The Romans believed that an artist's inspiration came from a spirit, called a genius, that lived in the walls of the artist's home. This character appears throughout the book, providing charming commentary and biting insight on the young author's creative process and emotional path.

The Romans believed that an artist's inspiration came from a spirit, called a genius, that lived in the walls of the artist's home. In her second book, Sierra DeMulder examines her childhood in a small town, heartache, loss, and the possibility of transcending suffering, aided by the voice of her own genius. His character appears throughout the book, providing charming commentary and biting insight on the young author's creative process and emotional path.

Our Poison Horse is the newest poetry collection released by Derrick C. Brown. Brown is the winner of the Texas Book of The Year Prize, 2013. The New York Times calls his work a "...rekindling of the faith in the shocking, weird and beautiful power of words." Brown finally sold the ship, The Sea Section, upon which he lived for years in the Long Beach harbor, after which he took to hunting for a city that was affordable and had a bustling writer's community. He landed in Austin, Texas and when the progress of that town got to be intense, he moved to the nearby countryside in Elgin, Texas, and from that pastoral setting came unfurling this new collection of his most personal work to date. Brown has been known as one of the most touring, well travelled living poets in America. He has based his whole writing career on changing peoples minds about poetry and he feels a quality, unforgettable live experience can achieve that. Brown told himself he needed a 10-year hiatus from writing poetry when he felt the well of creativity had dried up. 2 years ago, he wrote a one-hour long 'poetic play' called Strange Light, commissioned by The Noord Nederlands Dans Group in Holland. The piece was performed by 14 dancers and accompanied by a live orchestra using music composed by fellow Americans, Emily Wells and Timmy Straw. While he was working on a new libretto for Wayne State University in Detroit, he was set up in a seemingly pastoral country setting, where, as Brown says, "an incredible war broke out inside and out, such bright, massive storms, snakes, guns, howling wind, hard sun: all kinds of poems gushed forth. I gave in to the process and my best work to date was born, this will be my 5th book." Our Poison Horse touches on more autobiography than the romantic and fantastical that was so present in his past work. In Derrick Brown's words: "I found a poetry in the real events that shaped or broke me. Every morning, I would quiet down, stare out into the field where we were watching our neighbors horse, a horse that was poisoned with pesticide by some local boys, a horse with massive scars all down its body from it's skin peeling from the poison sprayed upon it maliciously by some bastard kids. I watched the horse heal and finally come to me, and trust me and eat carrots. Something about that horse, Lacey, about it not trusting me and then warming up pulled something out of me that I didn't know I was ready for. There is a theme that in beautiful places, you will

Dear you: Whoever you are, However you got here, This is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. These are the opening lines of "Today Means Amen," YouTube star Sierra deMulder’s immensely powerful and virally popular poem, which lends its title to this collection. Like her fellow Millennial poets Tyler Knot Gregson, Clementine von Radics, and Lang Leav, Sierra has the gift of speaking directly to the reader. “Today Means Amen” has become an anthem of sorts to thousands, who find themselves reflected in its pain, its fierceness, its tenderness — but also in its triumphant culminating refrain: You made it You made it You made it Here. The poems in Sierra's new book explore the rocky terrains of love, family, and womanhood with this same remarkable honesty and generosity. Today Means Amen brings this important young poet's work to an even broader audience.

A collection of fierce, empowering poems by living, self-identified women writers intended for girls age 12-21. Full of advice, critique, reflection, commiseration, humor, sorrow and rage, this anthology includes poems by some of the most exciting female poets writing and performing today. Courage; Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls will live in lockers, backpacks and under beds for years, its pages reblogged, tattooed, dog-eared and coffee stained.

This second edition is designed to introduce students of urban history to recent interpretive literature in this field. Its goal is to provide a coherent framework for understanding the pattern of American urbanization, while at the same time offering specific examples of the work of historians in the field.

Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal follows the story of outcast high school senior Carson Phillips who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to bolster his college application; his goal in life is to get into Northwestern and eventually become the editor of The New Yorker. At once laugh-out-loud funny, deliciously dark, and remarkably smart, Struck By Lightning unearths the dirt that lies just below the surface of high school. The film Stuck By Lightning features Colfer's own original screenplay. Colfer also stars in the film alongside Allison Janney, Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Hyland, and Polly Bergen.

The book offers a collection of papers that draw on contemporary developments in cultural studies in their discussions of postmillennial trends in works of Anglophone literature and media. The first section of the book, “Addressing the Theories of a New Cultural Paradigm”, comprises ten essays that present, respectively, performatist, metamodernist, digimodernist, and hypomodernist readings of selected texts in order to test the usefulness of recent theories in explorations of the new paradigm in literary, media and food studies. The papers cover a wide variety of genres, including the novel, the film, the documentary, the cookbook, the food magazine, and the food commercial, and present a number of themes which shed light on the nature of the new paradigm. The second part of the volume, “Mapping the Dynamics of a New Sensibility”, offers a wider perspective and presents seven papers that search for evidence of a new sensibility in selected examples of postmillennial texts. These contributions move beyond the frameworks of the theories explored in the first part in order to offer new perspectives in the contributors’ respective fields of interest.

From the author of How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America * Winner, 2017 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award * Finalist, 2017 NAACP Image Awards * "One Book One New Orleans" 2017 Book Selection * Published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, New Republic, Boston Review, The Guardian, The Rumpus, and The Academy of American Poets "So many of these poems just blow me away. Incredibly beautiful and powerful." -- Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow "Counting Descent is a tightly-woven collection of poems whose pages act like an invitation. The invitation is intimate and generous and also a challenge; are you up to asking what is blackness? What is black joy? How is black life loved and lived? To whom do we look to for answers? This invitation is not to a narrow street, or a shallow lake, but to a vast exploration of life. And you’re invited. -- Elizabeth Acevedo, Author of Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths "These poems shimmer with revelatory intensity, approaching us from all sides to immerse us in the America that America so often forgets." -- Gregory Pardlo "Counting Descent is more than brilliant. More than lyrical. More than bluesy. More than courageous. It is terrifying in its ability to at once not hide and show readers why it wants to hide so badly. These poems mend, meld and imagine with weighted details, pauses, idiosyncrasies and word patterns I've never seen before." -- Kiese Laymon, Author of Long Division Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. "Do you know what it means for your existence to be defined by someone else’s intentions?" Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the reader on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward.