Universal Table

Finding the We in Them, the Us in You

Welcome

Wising Up

ABOUT OUR PRESS

ADVISORY BOARD

SUBJECTS

Writers Collective

Philosophy & Writers

Bookstore

Second Saturdays

Library: Anthologies A-F

The Art of the Anthology

ADULT CHILDREN

COMPLEX ALLEGIANCES

CONNECTED

CREATIVITY & CONSTRAINT

CROSSING CLASS

DARING TO REPAIR

DOUBLE LIVES

FAMILIES

FLIP SIDES

Library: Anthologies G-Z

GOODNESS

ILLNESS & GRACE

KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

LOVE AFTER 70

RE-CREATING COMMON CHORD

SHIFTING BALANCE SHEETS

SIBLINGS

SURPRISED BY JOY

VIEW BED: VIEW BEDSIDE

Library: Fiction

GERMS OF TRUTH

HEARTS AS BIG AS FISTS

LIVE YOUR LIFE

MY NAME IS YOUR NAME

NOT NATIVE

ONLY BEAUTIFUL

PHIL TRANS MARIA

SOMETHING LIKE HOPE

TRUCKER RHAPSODY

VISIBLE SIGNS

Library: Non-Fiction

BIDEN & IMMIGRATION

GOD SPEAKS MY LANGUAGE

GREEN CARD

JOURNEYS-THOUSAND HEROES

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

LAST FLIGHT OUT

SHARING BURDEN OF REPAIR

2020 Immigration Debate

Library: Poetry

BREATHING IN PORTUGUESE

EPIPHANIES

HYMN THAT MEANDERS

LITTLE BOOK OF LIVING

SANCTITY OF THE MOMENT

SOURCE NOTES

Web Anthologies

Longer Than Expected

ColdShoulderSteadyingGaze

Naturalized Citizenship

Weight of Felony

Participants

Wising Up Gallery

Inclusion & Belonging

Resilience & Families

Creativity

Illness & Meaning

About Us

WISING UP PRESS

Come Join Us!

SECOND SATURDAYS
WISING UP ZOOM DISCUSSION GROUPS 
 4:00-5:30 pm EST

Saturday, May 14, 2022        

Re-Creating Our Common Chord




Learn more, including 2022 calendar
For ZOOM Invite
secondsaturdays@universaltable.org

Wisdom: The quality of having experience, knowledge, good judgment 
Wising Up: Easier Said Than Done, Easiest Done Together


NEW PUBLICATIONS

A LITTLE BOOK OF LIVING THROUGH THE DAY: 
Poems During a Pandemic

David Breeden 

David Breeden's moving and accessible collection of poetry, A Little Book of Living Through the Day: Poems During a Pandemic, was written to get himself through the isolation of the pandemic—and to reach others, like those in his congregation, struggling with the same burden of the day-after-day.
 
Look Inside
Buy Now

ADULT CHILDREN: Being One, Having One & What Goes In-Between
A Wising Up Anthology

In this Wising Up Anthology, fifty writers explore—with zest, angst, humor, humility, anger, and love—through stories, poems, memoirs and creative non-fiction, our  constantly changing and, hopefully, maturing relationships with those we raised and those who raised us.  

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TRUCKER RHAPSODY & OTHER PLAYS
Toni Press-Coffman

These five highly topical plays by Toni Press-Coffman remain relevant to current social divides. Written over the last forty years, they movingly explore the nature of idealism, its distinctively American forms—where it comes from, how it is tested, how we lose or temper it, what saving graces come to take its place.

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 BUY NOW 


CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS


LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WISING UP PRESS WRITERS COLLECTIVE

A GENTLE REMINDER FOR WRITERS

We read all submissions with care because we value the time, effort, and aspirations of our writers. We ask that writers who submit show us the same consideration. Before submitting, please read our Calls for Submissions carefully to make sure that the work you are submitting truly fits the theme in content matter and in tone, for we are more than a literary press, we are one with a clear social commitment to finding the We in Them, the Us in You. We want work that has emotional depth and complexity and that invites us, ultimately, into wiser relation with each other.

We suggest you browse through our list of subjects and then our library and read excerpts from some of our other anthologies,  as well as our mission statement  - A Welcoming Philosophy  - on the home page and our reasons for founding the Wising Up Press.  If you are interested in the Writers Collective, we provide extensive information about that as well.


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
FOR ALL WISING UP ANTHOLOGIES 
Print and Web

We make final editorial submissions on all submitted manuscripts only after the submission deadline.
Electronic submissions only, either Word or RTF.
Prose ≤ 5,000 words. Poetry ≤ 5 poems.
Payment in copies
Submit manuscripts electronically

We consider dual submissions and previously published work only if informed of this at time of submission. 
Previously published work must be accompanied with a list of where and when it has been previously published, including on the internet.
We do not pay reprint fees. It is the author's responsibility to get needed permissions.


