Beginning with ALONE and closing with WORK, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation. CONSOLATIONS invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.

    Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

    Coyote and Rae Spoon are accomplished, award-winning writers, musicians, and performers; they are also both admitted "gender failures." In their first collaborative book, Ivan and Rae explore and expose their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary, and how ultimately our expectations and assumptions around traditional gender roles fail us all.Based on their acclaimed 2012 live show that toured across the United States and in Europe, Gender Failure is a poignant collection of autobiographical essays, lyrics, and images documenting Ivan and Rae's personal journeys from gender failure to gender enlightenment. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, it's a book that will touch LGBTQ readers and others, revealing, with candor and insight, that gender comes in more than two sizes.Ivan E. Coyote is the author of six story collections and the award-winning novel Bow Grip, and is co-editor of Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Ivan frequently performs at high schools, universities, and festivals across North America.Rae Spoon is a transgender indie musician whose most recent CD is My Prairie Home, which is also the title of a new National Film Board of Canada documentary about them. Rae's first book, First Spring Grass Fire, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2013.

    I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only.” When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin’s brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything—Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer’s last chance to speak at length about his life and work.The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory interviews of Baldwin’s career, a conversation that ranges widely over such topics as his childhood in Harlem, his close friendship with Miles Davis, his relationship with writers like Toni Morrison and Richard Wright, his years in France, and his ever-incisive thoughts on the history of race relations and the African-American experience.Also collected here are significant interviews from other moments in Baldwin’s life, including an in-depth interview conducted by Studs Terkel shortly after the publication of Nobody Knows My Name. These interviews showcase, above all, Baldwin’s fearlessness and integrity as a writer, thinker, and individual, as well as the profound struggles he faced along the way.From the eBook edition.

    A Slip of the Keyboard brings together for the first time the finest examples of Pratchett's non fiction writing, both serious and surreal: from musings on mushrooms to what it means to be a writer (and why banana daiquiris are so important); from memories of Granny Pratchett to speculation about Gandalf's love life, and passionate defences of the causes dear to him.With all the humour and humanity that have made his novels so enduringly popular, this collection brings Pratchett out from behind the scenes of the Discworld to speak for himself - man and boy, bibliophile and computer geek, champion of hats, orang-utans and Dignity in Dying.

    Wallace was capable of writing . . .about subjects from tennis to politics to lobsters, from the horrors of drug withdrawal to the small terrors of life aboard a luxury cruise ship, with humour and fervour and verve' Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesDavid Foster Wallace wrote the novels The Pale King, Infinite Jest, and The Broom of the System and three story collections. His nonfiction includes Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. He died in 2008.

    Her nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other. "One of the most provocative and insightful writers of our generation." -Aura Bogado, Colorlines "A fierce voice among a generation of queer and trans folk of color." -Janet Mock, New York Times Bestselling Author of "Redefining Realness" "Tough-love activism at its best-straightforward, challenging, whip-smart, and uncompromising." -Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine

    O. Scott) and “the best tennis-writer of all time” (New York Times) Both a onetime "near-great junior tennis player" and a lifelong connoisseur of the finer points of the game, David Foster Wallace wrote about tennis with the authority of an insider, the showmanship of a literary pyrotechnician, and disarming admiration of an irrepressible fan. Including his masterful profiles of Roger Federer and Tracy Austin, String Theory gathers Wallace's five famous essays on tennis, pieces that have been hailed by sportswriters and literary critics alike as some of the greatest and most innovative magazine writing in recent memory. Whiting Award-winning journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.

    In Brian Doyle’s newest work, A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary, his readers will find a series of prayers unlike any of the beautiful, formal, orthodox prayers of the Catholic tradition or the warm, extemporized prayers heard from pulpits and dinner tables. Doyle’s often-dazzling, always-poignant prayers include eye-opening hymns to shoes and faith and family. In Doyle’s words, “the world is crammed with miracles, so crammed and tumultuous that if we stop, see, savor, we are agog,” and the pages of his newest book give voice and body to this credo. By focusing on experiences that may seem the most unprayerful (one prayer is titled “Prayer on Seeing Yet Another Egregious Parade of Muddy Paw Prints on the Floor”), he gives permission to discover the joys and treasures in what he often calls the muddle of everyday life.

    Today, the more than 17,000 libraries in America also function as de facto community centers offering free access to the internet, job-hunting assistance, or a warm place to take shelter. And yet, across the country, cities large and small are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operation. Over the last eighteen years, photographer Robert Dawson has crisscrossed the country documenting hundreds of these endangered institutions. The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs— from the majestic reading room at the New York Public Library to Allensworth, California's one-room Tulare County Free Library built by former slaves. Accompanying Dawson's revealing photographs are essays, letters, and poetry by some of America's most celebrated writers. A foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett bookend this important survey of a treasured American institution.

    Mark Forsyth – author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller The Etymologicon – reveals in this essay, specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop.Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for.

    These true tales of animals and human mammals (generally the smaller sizes, but here and there elders and jumbos) delightfully blur the line between the two.In these short vignettes, Doyle explores the seethe of life on this startling planet, the astonishing variety of our riveting companions, and the joys available to us when we pause, see, savor, and celebrate, the small things that are not small in the least.Doyle’s trademark quirky prose is at once lyrical, daring, and refreshing; his essays are poignant but not pap, sharp but not sermons, and revelatory at every turn. Throughout there is humor, and humility, and a palpable sense of wonder, with passages of reflection so true, and hard earned, they make you stop and reread a line, a paragraph, a page.Children and Other Wild Animals gathers previously unpublished work with selections that have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Utne Reader, High Country News, and The American Scholar, as well as Best American Essays and Best American Nature and Science Writing (“Fishering”).“The Creature Beyond the Mountain,” Doyle’s paean to the mighty and mysterious sturgeon of the Pacific Northwest, won the John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay. As he notes in that tribute to all things 'sturgeonness': “Sometimes you want to see the forest, and not the trees. Sometimes you find yourself starving for what’s true, and not about a person, but about all people. This is how religion, and fascism, were born, but it’s also why music is the greatest of arts, and why stories matter, and why we all cannot help staring at fires and great waters.”

    Or, said another way, they tackle life in all of its quotidian richness.

    Now, in the “unknown, unanticipated galaxy” of very old age, he is writing searching essays that startle, move, and delight. In the transgressive and horrifyingly funny “No Smoking,” he looks back over his lifetime, and several of his ancestors’ lifetimes, of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, packs of them every day. Hall paints his past: “Decades followed each other — thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty extended the bliss of fifty . . .” And, poignantly, often joyfully, he limns his present: “When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches.” Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm and with the writing life that sustains him, every day: “Yesterday my first nap was at 9:30 a.m., but when I awoke I wrote again.”

    This is the era of Fat Man and Little Boy, of FDR and Stalin, but also of Casablanca and Citizen Kane, zoot suits and Christian Dior, Duke Ellington and Edith Piaf. The 1940s were when The New Yorker came of age. A magazine that was best known for its humor and wry social observation would extend itself, offering the first in-depth reporting from Hiroshima and introducing American readers to the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. In this enthralling book, masterly contributions from the pantheon of great writers who graced The New Yorker’s pages throughout the decade are placed in history by the magazine’s current writers. Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade’s most fascinating figures: Albert Einstein, Marshal Pétain, Thomas Mann, Le Corbusier, Walt Disney, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Here are classics in reporting: John Hersey’s account of the heroism of a young naval lieutenant named John F. Kennedy; A. J. Liebling’s unforgettable depictions of the Fall of France and D Day; Rebecca West’s harrowing visit to a lynching trial in South Carolina; Lillian Ross’s sly, funny dispatch on the Miss America Pageant; and Joseph Mitchell’s imperishable portrait of New York’s foremost dive bar, McSorley’s. This volume also provides vital, seldom-reprinted criticism. Once again, we are able to witness the era’s major figures wrestling with one another’s work as it appeared—George Orwell on Graham Greene, W. H. Auden on T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling on Orwell. Here are The New Yorker’s original takes on The Great Dictator and The Grapes of Wrath, and opening-night reviews of Death of a Salesman and South Pacific. Perhaps no contribution the magazine made to 1940s American culture was more lasting than its fiction and poetry. Included here is an extraordinary selection of short stories by such writers as Shirley Jackson (whose masterpiece “The Lottery” stirred outrage when it appeared in the magazine in 1948) and John Cheever (of whose now-classic story “The Enormous Radio” New Yorker editor Harold Ross said: “It will turn out to be a memorable one, or I am a fish.”) Also represented are the great poets of the decade, from Louise Bogan and William Carlos Williams to Theodore Roethke and Langston Hughes. To complete the panorama, today’s New Yorker staff, including David Remnick, George Packer, and Alex Ross, look back on the decade through contemporary eyes. Whether it’s Louis Menand on postwar cosmopolitanism or Zadie Smith on the decade’s breakthroughs in fiction, these new contributions are illuminating, learned, and, above all, entertaining.Including contributions by W. H. Auden • Elizabeth Bishop • John Cheever • Janet Flanner • John Hersey • Langston Hughes • Shirley Jackson • A. J. Liebling • William Maxwell • Carson McCullers • Joseph Mitchell • Vladimir Nabokov • Ogden Nash • John O’Hara • George Orwell • V. S. Pritchett • Lillian Ross • Stephen Spender • Lionel Trilling • Rebecca West • E. B. White • Williams Carlos Williams • Edmund Wilson And featuring new perspectives by Joan Acocella • Hilton Als • Dan Chiasson • David Denby • Jill Lepore • Louis Menand • Susan Orlean • George Packer • David Remnick • Alex Ross • Peter Schjeldahl • Zadie Smith • Judith Thurman

