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Growing up in the 1920s, Garnet Richardson watches the birds outside her window, admiring their freedom and beauty. When Garnet is sent away to a lakeside resort town for the summer, she discovers a chance to finally spread her wings, and her...
Often the most recognized, even brutal, events in American history are segregated by a politicized, racially divided “Color Line.” But where—asks this intense and ambitious National Poetry Series winner—is the Color Line in the mind, in the body...
In 1984, the eleventh year of his life, the author experienced his first love, the loss of his grandmother, and his sister’s departure for college—seemingly ordinary events that eroded his innocence in a way that was never to be fully...
These are poems rooted in the flatlands and lowlands: the Midwestern lawns, fields, lakes, and creeks of the author’s childhood, and the farms, canals, and seascapes near her family home’s in Holland. And from these seemingly empty spaces—and the...
Originally published as the state marked its sesquicentennial in 2008, this anthology suggests what residents of the state have known for some time: Minnesota has changed enormously since 1858. Rich, compelling, and often surprising, these pieces...
Wild, austere, and magnificently beautiful, the territories of northern Pakistan are a forbidding place. When a young bride from Lahore arrives in these mountains, the ancient customs of unquestioning obedience and backbreaking work make...
This collection shows the self as a crucible of force—that which compels us to exert ourselves upon the world, and meanwhile renders us vulnerable to it. From Robert Smithson’s colossal Spiral Jetty to a train hurdling along the west-reaching...
A stunning, intricate collection of forty lyric essays juxtaposing natural history, ancient texts, folk heroes, and found objects. Moving from cemeteries to parks—and always cast in the light of the author’s Southern upbringing—this is a...
Growing up in Pakistan in the 1970s, Feroza Ginwalla is precocious, impetuous, and increasingly affected by the rising tide of religious fundamentalism there. When her family decides to send her to America for a change of scenery and influence, a...
On the surface, Alice Marie Krayenbraak has it all: she’s beautiful and witty, a star student and a gifted athlete. But nothing is as it seems: the family farm is failing, Alice’s mother awaits the apocalypse, her parents are planning to send her...
In these poems, presented in both Portuguese and English, butcher shops, sex, and machine guns sit in spirited dialogue with language, absence, and time. The resulting collection is varied as well as unified, brilliantly textured and layered.
Matthew Garth’s story begins in the fall of 1962, with the shooting of a young woman on Thanksgiving Day. Fueled over the following weeks by his longing for this mysterious woman, Matthew finds himself drawn into a series of confrontations he...
After the Deepwater Horizon well was capped in 2010, most reporters and government officials turned away from the unfolding narrative: the story was over. But for one writer the unimaginable amount of oil spilled into the ocean was only the...
Taking their inspiration from the alphabet, and employing such innovative forms as the ancient ghazal, these poems are both humble and exotic. Highly ambitious and astonishingly beautiful, this collection deciphers the seemingly indecipherable in...
A family curse, a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship, causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. In assured and mystically powerful prose, this novel follows generations of the family across North America and...
These haunting and crystalline poems examine the moment when solitude slips into separation, when a person realizes he can barely see the place he set out from, and must make his way back to the present. In this journey, Thoreau’s “border life”...
Touching on the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Proust, and Plato, among others, this collection of nonfiction and fables provides a walking tour of the creative mind. This is a rich investigation of what it means to think, read, write, and learn,...
Frigid, lethal, and wildly beautiful, Lake Superior is as alluring as it is dangerous. Featuring three women living on its shores in three different centuries, this novel—haunting, rich in historical detail, and universal in its exploration of...
This groundbreaking anthology presents a revelatory portrait of contemporary Vietnamese poetry. What emerges from this conversation of outsiders and insiders, Vietnamese and American voices, is a worldly sensibility descended from the...