<P><P>Enticing, heart wrenching, and darkly funny, the interconnected stories in <EM>The Artstars</EM> are set in creative communities—an art school, an illegal loft studio, a guerrilla street performance troupe—where teamwork and professional jealousy mix, and the artists grapple with economic realities and evolving expectations. A middle-aged poet, reeling from 9-11, fights homesickness, writer's block, and ladybugs at an artist's colony. A new empty-nester finds a creative outlet in her community garden, but gets tangled up in garden politics. As the characters pass through each other's stories, making messes and helping mop them up, some find inspiration in accidents; others are ready to quit art completely. Together, they stumble through the creative process, struggling to make art and find the spark of something new and original within themselves. In a world where the odds of becoming a star are nearly impossible, <EM>The Artstars</EM> tells the stories of those who dare to dream. </P></P>
The mind and the body. The heavens and earth. God and animal. The speaker in God had a body considers how the image of a higher power is presented to her, beginning with a Catholic upbringing in Kentucky. Speckled with stars and peopled with creatures, these poems employ a trinity of sequences that address a present, past, and possible future—from a troubled reckoning with belief to loss and promise still ahead.In this debut collection from Jennie Malboeuf, we observe undercurrents of violence and power, the dynamics of memory, gender, marriage, and miscarriage. At times, God is brutal. At times, delicate. Through true stories of animal savagery, God had a body unravels human behavior and undoes the opaque and cryptic mysteries of faith.
<P><P>In these eight darkly comic stories, Tom Howard explores the instincts for violence and tenderness that mark his character's lives. A brother and sister wander the pier after a deadly plague destroys most of humanity. A high school bully struggles to overcome his demons. A man in the grips of dementia is visited by his children's ghosts. The people in these blistering tales grapple with past mistakes, trying to navigate their way toward redemption and resurrection and failing often—but always with a ferocious heart. Their unforgettable voices guide us through schoolyards, cemeteries, drive-in theaters, and the rich landscapes of their own imaginations.</P><br><P>Equal parts funny, tragic, and wise, <I>Fierce Pretty Things </I>is a striking debut that teaches us how to live in a world as cruel as it is beautiful.</P></P>
Love, tequila, sex, first periods, late nights, abuse, and heartache. The journey from girl to womanhood is brimming with transformative magic that heals even as it shatters. These are the memories that haunt the dreams of what was and what could have been in Girl with Death Mask .In four rich and imaginative movements of poems, Jennifer Givhan profiles the suffering and the love of a Latina girl and then mother coming to terms with sexual trauma. Her daughter is a touchstone of healing as she seeks to unravel her own emotions as well as protect the next generation of budding women with a fierceness she must find within. Givhan exploits changing poetic forms to expose what it means to mature in a female body swirling with tenderness, violence, and potential in an uncertain world. Girl with Death Mask is a cathartic and gripping confession of the trials of adolescence and womanhood.