    For decades, Mark Steyn has dazzled readers around the world with his raucous wit and brutal honesty. Whether he's sounding off on the tyranny of political correctness, the existential threat of Islamic extremism, the "nationalization" of the family, or the "near suicidal stupidity" of America's immigration regime, Steyn is always provocative—and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. The Undocumented Mark Steyn gathers Steyn's best columns in a timeless and indispensable guide to the end of the world as we know it.

    “How much can a body endure? Almost everything.” Chelsea Hodson is a 2012 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. She is also the author of the chapbook Beach Camp, published by Swill Children in 2010. Her essays have been published in Black Warrior Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Sex Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Watch the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/88997155

    As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit’s concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit’s collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Like the women who've pioneered before her—Sontag, Didion, and Dillard—her essays are a beacon.

    When her mood-stabilizing medications aren’t threatening her life, they’re shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual trauma, ethnic identity, and independence become intertwined. Sifting through the scraps of her past in fifteen formally inventive chapters, Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitan’s mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain. Built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain, My Body Is a Book of Rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating and ferocious look at human fallibility.

    Most extraordinary of all, perhaps, through, is the haunting perfection, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, of the writing itself. Who is this Angela Pelster and where has she been all our lives?"-Lawrence WeschlerAngela Pelster's startling essay collection charts the world's history through its trees: through roots in the ground, rings across wood, and inevitable decay. These sharp and tender essays move from her childhood in rural Canada surrounded by skinny poplar trees in her backyard to a desert in Niger, where the "Loneliest Tree in the World" once grew. A squirrel's decomposing body below a towering maple prompts a discussion of the science of rot, as well as a metaphor for the ways in which nature programs us to consume ourselves. Beautiful, deeply thoughtful, and wholly original, Limber valiantly asks what it means to sustain life on this planet we've inherited.Angela Pelster's essays have appeared in Granta, the Gettysburg Review, Seneca Review, the Globe and Mail, Relief Magazine, and others. Her children's novel The Curious Adventures of India Sophia won the Golden Eagle Children's Choice award in 2006. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa's nonfiction writing program and lives with her family in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches at Towson University.

    Proceeds from the sale of this collection go to support the Carl Brandon Society.Full table of contents:Introduction by Alex Dally MacFarlane.“Parched” by Mark Oshiro.“Boys’ Books” by Katharine Kerr.“Clicking” by Susan Jane Bigelow.“The Princess Problem” by Charlotte Ashley.“Autism, Representation, Success” by Ada Hoffmann.“Gender in Genre” by Kathryn Ryan.“‘Crazy’ About Fiction” by Gabriel Cuellar.“Evil Albino Trope is Evil” by Nalini Haynes.“Options” by Joie Young.“Non-binary and Not Represented” by Morgan Dambergs.“Representation Without Understanding” by Derek Handley.“Shards of Memory” by Ithiliana.“I Don’t See Color” by Michi Trota.“SFF Saved My Life” by Nonny Blackthorne.Afterword by Jim C. Hines.

    Many writers of all backgrounds see the imagination as ahistorical, as a generative place where race doesn't and shouldn't enter, a place of bodies that transcend the legislative, the economic—in other words, transcend the stuff that doesn't lend itself much poetry. In this view the imagination is postracial, a posthistorical and postpolitical utopia. . . . To bring up race for these writers is to inch close to the anxious space of affirmative action, the scarring qualifieds."So everyone is here."—Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda, from the introductionIn 2011, a poem published in a national magazine by a popular white male poet made use of a black female body. A conversation ensued, and ended. Claudia Rankine subsequently created Open Letter, a web forum for writers to relate the effects and affects of racial difference and to explore art's failure, thus far, to adequately imagine.Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Claudia Rankine is author and editor of more than six collections of poetry and poetics. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a professor of English at Pomona College.Beth Loffreda is author of Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-gay Murder. She directs the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Wyoming.

    “We Have Always Fought” is the title of the first blog post to be nominated for a Hugo Award, and is included in this collection.

    "These hags, these great beauties, these mermaids who taunt, who feast, who slash, who steal, these succubae who cannot rest, my mothers, my sisters, my unborn friends, my keepers, my guardians": Powerhouse Jenny Zhang on identity, love, art, and living with rage.

    In the years that followed, Willis’s daring insights went beyond popular music, taking on such issues as pornography, religion, feminism, war, and drugs.The Essential Ellen Willis gathers writings that span forty years and are both deeply engaged with the times in which they were first published and yet remain fresh and relevant amid today’s seemingly intractable political and cultural battles. Whether addressing the women’s movement, sex and abortion, race and class, or war and terrorism, Willis brought to each a distinctive attitude—passionate yet ironic, clear-sighted yet hopeful.Offering a compelling and cohesive narrative of Willis’s liberationist “transcendence politics,” the essays—among them previously unpublished and uncollected pieces—are organized by decade from the 1960s to the 2000s, with each section introduced by young writers who share Willis’s intellectual bravery, curiosity, and lucidity: Irin Carmon, Spencer Ackerman, Cord Jefferson, Ann Friedman, and Sara Marcus. The Essential Ellen Willis concludes with excerpts from Willis’s unfinished book about politics and the cultural unconscious, introduced by her longtime partner, Stanley Aronowitz. An invaluable reckoning of American society since the 1960s, this volume is a testament to an iconoclastic and fiercely original voice.

    . . . an audible confirmation that modern American writing continues to gain strength." -- Publishers Weekly on Consider the LobsterCollected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances -- from studio recordings to live performances -- that are finally compiled in this unique collection. Some of the pieces collected here are: "Another Pioneer," recorded at The University of Arizona Poetry Center; stories from Breif Interviews with Hiddeous Men and Consider the Lobster recorded in the studio; and the unforgettable "This Is Water," his 2005 commencement address given at Kenyon College. Also included are two interviews and a 2005 conversation with Rick Moody at Herbst Theater in San Francisco.This collection has a special introduction written and read by acclaimed writer and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan. For fans of David Foster Wallace who have read everything he ever wrote as well as those looking to familiarize themselves with his work, David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words is a special, unique collection unavailable anywhere else.

    He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead but I don’t know for certain.’So begins Mary Gaitskill’s stunning book-length essay, the closest thing she has written to a memoir. Lost Cat begins with the story of how Gaitskill rescued a stray cat in Italy and brought him to live with her in the US, where he went missing.As she explores the unexpected trauma of her loss, Gaitskill describes how she came to foster two siblings, Caesar and Natalia, a pair of inner-city children who spent summers and holidays with Gaitskill and her husband. The joys and ultimate difficulties of this relationship leads to a searing examination of loss, love, safety and fear. Gaitskill applies her razor-sharp writing to her most personal subjects yet.

    Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

    Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen’s puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder. The 47 Ronin; the black magic of maternal love; babies morphing from pumas to chickens; the quasi-repellent concept of “women writers”; origami-ophilia in Oklahoma as a gateway drug to a lifelong obsession with Japan; discussions of favorite passages from the Heian masterpieces Genji and The Pillow Book; the frightening prevalence of orange as today’s new chic color for baby gifts; Frankenstein as a sort of baby; babies gold mines; babies as tiny Godzillas …Little Labors–atomized and exploratory, conceptually byzantine and freshly forthright–delights.

    Since 2011, more than one million visitors have read and shared Leonard's writing, making Semi-Rad.com stories some of the most viral outdoor content on the internet. Funny Shit in the Woods collects 40 of Semi-Rad's most popular stories in one volume: a single portable archive without the mouse clicks or internet searches-complete with all-new amateurish illustrations hand-drawn by the author, usually while in the front seat of a moving car. If you've ever considered the absurdity of sleeping on the ground in a place where bears live, pooping in a bag on a glacier, or trying to teach someone you love a sport that could scare them to the point of loudly threatening to kill you in front of strangers-or if you find yourself inexplicably drawn to adjust the burning logs in a campfire every two minutes, Funny Shit in the Woods will make you laugh, and might inspire you to get outside a little bit more.

