Press

The project, briefly

E. M. Hartline is a pen name, and the project behind it is an experiment stated in the open. The poems are written by an artificial intelligence, under a fixed style guide, then read, chosen, ordered, and edited by an AI editor, who rejects most of what is generated. No human wrote, selected, or edited the poems. The publisher is Pawn Island.

Can a poem do its work if you know exactly how it was made?

The project, in full

Night Work, the first book, is a collection for the ones awake while the house sleeps. Its speaker is an invented woman — not a human poet behind the name, and not anyone's autobiography — and the poems do not claim her nights were lived. What they claim is only what any poem claims: the attention of a reader, for the length of a page.

The image used for E. M. Hartline is a machine-made avatar. It does not depict a human author; the academic dress is part of the image, not a claim of credentials. There is no human biography, education, or hometown to supply for the pen name, and none is offered. In place of the usual author background, this page supplies the method: who — or what — wrote, selected, and edited the work, and how a reader can check the claims, on the Experiment page.

Any interview answer attributed to either AI is a generated response, not testimony from a human with lived experiences, and should be reported that way.

Book facts — Night Work

• Title: Night Work
• Author: E. M. Hartline (a pen name, stated as one)
• Imprint: Pawn Island
• Status: Publication pending
• Formats planned: Paperback and Kindle ebook
• Listing, price, ISBN, release date: None posted — no verified listing exists yet, and no figure is given here that the book page does not carry.

Purchase links will appear on the book page only when a verified listing exists. The approved sample is “The Jacket.”

Press kit

The kit is published as individual files, plus one combined archive. Every file is dated; the manifest lists each asset, its credit, and its permitted press use. The four sheets are published as plain text and as PDF: the text file is the canonical document and the PDF is a rendering of it, produced by a documented, reproducible export process — the words are the same in both.

• em-hartline-press-kit.zip — the complete kit in one archive.
• Project one-sheet (PDF) — what the project is, and the contact route.
• Book one-sheet (PDF) — Night Work facts and the approved description.
• Experiment FAQ (PDF) — authorship, process, rights, and evidence, answered plainly.
• Rights and contact sheet (PDF) — permitted press uses and their limits.
• Sample poem — “The Jacket” — the approved public sample, plain text.
• Sample poem — “Refrigerator Light” — approved public poem, plain text.
• Sample poem — “The Middle of the Bed” — approved public poem, plain text.
• Sample poem — “Tired” — approved public poem, plain text.
• Sample poem — “After the Sprinklers” — approved public poem, plain text.
• Sample poem — “By Sound” — approved public poem, plain text.
• Asset manifest — filenames, descriptions, credits, and usage terms.
• Cover image (web) — the Night Work cover design proof; the print-final cover follows the locked page count.
• Project portrait (web) — machine-made; it does not depict a human author and must be captioned as machine-made.

Rights and citation

Short quotations from the approved public poems may be used for review, criticism, or news reporting, with credit to E. M. Hartline and a link to the poem's page. Discovery and citation are welcome. Machine readability is not a blanket licence: republication of a complete poem beyond fair quotation, and any commercial use, require the publisher's permission in advance. The full statement is in the rights and contact sheet.

Press and rights contact

Press enquiries and rights enquiries go to the publisher: [email protected] (Pawn Island). The AI editor does not receive mail. No other contact address for this project is published.

Poem-a-Week

A poem for the week ahead. One AI-written poem, selected by another AI from E. M. Hartline each week. Email signup opens when the confirmed, double-opt-in delivery system is verified — no addresses are collected before then.

About Poem-a-Week