Christopher McCurry and THE GOSPEL OF GOD BOY

Headshot of Christopher McCurry

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, THE GOSPEL OF GOD BOY.

It starts with being an older brother. What an awful and awesome responsibility that is. And I’ve got to be honest here, I really botched it up. I was mean, controlling, manipulative. I was a kid. I didn’t really understand how to be good. Eventually (and thankfully) I grew up and realized I had abused and misused my power. God Boy explores all that across themes of family, religion, myth. 

What do you like most about it?

I like that it’s bloody. I like that it’s kind of alarming. Oh. I like when I read it to myself, I feel something deep and ancient working within it.

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

Fear that my loved ones would be mad. Fear that it wouldn’t be as good as my first book. Fear that even though I’ve thought about all of this and wrote about it, maybe I haven’t changed all that much, after all. Maybe, just maybe, we are all evil and spiteful and tiny.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

I guess I felt, and have felt for sometime, the effects of time. I’m not really sure that it heals all wounds, but that it provides context and counterpoints–counter examples. It gives spaces for growth, if you are lucky enough to get a lot of it. Opportunities for reflection and collection, correction. So, yes, in humanity there’s violence. We kill each other. And since this isn’t a book about the consequences, it can be a book about why and how to be or become a person who loves others.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

Well, I’ve got to say I love when my wife reads my work or is sitting in the audience smiling at me. That gives me confidence and peace. Recently, someone reached out after reading God Boy and asked to get a copy of my first chapbook ever published, Splayed. That was nice of them! I don’t have any more copies, so I couldn’t help them out, but it was still fun that someone wanted to read more after finishing my book.

What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of THE GOSPEL OF GOD BOY.

The next poetry book will be a book of love poems, for sure. And I’d love to share my short stories with the world. Finish a novel I’ve been working on for awhile. I’m working with a team of teachers to draft a Literary Arts curriculum for 6th-12th grade. My son Ecton is a full goose. Abra is a high schooler and in the Literary Arts program that I teach. And I’m leading the Bluegrass Disc Golf Association as the President for 2026. To name just a few of the things I’ve got cooking right now.

Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

Imagine if every middle and high school had a Literary Arts teacher. How cool would that be? Most people don’t know this, but we need Literary Arts/Creative writing to be included in the legislation that governs Visual and Performing Arts. With that we could start developing a robust system of literary arts teachers to introduce the art of writing from a young age and help those who develop a passion for it to hone their skill and craft.

Photo of the front cover of the book, The Gospel of God Boy

Leatha Kendrick and AND LUCKIER

Headshot of Leatha Kendrick

Tell us the story of publishing AND LUCKIER.

For me, making a book is a slow process of distillation and experimentation. I had been working on a collection for a couple of years when Katerina suggested in 2019 that I submit something to Accents. So the inkling of a new book had been hovering. Katerina’s interest in looking at a collection of my poems opened the way for me to sharpen and focus what coalesced into And Luckier. Without her being there to receive this book, I might have gone on tinkering with the collection for another year. As a matter of fact, when I published Almanac of the Invisible in 2014, I already had begun to gather poems for the next book, and I had written the title poem. I revise individual poems over the course of many years. As I write new poems, my sense of each collection sharpens and refines itself. It is not an efficient process, but one I have come to love and to give myself over to.

What do you like most about it?

More than my earlier collections, And Luckier balances personal poetry with poems that engage world events. Though the poems were written before the pandemic, many of them still feel timely. Katerina’s books (her own poetry) inspire me to push boundaries, and her gentle presence as editor encouraged me to experiment. Another thing I loved about working with Katerina was that despite the fact the And Luckier came out in March, 2020, as the world was closing down, she stayed upbeat and inventive, making sure that the poems were heard widely on YouTube, the radio, and via Zoom.

What did you have to overcome to finish and publish a book?

By the time I published And Luckier I had a certain amount of faith in my own process. I had learned to believe that the book would find its shape and its place in the world eventually. However, I had to overcome the frustration of working through many drafts over several years and wanting it not to take so long between books. As I look back on those drafts now, I see that I was rushing the collection. Many of the best poems in the book were written in 2018-19. The 2017 version would have been a different book, and not as strong as the book Accents published.

What do you hope people learn/experience from reading your book?

I always hope to present readers with a range of poetic forms and a variety of ways to encounter experience, including humor and playfulness. I do not hold onto expectations for what any reader might learn from my poetry. Instead, I think in terms of giving readers a chance to be surprised or delighted or moved to look at something a little differently. These are the things I hope for when I read poetry.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or fan?