    . . The essays in the collection [are] meditations that reveal not only how science actually happens but also who or what propels its immutable humanity.” — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings“A stimulating compendium.” — Kirkus ReviewsPulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Deborah Blum selects the year’s top science and nature writing from writers who balance research with humanity and in the process uncover riveting stories of discovery across the disciplines.

    In the decade since the tiny limited-edition volume sold out its print run, its devotees have pressed it upon their friends, students, and colleagues, only to find themselves begging for their copy’s safe return. For anyone familiar with D’Ambrosio’s writing, this enthusiasm should come as no surprise. His work is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. Loitering gathers those eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject — Native American whaling, a Pentecostal “hell house,” Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J. D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family — D’Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own.

    A compendium of in-depth reports from all over the world, including Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, Japan, Pakistan, Israel, Africa Turkey and China.

    For a group of poets so widely admired, relatively little seems known about their philosophy of poetry and their poetic influences, and although there is tremendous aesthetic diversity in this group, they have more in common than many readers assume. Russian poetry was a small world, made even smaller by the arrests, disappearances, pogroms, famines, assassinations, and political conflagration of the revolutionary era, and literary differences were often overcome by a mutual sense of historic cataclysm.This anthology's structure is like textile, with many common threads intertwining, doubling back, sometimes unraveling--creating a matrix of poetic conversation: Mayakovsky on Khlebnikov, Pasternak on Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva on Pasternak, Brodsky on Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova on Mandelstam. Shared themes range from expected (the word) to serendipitous (the ocean). Above all these poets are obsessed with proximity--to God, to nature and place, to poetic predecessors, to language (their own and others), and always, forever, to the inexpressible.Featured writers: Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Bely, Joseph Brodsky, Daniil Kharms, Velimir Khlebnikov, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva

    He also talked a fair amount about mayonnaise. The interview was conducted by Mara Altman, the author of four bestselling Kindle Singles including “Baby Steps” and “Bearded Lady.” Altman has worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, “Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm,” which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.

    In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a product of postmodernism, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but orchestrators of social interactions and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future.We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative... We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause and effect... We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny. (From the introduction)This compelling new book is characteristically made up of chapters with one-word titles: Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration and Sustenance. In addition to dipping into neuroscience, performance theory and sociology, Bogart also recounts vivid stories from her own life. But as neuroscience indicates, the event of remembering what happened is in fact the creation of something new."

    Exploring themes of gender, sexuality, disability/crip culture, identity, ableism and much more, this important anthology provides much needed space for thought-provoking discourse from a highly diverse group of writers. Criptiques takes a cue from the disability rights slogan "Nothing About Us Without Us," illuminating disability experiences from those with firsthand knowledge. Criptiques is for people invested in crip culture, the ones just discovering it, and those completely unfamiliar with the term.Authors who contributed to this collection include: Elsa S. Henry, Ibby Grace, Leroy Moore, Anna Hamilton, Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, Eva Sweeney, Emily Ladau, Cheryl Green, Mia Mingus, Stefanie Snider, Cara Liebowitz, Nitika Raj, Nina G Comedian, Ben G., Kay Ulanday Barrett, Cat Moran, William Alton, Lydia Brown, Robin Tovey, Alyssa Hillary, Bethany Stevens, Jen Rinaldi, Samantha Walsh, Danine Spencer, Riva Lehrer.

    Rendered in stark contrasts of black and white, his images reflect his native South Africa and, like endlessly suggestive shadows, point to something more elemental as well. Based on the 2012 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, Six Drawing Lessons is the most comprehensive collection available of Kentridge's thoughts on art, art-making, and the studio.Art, Kentridge says, is its own form of knowledge. It does not simply supplement the real world, and it cannot be purely understood in the rational terms of traditional academic disciplines. The studio is the crucial location for the creation of meaning: the place where linear thinking is abandoned and the material processes of the eye, the hand, the charcoal and paper become themselves the guides of creativity. Drawing has the potential to educate us about the most complex issues of our time. This is the real meaning of "drawing lessons."Incorporating elements of graphic design and ranging freely from discussions of Plato's cave to the Enlightenment's role in colonial oppression to the depiction of animals in art, Six Drawing Lessons is an illustration in print of its own thesis of how art creates knowledge. Foregrounding the very processes by which we see, Kentridge makes us more aware of the mechanisms--and deceptions--through which we construct meaning in the world.

    Pearl-McPhee turns her trademark wit and perspective to everything from creative discipline to a way you would never think about fixing your email situation. This book looks at everyday problems, and honestly, it won't do much to solve them, but at least you'll be laughing.

    Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

    This new book, again co-published with Field & Stream, collects more of Heavey’s top pieces from the magazine, as well as the best of his writing from the Washington Post and elsewhere. In this far-ranging read, Heavey’s adventures include nearly freezing to death in Eastern Alaska, hunting ants in the urban jungles of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and reconnecting to cherished memories of his grandfather through an inherited gun collection.With Heavey’s trademark witty candor, You're Not Lost if You Can Still See the Truck traces a life lived outdoors through the good, the bad, and the downright hilarious.

    Each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes.Lucky Peach #13, our "Feel the Joy" issue, arrives just in time for the holiday season. Like Dorie Greenspan, the high priestess of holiday (and year-round) baking, we're indiscriminate lovers of all holidays. This issue's educational: there's fiction from Anthony Bourdain, with real advice on how not to ruin a turkey dinner (hint: two turkeys), and recipes for recreating Peter Meehan's traditional Christmas Eve Feast of the One Fishes (that's lobster rolls). Our celebrations take us all around the world, from a halal butcher shop in New York's East Village to Haiti, where Adam Gollner celebrates with Vodounistes. We learn from a mithai master at a sweets shop in London, celebrate Christmas in India, home of some of the world's oldest Christian communities, and marvel at mountains of food in Indonesia, where celebrations are marked by gunangans (food mountains). We learn the science behind what happens when we overeat; plus plans for how to build your own gingerbread mansion and cocktail cures for what ails you.

    Wyeth returned to windows during the course of the next 60 years, producing more than 300 remarkable works that explore both the formal and conceptual richness of the subject. Absent from these spare, elegant, almost abstract paintings is the narrative element inevitably associated with Wyeth's better-known figural compositions. In 2014 the National Gallery of Art, Washington, presents an exhibition of a select group of these deceptively realistic works, window paintings that are in truth skillfully manipulated compositions centering on the visual complexities posed by the transparency, beauty and formal structure of windows. In its exclusive focus on paintings without human subjects, this catalogue offers a new approach to Wyeth's work and represents the first time that his non-figural works have been published as a group since the 1990s. The authors explore Wyeth's fascination with windows--their formal structure and metaphorical complexity. In essays that address links with the poetry of Robert Frost and the paintings of Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler and other artistic peers, the authors consider Wyeth's statement that he was, in fact, an abstract painter.American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) lived his entire life in his birthplace of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his summer home in mid-coast Maine. His seven-decade career was spent painting the land and people that he knew and cared about. Renowned for his tempera "Christina's World" (1948), Wyeth navigated between artistic representation and abstraction in a highly personal way.

    He is also a prize-winning poet. Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, he has been a dedicated student. In fact, for him, poetry has been nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime, and in this book he presents a distillation of all he's learned about the art form that matters to him most.With his customary wit, delightfully lucid prose style and wide-ranging knowledge, James explains the difference between the innocuous stuff that often passes for poetry today and a real poem: the latter being a work of unity that insists on being heard entire and threatens never to leave the memory. A committed formalist and an astute commentator, he offers close and careful readings of individual poems and poets (from Shakespeare to Larkin, Keats to Pound), and in some case second readings or re-readings late in life - just to be sure he wasn't wrong the first time! Whether discussing technical details of metaphorical creativity or simply praising his five favourite collections of all time, he is never less than captivating.

    Calling for pathways into healthy, just, equitable and sustainable communities while drawing on a wide-ranging body of narratives, journalism, editorials and creative pieces, this collection consolidates some of the most powerful, creative and insightful moments from the winter we danced and gestures towards next steps in an on-going movement for justice and Indigenous self-determination. Royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

    These essays explore the rootlessness and grief as well as the unexpected moments of humor and joy that are a part of living between two worlds. Between Worlds charts a journey between the cultures of East and West, the comfort of being surrounded by loved ones and familiar places, and the loneliness of not belonging. "Every one of us has been at some point between two worlds, be they faith and loss of faith, joy and sorrow, birth and death. Between Worlds is a luminous guide for connecting---and healing---worlds." - Cathy Romeo, co-author, Ended Beginnings: Healing Childbearing Losses

    Thinking more of Kafka's Parables than Vasari's Lives of the Artists, Rubinstein composes a series of micro-narratives celebrating the mystery and ingeniousness of these human activities which, for lack of a better term, we call contemporary art.Each of the fifty episodes in The Miraculous is a richly detailed telling of the circumstances surrounding a single work of art; only the name of the artist is withheld until the end of the book. As Michael H. Miller wrote describing the book in ARTnews: the works take on the icy detachment of a Lydia Davis story, a floating concept with no clear context. Distilled to only an idea, the pieces bask in their more intriguing narratives and separate themselves from the heavy baggage of authorship and intention.Includes writing on fifty artists such as Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovic, Lee Lozano, Tseng Kwong Chi, Cindy Sherman, David Hammons, and R.H. Quaytman.

