Unsolicited Press

There are things you carry because you have to, and then there are weightier bits you carry well past the point necessary. People will tell you not to carry it so long. Go ahead and set it down. Forget about it. But we all know that letting go is not that easy. It does not happen in one swift motion. More often than not, it is a matter of looseing your grip on it until your fingers simply flex open and let it loose.

This week, we have just one book for you, and it hits the spot.

Kissing the World Goodbye by Jennifer Clark is a memoir infused with recipes that invites the reader to crouch down and notice the small things in life we too easily overlook. Everything in this world, no matter how small, is worthy of consideration for Clark, from isopods barreling through Tasmanian soil to the origins of childhood nicknames. Big things matter, too, like siblionic love, a term she coins in an attempt to describe the indescribable connections between siblings. Within this funny, poignant, and often tasty memoir, Clark weaves in serious issues such as the perpetual closeness of various forms of loss, and family members, particularly her sister’s, easily moving on in the face of matters that weigh Clark down. And much weighs her down: naming fish, Ernest Borgnine’s eyebrows, cell phones, instapots, and more.

Publishing advice is often vague, outdated, expensive, or wrapped in fake industry mystique. So our publisher opened a limited number of Unruly Lit Strategy Sessions through the Small Press Publishing Collective.

One hour. Honest publishing guidance. Concrete next steps. Bring your manuscript, launch problems, submission questions, marketing confusion, small press ideas, or literary career mess.

Every session includes:
• personalized recap/action email
• lifetime free submissions to Unsolicited Press
• your choice of an extended feedback report with a future submission OR one year of paid Substack access

No gatekeeping. No guru nonsense. No motivational fluff. Just a real conversation about books, publishing, visibility, and what to do next.

https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/small-press-publishing-collective/p/publishingconsult

Note: The fee paid for these consults goes into the Unsolicited Press budget. You are directly supporting the press.

What if the body—your own body, or someone else’s—became the most unreliable narrator you’ve ever met?

From post–World War I New York to pandemic-era Savannah, from the quiet kitchens of Maine to the heat-soaked streets of Malaysia, THE LEG IN QUESTION unravels the strange, haunting, and often darkly funny ways our flesh betrays us. A young woman insists her healthy leg must be removed. A physician faces ghosts of the living and the dead. A mountain cabin turns feral. A debutante circuit shields a gay man on the cusp of a terrifying new epidemic.

Across sixteen stories, doctors and patients collide in moments where the body’s mysteries—its failures, obsessions, hungers, and grief—expose the fragile seams between sanity and longing. These are tales of medicine and mortality, yes, but also of the tender, reckless, astonishing human spirit trying to make sense of it all.

https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/shop/p/theleginquestion