From the award-winning author of Banana Heart Summer—“[a] wonderful debut…[that] resembles Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street and is destined to be a hit among book club members”*—comes a wondrous tale of hope, secrets, and family devotion. It’s six days until Christmas, and on the bustling streets of Manila a mute ten-year-old boy sells his version of the stars: exquisite lanterns handmade with colorful paper. But everything changes for young Noland when he witnesses an American tourist injured in a drive-by shooting of a journalist and imagines he’s seen an angel falling from the sky. When Noland whisks her to the safety of the hut he shares with his mother, the magical and the real collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and loss, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. While the story of the missing tourist grips the media, Noland and his mother care for their wounded guest, and a dark memory returns. But light sneaks in—and their lives are transformed by the power of love. *Library Journal ( starred review, “Editor’s Pick”)

Southeast Asian Ecocriticism presents a timely exploration of the rapidly expanding field of ecocriticism through its devotion to the writers, creators, theorists, traditions, concerns, and landscapes of Southeast Asian countries. While ecocritics have begun to turn their attention to East and South Asian contexts and, particularly, to Chinese and Indian cultural productions, less emphasis has been placed on the diverse environmental traditions of Southeast Asia. Building on recent scholarship in Asian ecocriticism, the book gives prominence to the range of theoretical models and practical approaches employed by scholars based within, and located outside of, the Southeast region. Consisting of twelve chapters, Southeast Asian Ecocriticism includes contributions on the ecological prose, poetry, cinema, and music of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors emphasize the transnational exchanges of materials, technologies, texts, motifs, and ideas between Southeast Asian countries and Australia, England, Taiwan (Formosa), and the United States. From environmental hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, and ecofeminism to critical plant studies, ecopoetics, and ecopedagogy, the edited collection embodies the dynamic breadth of interdisciplinary environmental scholarship today. Southeast Asian Ecocriticism foregrounds the theories, practices, and prospects of ecocriticism in the region. The volume opens up new directions and reveals fresh possibilities not only for ecocritical scholarship in Southeast Asia but for a comparative environmental criticism that transcends political boundaries and national canons. The volume highlights the important role of literature in heightening awareness of ecological issues at local, regional, and global scales.

In the era of war on terror, the term terror has tended to be applied to its sudden eruptions in the metropolises of the global north. This volume directs its attention to terror’s manifestations in other locations and lives. The title Living Through Terror refers both to the pervasiveness of terror in societies where extreme violence and war constitute the everyday processes of life as well as to the experience of surviving terror and living into the future. The contributions consider terror’s effects in those ignored and silenced locations where terror is either naturalised (the Philippines, South Africa, Timor Leste, Sri Lanka) or made invisible (the neo-liberal democracies of Australia and Italy). The stories of ruined places, displaced bodies and identities shattered and remade that emerge from these pages bring into view the socio-political systems, cultural geographies and regimes of territoriality through which terror is engendered and naturalised, and the institutions and imaginaries that continue to underpin them. The essays, literary writings and images collected here attend, in their different ways, to subjects living in and with terror as an element incorporated in their everyday, and to the processes by which terror exercises itself in their lives, whether it is perpetrated by state or non-state actors. Simultaneously, the contributions attest to the tactics subjects deploy to confront and negotiate conditions of terror, their attempts to live with and through terror and, ultimately, their strategies to recover through the everyday and the ordinary the seeds of life and hope.

This book investigates the politics of identity in Asia and explores how different groups of people inside and outside Asia have attempted to relate to the alterity of the places and cultures in the region through various modes (literary and filmic representation, scholarly knowledge, and so on) and at different points in time. Although coming from different perspectives like literary criticism, film studies, geography, cultural history, and political science, the contributors collectively argue that Asian otherness is more than the dialectical interplay between the Western self and one of its many others, and more than just the Orientalist discourse writ large. Rather, they demonstrate the existence of multiple levels of inter-Asian and intercultural contact and consciousness that both subvert as much as they consolidate the dominant ‘Western Core-Asian periphery’ framework that structures what the mainstream assumes to be knowledge of Asia. With chapters covering a wealth of topics from Korea and its Cold War history, to Australia's Asian identity crisis, this book will be of huge interest to anyone interested in critical Asian studies, Asian ethnicity, postcolonialism and Asia cultural studies. Leong Yew is an Assistant Professor in the University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore. He is the author of The Disjunctive Empire of International Relations (2003).