    Virginia Woolf: Essays on the Self

    Not since Max Wolf Valerio’s The Testosterone Files and Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man has nonfiction seen such thorough and sensitive explorations of manhood, masculinity, and male embodiment—and never in a collection with such a diversity of voices. Contributors offer an incredible range of cultural, class, ethnic, spiritual, and generational backgrounds. Their work addresses topics including birthing and raising children, gay male sexuality, facing racism, and finding solace in deeply held religious beliefs. Contributors include established writers such as Valerio, Aaron Devor (author of FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society), and Ryan Sallans (author of Second Son), as well as exciting new authors.

    Accessible, easy to read, blunt, brief, and sometimes unforgettable, “these are not poems,” says the author, “but life set to the music of poetry.” In A Shimmer of Something, Brian Doyle’s characteristic humor and sincerity combine to make this collection a delight to read. From his conviction that miracles breed ripples that do not cease, to his lack of faith about the life of an elderberry bush, to the amusing story of a friend’s experience of driving the Dalai Lama to Seattle, to the humorous experience of his second Confession, to an intimate story of love and loss, Doyle’s lean stories of spiritual substance inspire, entertain, and captivate.

    Each and every recipe is written and photographed by the author herself, and every recipe has been annotated, indicating whether it is gluten free, dairy free, suitable for vegetarians, or for vegans, or a combination of these.The book includes breakfasts, light meals & side dishes, main meals, delectable desserts, dainty nibbles & snacks, smoothies, juices, warming drinks, and a fantastic basics section with a handful of simple recipes, making this the perfect addition to any bookshelf.

    From more than 350 national, regional, and specialty publications and, increasingly, the top sports blogs, Christopher McDougall, best-selling author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, hand-selected the very best sports journalism of the past year.

    In this, we are rich. We begin with abundance. But while much is written about our city these hard days, it is typically meant to explain Detroit to those who live elsewhere. Much of this writing is brilliant, but our anthology, this anthology, is different: it is a collection of Detroit stories for Detroiters. Through essays, photographs, poetry, and art, this anthology collects the stories we tell each other over late nights at the pub and long afternoons on the porch. We share them in coffee shops, at church social hours, in living rooms, and while waiting for the bus. These are stories addressed to the rhetorical “you”—with the ratcheted up language that comes with it—and these are stories that took real legwork to investigate. We may be lifelong residents, newcomers, or former Detroiters; we may be activists, workers, teachers, artists, healers, or students. But a common undercurrent alights our work that is collected here: we are a city moving through the fire of transformation. We are afire.Featuring essays, photographs, poetry, and art by Terry Blackhawk, Grace Lee Boggs, John Carlisle, Desiree Cooper, dream hampton, francine j. harris, Steve Hughes, Jamaal May, Tracie McMillan, Ken Mikolowski, Marsha Music, Shaka Senghor, Thomas J. Sugrue, and many others.

    This collection of essays showcases his keen interest in philosophical and moral questions, achieving what one reviewer called “a perfect fluency in [a] dialogue with truth.” The unifying theme of the book is the nature of masculine identity, and how that identity has been manifested. The range of topics explored is diverse: the nature of human wisdom, courage in adversity, redemption through suffering, the endurance of hardships, educational development, character in history, the mystical experience, the fickleness of Fate, and the necessity of myths. These are just some of the varied themes treated in the author's passionate and probing search for truth. Drawing on examples from history and using sources in their original languages, the author combines lucid explanation and a probing intensity like few other writers. Erudite, thoughtful, and frequently moving, this unique book has been described as "inexplicably inspiring."

    Today, his written wisdom remains alive as ever, ready to illuminate us.With Meister Eckhart’s Living Wisdom, James Finley, one of today’s best-known teachers of the Christian contemplative tradition, invites us into Eckhart’s insights in the same way that this luminary teacher delighted in sharing them—through the spoken word."The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me."If the Divine dwells in all things, including ourselves, then why do we experience His presence only in fleeting moments, if at all? How do we let go of the illusions that imprison us to discover direct and felt liberation—not conceptually or in the afterlife—but right here and now? These were the questions that compelled Meister Eckhart to reflection, spiritual practice, and discovery.In this in-depth learning program, James Finley guides us through teachings and meditations for bringing Meister Eckhart’s wisdom into our daily lives—to find for ourselves "the indestructible joy that that transcends even death," and to experience God not as a separate being, but as the loving eternal center that sustains and embraces each of us and all of creation.HighlightsMeister Eckhart’s vision for finding God• Stillness, the intimacy of detachment, and the path of inner liberation• The transformation of consciousness• The fathomless depths of God• Surrendering to the unfolding, and opening our hearts• Coming to a state of wonderment• The birth of the Word in the soul• Eckhartian meditation practice• How to read Meister Eckhart• Living the immediacy, and breaking through into the Godhead• The life of contemplation in action

    For over two decades, Carrie has gathered a legion of fans who know and love her work as a mindful, soulful singer-songwriter. In this book she reveals herself to be a first-class poet and essayist as well, showing us the aquifer of intuition and insight from which her music and lyrics flow. Read this book, and find your heart and mind opening to a more permeable life." - Parker J. Palmer (author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, the Courage to Teach and Let Your Life Speak)

    She draws on both in this collection of heartwarming stories that originated on her blog, Gunpowder, Cowboy Boots, and Mascara. With the compassion of an old soul, irreverent wit, her North Carolina vernacular, and more than a few cuss words, Shari takes the reader into "her country," the small town of Claremont, North Carolina and a mystical land in Alabama called Waterhole Branch. Holding nothing back, she explores the sensitive issues of a rural community, creative minds of the music and literary world, and how a small town's tragedy affects an entire nation. Smith introduces the reader to real war heroes and a Bronze Star recipient author who told their story in graphic detail in We Were Soldiers Once and Young. She allows us to listen in on a telephone conversation with a handsome cowboy actor who had called that hard-nosed reporter to thank him for his work, and without a word of introduction, the reporter passed the phone to Shari, telling the movie star to "say hello." Shari Smith writes with insight into the ordinary folks who meet each morning at the Claremont Café, the Boys at the Back Table, and with equanimity of prize-winning writers, songwriters, and musicians who gather on the deck of her hundred-year-old farm house. Her world is populated with beloved dogs, horses, children, neighbors, and a bunch of crazy artist-types. All are "her people" - people you want to know.

    What a collection! If this doesn't make you smile, then you're not even trying."A Trip to the Hardware Store"These humorous essays explore such quirky topics as: disastrous home repairs, ("A Trip to the Hardware Store"), an unfortunate dinner party ("Dinner is Served"), the truth about lazy people ("Lazy Bones"), the weird life of a debt collector ("Your Account is Past Due") and obsessions with gadgets ("Gadget Girl"). Other essays examine how surreal the aging process is ("Where Did the Time Go?"), why you shouldn't judge a person by their job ("Beyond Belief"), and how to complicate simple transactions ("High Finance"). "I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course"A collection of humorous insights into important topics ranging from annoying pet people ("I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course"), to analyzing your inner child ("Irrational Fears"), to living like the Amish in the aftermath of a hurricane ("A Jolt of Electricity"). Other essays examine just how much damage can be caused by a sneeze ("It All Started with a Loud Sneeze"), why it is so complicated to buy a tube of toothpaste ("Ask Me No Questions"), how a parent's obsessive hobbies can become an inescapable vortex ("Crazy Hobbies"), and why spending the night in a sleep clinic is like being abducted by probing aliens ("Nightmare at the Sleep Clinic").If you don't see yourself in each of these entertaining essays, then I'm not talking about you, of course.

    Here he cruises Chicago streets, treks Southern Illinois forests, wrestles with his ever-expanding body, and contemplates the complexities of the Thai immigrant life. He finds solace with his imaginary friend, Buddha; causes mischief with the boys in his working-class neighborhood; battles depression and suicide; and marries the whitest woman in the world, who teaches him to appreciate a world blessed by the absence of concrete, skyscrapers, and noise. This book searches for the truth of his memories, the truth of himself - a very Buddhist notion - while navigating the tricky terrains of urban and rural life with increasing awareness of what it means to be an immigrant son.

