Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia
Thrilled to have my dystopian cli-fi story “The Beekeeper” in this anthology.
It was inspired, in part, by a Tori Amos song of the same name.
Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Eds. Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu. Exile Editions. Dec 31, 2024. ISBN: 9781990773341.
Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline
I’m so pleased to have a creative non-fiction piece (my first!) titled “Homing Beacon,” published in this beautiful commemorative anthology.
Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline. Ed. Kim Fahner. The Sudbury Writers’ Guild, May 2024. ISBN: 978-0-9952851-3-2.
Copies available from the Sudbury Writers’ Guild, or locally, at Books and Beans.
The Art of Floating
My debut poetry collection!
The Art of Floating. Melanie Marttila. Latitude 46 Publishing, April 2024. ISBN: 9781988989747.
Latitude 46 | Chapters-Indigo | Amazon.ca
Please support your local independent bookstore and order through them, or request a copy from your library. It all helps!
Reviews:
Frances Boyle – Changing with the Tide: Melanie Martitla’s The Art of Floating. ARC Poetry Magazine
Melanie Marttila’s debut collection beautifully evokes many interconnected themes. There is the wondrous sky with clouds “dancing / to the symphony of / blood and sun and / royal navy slate” (“Manitou sky”); the weather and waterways of the author’s home in Northern Ontario, its pines, spruces and birches, its many birds whose “beauty must be / brought with breath to heart” (“peregrine”); and rain that “opens earth / releasing mineral smells centuries trapped / in soil and stone yielding at last / to the sweet release” (“The Scent of a Spring Rain”). Nature is intertwined with family lore and love, and with myth, ancient magic and feminism to summon mystery. We are exhorted to “[t]ake up hammer, learn to / reforge fate. ‘Prentice to apple- / women. Return a fiery arrow, / holder of ancient wisdom. / Wear crown of blossoms. / Walk with hare and vixen.” (“Avalon”).
Lisa Timpf – The Art of Floating, Poetry by Melanie Marttila – The Seaboard Review
The Art of Floating is a collection meant to be savoured. I found deeper appreciation of several of the poems upon re-reading. Exploring multiple themes from nature to the moon and stars and points in between, Marttila’s collection offers insightful observations, a resonant sense of place, and original, striking imagery.
The Art of Floating – Melanie Marttila. Book Ramblings blog.
Ann Douglas – Four Canadian poetry collections that speak to the soul. The Honest Talk.
“Writing is as much an act of destruction or dissection as it is of creation,” writes Melanie Marttila in the epilogue of this deeply moving and thought-provoking poetry collection.
Writers take things apart in order to figure out how to put everything back together in just the right way. And, in between, there’s a lot of messiness. So much messiness…. As she notes in the poem that serves as the epigraph to her collection, “it’s messy / getting to the heart / of things.” This is a collection about doing just that: writing about what matters — the beauty and the brokenness of the world.
Terry Trowbridge – Melanie Marttila’s The Art of Floating – The /tεmz/ Review
Reading The Art of Floating on the terms in which it is advertised, as a mediation about mental health, offers Ontario readers a familiar, almost archetypal mirror of our mental health experiences. Marttila writes about the social dimensions of mental health and the mental geographies of Ontario. Whether readers in other provinces or other countries will encounter the same familiarity, or the same social reinterpretation of what mental health really is, could be an interesting literary conversation. Critical consciousness can emerge from agreement and disagreement, comparisons and contrasts. Hopefully, opportunities for such dialogues will present themselves in 2024 and many times over the next few years.
Pirating Pups
Pirating Pups: Salty Seadogs and Barking Buccaneers. Ed. Rhonda Parrish. Tyche Books, August 2022. ISBN: 978-1-989407-47-9.
My short story, “Torvi, Viking Queen,” (yes, inspired by my dog, Torvi) was accepted into this anthology by the fabulous Rhonda Parrish. The title link will take you to the Amazon.ca page for the anthology and the Tyche Books link will take you to the publisher.
Home for the Howlidays
Home for the Howlidays. Ed. M.L.D. Curelas. Tyche Books, November 2021. ISBN: 978-989407-35-6.
My short story, “The Wolf You Feed” was accepted into this anthology. Publisher Margaret Curelas was great to work with. The title link will take you to the Amazon.ca page for the anthology, and the Tyche Books link will take you to the publisher.
Sudbury Ink
Sudbury Ink: A Sudbury Writers’ Guild Anthology. Sudbury: Sudbury Writers’ Guild, 2016. ISBN 978-0-9952851-0-1.
I am privileged to have two speculative short stories in this anthology, “Cicadas,” and “Molly Finder.” All of the prose and poetry in this book was written by members of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild, and was selected by Mark Leslie, author, editor, and former resident of Onaping Falls (just a ways up the road from the Sudz).
For more information, please visit http://sudburywritersguild.com/
NeoVerse
NeoVerse. Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 1998. ISBN 1-896350-06-2.
“In Melanie Marttila’s poems lyrical tendrils of language connect us to nature, animals, and other people. Words and world are symbiotic.”
Unfortunately, the publisher, Your Scrivener Press, has ceased operations. Fortunately, I have taken custody of the some of the remaining stock of the collection. If you would like to obtain a copy, please contact me by email: melanie (dot) marttila (at) gmail (dot) com
Always Looking Up 