Knights of Columbus in Port Henry, NY, on January 12th 2008. A nice crowd was on hand to watch this gangster film shot in the Adirondacks. Also shown at the film festival were Zach Donohue's BITTER, High School Break-Up with Mark Scozzafava and Maria Manfred, and HAUNTED DREAMS with Mark, Tom, and Mary Lou Scozzafava. Tom Scozzafava was on hand to celebrate the long history of Ra Films in Port Henry.

Main Page | Book Reviews