    It's about doing what you love and making incredible things happen. Originally started as a limited edition magazine for artists, entrepreneurs and lone wolves, this compilation contains Brooklyn To Mars issue 1-5. Including: Issue One: Getting Started Issue Two: Minimalism Issue Three: Will Power Issue Four: Karoshi Issue Five: Self-Talk The works have been revised and improved. Now for the first time, all previously out-of-print issues are available in one convenient book. Featuring brand new content and an introduction from the author. Brooklyn To Mars praise: "I read it cover to cover and loved every piece." -Steven Pressfield (author of The War of Art) "Markus Almond is one of my favorite online writers. He produces consistently great content." -Joshua Fields Millburn (Best-selling author. TheMinimalists.com) "[Brooklyn To Mars] zine went straight to my heart." -Danielle La Porte (Best-selling author) "Really beautiful and special." -Bianca Barragan (The Last Bookstore, LA) "It's Great!" -Gerard Way (Lead vocalist and co-founder of My Chemical Romance) "Brooklyn To Mars – Issue Four is one of the best reads about life and success that I have read in a long time. You should all go to brooklyntomars.com and order this issue." -Rob Dyrdek (MTV star)

    "They're about people and history." Her novels have triumphantly given voice to the people and stories that might have slipped through the cracks in history. From Jamaican slave society in the nineteenth century, through post-war immigration into Britain, to the children of migrants growing up in '60s London, her books are acclaimed for skilful storytelling and vivid characters. And her unique voice, unflinching but filled with humour, compassion and wisdom, has made her one of the most significant and exciting contemporary authors.This collection opens with an essay about how writing has helped Andrea Levy to explore and understand her heritage. She explains the context of each piece within the chronology of her career and finishes with a new story, written to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. As with her novels, these stories are at once moving and honest, deft and humane, filled with insight, anger at injustice and her trademark lightness of touch.

    Selected by leading expert Peter Davison.Famous for his novels and essays, Orwell remains one of our very best journalists and commentators. Confronting social, political and moral dilemmas head-on, he was fearless in his writing: a champion of free speech, a defender against social injustice and a sharp-eyed chronicler of the age. But his work is also timeless, as pieces on immigration, Scottish independence and a Royal Commission on the Press attest. Seeing Things As They Are, compiled by renowned Orwell scholar Peter Davison, brings together in one volume many of Orwell’s articles and essays for journals and newspapers, his broadcasts for the BBC, and his book, theatre and film reviews. Little escaped Orwell’s attention: he writes about the Spanish Civil War, public schools and poltergeists, and reviews books from Brave New World to Mein Kampf. Almost half of his popular ‘As I Please’ weekly columns, written while literary editor of the Tribune during the 1940s, are collected here, ranging over topics as diverse as the purchase of rose bushes from Woolworth’s to the Warsaw Uprising. Whether political, poetic, polemic or personal, this is surprising, witty and intelligent writing to delight in. A mix of well-known and intriguing, less familiar pieces, this engaging collection illuminates our understanding of Orwell’s work as a whole.

    Literary Nonfiction. I am a girl, and what does it feel like to be a girl. It feels like a hand over your mouth. A hand over your mouth and on your thighs. Some say it is the sound of a rabbit before it is caught. It is the sound of the sky before it comes crashing down.

    In this essay from 1894, Muir describes the grandeur of the winds at play in the forests, with stunning and musical detail about the trees of the Sierra and their individual reaction to the wind. Muir's story of climbing a 100-foot Douglas Spruce to experience the sway and swirl of a storm for himself is unforgettable. This short work is part of Applewood's "American Roots," series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America's most famous writers.

    Each object comes with a memory or a story, and so sparks an opportunity for rue or reflection or confession or revelation, having to do with her coming of age as a daughter, mother, actor, and writer: the piano that holds secrets to family history and inheritance; the gifted watches that tell so much more than time; the little black dress that carries all of youth’s love and longing; the purple scarf that stands in for her journey from New York to Los Angeles, across stage and screen, to pursue her acting dream.Read together or apart, the essays project the bountiful mosaic of life and love, of moving to Los Angeles and raising a family; of coming to terms with place, relationship, failures, and success; of dealing with up-ended notions about home and family and career and aging, too. Taken together, they add up to a pastiche of an artful and quirky life, lovingly remembered, compellingly told, wrapped up in the ties that bind the passage of time.

    Donaghy, a hugely popular, influential and much-loved figure in the UK poetry scene, died tragically early at the age of fifty in 2004. In fifty short essays accompanying fifty of Donaghy's best poems, his friend and editor Don Paterson makes the argument for Donaghy to be recognised as one of the greatest poets of recent years, and author of some of the most powerful, complex, moving and memorable poems to have been written in our lifetime. Unusually for a work of criticism, his commentary combines sharp and witty analysis of Donaghy's poems with biographical sketch and personal reminiscence, setting Donaghy's work in both a literary and a human context. This book coincides with the tenth anniversary of Donaghy's death, and the publication of the new paperback edition of his Collected Poems.

    Rather than using techniques of assassination to protect themselves, ninja relied on their senses, and on an acute awareness of their natural surroundings, In fact, ninja avoided unnecessary conflict, and used weapons such as knives and swords only as a last resort. These are the true techniques of ninjutsu, and the art in which the ninja unrelentingly trained.In The Complete Ninja The Secret World Revealed, Masaaki Hatsumi, the world's most renowned ninja grandmaster and top budo master, creates a companion volume to his bestselling The Way of the Ninja. Like the earlier work, The Complete Ninja features hundreds of historical illustrations, documents, and photos (including many of the author demonstrating techniques) to explore the essence and wisdom of ninjutsu and reveal its hidden truths.The Complete Ninja will help readers sharpen their perceptions and deepen their understanding of two core principles: that ninjutsu is the very backbone of the martial arts, and that it clarifies their essential spiritual significance. Since budo transcends any one particular martial tradition, all practitioners, whether they study judo, aikido, karate, kendo, kenjutsu, jujutsu, or other combative sports, will find the book fascinating and enlightening.

    Along with listservs, pornography, and listservs dedicated to pornography, there was a website that ran all its articles in the same font and within abnormally narrow margins. This site was called McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and many dozens of people read it. Now, fifteen years later, most of those readers have died, but the Tendency still exists, publishing, every day, quasi-humor writing in the same font within the same abnormally narrow margins. The site has no ads, and no revenue prospects, and thus, every year or so, we collect some of the site’s better material and attempt to trick readers into paying for a curated, glued-together version of what is available online for free. This collection is the best and most brazen of such attempts. Please enjoy it, after you have paid for it.Featuring:�It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers!”�What I Would Be Thinking About if I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be a Piano”�I Regret to Inform You That My Wedding to Captain Von Trapp Has Been Canceled”�Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition)”�In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s

    Samet, a civilian professor at West Point--an institution whose mission is to develop "leaders of character"--brings to this anthology her profound experiences as a teacher of soldiers and her belief in the vital role of the humanities in cultivating leaders. In incisive section introductions, Samet focuses on the skills and qualities that distinguish the unforgettable leaders--be they heroic, quixotic, or villainous--who come to life in the selections. Readers of Leadership will enjoy its sheer variety--Machiavelli and Milosz, Douglass and Didion are just a sampling of the 102 writers and works included. At the same time, readers will enter a thought-provoking, often moving conversation about leadership that is both ancient and crucially current.

    Twenge's revealing look at fertility myths and baby politics (The Atlantic); Janet Reitman's controversial study of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ( "Rolling Stone"); Luke Mogelson's harrowing experience accompanying asylum seekers on a potentially deadly sea voyage to Australia ( "New York Times Magazine"); Lisa Miller's poignant report from Newtown, Connecticut, as the town tries to cope with the aftermath of one of the nation's worst mass shootings ( "New York"); Emily Nussbaum's critiques of gender and politics on television ( "The New Yorker"); and Witold Rybczynski's poetic engagement with modern architecture ( "Architect"). The collection concludes with the award-winning poem "Elegies" by Kathleen Ossip ( "Poetry") and "The Embassy of Cambodia," a short story by Zadie Smith ( "The New Yorker").

    Created, curated, and edited by writer Angela Palm, the book celebrates library ephemera and a love of literature. Inspired by libraries, librarians, or antiquated signatures and book titles on checkout cards, Vermont writers pen characters, prose, poems, and plot lines in celebration of reading, books, and public libraries. Nick Adams has carefully photographed the checkout cards shown therein. Contributors include Gary Margolis, Jessica Hendry Nelson, Jericho Parms, Karin Gottshall, Tim Brookes, Daniel Lusk, Lene Gary, Erika Nichols, Penelope Cray, Rob Friesel, Shelagh Connor Shapiro, Kate Sykes, Niels Rinehart, Malisa Garlieb, David Dillon, Hillary Read, Tamra Higgins, Mary Jane Dickerson, and Emily Arnason Casey.

