Aisha Sharif's debut collection is an exploration in belonging--to a family, to a community, to a faith. In poems that navigate the boundaries of these different types of belonging, Sharif examines both what is lost and what is gained. Praise for To Keep From Undressing Muslim narratives, bodies, and lineages don't just matter; they make up the American fabric, both historic and contemporary, and woven within that fabric is a tradition rooted in the same ideals and morals and complications as all other American narratives. Sharif's poems deconstruct the hijab not for metaphoric purposes, or to serve as a simplified how-to manual for the unlearned. The hijab becomes a directional marker into the poet herself, wondering "how to truly unwrap myself." And what we find is the good work of poetry: desire, regret, mis-spoken languages, vulnerabilities. --F. Douglas Brown, author of ICON, and Zero to Three, winner of 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize To Keep from Undressing, Aisha Sharif's timely debut collection, reveals the type of honesty that gets you uninvited to family reunions. Sharif requires honesty, not only of those she speaks of in her poems, but also of herself. The undressing comes from the wrestling with the truth of the discomfort but also the beauty of what we now call intersectionality but what has been long known as being a black woman in America-- a folding and unfolding, a combination of internalized faith, motherhood, men, family and unshakable identity. --Natasha Ria El-Scari, author of The Only Other In nature, the greatest richness appears at the edges between habitat zones--between meadow and forest, oasis and desert, sea and shore. The same can be true of poetry that explores the edges between seemingly disparate realms or rival qualities, as in this fine collection by Aisha Sharif. She speaks in these poems of how it feels to be both Muslim and black, faithful and doubting, obedient and rebellious. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of Earth Works From the intersection of Black culture and religion, to conversations with jinn, to motherhood, marriage and the meaning of hijab, To Keep From Undressing beautifully melds private and public, interweaving bold and delicate themes into a one-of-kind tapestry of words and freeing truths. The reading experience is just as therapeutic to the reader as the writing was for the writer. That is the mark of pure magic. --Nadirah Angail author of On All Things That Make Me Beautiful and What We Learned Along the Way

“Immediate, sensual, unrelentingly intense.” —NPR A breathtaking volume about the violence of desire and the peace of love from celebrated poet Li-Young Lee, The Undressing is a tonic for spiritual anemia; it attempts to uncover things hidden since the dawn of the world. Short of achieving that end, these mysterious, unassuming poems investigate the human violence and dispossession increasingly prevalent around the world, and the horrors the poet grew up with as a child of refugees. Lee draws from disparate sources including the Old Testament, the Dao De Jing, and the music of the Wu-Tang Clan. While the ostensive subjects of these layered, impassioned poems are wide-ranging, their driving engine is a burning need to understand our collective human mission.

Get Naked For Me As director of a Boston art gallery, Mercy Rothell has made some hot deals in her time, but none like this. In order to sign the impossibly sexy, brilliant, and successful artist Shamus Montgomery to do a show of his celebrated erotic sculptures, Mercy must meet his curious but absolutely non-negotiable demand--she must pose for him in the nude, day after day, or he walks. Never one to back down from a challenge, Mercy agrees. Burning under the intense gaze of the hottest man she's ever known, watching his hands work their magic, Mercy feels vulnerable yet liberated and fully aroused, desperate for the kind of satisfaction only a master like Shamus can give. In fact, she would beg him to cross the line. And once he does, mercy is the last thing she desires. . . "Lee hits the mark time and time again. . .in a class by itself." --Romantic Times (4 1⁄2 Stars G, Top Pick) "An incredible gem of a story. . .different and extraordinary." --Just Erotic Romance Reviews "The love scenes are hot, hot, hot, and the story will keep you riveted from beginning to end. . .absolutely magnificent."--Fallen Angels Reviews (5 Angels) "Sexy and sensual and totally hot. . .will keep you turning the pages." --The Romance Studio Deanna Lee has received rave reviews for her e-published erotic fiction, including a 4 1⁄2-star, Gold Medal, Top Pick review from Romantic Times for Undressing Mercy. She lives in Alabama where she is currently working on the next novel in this planned trilogy.

