Books

Kenward Elmslie’s way with words cuts a singular path through a polymath variety of forms. Jukebox hitlet sung by Nat King Cole. Ahead-of-their-time lingo works: The Champ, poem, City Junket, play. Balloons for Cartoons by Joe Brainard. Puréed anthropological tales of fantasy drinking establishments: 26 Bars. Quirky surreal poetry mosaics (Routine Disruptions) that prompted Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR’s "Book Worm" program to finger Kenward as “Hands down, my favorite contemporary poet.” Elmslie’s verbal swath includes The Grass Harp (Broadway cult-fave musical) and annum 2000, Postcards on Parade, composed by Steven Taylor, a concept musical that deconstructs musicals. Plus Cyberspace, tech poem enhanced by Trevor Winkfield visuals. The wrap: Nite Soil introduces Kenward, poet of dense stanzas, to Elmslie, outed collagist of resonant icons in a smartly packaged collection of 41 full-color postcards.

41 full-color postcards in a folding card cover. Printed offset in an edition of 3000 of which 26 copies are lettered and signed by the artist, each with a unique handmade collage by Kenward Elmslie. The limited edition of 26 is out-of-print; the regular edition is available, as new.

Juice is Renee Gladman's first full-length book. Gladman wields an idiosyncratic skill with description and characters that draw praise and attention from her contemporaries. Juice describes a world where seemingly minor obsessions and details (like the narrator's almost random preference for juice) can structure and develop an entire story, down to its tone and style. As her narrator puts it: "So far it has been sex and leaves that keep me alive."

With wicked sarcasm and brilliant agility, Catalyst shreds the surface of all his many subjects—gay relationships, backwater adolescence, and spiraling addiction—and ignites a bonfire of personal honesty. Whether he's writing about a chance sexual encounter at a Goth club or revealing the inner thoughts of young hustlers, Catalyst grinds platitudes into toxic dust with a vivid, whip-smart voice.

"Clint Catalyst has the magical knack for turning the most ethereal of thoughts and feelings into tangible imagery. He creates beauty with an original hybrid of brutality and love that takes my brain to its favorite place." - Anthony Kiedis, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Written with lyrical fire in a chorus of vividly rendered voices, Dionne Brand's second novel is an epic of the African diaspora across the globe.

It begins in 1824 on Trinidad, where Marie-Ursule, queen of a secret slave society called the Sans Peur Regiment, plots a mass suicide. The end of the Sans Peur is also the beginning of a new world, for Marie-Ursule cannot kill her young daughter, Bola, who escapes to live free and bear a dynasty of descendants who spill out across the Caribbean, North America, and Europe.

Haunted by a legacy of passion and oppression, the children of Bola pass through two world wars and into the confusion, estrangement, and violence of the late twentieth century.

"[Brand has] a lush and exuberant style that may put some readers in mind of Toni Morrison or Edwidge Danticat." — William Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review

"The Pain Journal" is the last finished work by Los Angeles writer and artist Bob Flanagan and is the extraordinary chronicle of the final year of his life before his death from cystic fibrosis at the age of 43. Flanagan created performances with Sheree Rose that shocked and inspired audiences as he combined text, video, and live performance to create a highly personal exploration of childhood, sex, illness, and mortality.