FOMITE

The engaging, colorful stories in Blue Songs in an Open Key explore the hopes, longings and struggles of unforgettable characters who are musicians, artists, writers, junkies, alcoholics, outsiders, in settings as diverse as Ithaca, New York City, Lenox, Provincetown and Paris. They share a common pulse and legacy that is the love of jazz and their adventures are guaranteed to stir the reader’s heart.

 

About the Author

Arya F. Jenkins is a Colombian American whose poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and zines. Her fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2018. Her poetry was nominated for the Pushcart in 2015. Her work has appeared in at least five anthologies. Her poetry chapbooks are: Jewel Fire (AllBook Books, 2011) and Silence Has A Name (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry chapbook, LOVE & POISON, is forthcoming from Prolific Press in October 2019.

 

Arya’s Blog

 

Read an excerpt at Booklife

Interview on WYSU Radio

Review in Cultural Weekly

Review in Booklist

 

Praise

"These are powerful stories, with appeal to more than just jazz aficionados." 

—Mark Levine, Booklist

 

“Ms. Jenkins is a major contributor to the world of jazz music.Her prose weaves many of the compelling characteristics of jazz – its spontaneous beauty, its poetic inspiration, its political essence, its cultural complexity – into an inventive fabric that so effectively envelops her reader in stories of love, loss, enlightenment, and hope.The authenticity of her writing lives duly within the aesthetic of the great American art form she reveres."

— Joe Maita, Founder and Publisher of Jerry Jazz Musician 

 

“These stories of disenfranchised jazz musicians, music aficionados, and fans rollick on the page. Jenkins has brilliantly crafted 13 stories that center on the theme of jazz, but at their hearts, these are stories about connection. A gentle giant no one seems to love. A musician trying to rebuild his life after alcoholism. A young woman who loses her father but gains his love for music. These characters are improvising their own beat in a 4/4 world.”

— CL Bledsoe, author of Man of Clay and The Funny Thing About…