From journalist, fashionista, and clothing resale expert Elizabeth L. Cline, “the Michael Pollan of fashion,”* comes the definitive guide to building an ethical, sustainable wardrobe you'll love. Clothing is one of the most personal expressions of who we are. In her landmark investigation Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth L. Cline first revealed fast fashion’s hidden toll on the environment, garment workers, and even our own satisfaction with our clothes. The Conscious Closet shows exactly what we can do about it. Whether your goal is to build an effortless capsule wardrobe, keep up with trends without harming the environment, buy better quality, seek out ethical brands, or all of the above, The Conscious Closet is packed with the vital tools you need. Elizabeth delves into fresh research on fashion’s impacts and shows how we can leverage our everyday fashion choices to change the world through style. Inspired by her own revelatory journey getting off the fast-fashion treadmill, Elizabeth shares exactly how to build a more ethical wardrobe, starting with a mindful closet clean-out and donating, swapping, or selling the clothes you don't love to make way for the closet of your dreams. The Conscious Closet is not just a style guide. It is a call to action to transform one of the most polluting industries on earth—fashion—into a force for good. Readers will learn where our clothes are made and how they’re made, before connecting to a global and impassioned community of stylish fashion revolutionaries. In The Conscious Closet, Elizabeth shows us how we can start to truly love and understand our clothes again—without sacrificing the environment, our morals, or our style in the process. *Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek/The Daily Beast

"Forgive my bluntness, but...Goddamn, Sam Sax can write some poems. Devastating, comic, inventive, weird, dangerous, smart as hell. I could talk about the diction sometimes glass and sometimes bouquet. Or the syntax jagged here, balletic there. Or the metaphors, good lord. But the bottom line is that when reading the poems in A GUIDE TO UNDRESSING YOUR MONSTERS, one after the next, I kept saying to myself, probably twisting my face a little bit or squirming in my seat, "Goddamn, Sam Sax can write some poems." Ross Gay

The act of undressing has a multitude of meanings, which vary dramatically when this commonly private gesture is presented for public consumption. This ground-breaking book explores the significance of undressing in various cultural and social contexts. As we are increasingly obsessed with dress choices as signifiers of who we are and how we feel, an investigation into what happens as we remove our clothes has never been more pertinent. Exploring three main issues - politics, tease, and clothes without bodies - Acts of Undressing discusses these key themes through an in-depth and eclectic mix of case studies including flashing at Mardi Gras, the World Burlesque Games, and 'shoefiti' used by gangs to mark territories. Building on leading theories of dress and the body, from academics including Roland Barthes and Mario Perniolato, Ruth Barcan and Erving Goffman, Acts of Undressing is essential reading for students of fashion, sociology, anthropology, visual culture, and related subjects.

In ancient times many teachings were written in the style called Sutra. The idea behind Sutra is if there is something you can say in six words – say it in five. The sixth word has to be found. They believed this was the only way in which you could understand life. In Souls Undressing I set out to find the ‘sixth word’ as both a therapist and as an individual. As I embark on this journey I will relive and revive some of the pivotal moments from my therapy cases through the lens of literature and my own life experience. Along the way I found unlearning becoming more important than learning. Undressing. Loosening the hold on old patterns, unbuttoning and perhaps even throwing them away. When souls meet other souls without their usual costumes. In these stories you may easily find yourself facing your own feelings, dilemmas and life situations. You may even come to meet yourself. And me. For writing about unbuttoning our souls, the therapist cannot remain dressed either.

In an alternate Brooklyn, New York, Lorna flirts with the idea of love despite the fact that any boy a Devonairre Street girl falls in love with is destined to die.

In evocative shards of memory, a terminally ill young woman pieces together her family’s difficult past in this “lyrical, delicately affecting tale” (Publisher Weekly). At thirty, Piper Kincaid feels too young to be dying, even as breast cancer eats away her strength. Yet with all the questions of her future before her, she's adrift in the past, remembering the fateful summer she turned fourteen and her life changed forever. It was back then that what Piper dreaded came to pass: her restless, artistic mother, finally left. She had a brother who loved her, but her mother's absence, her father's distance, and a volatile secret threatened to shatter her whole world. Now Piper is back in her hometown of Quimby, Vermont—and once again left with the jagged pieces of a broken life. If she is ever going to survive, she'll have to begin with the summer that broke them all.