starred review - Graywolf Press

G R AY W O L F P R E S S
NE W T IT LE S AN D
SE L E CT E D BACKLIS T
SPRING 2011
Graywolf Press
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G r ay wo l f S ta f f
Fiona McCrae, Director and Publisher
Marisa Atkinson, Marketing and Publicity Associate
Sara Barnaby, Accountant
Katie Dublinski, Editorial and Managing Director
Leslie Koppenhaver, Sales and Business Manager
Erin Kottke, Marketing and Publicity Manager
E. J. McGonagle, Development Director
Ethan Nosowsky, Editor-at-Large
Stephanie Shockley, Administrative Assistant
Jeffrey Shotts, Senior Editor
Steven Woodward, Editorial Assistant
B o a r d o f D i r e c to r s
Colin Hamilton (Chair), Ronnie Brooks, David Galligan, Betsy Hannaford, Barbara Haugen, John Junek, Chris Mahai,
Glenn Miller, Jennifer Melin Miller, Leni D. Moore, Wenda Weekes Moore, Mary Polta, Bruno Quinson, Gail See,
Kim Severson, Kate Tabner, Kim Vappie, Joanne Von Blon, Melinda Ward, Elizabeth Winton
B oa r d E m e r i t u s
Ann Bitter, Page Knudsen Cowles, Sally Dixon, Diane Herman, Katherine Murphy, Kay Sexton, Margaret Telfer,
Margaret Wurtele
N at i o n a l C o u n c i l
Bruno Quinson (Chair), Ann Bitter, David Breskin, Mary Carswell, Edwin Cohen, Jaune Evans, Ellen Flamm, Betsy
Gardella, Barbara Holmes, Laura Kracum, Don Lee, Dan McCarthy, Georgia Murphy Johnson, Elise Paschen, Josephine
Reed-Taylor, Susan Ritz, Eunice Salton, Stephanie Stebich, Kathryn B. Swintek, Diane Thormodsgard, Charlotte
Vaughan Winton
In t e r ns
Paul Blaschko, Kathryn Ervin, Becki Iverson, Rebecca Julison, Katie Pennell, Shannon Robinson, Colleen Smith,
Caitlin Thompson, Benjamin Voigt, Caryn Willie
A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s
This activity is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation
by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the
people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008; a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; and a grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional organizational support has been provided by: Anonymous (2), the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen
Foundation, the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, the College of Saint Benedict, the Dorsey & Whitney
Foundation, the General Mills Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation’s Kellogg Action Lab, the
Lannan Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, the Elizabeth C. Quinlan Foundation, and Target.
Cover image: Cone Nebula Close Up © STScl
Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter
Logo created by Pat Wagoner
A spellbinding story
of renunciation,
conversion, and
radicalism
“Deborah Baker’s astonishing
book reads like a detective story
but is also a work of enormous
beauty and understanding. She
has explored the most difficult
of subjects in an evocative and
original way, powerfully conjuring
a bygone, albeit simpler era when
an argument between Islam and the
West first arose fi fty years ago. The
Convert is the most brilliant and
moving book written about Islam
and the West since 9/11.”
 
author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos
the conver t
A Parable of Islam and America
DeBoRaH BakeR
As she assembles the pieces of a singularly perplexing life,
What drives a young woman raised in a postwar New York City
suburb to convert to Islam, abandon her country and Jewish
Baker fi nds herself captive to questions raised by Maryam’s
faith, and embrace a life of exile in Pakistan? The Convert tells
journey. Is her story just another bleak chapter in a so-called
the true story of how Margaret Marcus of Larchmont became
clash of civilizations? Or does it signify something else entirely?
Maryam Jameelah of Lahore, one of the most trenchant and
The Convert is a gripping account of a life lived on the radical
celebrated voices of Islam’s argument with the West.
edge and a profound meditation on the cultural confl icts that
frustrate mutual understanding.
A cache of Maryam’s letters to her parents in the archives
of the New York Public Library sends acclaimed biographer
Deborah Baker is the author of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a
finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, as well as A Blue Hand: The Beats in India. She
divides her time between Calcutta, Goa, and Brooklyn.
Deborah Baker on her own odyssey into the labyrinthine heart
of twentieth-century Islam. Casting a shadow over these letters is the mysterious figure of Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi,
Brit., 1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press
both Maryam’s adoptive father and the man who laid the
intellectual foundations for militant Islam.
trans., dram.: mccormick and Williams

Biography, 256 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Hardcover (978-1-55597-582-1), $23.00, May
A provocative
cri de coeur to rescue
the idea of civilization
from irrelevance and
connect it to our search
for individual
happiness
“[Armstrong] is out to
lead philosophy back to its
most urgent, traditional and
noble task: that of helping us to
live wisely and well. His new book,
lyrical, courageous and uplifting,
is seeking to do nothing less
than reform the ambitions
of western societies.”
  
