Better Than Starbucks
Poetry and Fiction Journal
. . . if you love diversity and creative writing in any and every form, then you’re in the right place . . .
February 2021
Vol VI No I
Published quarterly:
February, May, August,
and November.
Shop for Print Issues
All the covers and listings on this page are clickable. They take you to a purchase page on Lulu, our print publisher. Many of the issues are also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. If you purchase from those venues enough to reduce your shipping cost, you can search "Better Than Starbucks" on their sites, but we don't make much on those sales. Purchasing on Lulu helps us move toward paying more contributors.
The more issues we sell the closer we will be to our goal of paying more contributors for their work. Thank you all for your support, and for sharing our love of poetry and creative writing. —Vera Ignatowitsch
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If you are interested in reviewing one of the books on this page, please email us at betterthanstarbucks2@gmail.com and we will send you a review copy.
Mist in Their Eyes
by William Doreski
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Everything is alive in Doreski’s delightful poems. They take the time to see the small things of the world, and they do it beautifully. I also love how he’s not afraid to poke the people around him with wry social needling. You’ll read this book and feel like you walked through your hometown wearing some kind of special glasses that let you see what’s always being going on.
— Matthew Rohrer, Hopwood Award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize recipient.
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Black Bamboo
Better Than Starbucks Haiku Anthology 2020
Kevin McLaughlin
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Hardcover $25 available here.
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In this anthology, Kevin presents 131 haikuists and 446 of their haiku. He has chosen 307 haiku from BTS issues 2016-2020. 139 of the haiku are new and not previously published. There are also ten of Kevin’s haiku included in his chapter introductions, and well as the one on the back cover, and six bonus haiku on the hardcover dustjacket.
coming soon:
Glamoury
by Susan Sheppard
When I first read the poems of a young woman from Appalachia, thirty years ago, I knew she was one of the best poets I’d ever met. I never forgot the brooding witchcraft, the mystery and magic in her work. There’s no writer like Susan Sheppard. She writes like a woman who has nothing to lose and I place her at the top of poetry’s canon. It is the world’s fault that a Sheppard poetry book is not in our libraries. Every page of “Glamoury” is rich, resolving to bring truth to life with language smoldering, ready to burst into flame. I read this book and feel lucky to know a poet who keeps poetry alive. This is the book of the year.
—Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate