- Title: In Tribes of Running Rain
- Author: Barbara Truncellito
- Publisher: Fragile Twilight Press
- Form: Paperback
- Illustrated: ---
- Number of Pages: 80
- ISBN: 0-9631101-7-9
- Price: $15.00 + $1.50 (Shipping) = $16.50
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Review:
“Years ago, I was traveling through the north of Italy as an accomplished executive in a chauffeur driven black Mercedes, feeling I had arrived. In the fog I heard the calls of my grandparents through cypress trees that lined the landscape of the Tuscany valley. It is only in the last few years that I have come to understand their message. They were whispering all the gifts that would enable me to move through the phases of my life. These gifts are the tribes of running rain.”
Barbara Truncellito resides in Barnegat Light, NJ, and Manhattan, NY. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the York Street Project in Jersey City, NJ, which educates and houses homeless women and children.
"'Truncellito observes her world with confidence in the power of nature to inspire and console. She also gives us a vision at once sensuous, delicate, earthy and spiritual that reverberates in memory."
Colette Inez
Associate Professor, Columbia University
The Writing Program, New York, NY 10027
From The Sandpiper, NJ, August 16, 2006:
“Earlier in the evening, somebody asked me if this wag going to be a structured evening,” Barbara Truncellito said with a laugh, gazing out over her small but rapt audience of friends, family, fans and fellow artists sitting in the dusky sunlight At her Barnegat Light home. “Well, no. This is not going to be a structured evening.”
With the pink glow of an extraordinarily beautiful, Barnegat Bay sunset at her back, illuminating the crisp pages of her newest publication, In Tribes Of Running Rain, it became clear as she read that truer words could not have been spoken ‑ not only of the Saturday evening book release party but also of her poetry, her publishing and her life.
Truncellito started her independent publishing company, Fragile Twilight Press, 15 years ago as a vehicle for publishing her first collection of poems, In Fragile Twilight.
“When I put my first manuscript together, people said, ‘Who are you: going to get to publish this? It’s just avant-garde,”‘ Truncellito joked, remembering what friends said after reading her sometimes religious, sometimes feminist, sometimes political verse. “But I thought it was quite normal,” she said, again with a laugh.
After her cousin, also an independent publisher, offered to publish her poetry, but not before first editing her words, Truncellito decided to take matters into her own hands, all the while saying, “This is my soul. This is my life. this is what I’m going to write. This is what I’m going to publish.”
Inspired by independent writers such as T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Truncellito joined the New York City-based Small Press Center, an organization whose mission is to provide “access to education and expertise in the field of independent publishing, encouraging excellence and free expression ... through workshops, lectures, book fairs, exhibits and a reference collection.” The same year, 1990, her own Fragile Twilight Press was born.
Today, Truncellito’s company has become a vehicle for other writers much like herself, who have struggled to make their voices heard, and has allowed them to share their stories and feelings truthfully.
“Barbara made publishing very easy,” said author John Egan, recalling the marked differences between the publishing of his first novel, Baptism of Resistance, Blood and Celebration, which was done with another publisher, and his second, the autobiographical A Priest Forever and No More, published through Fragile Twilight Press. He realized that his second book, which centers on the most difficult point in his life, needed to be handled by a trusted friend.
A Roman Catholic priest for 25 years, Egan was devoted to social change, both in Jersey City, where he spent most of his, career, and in Central America. However, after having written articles criticizing the Church for outlawing women in the clergy and for the importance placed :on its hierarchy, Egan left the priesthood in 1985, despite the outcry from the Jersey City community.
“It was very painful to leave,” said Egan, who met Truncellito while the two were volunteering for the nonprofit York Street Project, a charity dedicated to helping homeless and economically disadvantaged women and children, They both recognized his heartbreaking story was one that had to be published. In 1999, A Priest Forever and No More went to press, and neither Egan nor Truncellito could be happier with the final product.
Truncellito also helped give a voice to novelist Regina Krummel by publishing two of her works, Liquor to Casket, an exploration of the mind of a teenage girl struggling with various societal influences, and The Underground Woman, the story of a progressive woman struggling to remain true to herself in a society determined to suppress her.
Krummel said she found much of her inspiration for writing while living in New York City and teaching at City University, The Covenant House and on Rikers Island. Truncellito, she added, may have had a hand in her inspiration as well.
“She’s more than a creator of religious poetry,” Krummel said. “She’s an inspiration because she has such a connection with reality and beauty. We need to reach out to one another. Barbara’s the kind of person who does that.”
In 2004, Truncellito also encouraged Lynn Shepherd Titmas to publish her writing through Fragile Twilight Press, in a collection of inspirational reflections titled Beside Still Waters.
“When I first saw her books and heard the title of the company, I knew I wanted to publish with her. It seems to reflect what I do and how I write,” Titmas explained, All 250 copies of her book of meditative and relaxing prose have been sold, but like the rest of the Fragile Twilight Press writers, Titmas said her decision to publish with Truncellito wasn’t about making money.
“I just wanted to share myself with the people I love,” she explained.
Truncellito’s newest work revisits her favorite poetry from her first three books, In Fragile Twilight, Beyond The Seventh Poinsettia and Moonflowers. Tribe also includes a section of new works for readers to enjoy. Like the other writings she’s published, Truncellito tackles controversial social and political issues. After she witnessed the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001 first hand while living in Manhattan, her writing, specifically in Moonflowers, was a way of dealing with her own pain and to help soothe others’.
“I just felt the world needed some hope,” she said. “If there was ever a time that our country needed hope, that was it.”
A portion of the proceeds from the Fragile Twilight Press benefits the York Street Project. Over the last 12 years, Truncellito has dedicated herself to the project and said it’s an issue that remains close to her heart today.
With the constant themes of charity and love, both in her life and poetry and in the lives and work of the authors she’s published, Truncellito has made an effort to change what she sees as wrong in the world. As “unstructured” as she may be, she hopes her words bring change, hope and inspiration to all who read them.
– Jennifer Ackers
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