The Observer
in search of civilization
R e m a k i n g a Ta r n i s h e d I d e a
JoHn aRmstRonG
“Civilization” once referred to a society’s technological prow-
window, from Adam Smith’s philosophy to the Japanese tea
ess, its political development, or its cultural achievement. In
ceremony—Armstrong reminds us that culture lies within us
the modern era, however, the word became burdened by the
and that its nourishment is essential to a flourishing society.
legacy of colonialism and connotations of elitism. For it to have
value once again, according to philosopher John Armstrong,
“Armstrong’s account of what is truly civilized is much richer
we must understand that a society balances material prosperity
than the value-free version currently on offer in the sociology
with spiritual prosperity if it is to merit the term “civilized”—
textbooks.”—Noel Malcolm, The Telegraph
and currently we are impoverished.
John Armstrong is Philosopher-in-Residence at the Melbourne Business School and
senior adviser to the vice-chancellor of Melbourne University. He is the author of several internationally acclaimed books on art, aesthetics, and philosophy.
In Search of Civilization is his corrective. As he roams from
anecdote to aesthetic appreciation—from the banality of an
early job at an insurance company to the redemptive wonders
Brit., trans., dram.: aitken alexander associates ltd
of a seventeenth-century church spire visible out an office
1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press

Philosophy, 208 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Hardcover (978-1-55597-580-7), $24.00, March
A groundbreaking and
wide-angled memoir by
the acclaimed Kenyan
Caine Prize winner
I am always standing and
watching people acting boldly
to the call of words. I can only
follow them. They don’t seem
to trip and fall through holes
their conviction does not see.
So their certainty must be
the right world. I put the
glass down. Something is
wrong with me.
o n e D ay i W i ll Wr i t e a b o u t t h i s P l ace
A Memoir
B i n yaVa n G a Wa i n a i n a
Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan
in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened
childhood out of kilter with the world around him. This world
for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning
came to him as a chaos of loud and colorful sounds: the hair
all along. Resolutely avoiding stereotype and cliché, Wainaina
dryers at his mother’s beauty parlor, black mamba bicycle bells,
paints every scene in One Day I Will Write About This Place with a
mechanics in Nairobi, the music of Michael Jackson.
highly distinctive and hugely memorable brush.
In this vivid and compelling debut memoir, Wainaina takes
Binyavanga Wainaina is the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and
has written for Vanity Fair, Granta, and the New York Times. Wainaina directs
the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
us through his school days, his mother’s religious period, his
failed attempt to study in South Africa as a computer programmer, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels
around Kenya. The landscape in front of him always claims his
This book is made possible through a partnership with the College of Saint Benedict,
and honors the legacy of S. Mariella Gable, a distinguished teacher at the College.
main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene
that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood.
Brit.: Granta Books
Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when,
trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: the Wylie agency

Memoir, 272 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-591-3), $24.00, August
“An irresistibly funny
storyteller, Dyer is adept at fiction,
essay, and reportage, but happiest
when twisting all three into
something entirely his own.”
  
