Milk & Cake Press

A meditation on illness, healing, and caregiving and its limits, Panacea is elegiac.Using the framework of archaic remedies, Panacea addresses the psychological burden of caregiving, particularly when it is futile. Drawing on themes of transformation and turning one thing to another (lead to gold / healthy to unhealthy), Panacea reminds us that even in the days of modern medical advances, illness is as old as life itself. You can find it here: https://milkandcakepress.com/product/panacea-by-alison-strub/

Join us for this reading! Here’s the link: https://ucincinnati.zoom.us/j/96344621078

This chapbook consists of an erasure of part of the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches), a witch-hunting text published and translated repeatedly across Europe through the 16th century and retranslated into English as late as 1928, from which this chapbook’s text is drawn. It is disturbingly relevant for today, as the poet explains in her Foreword:

These poems are…brought to you now with a renewed feeling of urgency, as the Supreme Court rescinds the bodily autonomy of women (any uterus-having person, by most of these laws’ definitions) and states race to enact ever-tightening laws controlling us. We must all remember for how brief a time women, trans, intersex, and nonbinary folk have had even imperfect legal rights to themselves, and how easily such rights can be erased….

If…witches are “a vast political movement, an organized society…a world-wide plot,” then perhaps it is time for us all to claim the name of “Witch.”

You can find this this fierce chapbook in our store.

In this concise work, essentially one poem, Nicole Kurlich explores her own gender dysphoria and identity, and through her own experience, examines what it means, or doesn’t mean, to be a girl, drawing on the symbiotic relationship between figs and the wasps that pollinate them. Find this lovely book for purchase here.

We here at Milk & Cake Press are delighted to announce that we have accepted the following books for publication in 2023-2024:

My Dear Yeast Melanie Hyo-In Han

And Aphrodite Laughs Megan Mary Moore

The Flame of Her Will Phoebe Reeves

Ghost || Animal Erin Elizabeth Smith

Panacea Alison Strub

Daffodils Dameion Wagner