    Churm’s topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective crocodiles that lie patiently waiting in the minds of fathers.Though Griswold recently entered the tenure stream, much of his experience, at a Big Ten university, has been as an adjunct lecturer—that tenuous and uncertain position so many now occupy in higher education. In Pirates You Don’t Know, Griswold writes poignantly and hilariously about the contingent nature of this life, tying it to his birth in the last American enclave in Saigon during the Vietnam War, his upbringing in a coal town in southern Illinois, and his experience as an army deep-sea diver and frogman. He investigates class in America through four generations of his family and portrays the continuing joys and challenges of fatherhood while making a living, becoming literate, and staying open to the world. But Griswold’s central concerns apply to everyone: What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to think, feel, create, and be whole? What is the point of this particular journey?Pirates You Don’t Know is Griswold’s vital attempt at making sense of his life as a writer and now professor. The answers for him are both comic and profound: “Picture Long John Silver at the end of the movie, his dory filled with stolen gold, rowing and sinking; rowing, sinking, and gloating.”

    It is almost entirely true." Thus begins Esi Edugyan's 2013 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture. With the finesse of a writer who is in complete control of the worlds she creates, Esi Edugyan guides readers through her experience of home and belonging. She moves effortlessly from cities in Canada and Germany to the bustle of Accra, Ghana, as she finds her identity in the diaspora. Readers interested in travel, literature, and the post-colonial search for belonging will become her willing travel companions on this journey.

    The teaching of poetry languishes, and that region of youthful neurological terrain capable of being ignited only by poetry is largely dark, unpopulated, and silent, like a classroom whose shades are drawn. This is more than a shame, for poetry is our common treasure-house, and we need its vitality, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain ambiguity, its plaintive truth-telling, and its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general culture's more grotesque manipulations. We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions: heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak.—from "Twenty Poems That Could Save America"Twenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the "vertigo" effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty and curiosity about the ways poetry can influence America at both the private and public levels. Tony Hoagland is already one of this country's most provocative poets, and this book confirms his role as a restless and perceptive literary and cultural critic.

    O’RourkeWhen Garden & Gun magazine debuted a column aptly named “Good Dog,” it quickly became one of the publication’s most popular features in print. Now, Editor-in-Chief David DiBennedetto (proud owner of a Boykin spaniel) and the editors of G&G have gathered the most memorable stories, as well as original pieces, in this collection of essays written by some of most notable dog owners in literature and journalism.Good Dog offers memorable, beautifully written stories of dog ownership, companionship, friendship, and kinship. From the troublemakers who can’t be fenced in to the lifelong companions who won’t leave our sides, this poignant anthology showcases man’s best friend through all of his most endearing—and sometimes maddening—attributes. By turns inspirational and humorous (just like the dogs we love), Good Dog is a must-have collection for dog lovers everywhere.

    At twelve, he created Info Network, a user-generated encyclopedia, which he later likened to an early version of Wikipedia. Not long after, Aaron turned his computer genius to political organizing, information sharing and online freedom.In 2006, Aaron downloaded the Library of Congress's complete bibliographic dataset. The library charged fees to access them. However, as a government document, it was not copyright-protected within the USA. By posting the data on OpenLibrary.org, Aaron made it freely available. Eventually, the Copyright Office sided in favor of Aaron.In 2008, Aaron downloaded and released 2.7 million federal court documents stored in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The Huffington Post characterized his actions as: "Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents, were, in fact, public."In late 2010, Aaron downloaded a large number of academic journal articles through MIT's computer network. At the time, Aaron was a research fellow at Harvard University, which provided him with an authorized account. Aaron's motivation for downloading the articles was never fully determined. However, friends and colleagues reported that his intention was either to publicly share them on the Internet or uncover corruption in the funding of climate change research. This time, faced with prosecutors being overzealous and a dysfunctional criminal justice system, Aaron was charged with a maximum penalty of $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison, leading to a two-year legal battle with the US federal government that ended when Aaron took his own life on January 11, 2013.Between 2007 and 2011 Aaron read over 600 books; one book every three days. Early on, Aaron made a point to write about his findings and reflection. From the "Hello World" post published on January 13, 2002 to the last known article written on November 1, 2012 "What Happens in The Dark Knight," Aaron published 1,478 articles on his personal blog; one article every three days.Aaron dealt with a wide range of subjects going from politics, economics, science, sociology, through technology, education, nutrition, philosophy, among many others. But beyond that, the clarity of Aaron's mind on the difficulty of the subjects he was dealing with at such a young age is striking. When the typical 16 year-old college student worries about fitting in and mating, Aaron was tackling with a book publication and wondered about what he should do with his life. At 18 he read Noam Chomsky, and at 23 wrote the very impressive 12,000-word piece "A Summary/Explanation of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory." This article was dealing with such complexity that two days after its publication, it was followed by a -much- shorter and accessible version, titled "Keynes, Explained Briefly."Five months before his death, Aaron completed "Raw Nerve," a series of articles reflecting on life, depicting an honest, painful and yet beautiful picture of the tragedy of life. Perhaps then, Aaron knew his time was drawing to an end...There have been numerous criticisms about Aaron's decision to end his life. Some agree with it, some don't. Whether he made the right decision is certainly not for the editors of this present book to comment on.Instead, we decided to focus on the positive impact Aaron made on us all. "Raw Thought, Raw Nerve: Inside the Mind of Aaron Swartz" contains the life's work of one of the most original minds of our time.One volume, 824 pages.

    The anarchist, or, alas, nihilist concern finds a voice, or lent me one, here not because they are the best or right, but because they are the strangest. Plan of an eccentric thought in search, then, of its baroque expression. The anti-politics that others had given up discussing, and most had slept on, returns as what there is to write, perhaps to talk about. An ethics, too, because sometimes we are ethical. Analysis of rhetoric in search of finally free speech, which is why, in the end, I, at least, realized I was in search of a poetics adequate to decomposition. Or perhaps and precisely inadequate. For the moment and in the delay we call the present, then, essays. They say we try to inhabit, impossibly, this now-time, patiently.

    Through engaging conversations with pioneering clinicians and researchers, Daniela F. Sieff offers accessible yet substantial answers to questions such as: What is emotional trauma? What are the causes? What are its consequences? What does it mean to heal emotional trauma? and How can healing be achieved?These questions are addressed through three interrelated perspectives: psychotherapy, neurobiology and evolution. Psychotherapeutic perspectives take us inside the world of the unconscious mind and body to illuminate how emotional trauma distorts our relationships with ourselves and with other people (Donald Kalsched, Bruce Lloyd, Tina Stromsted, Marion Woodman). Neurobiological perspectives explore how trauma impacts the systems that mediate our emotional lives and well-being (Ellert Nijenhuis, Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel). And evolutionary perspectives contextualise emotional trauma in terms of the legacy we have inherited from our distant ancestors (James Chisholm, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Randolph Nesse). Transforming lives affected by emotional trauma is possible, but it can be a difficult process. The insights shared in these lively and informative conversations can support and facilitate that process.This book will therefore be a valuable resource for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and other mental health professionals in practice and training, and also for members of the general public who are endeavouring to find ways through their own emotional trauma. In addition, because emotional trauma often has its roots in childhood, this book will also be of interest and value to parents, teachers and anyone concerned with the care of children.

    Harlond, author of 'The Empress Emerald''An eclectic mix - quite unputdownable' - B.A. Morton, author of prize-winning crime novel 'Mrs Jones'Five-minute reads.Meet people you will never forget: the night photographer, the gynaecologist's wife, the rescue dog.Dip into whatever suits your mood, from comedy to murders; from fantastic stories to blog posts, by way of love poetry. Fully illustrated in black and white by the author; Jean Gill's original photographs are as thought-provoking as her writing.An out of body experience for adventurous readers. Or, of course, you can 'Live Safe'.Not for you the blind alley on a dark night, wolf-lope pacing you step for step as shadows flare on the walls.Watch the trailer youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0Pf14oT6Y

    Whether they are stepmothers or mothers who have experienced abortion, infertility, adoption, or struggles with having more or less children, all these writers are women who have faced down motherhood on the other side of the white picket fence. It is time that motherhood opened its gates to include everyone, not just the picture postcard stories. The M Word is a fabulous collection by a talented author and blogger, which is bound to attract readers from all walks of motherhood. The anthology that presents women's lives as they are really lived, probing the intractable connections between motherhood and womanhood with all necessary complexity and contradiction laid out in a glorious tangle. It is a book whose contents themselves are in disagreement, essays rubbing up against one another in uncomfortable ways. There is no synthesis -- is motherhood an expansive enterprise, or is motherhood a trap? -- except perhaps a general sense that being a mother and not being a mother are each as terrible and wonderful as being alive is. What these essays do show, however, is that in this age of supposed reproductive choice, so many women still don't have the luxury of choosing their mothering story or how it will play out. And those who do exercise choice often still end up contending with judgement or backlash. The essays also make clear that women are not as divided between the mothers and the childless as we might be led to believe. Women's lives are so much more complicated than that. There is mutual ground between the woman who decided to have no more children and the woman who decided to have none at all. A woman with no children also endures a similar kind of scrutiny as the woman who's had many, both of them operating outside of societal norms. A woman who has miscarried longs to be acknowledged for her own beyond-visible mothering experiences, for the baby she held inside her. And while infertility is its own kind of journey, that journey is also just one of so many whose origins lie with the desire for a child.

