First Place Winner of the 2019 International Latino Book Award for Poetry, One Author, in English In Morales's newest collection, an imagined zombie apocalypse intertwines with personal narrative. From zombie dating to the sin of popcorn ceilings, these poems investigate the nature of impermanence while celebrating the complexities of life.

America is at a crossroads. Conflicting political and social perspectives reflect a need to collectively define our moral imperatives, clarify cultural values, and inspire meaningful change. In that patriotic spirit, nearly two hundred writers, artists, scientists, and political and community leaders have come together since the 2016 presidential election to offer their impassioned letters to America, in a project envisioned by the online journal Terrain.org and collected, with 50 never-before-published letters, in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. In the inaugural piece in Terrain.org’s Letters to America series, Alison Hawthorne Deming writes, “Think of the great spirit of inventiveness the Earth calls forth after each major disturbance it suffers. Be artful, inventive, and just, my friends, but do not be silent.” Joining Deming are renowned artists and thinkers including Seth Abramson, Ellen Bass, Jericho Brown, Francisco Cantú, Kurt Caswell, Victoria Chang, Camille T. Dungy, Tarfia Faizullah, Blas Falconer, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, David Gessner, Katrina Goldsaito, Kimiko Hahn, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan, Pam Houston, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Karen An-hwei Lee, Christopher Merrill, Kathryn Miles, Kathleen Dean Moore, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Naomi Shihab Nye, Elena Passarello, Dean Rader, Scott Russell Sanders, Lauret Savoy, Gary Soto, Pete Souza, Kim Stafford, Sandra Steingraber, Arthur Sze, Scott Warren, Debbie Weingarten, Christian Wiman, Robert Wrigley, and others. Dear America reflects the evolution of a moral panic that has emerged in the nation. More importantly, it is a timely congress of the personal and the political, a clarion call to find common ground and conflict resolution, all with a particular focus on the environment, social justice, and climate change. The diverse collection features personal essays, narrative journalism, poetry, and visual art from nearly 130 contributors—many pieces never before published—all literary reactions to the times we live in, with a focus on civic action and social change as we approach future elections. As Scott Minar writes, we must remain steadfast and look to the future: “Despair can bring us very low, or it can make us smarter and stronger than we have ever been before.”

Award-winning poet and playwright Idris Goodwin interrogates and remixes our cultural past in order to make sense of our present and potential futures.

This debut collection reads like an elegy, not just for the author's brother Lou, stricken with schizophrenia, but for all families affected by mental illness. Through multiple personae and a variety of styles, Seluja offers a gritty authenticity and empathy to the subjects and themes. These poems grieve for a world of the lost while extending solace to those who remain and remember.

For more than a century, Converse College has held a unique position in the literary history of South Carolina. Converse graduate Julia Mood Peterkin is the only South Carolinian to be selected for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (1929), and alumna and poet Ellen Bryant Voigt, a National Book Award and Pulitzer finalist, and a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant recipient, has been credited with starting the low-residency MFA model for graduate writing students. These writers, plus a significant number of others over the last century, have been hallmark authors in the literary history of this state. With the start of the Converse Low Residency MFA in the earlier part of the twenty-first century, the only low-residency MFA in South Carolina, Converse has added a new chapter to South Carolina’s literary history. This anthology highlights the last decade of outstanding poetry presented in the Converse MFA program and produced by our program faculty, visiting faculty, and graduates.

"Her rivers are urgent witnesses; her rivers sing truths, shimmer in the darkness. Here are songs pure as water to nourish and cleanse us in the season of lies."--Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

In this stunning collection Rockman explores the themes of aging; our relationships to our bodies; marriage; and the surprises, griefs, and joys of motherhood.

From veteran teacher and acclaimed author Joni B. Cole comes a revised and expanded edition of her popular writing guide Toxic Feedback. Successful writers know that feedback is often the difference between writing and not writing, and between writing and writing well. But feedback mismanaged is more likely to leave the writer confused, intimidated, or even deflated. This book not only detoxifies the feedback process with humor, but it also shows writers and feedback providers how to make the most of this powerful resource at every stage of the writing and publishing process. This new edition includes a second preface, four new chapters, updates throughout the original material, and several additional exercises. Cole also includes new and previous interviews with authors such as Khaled Hosseini, Juan Morales, Grace Paley, Jodi Picoult, and Matthew Salesses. Toxic Feedback remains essential reading for all writers, critique groups, MFA programs, and teachers of writing at every level.

The geography of After Party includes married life and fatherhood, a childhood survived if not fully understood, the transition from youth to an adulthood filled with responsibilities, and the dangers of our current world and culture—on a personal and global scale—that can distract and disrupt life and our idea of home. By turns funny and heartbreaking, flirtatious and frank, Blaustein never lets his aggravation or confusion overwhelm his sense of gratitude for the life he leads and those he loves.

The News as Usual showcases the work of a gifted poet who employs language at its richest. Yenser captures lyrics and blues, ballads and villanelles, and even a crown of sonnets. Sonically rich and filled with detail, these poems link mortality with fishing, nature with protoplasm—constantly finding ways to explore the inner and outer worlds in ways at once understated and wise.