“Dyer is very funny,
in both senses—sort of like a
postmodern Kingsley Amis. His
writing is acute and bad-tempered
in the great British tradition,
and his prose is the equal of
anyone’s in the country.”
 
other wise known as the Human condition
Selected Essays and Reviews
G eoFF Dye R
Geoff Dyer has earned the devotion of passionate fans on both
David Murray (in the same essay), on his heroes Rebecca West
sides of the Atlantic through his wildly inventive, romantic
and Ryszard Kapuściński, on haute couture and sex in hotels.
novels as well as several brilliant, uncategorizable works of
For Dyer there is no division between the reflective work of the
nonfiction. All the while he has been writing some of the wit-
critic and the novelist’s commitment to lived experience: they
tiest, most incisive criticism we have on an astonishing array of
are mutually illuminating ways to sharpen our perceptions. His
subjects that, in Dyer’s expert hands, becomes a kind of irre-
is the rare body of work that manages to both frame our world
sistible self-reportage.
and enlarge it.
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition collects twenty-five
Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and five genre-defying books, including But
Beautiful; Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle finalist;
and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. He lives in London.
years of essays, reviews, and misadventures. Here he is pursuing the shadow of Camus in Algeria and remembering life on
the dole in Brixton in the 1980s; reflecting on Richard Avedon
Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: William morris endeavor entertainment
and Ruth Orkin, on the sculptor Zadkine and the saxophonist

Essays, 432 pages, 6 x 9, Black-and-White Photographs, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-579-1), $18.00, April
“Reading The Last Brother
is like entering into a Grimms’
fairy tale where the darkness of the
forest is met only by the greater
darkness of human cruelty.
“Nathacha Appanah’s
Nathacha Appanah has beautifully
The Last Brother is one of
rendered this tangled world through
the most beautiful, contained
the innocent perspective of a boy
portrayals of devastating loss and
who apprehands and misapprehends
profound longing that I’ve ever
events—historical and personal—
read. An older man gives voice and
that unfold around him. An
remembrance to his younger self,
important story, lyrical, grave,
bringing to vivid life a childhood
and gorgeously told.”
marked by brutality, separation,
 
and death, but also cunning,
connection, and survival. With the
lightest of touches, the author
movingly conveys a child
discovering his own mysteries,
then navigating those of a
baffling, larger world.”
 
Elliott Bay Book Company
the last Brother
A Novel
n at H ac H a a P Pa n a H
t R a n s l at e D F Ro m t H e F R e n c H B y G e o F F R e y s t R a c H a n
a l a n n a n t R a n s l at i o n s e l e c t i o n
This unforgettable and deeply moving novel sheds light on
As 1944 comes to a close, nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the
war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius,
a fascinating and unexplored corner of World War II history,
a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily
and establishes Nathacha Appanah as a significant international
struggle for his family. After a brutal beating lands Raj in the
voice.
hospital of the prison camp near his home, he meets David, a
Nathacha Appanah, a French-Mauritian of Indian origin, was born in
Mauritius and worked there as a journalist before moving to France in 1998.
Geoffrey Strachan is the award-winning translator of Andreï Makine.
boy his own age. David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish
exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazi-occupied
Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent
Brit.: Quercus
on to indefi nite detainment in Mauritius.
trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Georges Borchardt inc.
When a massive storm on the island brings chaos and confusion to the camp, Raj is determined to help David escape.

Fiction, 176 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-575-3), $14.00, February
“Alan Heathcock’s voice is the
American voice, doing what it was
meant to do. It’s full of distance
and wind, highways and heart.
He’s the real deal.”
  
author of Into the Beautiful North
“Alan Heathcock
is an epic storyteller—
and Volt is an epic collection.
You will come away from each
of these majestic stories thrilled,
alternately terrified and heartened,
ultimately full of wonder at how
the author manages to make twenty
pages so timeless, so deep and
sweeping—every story like
a novel writ small.”
 
author of The Wilding
and Refresh, Refresh
Vo l t
Stories
a l a n H e at H c o c k
One man kills another after neither will move his pickup truck
“Volt is booming, cracking good. Heathcock’s characters are trying
from the road. A female sheriff in a flooded town attempts to cover
to make things right, whether they’re busting up a town, avenging
up a murder. When a farmer harvesting a field accidentally runs
the grief of a mother, or trying to live with the self-imposed judg-
over his son, his grief sets him off walking, mile after mile. As these
ment of loyalty or remorse. Guilt and grace are the pillars of this
men and women lash out at the inscrutable churn of the world
excellent collection, and there are no stronger or more mysterious
around them, they fi nd a grim measure of peace in their solitude.
pillars than those.”—Joy Williams, author of Honored Guest
Throughout Volt, Alan Heathcock’s stark realism is leavened
Alan Heathcock’s work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Virginia
Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, and Best American Mystery Stories,
among other places. He is the winner of a National Magazine Award in fiction.
by a lyric energy that matches the brutality of the surface. And
as you move through the wind-lashed landscape of these stories,
faint signs of hope appear underfoot. Volt is the work of a writer
Brit., audio: Graywolf Press
who’s hell-bent on wrenching out whatever beauty this savage
trans., 1st ser., dram.: the Gernert company
world has to offer. Heathcock’s tales of lives set afire light up the
sky like signal flares touched off in a moment of desperation.

Fiction, 224 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-577-7), $15.00, March
A vibrant selection of
stories from the author
of Sweet Hearts and
First, Body
“What a voice and vision
Melanie Rae Thon has. Penetrating,
unflinching, poetic and honest. She
has created outstanding work over
more than a quarter of a century,
and it deserves to be recognized by
a wider audience.”
         
in this light
New and Selected Stories
melanie Rae tHon
This selection of Melanie Rae Thon’s stories showcases her
“The reader is swept along . . . by the taut, magic current of her
breathtaking ability to become each one of her characters, to
prose, which carries an exhilarating rhythmic punch.”—The New
move inside the bodies and minds of the dispossessed. One
York Times Book Review
woman speaks for them all: “I’m your worst fear. But not the
Melanie Rae Thon is the author of two collections of stories and three novels.
Named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, Thon has received a Whiting
Writers’ Award and two NEA fellowships. She teaches at the University of Utah.
worst thing that can happen.”
In This Light shimmers with grace as a drunk young woman
hits a Native American man on a desolate Montana road, a griev-
Brit., audio: Graywolf Press
ing slave murders the white child she nurses and loves, and two
1st ser., trans., dram.: irene skolnick agency
throwaway kids dance in the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree
in a stranger’s house. Thon’s searing prose reveals that the radiant heat inside us all is the hope and hunger for love.

Fiction, 256 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-585-2), $15.00, June
Winner of the
2010 Bakeless Prize
for Fiction, a muscular
debut that reconfigures
the American West
“The sentences in this
book have such grace and
muscularity that they seem more
performed than written, and the
author’s images and events carry
the nearly visceral weight of
memory. . . . American
Masculine is a powerful,
resonant work of literature, and
Shann Ray is a masterful and
original writer.”
 
Bakeless Prize Judge
american masculine
Montana Stories
s H a n n R ay
In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we
The American West has long been a place where myth and
legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough.
infl ict on those we love, and fi nds that reconciliation, if far off,
But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray fi nds washed-
is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefi ne
up basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and
the contours of the West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and
women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these
fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.
men. A son struggles to accept his father’s apologies after sur-
Shann Ray holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Alberta. His work
has appeared in McSweeney’s, Narrative Magazine, and Story Quarterly.
He teaches at Gonzaga University, and lives in Washington State.
viving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball
hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider
skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as
Brit., trans.: Graywolf Press
he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana’s
1st ser., audio, dram.: Wendy Weil agency
Rocky Mountains.

Fiction, 192 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-588-3), $15.00, July
Winner of the
2010 Bakeless Prize
for Nonfiction, an
unflinching memoir by
a working nurse
“Beautiful Unbroken
is about the power of language
as well as the power of compassion.
But this memoir is above all an
examination of a life, which is an
examination of a conscience. And,
after having traveled through the
wilderness with Nealon, her readers
may find themselves confronted
with essential questions: What do
we owe our fellow citizens, our
society, our family, ourselves?”
 
Bakeless Prize Judge
Beautiful unbroken
One N ur se’s L i fe
m a Ry J a n e n e a lo n
As a child, Mary Jane Nealon dreams of growing up to become
years in New York City, treating men in a homeless shelter on
a saint or, failing that, a nurse. She idolizes Clara Barton,
the Bowery and working in the city’s fi rst AIDS wards. In this
Kateri Tekakwitha, and Molly Pitcher, whose biographies she
compelling and revealing memoir, Nealon brings a poet’s sen-
reads and rereads. But by the time she follows her calling to
sitivity to bear on the hard truths of disease and recovery, life
nursing school, her beloved younger brother is diagnosed with
and death.
cancer, which challenges her to bring hope and healing closer
Mary Jane Nealon is the winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction. She is
the author of two collections of poetry, Immaculate Fuel and Rogue Apostle. She
lives in Missoula, Montana.
to home. His death leaves her shattered, and she flees into her
work, and into poetry.
Beautiful Unbroken details Nealon’s life of caregiving, from
Brit., 1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press
her years as a flying nurse, untethered and free to follow friends
trans., dram.: Brandt & Hochman literary agents
and jobs from the Southwest to Savannah, to more somber

