Our History

Wandering Aengus Press and its imprint Trail to Table Press are dedicated to publishing works to enrich lives and make the world a better place, because why not do as much good as we can in the world with what little time we have?

Poets will recognize "Wandering Aengus" as the title of a poem by Yeats.
Aengus is the Celtic god of love and poetic inspiration.
He was also the treasured cat of press founder Jill McCabe Johnson.
We hope readers will find something to love, treasure, and be inspired by in the books we publish.

Our Editors

Susan Kim
Campbell

Susan Kim Campbell is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work is published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Meridian, SmokeLong Quarterly, and the Mississippi Review, and forthcoming in the anthology Us Against Alzheimer’s: Stories of Family, Love, and Faith (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019).. Susan has been awarded artist residencies to the Millay Colony and Hedgebrook, among others, and won fellowships to the Writers@Work Conference, the Tomales Bay Writers Conference, and the Norman Mailer Center.

Kate Carroll de Gutes

Kate Carroll de Gutes is a genderqueer writer whose work explores sexuality and the qualities of gender identity and expression. Kate’s first book, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in Memoir. Their second book, The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons From the Best & Worst Year of My Life, based on Kate’s critically acclaimed blog, was released in September, 2017 and won an Independent Publishing Award medal in LGBTQ Nonfiction.

Gail
Folkins

Gail Folkins often writes about her deep roots in the American West. She is the author of two nonfiction books: Light in the Trees, a 2016 Foreword INDIES nature finalist and Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit, a 2007 INDIES popular culture finalist. Her essay “A Palouse Horse” was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2010. Folkins teaches creative writing at Hugo House in Seattle. Recent work can be found in Crab Creek Review and Deep Wild Journal.

Thomas
Larson

Julie
Riddle
Journalist, book/music critic, and memoirist, Thomas Larson is the author of Spirituality and the Writer: A Personal Inquiry, The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings", and The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative. He is a 25-year staff writer of longform journalism for the San Diego Reader, a 7-year book-review editor for River Teeth, and a former faculty member in the Ashland (Ohio) University MFA Program.
Julie Riddle is author of the memoir The Solace of Stones: Finding a Way through Wilderness . Her essay “Shadow Animals” appeared in The Georgia Review and received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. It was nominated for a National Magazine Award and appears in the anthology This Impermanent Earth. Her essay “If Swans Could Speak” appears in New England Review . A case study and interview about her literary editing expertise are featured in Invisible Art: A Field Guide to Literary Editing. She is a freelance nonfiction editor, providing line editing, copy editing, and proofreading services.

Tina
Schumann

Tina Schumann is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Boneyard Heresies, winner of the 2023 Moon City Press Poetry Award (Missouri State University); Praising the Paradox (Red Hen Press) a finalist in the National Poetry Series, and the Julie Suk Award among others; Requiem. A Patrimony of Fugues, winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition and As If (Parlor City Press) winner of the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. She is editor of the IPPY-award winning anthology Two Countries. U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen).
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Jill McCabe Johnson's most recent poetry book is Tangled in Vow & Beseech (MoonPath, 2024), finalist in the Sally Albiso Poetry Award and Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown was shortlisted for the Clara Johnson Award in Women's Literature. Her first poetry book, Diary of the One Swelling Sea, was awarded the Nautilus Silver Award in Poetry. Jill is also author of the poetry chapbook, Pendulum, finalist for the Rane Arroyo Prize in Poetry from Seven Kitchens Press, and the nonfiction chapbook, Borderlines., from Sweet Publications. Jill is the press's founder and Editor-in-Chief.