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authors agree to donate portions of proceeds to charities of their choice. 

 

New from Mercy Seat

 

Glory Wings

Indeed, I recall very well,
That special feeling of being exalted,
Flying helter skelter over vast fields
My dusky heels beating a tattoo on the earth,
On my skinny youthful bottom.
The rays of the sun seemed filtered
As through clouds with golden flash-lights,
Alive with thousands of golden fingers
Caressing my damp joy infused face,
As glory wings lifted skywards,
Oh yes, to race the boundless heavens.

                                                                            copyright 2005 by Darrell B. Grayson

Darrell B. Grayson was raised in Montevallo, Alabama with eleven siblings in a single parent household. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade.  At age 19, and with no prior criminal history, he was convicted and received the death penalty from an all white jury.  He has been on Death Row at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama since 1982.  After some years of severe depression, which he describes as spending flat on his back, the death of his mother brought about the decision to better himself. He began to write commentary and poetry and received his GED and Associate Science degree. In 1994 he became active in Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an organization founded and operated by Death Row inmates. In 2000 he became its chairman.  He edits and assembles Wings of Hope, the Project Hope newsletter, with primitive equipment in the prison.

Darrell Grayson’s poetry, which he describes as "a contagion of insecurities,” has appeared in Axis of Logic, Right Hand Pointing, Wings of Hope, and elsewhere.

 

Proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit

Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty

$1200

to order, email us for information

 

Publisher's Note:  Many of our titles have particularly interesting back stories.  This author's son, Michael Pickard, is a gifted young poet who has studied with Robert Pinsky, among others.  Michael approached us with the manuscript of this book.  It turned out that Michael and his mother had discovered that Rev. Pickard had been secretly writing this book of Christian meditations.  Subsequently, Rev. Pickard was injured in an auto accident which has left him limited in his ability to speak and move.  Michael wanted to get his father's book published for the reason any good son who is proud of his father would want to see his father's work made available.   We are proud to be the publishers of this book.

The Rev. Jamie E. Pickard received a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Randolph Macon College and a Master of Divinity from Duke University.  A United Methodist Minister from 1981 until his retirement in 2000, he served on the Conference Board of Church and Society and, in 1999, as Dean of the Cooperative School of Christian Missions.  Since 2001, he has lived in Auburn, Alabama, with his wife, Barbara, and three children.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit

the Alabama Head Injury Foundation and

The General Advance Program of the United Methodist Church

$1200

to order, email us for information

 

The Reverend Douglas Carpenter has been a parish priest in the Episcopal Church for forty-five years, preaching a majority of the past 2,340 Sundays.  He has served congregations in Lynchburg, Virginia and in several towns in Alabama, most recently in Birmingham at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church.  He began telling stories around campfires at Camp McDowell as a teenager and hasn't stopped yet.  All the stories in this book are as accurate and true as the author's memory.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

Birmingham, Alabama

$2000

to order, email us for information

 

poems by Robert Collins

Robert Collins has published poems in a variety of literary magazines, including Ascent, Cimarron Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Connecticut Review, College English, Plainsongs, South Coast Poetry Journal, Ohio Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Poetry Review. He has received two Individual Artist Grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1993 and 1998, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and awarded the Ascent Prize for Poetry and the Tennessee Chapbook Prize. He teaches American literature and creative writing at the University of Alabama in Birmingham where he edits Birmingham Poetry Review and directs the creative writing program. His books include The Inventor Poems, Greatest Hits, The Glass Blower, and Lives We Have Chosen.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit

Alethia House

Birmingham, Alabama

$1200

to order, email us for information

 

 

 

  

chapbook, 40 pages

 

A Constellation of Lace  

poems by

L u c y   B e n n e t t  B l a c k

chapbook, 28 pages

 

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