Memoir, 224 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-590-6) $15.00, August
“A well-written and notable story of
three generations of stong-willed
women, each in search of something
just out of their grasp; the sacrifices
they make for their daughters; and
the unseen repercussions of choices
made long ago.”

“The best elements of a mystery
story, ghost story, magical realism
and the complex difficulties in
deciding what is ‘best’ for our
elders and offspring.”
 
(Minneapolis)
Picking Bones from ash
A Novel
maRie mutsuki mockett
Ghosts lurk in the bamboo forest outside the tiny northern
“The novel, so fi rmly anchored in a sensuous reality, veers into
Japanese town where Satomi lives with her elusive mother,
a dream world. A reader has the sense that even the author was
Atsuko. A preternaturally gifted pianist, Satomi wrestles with
driven by her most powerful character: the original mother,
inner demons. Her fall from grace is echoed in the life of her
raising her daughter alone, shunned by villagers, forced to
daughter, Rumi, who unleashes a ghost she must chase from
make decisions that haunt her descendants.”—Los Angeles Times
foggy San Francisco to a Buddhist temple atop Japan’s icy
Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born to a Japanese mother and an American father.
Her Japanese family owns and runs a Buddhist temple that has, among other things,
performed exorcisms. This is her first novel.
Mount Doom. In sharp, lush prose, Picking Bones from Ash traces
the reverbations of each woman’s decisions regarding the competing demands of their artistic gifts, family, and society.
Brit., audio: Graywolf Press
trans., dram.: irene skolnick literary agency
“Deeply preoccupied with girls, talent, and power.”—Maud
Newton
Hardcover isBn: 978-1-55597-541-8

Fiction, 320 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback (978-1-55597-576-0), $15.00, February
“Genuinely unnerving.”
  
“Shockingly, bracingly good.”
  
yo u r P r e s e n c e i s R e q u e s t e d a t s u v a n t o
A Novel
maile cHaPman
Sunny Taylor is an American nurse who hides behind a mask
“[Chapman’s] voice can be coyly unnerving, as if whispering
of crisp professionalism at a Finnish convalescent hospital
your naughty thoughts for you. . . . Eerie and fascinating.”
called Suvanto. On a late-summer day, a new patient arrives on
—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Sunny’s ward, and soon Suvanto’s reliable calm begins to show
“Unputdownable . . . a feminist thriller.”—Vogue
signs of strain. As summer turns to fall, and fall to a long, dark
winter, the escalating menace of Maile Chapman’s astonishing
Maile Chapman’s stories have appeared in A Public Space, the Literary Review,
the Mississippi Review, and Post Road. She earned her MFA from Syracuse
University and is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
debut novel builds to a terrifying conclusion.
“Bursts out of the gate with a premise that’s utterly specific and
Brit.: Random House Group ltd
original . . . [Chapman] has created a world in which the crust of
trans., dram.: sterling lord literistic
civility, like the ice of the frozen bay outside, is brittle, underlaid
audio: Graywolf Press
by darkness and on the verge of giving way.”—The New York Times
Book Review
Hardcover isBn: 978-1-55597-553-1

Fiction, 280 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback (978-1-55597-587-6), $15.00, June
The expansive,
energetic new poetry
book by David Rivard,
author of Sugartown
and Wise Poison
You pay as you go. Mornings
at this point are either like
spread sails or (more likely)
spread-sheets—they fill fast.
Mornings are fortunes,
but as suspect as a wristwatch
running in reverse.
—from “Vigorish”
otherwise elsewhere
Poems
DaViD RiVaRD
David Rivard’s new collection describes the many powers—
Praise for David Rivard:
psychological and historical—that flow through people’s lives
“A restless, original talent. The poems I’ve seen rank him in
in acts of faith, greed, pleasure, celebrity, gossip, and consola-
my mind as one of the best poets now writing.”—Tom Sleigh,
tion. A teenage boy looking at a weathered gravestone wonders
citation for the 2006 O. B. Hardison, Jr., Poetry Prize
how many times he’ll sign his name in his life; the forest on the
David Rivard is the author of four previous books of poetry, including Sugartown
and Wise Poison, which won the James Laughlin Award. He teaches at the
University of New Hampshire and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
move in Macbeth intersects with a blind man cured by Christ;
a man coming out of a terrible dream of being lost is saved by
touching his wife’s hair. “For those of us who need it,” one
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
poem asserts, “instruction is everywhere.” Rivard’s poetry
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press
is full of unsettling humor and the careening movement of
Also available:
memory and imagination.
Sugartown, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-435-0), $14.00