Engaging with Asian Australian writing, this book focuses on an influential area of cultural production defined by its ethnic diversity and stylistic innovativeness. In addressing the demanding new transnational and transcultural critical frameworks of such syncretic writing, the contributors collectively examine how the varied and diverse body of Asian Australian literary work intervenes into contemporary representational politics and culture. The book questions, for instance, the ideology of Australian multiculturalism; the core/periphery hierarchy; the perpetuation of Orientalist attitudes and stereotypes; and white Australian claims to belong as seen in its myths of cultural authenticity and authority. Ranging in critical analyses from the historic first Chinese-Australian novel to contemporary award winning Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Filipino Australian novels, the book provides an inside view of the ways in which Asian Australian literary work is reshaping Australian mainstream literature, politics and culture, and in the wider context, the world literary scene. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Now, more than ever, in a market glutted with aspiring writers and a shrinking number of publishing houses, writers need someone familiar with the publishing scene to shepherd their manuscript to the right person. Completely updated annually, Guide to Literary Agents provides names and specialties for more than 800 individual agents around the United States and the world. The 2009 edition includes more than 85 pages of original articles on everything you need to know including how to submit to agents, how to avoid scams and what an agent can do for their clients.

The best resource available for finding a literary agent! No matter what you're writing--fiction or nonfiction, books for adults or children--you need a literary agent if you want to get the best traditional publishing book deal possible. The 2015 Guide to Literary Agents is your essential resource for finding that literary agent and getting your book bought by a top publisher. Along with listing information for more than 1,000 literary agents who represent writers and their books, this new, updated edition of GLA includes: • "10 Reasons Agents Reject Your Manuscript"--helping you learn what not to do during the submission process • "New Agent Spotlights"--profiles of literary reps actively building their client lists right now • 13 debut author success stories: Writers explain their paths to publication, so you can learn from their successes and see what they did right • Informative how-to articles on query letters, synopsis writing, voice and craft, platform and blogging, nonfiction book proposals, and more *Includes access to the webinar "Everything You Need to Know About Getting an Agent" from Chuck Sambuchino, editor of Guide to Literary Agents* In this 90-minute webinar, you'll learn how to compose a query letter, what makes up a compelling pitch, synopsis writing tips, how to research/find agents, and much more.

The best resource available for finding a literary agent! No matter what you're writing--fiction or nonfiction, books for kids or adults--you need a literary agent to secure a book deal. The 2014 Guide to Literary Agents is your essential resource for finding that literary agent--without fear of being scammed--and getting your book published. Along with listing information for more than 1,000 literary agents who represent writers and their work, this new, updated edition of GLA includes: • "New Agent Spotlights"--calling out literary reps actively building lists right now. • "How I Got My Agent" success stories from writers who describe their paths from aspiring author to published success. • Informative articles on query letters, synopsis writing, voice and craft, author platform, nonfiction book proposals, researching agents, and more. • Includes "Ask the Agent" profiles of individual literary agents who are currently seeking writers.

In her lush, luminous debut novel, Merlinda Bobis creates a dazzling feast for all the senses. Richly imagined, gloriously written, Banana Heart Summer is an incandescent tale of food, family, and longing—at once a love letter to mothers and daughters and a lively celebration of friendship and community. Twelve-year-old Nenita is hungry for everything: food, love, life. Growing up with five sisters and brothers, she searches for happiness in the magical smell of the deep-frying bananas of Nana Dora, who first tells Nenita the myth of the banana heart; in the tantalizing scent of Manolito, the heartthrob of Nenita and her friends; in the pungent aromas of the dishes she prepares for the most beautiful woman on Remedios Street. To Nenita, food is synonymous with love—the love she yearns to receive from her disappointed mother. But in this summer of broken hearts, new friendships, secrets, and discoveries, change will be as sudden and explosive as the monsoon that marks the end of the sweltering heat—and transforms Nenita’s young life in ways she could never imagine.

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are made possible as a result of these creative synergies? By addressing these questions, the authors highlight the important roles that ethnography and creative practice play in socially impactful research. This book is aimed at interdisciplinary researchers, scholars, and students of art, design, sociology, anthropology, games, media, education, and cultural studies.