RECENT PUBLICATIONS 

FLIP SIDES
Truth, Fair Play & Other Myths We Choose to Live By

&
Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry
A Wising Up Anthology

This anthology was originally, and rather playfully, conceived as two. Truth, Fair Play & Other Myths We Choose to Live By was a response to an increasingly cynical world view that disavowed our best intentions. The other, Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry, responded to an increasingly righteous reactivity in all of us that refuses to take responsibility for the harm we ourselves can cause. Then we realized they were flip sides of the same coin. . . . Spot cleaning wouldn't be necessary if we didn't have beliefs and ideals—or if they didn't need to be continuously reconciled with the exigencies of raw life.

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SOURCE NOTES: Seventh Decade
Heather Tosteson

Both intimate and generalizable, the poems in Source Notes: Seventh Decade revolve around two core questions: "If everything we said to define ourselves/ was preceded by Just like everyone or/ Like most of us, what would shift/ in the life-long construction project/ we call our self?" and "Who says age can't be luxurious,/ astonishing, sui generis?" The poems move from public events to personal ones, explore creativity, age, marriage, early trauma, motherhood, family relationships, and travel, teaching us "we are never too old for rebirth, the hold of the miraculous."

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New Publication

SOMETHING LIKE HOPE & OTHER STORIES
William Cass

What attaches you to the characters in William Cass's moving first collection of stories is that they are loving people, emotionally observant and internally responsive to the world around them. Even when isolated, and many of them are, Cass's men and women know what it is to be connected. . .
READ MORE

BUY NOW

SHARING THE BURDEN OF REPAIR: 
REENTRY AFTER MASS INCARCERATION

A Wising Up Listening Project

Heather Tosteson & Charles D. Brockett

This book describes a six-year listening project on reentry that took place at the crest of an unusual wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Georgia, one of our most punishing states. Its primary intended audience is common citizens, like us, concerned about the reality of mass incarceration but unsure how to engage. . .

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BUY

New Publication

PRESIDENT BIDEN AND PROSPECTS FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

Charles D. Brockett, PhD

This ebook meant for the common citizen portrays trends in public opinion about immigration in 21 easily read graphs. These trends are also related to their broader context: Will President Biden succeed where his last three predecessors failed? Certainly it will be a big challenge, but it can be done if we let the public show the way.

READ MORE
BUY

KINDLE EDITIONS NOW AVAILABLE. . .

WISING UP ANTHOLOGIES
The Kindness of Strangers
Siblings: Our First Macrocosm
Creativity & Constraint
Connected: What Remains as We All Change
Daring to Repair: What Is It, Who Does It & Why?
Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration, Citizenship & Belonging
Shifting Balance Sheets: Women's Stories of Naturalized Citizenship & Cultural Attachment
View from the Bed: View from the Bedside
Double Lives, Reinvention & Those We Leave Behind
Love After 70
Families: The Frontline of Pluralism

Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction

GERMS OF TRUTH      VISIBLE SIGNS      HEARTS AS BIG AS FISTS,
GOD SPEAKS MY LANGUAGE, CAN
YOU?       THE SANCTITY OF THE MOMENT, 
BREATHING IN PORTUGUESE, LIVING IN ENGLISH

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM       LIVE YOUR LIFE      LAST FLIGHT OUT



Stephanie Hart, Contributing author, FIT reading Kindness and Creativity & Constraint
FIT reading & discussion - Audience response

Visit the WISING UP PRESS CHANNEL on YouTube.

LEARN MORE

WISING UP WRITERS COLLECTIVE

WEIGHT OF FELONY PROJECT

NATURALIZED CITIZENSHIP PROJECT

LIBRARY

BOOKSTORE

READING FOR INSIGHT

WISING UP GALLERY


ABOUT WISING UP PRESS

We decided to create a small press to expand and support our various Universal Table programs - and because we love the written word, especially when it is used passionately and authentically to explore themes of abiding importance to us as individuals and as a society.
Many of our publications focus on literature by contemporary writers because of the power of narrative to help us identify safely with others who may at first seem, by appearance or circumstances or culture, very different from us. Stories make the world feel more manageable by increasing our ability to tolerate suffering, to experience empathy, to marry hope and pain in a way that honors the reality in each of them. Stories teach us, in the very listening, in the very act of identifying with the storyteller, or the characters, that the existence of other points of view is a richness not a danger. In our own lives, most of us find it difficult to tell stories that have good roles for all of us, that can see our differences, however profound, as mysterious, unpredictable, but ultimately gracious - an invitation into a blessing story larger than any one of us can write alone. We want our publications to serve as an invitation to stand in that richer relation - empathic, musing, open to new meaning - with ourselves and with our neighbors. 

To learn more . . .


Member of CLMP since 2008
Member of CLMP since 2008
Universal Table   Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.   Wising Up Press
www.universaltable.org      P.O. Box 2122, Decatur, GA 30031-2122      404-276-6046