Poetry, 88 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-573-9), $15.00, January
“This is a poetry that
should be read out before the
Permanent Court of International
Justice in The Hague. Read and
be filled with awe, sorrow and
gratitude for this poet’s gifts
and spiritual courage.”
 
electrocution, no—the boy
stood in the hot-hot room
stammering I did stammering
I did stammering I
did stammering I did
stammering everything
you say I did
I did.
—from “Fire”
the captain asks for a show of Hands
Poems
n i c k F ly n n
The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands is Nick Flynn’s fi rst new
ent response to some of the essential issues of our day by one of
poetry collection in nearly a decade. What begins as a medita-
America’s riskiest and most innovative writers.
tion on love and the body soon breaks down into a collage of
Nick Flynn is the author of two memoirs, The Ticking Is the Bomb and Another
Bullshit Night in Suck City. He is also the author of two previous poetry collections,
Blind Huber and Some Ether. He teaches at the University of Houston and lives in
New York.
voices culled from media reports, childhood memories, testimonies from Abu Ghraib detainees, passages from documentary fi lms, overheard conversations, and scraps of poems and
song, only to reassemble with a gathering sonic force. It’s as if
Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: William morris endeavor entertainment
all the noise that fi lls our days were a storm, yet at the center
is a quiet place, but to get there you must fi rst pass through
Also available:
the storm, with eyes wide open, singing. Each poem becomes
Blind Huber, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-373-5), $14.00
a hallucinatory, shifting experience, through jump cut, lyric
Some Ether, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-303-2), $14.00
persuasion, and deadpan utterance. This is an emotional, resili-

Poetry, 104 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-574-6), $22.00, February
New poetry by
Jim Moore, who
“elevates economy of
phrase to an art”
(Star Tribune)
No, I don’t know
the way to get there.
Two empty suitcases sit in the
corner,
if that’s any kind of clue.
—from “Almost Sixty”
invisible strings
Poems
Jim mooRe
Brief, jagged, haiku-like, Jim Moore’s poems in Invisible
Praise for Lightning at Dinner:
Strings observe time moving past us moment by moment. In
“The poems in Moore’s sixth book are passionate meditations
that accrual, line by line, is the anxiety and acceptance of
on love, partnership, loss, and aging . . . fans of Louise Glück
aging, the mounting losses of friends to death or divorce, the
will fi nd a voice they can relate to, as will readers of Tony
accounting of frequent flyer miles and cups of coffee, and the
Hoagland.”—Publishers Weekly
poet’s own process of writing. It is a world of both diminish-
Jim Moore is the author of six previous books of poetry, including Lightning at
Dinner. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Spoleto, Italy.
ment and triumphs. Moore has assembled his most emotionally
direct and lyrically spare collection, one that amounts to his
book of days, seasons, and stark realizations.
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press
Also available:
Lightning at Dinner, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-425-1), $14.00

Poetry, 104 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-581-4), $15.00, April
“Tom Sleigh’s poetry is hard-earned
and well founded. I greatly admire
the way it refuses to cut emotional
corners and yet achieves a sense
of lyric absolution.”
 
