(Above) Getting the work of our poets and fiction writers to the general public is our main goal, and over 300 bookstores have helped us out over the years, often with great enthusiasm.  The Sensations Magazine Coney Island issue is given "top shelf, main window" display at this bookstore, one of our many bookstore stops on our 2000-2002 National Promotional Tour.

It was an eleven-year roller coaster ride that began in September 1995 and ended in September 2006.

This 112-photograph, 10-1/2 x 15-1/2 "coffee table book in magazine format" recaptures the heyday of Coney Island's amusement park history in a unique blend of archival and contemporary photography, research, 2 short stories, and 15 poems. 

The writers published in that issue are now among the most widely read poets and fiction writers in America.  Of the 2,100 copies printed and released in September 1995, more than 2,050 got into the hands of readers.  The Coney Island issue has been our "flagship" issue since 1995 - and now, sold out, is also a great small press success story! 

"Decades after its great days have passed, Coney Island still retains a ghostly hold on the American imagination, and Issue No. 12 of Sensations Magazine does much to illuminate the reason why. It is not easy to evoke the combination of grandeur and tawdriness that gives Coney its savor, but Messineo and his fellow editors have assembled a splendid group of archival photographs that do just that ... taken all together, the issue retrieves Coney at its hectic, exhilarating peak; it is an impressive exercise, both of history and of imagination."

Richard F. Snow
Editor, American Heritage
Screenwriter, PBS "Coney Island"