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Borderless and relentlessly topographical, this book maps the real and unreal Seattle as 'the city of two women.' Is it raining, or are these pixels on someone else's computer screen? Carol Guess must be writing from the top of Mount St. Helens; she sees it all and never averts her gaze. --Amanda Laughtland.

This hip poetry collection blends spoken word and language poetry with social commentary that speaks to younger women in a modern voice that still encompass the narrative and lyric traditions.

Poetry. Set on the margins of Seattle, beneath bridges and on the banks of waterways, in strip clubs and flooded farmland, the prose poems in TINDERBOX LAWN illuminate the intersection of domesticity and bohemia, orthodoxy and passion. Each untitled block of prose constitutes a novel-in-miniature, with shadow characters and shards of plot. The intensity of Carol Guess's poems builds through lyrical language and recurring images, capturing the moment when the small mad heart at the center of things stalls mid-tick. "This is such deep, rich writing. TINDERBOX LAWN feels like dreams you forgot as you walk through your day but it's your life. I mean we never think as deeply as we live and Carol Guess tries to braid those strands and succeeds. I love being in this work"--Eileen Myles.

Poetry. Based on The Nutshell Studies Of Unexplained Death, crime scene dioramas photographed by Corinne Botz, Carol Guess adds sound to the stillness of Frances Glessner Lee's bloodstained rooms.

Fiction. LGBT Studies. The voice narrating Carol Guess's newest book is that of a playfully effusive but meticulous cataloguer of our darker inquiries and oddities, a suburban former dancer with the inner life and vision of an epic librettist. DARLING ENDANGERED is nothing short of exceptional, a rare breed of hybrid that works between the "flash" of short fiction and the swift bite of the lyric. From the dizzying, battered nostalgia of youth remembered to the experiential trappings of maturity, Guess's collection maps the journey of a singular, sensitive existence through an ever-illuminating world of wayward hawks and track star meth addicts, avalanches and hot dog carts, zombie buildings, the works of Balanchine and Pachelbel, and the promises of love and love's disorders. You will not read another book quite like it.

A chronicle of the life of the acclaimed Broadway actress traverses five decades in show business and reveals her personal challenges involving her heritage and her father's alcoholism.

"Carol Guess has composed, from glass-edged fragments of her life and her work as a creative artist, the mosaic of a woman who has fought to be her true self. A nonfiction collection wrapped around a novella called "Fat Rosie and Rose," it documents the impact of sexism and homophobia on her professional and personal lives, and uses fictional characters to play out the events. Her adversaries have been many, and formidable. There were those who dictated the ideal shape of her female body and the correct dimensions of her sexuality as she emerged from a childhood in the south, ensnared in sexual exploitation and a spiral of anorexia. The teachers who attempted to extinguish her ambition and identity as a creative artist--because female writing could not possibly rise above the trivial--played their part. And the politics of art and sexuality continue to litter her path as a lesbian academic and a serious artist. Like no other book, "Gaslight" shares each step of the interior process of creation and of failing to create: the process of becoming a writer. In this extraordinary and unforgettable work, Carol Guess brilliantly illuminates the path to art and to individuality."--Amazon.com.

Poetry. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. In this new poetry collaboration from Kristina Marie Darling and Carol Guess, the real estate phenomenon of "home staging" becomes a metaphor for the illusions, and dissolution, of marriage. Or more broadly, of modern life in general, of lives not lived but "curated," everything transpiring and shared in real time that seems ever less real. The title of one section is especially telling, drawing upon the realtor clich� to "Depersonalize Your Home"--a process that must necessarily destroy any notion of "home" in favor of creating a fictive space, the detritus of messy human lives brushed aside to make room for artifice, for fantasy. On many pages this takes the form of footnotes that suggest an absurd invisible narrative, revealed only in fragments that do not make up a whole--in itself another apt metaphor. This collection is often funny, but in the wry wincing way of experiences that make a good story to recount years after, once survived. To turn these pages is to open the door on a tableau presented by two richly imaginative poets who know where to set each piece for the maximum effect--even if they may leave you looking for a way out of this dream home.

Poetry. Fiction. "Today the sky's not making sense. Small dramas unfold in the eaves, woodpeckers fracking the hemlock to fracture. You're standing under controlled bamboo controlling your temper. A little roundabout for the parade, a little whiskey and the night's not over. Trees twine the road to the evening train. Twin coyotes race between two whistles. To cross now would kill me. You're on the other side, summoning red intentions. Even cracked asphalt knows when to stop. The yard dreams of water, and I sink to my neck trying to leave. You eye me from the other side: street, world, story. You read the ending and rearrange the words. Grass moves in waves that break against the house. Trees puff like smokestacks. Escape is an underwater tunnel I find by inching deeper. Big breath, and I'm swimming in all directions but out."--Carol Guess & Kelly Magee

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Microchips that don't know when to stop, pop culture clones poised to take over the planet, a mysterious burial in a popular park, candy cigarettes wreathed in sugary ash. In these interlocked short stories, Elizabeth J. Colen and Carol Guess conjure characters guided by instinct but misguided by technology, longing for intimacy but propelled by desire. Taken together, these stories detail the spectrum of human loss and describe the rise and fall of a fictitious Seattle company governed by unruly appetites, a world of glass windows where privacy comes with a price.