A collection of the best essays from one of America's best (winner of an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant) and most poignant, personal and philosophical young critics, Morgan Meis Ph.D, on art, culture, politics and the transitory and illusory nature of time.

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.

These lyric elegies, spoken by the “under-self,” become a series of subtle chants which sing the speaker into being both physically and spiritually, and through which Mead seeks solace, enlightenment, and joy in the cycles of life and death in the natural world.

"The Lord and the General Din of the World, spoken in an intensely open voice . . . suggests that the only stable existential presence can be created in the language of art. But at every turn the relationship between language and identity is questioned." —The Journal

"[These poems] may change your view of what has meaning in the madness of American culture. Such poetry could easily become tediously clinical or unbearably despairing, as so many poems on the subject are. In fact, Mead never lets the reader off easy the unearned hope or resolutions. She does reveal, however, possibilities for redemption." —Small Press Review

"These are not poems to be read silently, in a comfortable corner or chair . . . [Mead's] poems enriched my appreciation of words and image and life in general." —Hodge Podge Poetry

The World at Large brings together the best of James McMichael's poetry and includes works that appear for the first time in this volume. With the publication of the new poems, McMichael surpasses even the formally daring and psychologically penetrating poetry that has characterized his work thus far.

Capacity, the extraordinary new collection from the award-winning poet James McMichael, deliberates an earth that supplies what people need to live. Land, water, sky, food, shelter, thought, talk, sex—each is addressed at the pace of someone dense with wonder’s resistance to take for granted even the smallest or most obvious parts of existence. Capacity is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

In a voice somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and Kurt Cobain, John McManus explores young people living in extreme situations. Some are in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains, some in the Pacific Northwest, a few are in the Western deserts of Utah and Nevada, one is in England, and many are scattered throughout the Southern US. All are desperate for something beyond the ordinary lives that are given to them, and every one is absolutely unforgettable.

From Whiting Award-winning writer John McManus comes a debut novel of startling originality and mystery. The son of an unknown father and an ostracized mother, and the next of kin in a long line of bastard relatives, nine-year-old Loren Garland lives a life of subtle mystery beneath the shadow of an East Tennessee mountain. It is on his family's broken-down estate that Loren's imagination grows, and with it, the extraordinary voice of Bitter Milk, a young boy named Luther who may be Loren's imaginary friend, his conscience, or his evil twin. And yet outside the puzzle of Loren's brain, there are the darker goings-on of his family—his mother who wishes she were a man, his new uncle who plans to develop the Garland land into real estate, and his withered grandfather who holds the clan together through truculence and fear. When Loren's mother disappears, he must set out on a quest of his own devising, tossing aside the trappings of youth in order to discover the truth of the world.

This collection of short stories, by award-winning author Reginald McKnight, explores the rich and complex experience of the African-American middle class, from a small southern classroom to a mythical Africa to suburban streets. Outrageously inventive, disarmingly comic, and urgently disturbing, this collection brings a disparate cast of characters face to face with fault lines of identity and the limbo of living between cultures.

"In the deeply satisfying title story, which won an O. Henry Award, an insecure 12-year-old, son of an Air Force sergeant who's away in Vietnam, defeats the school bully. The young hero is black, his tormentor is white, and the story tackles institutionalized racism and the hollowness of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' as experienced in Waco, Tex. Even more impressive is 'Roscoe in Hell,' a supernatural yet scathingly realistic fantasy about a crack addict looking back on his life from the vantage point of a free-for-all party in his new abode, hell. 'Soul Food' mirrors the soul of a homeless pickpocket/ex-male prostitute. In the raucous 'Peacetime,' set in East L.A. in 1973, a sensitive, flute-playing Marine almost loses his virginity under the tutelage of two scary dudes. The fable 'Homunculus,' centered on a lovesick poet, is a pool of wisdom about art as both mediator and cannibalizer of life. A master of narrative pacing, novelist McKnight (I Get on the Bus) evokes a quicksand world where survival is a victory." —Publishers Weekly

In this prize-winning author's most ambitious book to date, an African-American anthropologist trying to "find himself" in Senegal instead finds himself caught in a surreal web of deception and betrayal.

Bertrand, a young African-American anthropologist, has ostensibly come to Senegal to do field research. But in truth, he left his home in Denver to gain a fresh perspective on his troubled marriage. Struggling to fit in with his new Senegalese family—Alaine, his wife Kene, and their young daughter—Bertrand finds himself, for the first time in his life, haunted by surreal and increasingly violent dreams. His waking hours are no less sinister; unwittingly, it seems, Bertrand has become caught in the tension—sexual and otherwise—building between the married couple. His relations with the rest of the village community are also strained; he can't escape the sensation that he's being set up for a grand-scale betrayal. As his sense of isolation and alienation escalates, he comes to believe that not only his fragile sense of identity—but his very life—is at stake. A riveting tour de force, He Sleeps confirms Reginald McKnight's status as a writer of vivid imagination and exceptional talent.