Over by the cemetery next to
the CP
you could see them in wild
catmint going crazy:
I watched them roll and
wriggle, paw it, lick it,
chew it, leap about, pink
tongues stuck out, drooling.
—from “Army Cats”
army cats
Poems
tom sleiGH
Tom Sleigh’s poetry swerves dramatically from the ordinary
Praise for Tom Sleigh:
moment to the onrush of emergency or to the elusive past
“Tom Sleigh’s precision marks him as the diamond cutter of
or to the unexpectedly comic. In Army Cats, Sleigh confronts
poetry; his verse has a tense musicality, and his ability to con-
the more feral aspects of war, journalism, art, and selfhood.
vey exact emotions, even the state of consciousness itself, is
Many of these poems are seen as if through the haze after the
unerring.”—The New York Times Book Review
detonation of a roadside bomb, or while the smoke hasn’t yet
Tom Sleigh is the author of seven poetry collections, including Space Walk, which
received the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Award. He is also a playwright, translator, and the
author of a collection of essays, Interview with a Ghost. He lives in Brooklyn,
New York.
cleared from history in the making. One poem describes the
fallout after a wedding is interrupted by an explosive; still
another attempts to recreate the execution of Saddam Hussein
as distorted by a cell-phone video recording found on YouTube.
Brit., trans, audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
This is brilliant new work by one of America’s fi nest and most
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press
relevant poets.

Poetry, 104 pages, 6½ x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-583-8), $15.00, May
“We cannot do without
Fanny Howe.”
 
The Nation
Here a gun might go off,
There perhaps a broom would
brush away the sticks of
spring.
It was not your fault where
you were dropped
Or where you took your first
steps.
—from “After Watching
Klimov’s Agoniya”
come and see
Poems
Fanny HoWe
In Fanny Howe’s latest collection of poems, she beckons us
Praise for Fanny Howe:
toward the origins of both our collective knowing and mis-
“Fanny Howe is a religious writer whose work makes you
perception. These poems move from one country to another
more alert and alive to the earth, an experimental writer who
and from one archetypal position—parent, grandparent,
can break your heart. Live in her world for a while, and it can
child—to another in the wake of the twentieth century.
change the way you think of yours.”—Christian Wiman
Certain movies provide an almost religious resolution to
Fanny Howe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, essays, and fiction,
including The Lyrics and The Winter Sun. She received the 2009 Ruth Lilly
Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She lives in Massachusetts.
questions and experiences. “I don’t blame the children for
anything,” Howe writes in one poem. “Their century is like
a director who prefers his script to his actors.” With startling
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
revelation and lyrical power, Come and See urges us to observe
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press
the world anew.
Also available:
The Winter Sun, Memoir, Paperback (978-1-55597-520-3), $15.00

Poetry, 80 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-586-9), $15.00, June
New poetry by
the award-winning
poet Tracy K. Smith,
whose “lyric brilliance
and political impulses
never falter”
(Publishers Weekly,
starred review)
You lie there kicking like a baby,
waiting for God himself
To lift you past the rungs of your
crib.What
Would your life say if it could talk?
—from “No Fly Zone”
life on mars
Poems
tR acy k. smitH
With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life
this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself as
on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany
among the best poets of her generation.
the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In
these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith imagines a sci-fi
“Tracy K. Smith synthesizes the riches of many discursive and
future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark
poetic traditions without regard to doctrine and with great
matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits
technical rigor. Her poems are . . . deeply satisfying and . . .
the kitschy concepts like “love” and “illness” now relegated to
pristinely beautiful.”—Elizabeth Alexander
the Museum of Obsolescence. These reveal the realities of life
Tracy K. Smith is the author of two previous poetry collections, Duende, winner of
the James Laughlin Award, and The Body’s Question, winner of the Cave Canem
Poetry Prize. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in
the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars
walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
of the scientists who worked on the Hubble Telescope. With
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press

Poetry, 88 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-584-5), $15.00, May
Now available in
paperback, the awardwinning retrospective
by Linda Gregg, “One
of the best poets
in America”
(Gerald Stern)
Worlds out of time still exist.
Worlds of achievement out of
mind and remembering
just as the poem lasts.
In the concert of being present.
—from “Arriving”
all of it singing
New and Selected Poems
linDa GReGG
Linda Gregg’s abiding presence in American poetry for more
“Linda Gregg is a visionary poet. The fact that this is not imme-
than thirty years is a testament to the longevity of art and the
diately apparent constitutes the power of these extraordinary
spirit. All of It Singing collects the ongoing work of Gregg’s
poems, poems that have been accumulating with a quiet, slow-
career in one book, including poetry from her six previous
burning majesty for nearly four decades.”—James Longenbach,
volumes and more than twenty remarkable new poems. All
from the citation for the 2009 William Carlos Williams Award
of It Singing received the 2009 Jackson Poetry Prize from
Linda Gregg is the author of six poetry collections, including In the Middle
Distance. She received the 2006 PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry for achievement
across her career. She lives in New York.
Poets & Writers, the 2009 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from
the Academy of American Poets, the 2009 William Carlos
Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
the 2009 American Book Award from the Before Columbus
Foundation.
Hardcover isBn: 978-1-55597-507-4

