Jessica Stark's "Savage Pageant" Hits Small Press Distribution Bestseller List
Duke English would like to congratulate Jessica Stark for her literary work, Savage Pageant Poems, being listed #11 on the March 2020 Small Press Distribution (SPD) Poetry Bestseller list. Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, released Stark's Savage Pageant on March 10, 2020. Stark, is a Spring 2020 English Ph.D. graduate.
Jessica Stark's Savage Pageant recounts the history of the defunct zoo, Jungleland, which housed Hollywood's show animals up until its closure in 1969. In it, Stark explores the concept of US American spectacle and its historic ties to celebrity culture, the maternal body, racist taxonomies, the mistreatment of animals, and ecological violence. With a hybrid, documentary poetics, Savage Pageant reveals how we attempt to narrate and control geographical space and how ghosts (remainders, the sketch, unfinished stories) collapse the tidy corners of our collective, accumulative histories.
The Small Press Distribution was founded in 1969 by legendary Bay Area independent bookseller Peter Howard (Serendipity Books) and legendary Bay Area bookseller/publisher/editor Jack Shoemaker (Unicorn, Sand Dollar, North Point, Pantheon/Knopf, Counterpoint). SPD connects readers with writers whose works are independently published literature, small press books that are underrepresented literary communities. The goal of SPD is to help independent publishers and writers participate in the broader marketplace.
