June Road Press

It’s high time for a cover reveal! Here’s an early look at our first fall book: Level Watch is Mary Ardery’s debut collection, out September 23. It’s as outdoorsy and as place-based as they come—a raw and moving poetic account of life as a wilderness guide in the Blue Ridge Mountains for women in an addiction treatment program. The watercolor painting on the cover is by Asheville-based artist Bronwen McCormick, whose work is just gorgeous—check out @bentcreekwatercolor . We’ll have lots to share this summer about Mary’s book, but for now you can find audio clips, preorder links, a playlist to get the vibe, and more at juneroadpress.com/level-watch (also at the link in our bio). 🌲🥾✨

✨Cover reveal!✨ Here’s the second title of our fall season, out the week of Halloween: Mother, Daughter, Augur, the debut collection of Ohio-based poet Mary Simmons. How to even describe this one? This book is just so compellingly weird. It’s like a dark Victorian naturalist’s collection gathered from fables and folklore and myth and ballet and ghost stories. It’s full of omens and insects and birds and curiosities. Mary Simmons’s style is both lush and precise, dreamlike and eerie but also lucid and fierce. This book has atmosphere. It leaves a residue. It holds up a lantern and leads you into the dark woods. It’s about women and love and bodies and stories and time. The tarot card vibe continues inside. Intrigued? Click the cover anywhere on the press website, juneroadpress.com, for all the things: ways to preorder, blurbs, audio clips, more about the author, pictures, and of course a playlist to set the mood (or go right to juneroadpress.com/mother-daughter-augur). More to come! 🍂🪾🕯️ #fallbooks #newbook #poetry #smallpress #coverreveal #juneroadpress

We’re back with our Author Questions series, where we learn about the most unhinged or surprising Google search for a book. Today, we’re spotlighting Mary Simmons (@marysimmonspoet ), author of MOTHER, DAUGHTER, AUGER, a poetry collection that explores womanhood and femininity through a forest of possibility that’s transcendent, alluring, and dark. 🖤 🪶 Watch the full reel to find out more about Mary’s Google search. 📽️ Featured here: MOTHER, DAUGHTER, AUGER by Mary Simmons (@marysimmonspoet ) | June Road Press (@juneroadpress ) . . . . . #poetrycollection #booksaboutwomen #readersofig #feministstories #bookworm

We were excited to go One-on-One with Mary Simmons (@marysimmonspoet ), author of MOTHER, DAUGHTER, AUGER, a poetry collection that explores womanhood and femininity through a forest of possibility that’s transcendent, alluring, and dark. 🔮 💫 During our conversation, Mary defined auger, shared how the women in her poems embody queerness, and explained how she explored the theme of Death. 🖤 Check out the link in our bio to read more. 🔗 Featured here: Mary Simmons (@marysimmonspoet ), author of MOTHER, DAUGHTER, AUGER | June Road Press (@juneroadpress ) . . . . . #poetrycollection #feministliterature #gothicbooks #poetrylover #bookgram

Our extended reading period is drawing to a close! Submit up to three place-based or otherwise aligned poems to our poetry road trip project by this Sunday, March 15. Full details at /submissions! And if you’ve already submitted, thanks for your patience—we’ve decided to send all responses after the reading period closes, but we’ve been reviewing along the way and will move quickly once all submissions are in and considered. It’s shaping up to be a quite the collection, so stay tuned 👀

Turns out talking nonstop for three days means not taking many pictures, but here’s a roundup of our AWP people and moments—attempts at selfies and serious shots with rock-star authors Diana Whitney, Abbie Kiefer, Hila Ratzabi, and Mary Simmons at our fun corner-table home base, a night out (with obligatory Baltimore crab cakes not pictured), and a CLMP-sponsored panel on small presses winning prizes that we had the honor of being part of on Saturday (JRP editor Sara, shortest of the set, still had a voice and everything). This was a bookfair to remember, and if you stopped by to talk with Sara or Jon, the ever-friendly guy behind the table and world’s most supportive small-press spouse, thank you—you were part of what made the week so wonderful and the best reminder of why we’re doing this and hope to keep doing it, slowly, deeply, warmly, June Road Press style, for a long time to come. Look for us next year in Chicago for round five! 🤩 (Missing you, @abbie_kiefer and @dianawhitneypoet and @hila_ratzabi and @marysimmonspoet !)

We got some great news right in the thick of AWP: Mary Simmons’s debut collection from this fall, Mother, Daughter, Augur, is a Foreword INDIES finalist! That’s a first for us, and what an honor it is to be included among the powerhouse presses in this poetry finalist lineup, which you should check out at /awards/finalists/2025/poetry-1/! 🤩

We managed to pause the joyfully relentless Friday flow of AWP *just* long enough to take a group picture with all the press authors in attendance this year: Abbie Kiefer, Hila Ratzabi, Diana Whitney, and Mary Simmons (here with editor Sara Arnold, shown actually not talking for like a minute; if you stopped by the table and talked to her, you probably gathered how much she loves this). One more day of our fourth bookfair! Will Sara lose her voice again this time or break the streak? Come find out and get some chocolate and a free audiobook! 🤷‍♀️🎉

All set up and excited for day one of the bookfair! If you’re at AWP in Baltimore this week, stop by table 849 to say hi and see what we’re all about. We have *so much* chocolate. 📚🍫🕺

We’ll be at AWP this week in Baltimore! Visit us at the bookfair—table 849—to flip though our books, listen to audio clips, learn more about the press, snag a little giveaway, and grab some chocolate for the road. Four remarkable press authors will be there! Chat with publisher/editor Sara before she loses her voice by the third day from sheer exuberance! We’re a friendly bunch—come say hello! 🪩🎉

Time for a two-minute master class? There’s a wonderfully rich new interview in Gulf Coast with our author Abbie Kiefer that begins with this short deep dive into the poem that ends her book, called “Certainty”—it’s well worth a read. You can pick up a copy of Certain Shelter and meet Abbie in person at AWP in Baltimore in a few weeks (at the press table, 849)! 🤩

Poet Karen Sherk Chio has written a beautiful new review of Mary Ardery’s Level Watch for The Adroit Journal—check it out at the link in our story or theadroitjournal.org!