The reanimation of Apalachee Press launches slate of women writers

Stories! Poems! Dazzling words and beautiful illustrations! Could it be that in this time of all things electronic, such things could hook us again?

In such hard-to-define days as these, when “skimming” is the new “reading,” when AI seeks to shoulder out more messy human thought, it’s hard to guess where Mary Jane Ryals finds the excitement and energy she has invested in the “new” Apalachee Press.

Ryals, known as the “Poet Laureate of the Big Bend from 2009 until 2012,” is author of “Cookie and Me,” her best-known novel, published in 2010 and still in print today. But she is also a retired FSU professor, a poet, short-story writer, writing coach, an editor, and now the new Editor-in-Chief of the revived Apalachee Press that this year will publish three books by local women authors.

“The books that inaugurate this rebirth of Apalachee Press were selected to give women over 50, women with much experience in life and a talent to tell about their journeys with poetry, prose, and gorgeous illustrations, the opportunity to be published without the often long-term frustrations of seeking one of the big New York publishers,” says the new Editor-in-Chief.

Ryals, who has worked with the Apalachee Press and its original precursor, the Apalachee Review, for years as an editor and writer, as well as her husband, Michael Trammell, himself a poet, novelist, and research associate at FSU, who was also the Review’s editor-in-chief from 2006-2018, are part of a pantheon of Tallahassee or FSU literati who have cycled in and out of the Apalachee Review/Apalachee Press history.

The original Apalachee Review had begun in 1971 as a literary magazine. It published at first four, later two, and finally one issue per year, and the writing was, according to Trammell, “some of the best we could get our hands on.”

All of the selections, the editing, the publication details were handled by volunteers — Pete LeForge, Dave Chappel, Barbara Hamby — who was editor for 16 years and 27 issues, Laura Newton, Chris Hayes, Trammell, and currently, Rafael Gamero.

The late Gerald Ensley has written that often the magazine got by on $2,000 an issue, raised through subscriptions and donations. Many of its volunteer readers and editors have been associated with FSU, and their tastes and editing can be seen in the high quality of the publication which continues today.

But according to Marda Messick, one of the authors who will be published in early fall, “It seemed that Apalachee Press as a book publishing entity had been dormant for a while,” with no prime-mover to take over the reins. Yet, now, “Mary Jane’s incredible energy and vision is bringing it to life.”

And Ryals seems to have made carefully curated decisions as to the authors she will initially bring to print. Melanie Rawls, Messick, Sharon Kant-Rauch, and poet, but here, illustrator, Lynne Knight.

The first of Apalachee Press’s 2024 books is Melanie Rawls’ “The After Ever After.” Designed as a “fairy tale for adults and not for children,” Rawls says it was written during a five-year period when she was processing grief after the loss of both parents. Using Beauty and the Beast’s story, she ponders on what happens to the Beast after Beauty dies?

“How would he deal with what comes after?” The 69-year-old Rawls says that with this illustrated examination, she learned how to talk about her own grief. Now retired from FAMU as “composition instructor” she has published poetry and essays over her long career. And the collaboration with illustrator, Lynne Knight, she says has been “perfect.”

Lynne Knight is the co-publisher of the 50-year-old Anhinga Press, a poetry journal in Tallahassee. But Knight’s resume is extensive: with a Master’s degree in Art Education, she has been an art teacher, a potter, a graphic artist, a poet, and now illustrator. “I created 52 illustrations for this chapbook on an iPad and used Melanie’s written images as inspiration.”

The colorful creations resemble soft watercolor paintings and the style is in keeping with fairy tales of the 19th century.

In early fall, 73-year-old Marda Messick’s first chapbook will be Apalachee Press’s second presentation. With previous lives as an R.N., and later the pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, in Messick’s book, “The Feral Princess,” she describes a “sometimes humorous” exploration of grief through a rebellious princess who must deal with age.”

Having taken writing workshops from Susan Cerulean, Mary Jane Ryals, and Barbara Hamby, Messick says seeing her poetry accepted into the Apalachee Review was “a dream of mine.” Now she is thrilled with the publication of her first poetry chapbook in the Apalachee Press.

The last of the triad of books to be launched with Mary Jane Ryals’ “rebuilding” of the press is Sharon Kant-Rauch’s literary mystery. Yet to be titled, but arriving by winter, the book is set in the Indianhead area of Tallahassee — the Nenes. Ryals describes it as a “page-turner with wonderful, developed characters.”

Kant-Rauch was a long-time journalist with the Tallahassee Democrat covering the news, but charming readers with columns that focused on the everyday aspects of life in Tallahassee. Her columns were earlier collected in a volume called, “Life in the Out Lane.”

And what magnanimous force has set Ryals on the course of discovering talented women writers of a certain age, who with Apalachee Press behind them, can give voice to thoughts Ryals feels we all must hear?

“You know, I studied Native American Literature for my Ph.D.,” Ryals said. “And what those indigenous tribes honored most was what was right there before them — the natural world and its culture — honoring it, knowing it, loving it. Also, a sense of community — the need to help one another to understand that we need each other.”

Ryals says she hopes to reach out her literary hand to writers and artists, to honor their thoughts and talents, and to share them — in community and love.

Marina Brown can be contacted at: mcdb100@comcast.net. She is the author of four Gold Medal-winning works of fiction and short stories.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Rebirth of Tallahassee's Apalachee Press launches 3 books by women