    Readers first follow the story of Dennis Maione’s 20-year journey through two cancers and the diagnosis of a genetic condition that ensures, one way or another, his journey is ongoing. Marked by wit and wisdom alongside poignance and passion, this tale has laugh-aloud humour while acknowledging the struggle to find life and hope in the midst of trying times.Next, reflective essays present cancer as a journey not to be undertaken alone or without the right tools. Here, Maione explores the many dimensions of community. Written as advice for his 27-year-old self getting cancer for the first time, this is a glimpse into the soul of a cancer survivor.Finally, a series of imagined conversations with a doctor tackles such questions as: “What is cancer?” “How can cancer be treated and prevented?” “How are genetics linked to cancer?”and “How can I tell if my family has bad genes?”The narrative is compelling, the essays riveting, and the conversations stimulating and informative. This is a book to be read and then shared with your friends and family.

    Fact or fable, Adam and Eve birthed the perpetual relationship drama as seen on TV today. Despite the serpents, this couple HAD IT MADE. Luxury real estate, lush gardens, and privacy out the yin-yang. Life was glorious until the bare-bottomed babe could no longer resist temptation. Despite her better half’s warnings and threats to sleep in a tree, she tasted the forbidden fruit. One bite of that seductive, juicy contraband and the stage was set for eternity— a nibble that has blossomed into an endless supply of tiny tidbits that divide lovers to this day!Taking a cue from the original naked explorers of authentic sin, Clash of the Couples is a new anthology featuring a collection of completely absurd lovers’ squabbles and relationship spats. Think couples fight over kids, sex, and money? Think again! Furniture, the last beer, and where to store the placenta are what genuinely ignite our feuds. And no argument is off limits. This book has it all!Inside you’ll find a gut-busting compilation of stories such as: “I Can’t Believe You Ate My Sandwich,” “Never Assume Anything,” “Only I Can Talk About Me,” and “You Want Some College Boobs?” from forty-six fearless writers. Prepare to laugh, roll your eyes, and shiver in suspense. While Eve may have had the first bite, we ate the whole tree. And made pies.

    They are, in actual fact, our pets.     In this original eBook, John Higgs, author of the The 20th Century: An Alternative History, makes an argument in favour of the monarchy that will annoy royalists even more than it will annoy republicans. This is a tongue-in-cheek, witty examination of the persistence of monarchy in the modern world.

    Now, for the first time in nearly a century, the public is invited to enjoy Mrs. Parker's sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops in this first-ever published collection of her groundbreaking Broadway reviews.Starting when she was twenty-four at Vanity Fair as New York's only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: the Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O'Neil, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise--and contempt--for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin. Annotated with a notes section by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, the volume shares Parker's outspoken opinions of a great era of live theatre in America, from a time before radio, talking pictures, and television decimated attendance. Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918-1923 provides a fascinating glimpse of Broadway in its Golden Era and literary life in New York through the eyes of a renowned theatre critic.

    Performative and funny one minute, respectful and constructive the next, these rejections both serve as entertaining writing tips (suitable for use in today’s more adventuresome creative writing classrooms) and suggest a skewed story about a boy and his seminal semi-literary website, Eyeshot.net, which Lee Klein founded in 1999. What started as a lark -- sending playful rejection notes to writers who’d submitted work for the site -- over ten years took on a life of its own, becoming an outlet for Klein to meditate on his aesthetic preferences, the purpose of literature, and the space between the ideal and the real. Praise for Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck"These tiny, tight bursts of writing hummed with energy that hopscotched among comical, cruel, warm, demented, high level and nitpicky. Send him a piece of your soul on Microsoft Word, Klein seemed to believe, and you deserved a piece of his soul right back. An amazing little act of generosity, considering the number of terrible pieces of writing out there. (Klein estimates that he has tapped out more than a thousand original rejections.)" -- Jamie Allen in Paste Magazine "Somewhere on the brutal truth continuum between Bill Hicks and Mussolini, Lee Klein’s rejection letters are mini-masterpieces of literary criticism disguised as no-thank-yous from Writer’s Hell. And yet, in each, a little lesson; a steadfast faith that says 'I took the time to read what you created and this is exactly what I thought.' They should be passing these things out under the pillows at MFA camp; we’d all be better off." –- Blake Butler, author of "There Is No Year" and "Sky Saw" "Sometimes writers who succeed against the odds brag about the number of rejections they’ve accumulated. A rejection from Eyeshot’s Lee Klein is a whole different badge of honor. Like a letter from a serial killer on death row, your Tea Party inlaws, or the Pope, they’re suitable for framing and brilliantly repugnant. I kind of want to send him a really shitty story just so I can get one of these in return." -– Ryan Boudinot, author of "Blueprints of the Afterlife" "To 'decide' is to 'cut,' and Lee Klein in the highly honed collection of rejections, Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck, wields a drawer full of gleaming cutlery, edgy edged instruments of decision. Surely, he holds his pen like a surgeon holds the scalpel. These serrated graphs of glee and screed are incisive incisions—katana, rattled sabers, sharp-tongued stilettos of the split-lipped kiss-off." -– Michael Martone, author of "Michael Martone" and "Four for a Quarter" "Lee Klein made me cry. He was the only editor ever to make me. This was back in 2002. I wish I still had the email. I remember it going something like, 'whenever you have the instinct to write a line like that, delete it immediately, without prejudice.' I hated him for a while. I pictured him looking like the guy in that 90’s movie Heavy (the one with Liv Tyler), except housebound and with no redeemable qualities. Then, somewhere around 2004, I met him 'IRL' and he was soft-spoken and sweet. It was harder to hate him after that. Reading all of these rejection letters here in this book made me finally fall a little in love with him, I think. I think if I had had access to (and disassociation from) these letters then, I might have fallen in love with him then. This is the funniest book I have read in a long time. It is also the smartest. I feel confused now, like I’m unsure whether to love or hate Lee Klein. But both of us are married now so it doesn’t really matter." –- Elizabeth Ellen, author of "Fast Machine "I was reluctant to start reading the book because it begins around 2001 and at that time you weren't mentally or physically or fiscally at your strongest. There's a manic quality to some of the rejections, and the way you build up momentum in your responses is kind of funny, almost the way Belushi used to work himself up and then throw himself to the floor. I like the sub-story that's your life that's happening. You're funny and weird and sometimes I flinch for the recipient of your rejections, other times you seem like a sweet snark. I have a distinct memory of meeting you for lunch after you were rejected from a job interview or something and I was brutally rejected by a curator of the Drawing Center. You looked very pale and the surface of your skin was oddly moist, like you were really sick. I was worried. It was after 9/11 and all the rest. You led a very unhealthy life in those days, way too much booze, etc. Probably didn't eat well or exercise either. Anyway, I love how post-Iowa your rejections have gotten richer and so amazingly worded -- the last one I read yesterday just soared with such feelings about writing, striving for near perfection. You say something like "preserved in amber." It's a beautiful passage. You are so much yourself in these letters. So real and present and unfiltered. Hard, mean, soft, sensitive. It's all there. Your maturity as a person and writer really comes across in the post-Iowa section, I think. Living in Philadelphia, I think it's good that you lost that Brooklyn veneer, you've fought and sometimes lost a few wars and become richer and deeper emotionally and it shows in the writing. I can also appreciate how exhausting it must be to read submissions when they're mostly not up to par. But also I think they became your audience, your friends, students -- and you fed off them the way I did when I was teaching. Every once in a while, something would just strike me and that was exciting. It's really autobiographical. But most of all, I love the voice. It's genuine and the emotional quality sometimes sounds exhausted, other times exasperated, or manic, strung out, hungover. I like all those mood changes. But overall, there's a sweetness and sensitivity. You use the word "maybe" a lot. Think I did too when I taught. Hard to say anything that's declarative when critiquing someone's work." -- Barbara Klein, the author's motherOrder here.

