“A Girl, In Parts avoids the majority of coming-of-age drama, managing to show there are just as many ways to write about becoming an adolescent as there are adolescents.  One tough heroine and a clear-eyed author…First time novelist Jasmine Paul has crafted an elegant coming of age story in 97 perfectly told vignettes.”
~ Kirkus

“Paul captures the pain and confusion of adolescence, the struggles of poverty, the psychological impact of abuse, and the small rebellions that make ‘coming of age’ a true passage to a new state.  Her prose is realistic, her vignettes illustrative. Recommended.”                                                                                          
~ Library Journal

“Jasmine Paul…manages to add a unique voice to the genre…Honest, plucky, funny, and sharp, Dottie is a refreshingly unsentimental and entirely sympathetic young heroine.”
~ The Baltimore Sun

“Delectable and knowing…Paul’s clear-eyed and spunky distillation of how a girl becomes and adolescent makes A Girl, In Parts memorable.”
~ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A young Spokane writer’s debut novel is a gritty, winning tale.”
~ Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Gritty and realistic, A Girl, In Parts is never sentimental about wither poverty or childhood.  Dorothy is a tough and winning character, a true-to-life heroine perfect for the twenty-first century.”
~ Forbesbookclub.com

“A Girl, In Parts captures the fiery, conflicting impulses of adolescence through the experiences of one sharply perceptive young girl…Jasmine Paul’s first novel has a convincing narrator whose smart insights keep otherwise trite scenarios fresh…The writing in A Girl, In Parts can take you by surprise…Paul has mastered the voice of a keenly observant, sensitive youth…Dorothy makes for a believable and admirable young heroine that teens will relate to and whose story they will enjoy reading.”
~ The Portland Oregonian

“Her choice of narration is bullet-quick and sharp…First-time novelist Jasmine Paul deserves plenty of kudos for creating this Dorothy for us.  Despite her tornado bravado, she is a brave realist at heart.”
~ The Bellingham Herald

“…The next big…literary phenomenon…keen observations, quick intelligence and gravelly sense of humor…Unflinching and utterly without self pity…a resilient but oh-so-real heroine and for being written in a fresh, authentically, young voice.”
~ The Pacific Northwest Inlander

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Northwest authors Jasmine Paul and Amber LaParne are two names known throughout the national poetry community, whose works have been featured on Thin Air Radio, in The North American Review, and the Chiron Review among others…Ghosts is a winning and aesthetically charged collection.
~ Cara Lorello, Eve Magazine

The Ghosts of Anne & Sylvia deftly fills your senses with ardent prose. Wickedly stylish poetry woven between two authors and two historic women. It takes you on a journey of discovery that’s fresh and richly honest. It was an absolutely superb read and I look forward to much more from these authors!
~ AlleyCat (Vancouver, WA)

Disclaimer: I am not a poetry lover, having been exposed to the Dead Poets canon in college, but after reading the poems in this collection I have become a huge fan of this remarkable work and the two women who created it. They do not mimic Sexton and Plath, instead they evoke the very specific artistic temperaments and the full emotional palettes that these women brought to their work and their lives. The inspired conceit of contemporary poets channeling the voices of past ones in an intertwining dialogue results in a singular achievement that illuminates (and reflects) both Sexton and Plath, and the authors as well.
~ Kelly Alston (Dallas, TX)

The selected poems in the Ghosts of Anne & Sylvia are hauntingly beautiful. The poetry is fresh, bold and brutally honest. Images continue to linger in my mind. These poems resonated deeply for me. I would suggest this book to any serious lover of poetry.
~ Gal Noir

The poems in The Ghosts of Anne & Sylvia are accessible, yet intelligent – a unique combination in a book of poetry. The poems themselves touch on recognizable themes and are filled with striking imagery – all crafted in a way that any adult or even teen reader could relate to. The book makes poetry relevant and exciting again.
~ PDX Guy

I haven’t read poetry since I was forced to in college, but after thumbing through this collection on a friend’s coffee table, I was moved to buy my own copy. I kind of get it now. Reading these poems is a visceral experience. While I know nothing of either Anne or Sylvia – this collection has ignited an interest in poetry within myself that will extend beyond watching Def Poetry Jam.
~ D. Buzz Chatman (Los Angeles, CA)

Holly Bemiss
hollyb@rabiner.net
The Susan Rabiner Literary Agency
315 West 39th Street, Suite 1501
New York, NY 10018
www.rabinerlit.com

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Publications

•   2010: “Son of a Goat,”, short story (Swill Magazine)
•    2008: The Ghosts of Anne & Sylvia, poetry (iUniverse)
•    2007 – 2008: Eve Magazine (film reviewer)
•    2006: North American Review, “one girl’s winter”
•    2002: A Girl, In Parts, a novel  (Counterpoint Press)
•    1995: “Missing Persons,” a chapter in Feminism, Multiculturalism and the Media. (Sage Publishers)
•    1995-1996: Poetry published in the following journals and quarterlies: Riverside Quarterly, The Poet’s Page, Skylark, The Hollins Critic, Offerings, Chiron Review, Amelia, Black Bear Review, 360 Degrees and Black River Review

Presentations/Awards

•    2005 James Hearst Poetry Competition, Finalist: “one girl’s winter”
•    2005 Michigan Literary Fiction Awards, Finalist: Rumors About Gravity and Motion.
•    2004: Featured speaker for Lost Horse Press’ “Women in Motion” series.
•    2003: Awarded Outstanding Achievement recognition by the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards Committee.
•    2003: Get Lit, Spokane, Washington. One of four featured authors at the “finale” reading for the Inland Northwest Literary Arts Festival.
•    2003: Spokane Falls Community College. Delivered two lectures on writing, publishing and the creative process.
•    2003: Judge for The Northwest Inlander’s annual fiction contest.
•    2002: Featured author at the Northwest Bookfest for panel discussion.
•    2002: Featured author/speaker at the yearly Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Association function.

This is the year the trees are made of ghosts.

I smell them in the air and swallow them with every breath.  Every surface undulates beneath my palms.  Every surface holds some old secret that it unleashes when I walk by.  When I try to sleep, black wisps shape into bodies behind my closed eyes, the bodies sprout faces, eyes blink at me, ghost mouths crack open, and teeth fall out.  When I try to sleep I hear the whispers of ghosts in my ears, but I can’t make out what they are saying.

The ghosts that visit me are more real to me than my mother ever was.  It was difficult to know her.  She would stand in the backyard, cigarette in hand, staring off into the shorn wheat fields.  She exhaled cigarette smoke and it would float for a few yards, wrapping the rotten fence posts in billowy plumes of white.  She stood like a girl, one foot nervously tapping and her left arm hugging her own waist.  She was slender and petite, with icy eyes and high cheekbones.  I don’t look like her at all.  She was so beautiful, so lean and cool.  She was like an expensive knife.  A blade of a woman.

I remember the smell of her skin in the heat.  I remember the smoky sweetness of her hair and how her hands were slightly damp and cool to the touch. I remember this from when I was six years-old, when my mother could drive, sing with the radio and hold me in her arms all at the same time.

The light around my mother always faded in and out like flickering lamplight.  I used to want to scream at her, shatter her moored body with sound.  I wanted to say I love you I love you over and over until the words burrowed deep inside her ear, took root and grew. Instead, I said nothing.

Now, in the absence of conversation, in the thick of nightmares, wrapped in the ache my mother left me, I learn how to talk to the ghosts who visit me.