Some readers have written to tell me they are grateful for my poem, “No Fear”—particularly for its realization that it’s “impossible to separate/misery and joy—the living edge of mystery.” That line, that understanding arrived with the poem itself. It was what the poem had come to teach me, and I will always be grateful for its arrival.

What are you working on now? Catch us up on one significant event in your life since the publication of AND LUCKIER.

I don’t really think of myself as a prolific writer, but I am always writing and nearly always imagining how new poems might fit together. Each time a book comes out, I will already have the start of another collection in process. I am usually working on two or three things at once. Right now I am in different stages of working on two poetry collections, as well as writing occasional essays and doing research for another project. In the past year I have had essays accepted for two anthologies, and the year before I published a long scholarly essay. 

In July, 2025, I signed a contract with Madville Publishing for a new collection, entitled Interior with Poplar. The first week January, 2026, we finished final edits. The book is slated for release in September, 2026. It is my fifth full-length collection of poems.

Front Cover of And Luckier

A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN RAGES by Melissa Helton

Accents Publishing is proud to announce that Melissa Helton’s first full-length poetry collection, A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN RAGES is set to release on 5/15, exactly a month from now.
We believe that you will love this book and its powerful messages delivered with exemplary poetic craft! Preorder info to follow.

With fierce energy and a creative use of poetic styles, these poems collaborate as an affirmation against the evils women face and as an entreaty to “thrive in flux,” to pay “deliberate, unceasing attention” to everything in the world, “as if it were holy.”
—Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer

Through these poems, I come to understand the middle-aged woman raging as a community spiritual worker…. These poems are fearless and yet they understand the importance of
acknowledging our fears and telling what we must tell to survive.
—Joy Priest, author of Horsepower

Her passion & artistry left me awed, energized, & ready to write. What more could you want?
—George Ella Lyon, author of Back to the Light: Poems
Kentucky Poet Laureate 2015 – 2016

Gaylord Brewer and GOODBYE, BABY

headshot of Gaylord Brewer

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, GOODBYE, BABY.

The genesis of the poems is as transparent at it seems: the frail and painful final weeks of my beloved dog Lucy and the months of grieving that followed her death.

What do you like most about it?

“Like” perhaps isn’t the word to use in the context of this book, but writing it provided an
outlet that I apparently needed during those sad, angry, helpless, terrifying days.

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish the book?

I was writing compulsively over the course of those months, and at some point it
occurred to me that the poems might constitute a book. That was a by-product, not an
initial goal. One element unique to this collection is that I’d never before written a book
dictated by form. All of the poems are twelve lines and untitled. The latter seemed a
self-evident decision. These were intimate, compressed poems, on-going and in
conversation with one another, and individual titles seemed too much of a … what,
pronouncement? Too sharp a demarcation from piece to piece. The more arbitrary
choice—and I don’t recall how or why the idea came to me—was the restriction of the
twelve-line structure, which ultimately served several purposes. For one, each poem
was a puzzle for me to solve, to expand or more often contract to a contained,
companionable size. I was desperate for both distraction and for some semblance of
control in a world we’d lost control of.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

I’m suspicious of wanting anyone to “learn” anything from a sequence of poems, but
these are obviously close to the heart, so I’m gratified that folks seem moved by them.
Every poem in the book, by the way, however seemingly far-ranging in tone or subject,
is actually about Lucy and losing her. Stating the obvious, perhaps. Trust me.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

In the context of GOODBYE, BABY? Well, the book’s only recently published, but it’s been
more pleasant than I expected to get emails from friends—friends from different periods
of my life and vastly different contexts—whom I haven’t been in touch with for years or
even decades. I’ve been living an increasingly withdrawn and private life, so a few
knocks on the door from the outside world, some friendly overtures from the past, are
okay.

What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of GOODBYE, BABY.

Another book of poems, Negotiable Gods, is coming out later in 2026, of this book’s
heels. It contains pieces written during the three-four years before the intense period
that generated Goodbye, Baby. So, the books are appearing out of order, which
disconcerts me a bit, although I suppose no one will notice or care. Aside from writing,
I’m looking forward, if I ever have the chutzpah to retire, to getting back to drawing,
painting, working with clay.

A significant event?

I just put down a sizeable deposit on a trip a year from now, swimming with humpback whales for a week in the Dominican Republic. We’ll see if I have the nerve, or the body, to go through with it. Not a bad way to die, though—slapped unconscious by an errant flipper and returned to the dark, cold depths whence I came! I hereby leave all my posthumous poems to Accents.

cover of Goodbye, Baby