Poetry, 224 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback (978-1-55597-578-4), $18.00, March
Winner of the 2010
Bakeless Prize for
Poetry, the debut
collection by poet
Dilruba Ahmed
Can’t occupy the same space at
the same time
unless, of course, you land in
Dhaka
—from “Dhaka Dust”
Dhaka Dust
Poems
DilRuBa aHmeD
Ranging across Europe and America to the streets of
“Clear, sensuous, and astute, Dilruba Ahmed’s poems play
Bangladesh, the sharp-edged poems in Dhaka Dust are culled
and radiate off each other in subtle and provocative ways. She
from a rich mélange of languages, people, and poetic attitudes.
embraces life in all its complexity and handles a variety of forms
Through lyric and narrative poems, Dilruba Ahmed’s keen
with originality and grace. And the themes of departures and
observations on birth, motherhood, and death offer a unique
arrivals, of cultural and poetic hybridity, resonate gorgeously
way into the beckoning world. Voices of villagers resonate
through this book.”—Arthur Sze, Bakeless Prize Judge
alongside those of global travelers, each searching for an elu-
Dilruba Ahmed’s work has appeared in Cream City Review, New England
Review, New Orleans Review, and other publications. She holds an MFA from
Warren Wilson College. She was born in Philadelphia and raised in Ohio.
sive homeland in small towns and cities. Vendors hawk their
wares at a bazaar in Dhaka. Gyms in Ohio double as mosques
for uprooted immigrants. In Ahmed’s skillful hands, these
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
disparate subjects adroitly capture the textures of life in this
1st ser.: author c/o Graywolf Press
new century.

Poetry, 88 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-589-0), $15.00, July
R e c e n t
B a c k l i s t
The Report
A Novel
Essays from the Nick of
Time
Jessica Francis Kane
Reflections and Refutations
“Meticulous in its detail and
­devastating in its quiet precision,
The Report is . . . nothing less than
perfect.”—Newsday
Mark Slouk a
Fiction, 256 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-565-4), $15.00
Literature/Essays, 208 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-571-5), $16.00
The Wilding
Crave Radiance
A Novel
New and Selected Poems
Benjamin Percy
Elizabeth Alexander
“As close as you can get to a
­contemporary Deliverance.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The first career retrospective by
the award-winning poet Elizabeth
Alexander, including her poem
delivered at Barack Obama’s
Presidential Inauguration.
A new collection of prophetic essays
from one of the sharpest practitioners of the form.
Fiction, 288 pages, Hardcover
(978-1-55597-569-2), $23.00
Poetry, 240 pages, Hardcover
(978-1-55597-568-5), $26.00
The Adderall Diaries
A Memoir
Skin, Inc.
S t e ph e n E l l i o t t
Identity Repair Poems
“You won’t find a more provocative, masterful, thrilling ride than
this.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Th o m a s S a y e r s E l l i s
The ambitious, combative,
and spot-on new poetry book by
the author of the award-winning
The Maverick Room.
Memoir, 208 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-570-8), $14.00
Poetry, 176 pages, Hardcover
(978-1-55597-567-8), $23.00
The Heyday of the
Insensitive Bastards
Stories
Missing You, Metropolis
Robert Boswell
Poems
G a ry J ac k s o n
“[Boswell] shows a sensitive and
comprehensive understanding of
the quirks that can shake a person
off course: from fear, passivity, and
pride to external knocks and dings
that are easier to spot, harder to fix.”—The New York Times
Book Review
“Playful, jaunty, rueful, and highly
serious. . . . This first collection of
poems is gauged by a sophisticated
heart.”—Yusef Komunyakaa
Poetry, 80 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-572-2), $15.00
Fiction, 272 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-566-1), $15.00

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