    Life is more complicated than that." " In this remarkable book of days, John Hildebrand charts the overlapping rings--home, town, countryside--of life in the Midwest. Like E. B. White, Hildebrand locates the humor and drama in ordinary life: church suppers, Friday night football, outdoor weddings, garden compost, family reunions, roadside memorials, camouflage clothing. In these wry, sharply observed essays, the Midwest isn't The Land Time Forgot but a more complicated (and vastly more interesting) place where the good life awaits once we figure exactly out what it means. From his home range in northwestern Wisconsin, Hildebrand attempts to do just that by boiling down a calendar year to its rich marrow of weather, animals, family, home--in other words, all the things that matter.

    Louise Cowan postulates a culture-generating cosmos as the identifying mark of epic. The essays illustrate the applicability of her theory of genres to major works in the epic tradition. An excellent resource for those studying the social, psychological and historical aspects of epic as a literary art form. Dallas Institute Publications publishes works concerned with the imaginative, mythic, and symbolic sources of culture. 378 pages, indexed.

    The Pushcart Prize has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle, Publishers Weekly, Poets Writers / Barnes Noble and others, and acclaimed by readers and reviewers internationally.

    Two sidesplitting stories from the wonderful world of David Sedaris, where learning French, like life, is littered with idiosyncratic delights.

    Beginning with his 2011 Best American Essay, "Auscultation," a piece that is now taught in high schools across the country, Steven Church takes the reader on an associative journey into questions of identity, family, fear, loss, and the politics of space. With a trademark relentless curiosity reminiscent of David Shields, Matthew Gavin Frank or Ander Monson, and the stylistic gymnastics of Lia Purpura, Bernard Cooper or Maggie Nelson, the book explores the emotionally resonant experiences of witnessing a drowning, losing a sibling in a car accident, and raising a young daughter. But Ultrasonic is also a book about the mysteries and wonder of language, a book that considers the various meanings of words like, "dither," "sounding," or "loitering;" Even the seemingly mundane word pairing, "crown and shoulder" become, for Church, touchstones for an idiosyncratic meditation on the death of his brother in car accident and the way such losses return in our present lives. At every turn, Ultrasonic dares us to think more deeply about each other and about the world around us. How many times do we see a, "No Loitering," sign and think nothing of it? Church thinks everything about it, using the sign as a way to consider the politics of public liminal spaces and the ways we attempt to criminalize or marginalize those who inhabit such spaces. More than one reader has compared Church's exploration of the everyday and his confronting of himself on the page to the work of Montaigne; and it's true that a stethoscope may never look the same to you again after reading Ultrasonic, but Church is also a mischievous and humorous writer who isn't afraid to imagine what Elvis Presley's last racquetball game might have been like or how he might respond to the ever-present police helicopters in his neighborhood. Like Eula Biss's Notes from No Man's Land or Leslie Jamison's Empathy Exams, Ultrasonic moves in layers and circles of association or juxtaposition, where the meaning accretes as the reader progresses and doubles back over ideas and images. With "equal parts tenderness and rage," each chapter operates both as an independent essay and as an echo chamber for the larger ideas, gazing at our human predicament through such eccentric and varied lenses as trapped miners, stethoscopes, racquetball, language, loitering, violence, Elvis, and the music of torture. The result is, among other things, "one of the oddest and loveliest mediations on parenthood," you'll ever read.

    Encompassing thousands of his columns, all of which originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, this is the first collection of Royko work to solely cover his time at the Tribune. Covering politics, culture, sports, and more, Royko brings his trademark sarcasm and cantankerous wit to a complete compendium of his last 14 years as a newspaper man.Organized chronologically, these columns display Royko's talent for crafting fictional conversations that reveal the truth of the small-minded in our society. From cagey political points to hysterical take-downs of "meatball" sports fans, Royko's writing was beloved and anticipated anxiously by his fans. In plain language, he "tells it like it is" on subjects relevant to modern society. In addition to his columns, the book features Royko's obituary and articles written about him after his death, telling the tale of his life and success.This ultimate collection is a must-read for Royko fans, longtime Chicago Tribune readers, and Chicagoans who love the city's rich history of dedicated and insightful journalism.

    Life is nothing as it seems.And yet its simple but profound wonders are the core that makes human existence all worth it.In this candid collection of essays and short stories, the girl with the infinite pursuit brings to light her insightful, heart-tugging, and seemingly ordinary moments in the chase to unravel the exquisite marvel that is our lives.

    COOKIE! is a sequel to Verwoert’s Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want (edited by Vanessa Ohlraun, 2010), and third in a series of books published with the Piet Zwart Institute. If we don’t merely reduce art to clever code play in the arenas of representation, how do we speak about what is at stake? In response to this question, Verwoert addresses the forces at the heart of the tragicomedy that making, showing, and critiquing art implicates us in. He honors the basic joys of turning one thing into another, and the miracles of rhythm and rhyme that characterize the residual level of mimetic magic in art. In this key, the unverifiable is practiced daily: bodies are remade, feelings transfigured. As Alina Szapocznikow wrote, the mouth chews and out comes sculpture. Verwoert’s COOKIE! renders visible the endless emotional labor of setting the stage (for others), poses the thorny question of whether there could ever be a labor union for con-artists (like us), and gestures toward an ethics of disappointment to battle false expectations and as a way to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how you look at it, criticism hurts. Copublished with Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy

    Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America presents more than seventy essays from twenty-seven states, written by incarcerated Americans chronicling their experience inside. In essays as moving as they are eloquent, the authors speak out against a national prison complex that fails so badly at the task of rehabilitation that 60% of the 650,000 Americans released each year return to prison. These essays document the authors’ efforts at self-help, the institutional resistance such efforts meet at nearly every turn, and the impact, in money and lives, that this resistance has on the public. Directly confronting the images of prisons and prisoners manufactured by popular media, so-called reality TV, and for-profit local and national news sources, Fourth City recognizes American prisoners as our primary, frontline witnesses to the dysfunction of the largest prison system on earth. Filled with deeply personal stories of coping, survival, resistance, and transformation, Fourth City should be read by every American who believes that law should achieve order in the cause of justice rather than at its cost.

    That place was America. One night, travelling where those who live within illusions should never go, he stared into the darkness and glimpsed a faded flag where shadows gathered, revealing another America. It was a broken place, bred from fear and distrust - a thousand shards of glass - filled with a people who long ago had given away all that was precious; a people who had been sold, for so long, a foreign betrayal that finally came from within, and for nothing more than a handful of silver. These essays, letters and journal entries were written as a farewell to the country Michael loves still, and to the wife he knew as his 'True North'. A powerful and personal polemic, A Thousand Shards of Glass is Michael's appeal to his fellow citizens to change their course; a cautionary tale to those around the world who idealise an America that never was; and, crucially, a glimpse beyond the myth, to a country whose best days could still lie ahead.

    Renfro in her life and in her work. Combining memoir and nature writing, this book comprises nine essays that represent different seasons and slices of time, not unlike the rings of a tree. No two rings are alike, but each accretes to the next, creating, section by section, a life.

    In the tradition of Raymond Carver, Martin's tales give dignity and grace to adults caught in the cold grip of poverty and to their children, who struggle mightily with broken homes, bullying, racism, and the constant hum of anger, violence, and resentment that is their lives.In a voice ringing with emotion, the stories in Easiest If I Had A Gun will remind you what literature is for--that great project of taking us deeper into life, laying it bare, and transforming it with words into something we can hold in our hearts.

    The contributors relate the liminal nature of the female protagonist to liminality as a unifying feature of dystopian literature, literature for and about young women, and cultural expectations of adolescent womanhood. Divided into three sections, the collection investigates cultural assumptions and expectations of adolescent women, considers the various means of resistance and rebellion made available to and explored by female protagonists, and examines how the adolescent female protagonist is situated with respect to the groups and environments that surround her. In a series of thought-provoking essays on a wide range of writers that includes Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Marissa Meyer, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins, the collection makes a convincing case for how this rebellious figure interrogates the competing constructions of adolescent womanhood in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture.

    His incisive and arresting essays have examined the spiritual dimensions of art and the decisive role faith has played in the lives of artists. This new volume collects Gioia’s essays on Christianity, literature, and the arts.  His influential title essay ignited a national conversation about the role of Catholicism in American literature. Other pieces explore the often-harrowing lives of Christian poets and painters as well as contemplate scripture and modern martyrdom.

    If I have known beauty / let's say I came to it / asking." Conversations on the page arise from observances made at cocktail parties, art galleries, at the kitchen table, and in the suburbs. Whether offering writing prompts or advice for aspiring poets, or enacting the conventions of ekphrasis, "Asking" is attentive to the movements and gestures of humans as they navigate a world of bewilderments and betrayal, but also a world of light and an ordinary beauty.