BIE! Press Release

PRESS RELEASE - DECEMBER 6, 2007 – Blame It on Eve!

Blame It on Eve! is the first solo poetry compilation released by Melissa Dey Hasbrook, and authors Carol Davis Koss (OK) and Victor Villanueva (WA) offer up praise about her word art.

Blame It on Eve! is an electronic book available on CD through Everybody Reads Books and Stuff of Lansing, Michigan, and soon through its website.

The release party for Blame It on Eve!, held Sunday, December 2, 2007, at the Grand Café/ Sir Pizza in Lansing’s north end, kept tables full even after an ice storm. MC Dr. Jenn Nichols, Everybody Reads, Musician Barb Barton, poets Lisa Sayles, Chey Davis, and Susan Harris also joined the show.

The City Pulse of Lansing ran a story about the release party titled “Poet continues push for community through couplets” in its December 5, 2007, edition as part of its Arts and Entertainment section.

Here is what readers are saying about Hasbrook’s collection:

“One portion of Blame it on Eve! is titled ‘No Mincing Words’ and one thing Melissa Dey Hasbrook does NOT do is 'mince words.' Her poetry is both political and confessional, exploring her society, the larger world, and herself. Hasbrook is a performance poet and, in much of her work, even on the page, we can hear her voice and her passion. “
—Carol Davis Koss, Author of Camera Obscura, Oklahoma City, OK

“Blame it on Eve! doesn’t blame Eve. The title is an irony. Or maybe it’s an echo. A profound one (irony or echo), one which Melissa Dey Hasbrook carves out with words: free verse, rigorously metered rhyming verse, sonnet to prose poetry. This is a wonderful, politically powerful collection, railing—beautifully—against institutions of all sorts: the academy, the State, the economy, the illusions of race and the realities of racism, and the institution of gender. At bottom, this is a tribute to women—to all that they give of life and love, of violence absorbed and resisted, of Word.”
—Victor Villanueva, Author of Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, Pullman, WA

Through MySpace and The Women Writers Blog , Melissa Dey Hasbrook keeps the public up to date about her publications and performances. Hasbrook also is available by email about her work deyofthephoenix[at]hotmail.com.