From one of Michigan’s foremost writers comes a powerful, soulful meditation on grief, loss, the natural world, and the relationship between humans and everything around usIn Peter Markus’s new collection of poems, the loss of the father has become the river that shapes the landscape that the speaker behind these poems is looking to navigate and explore. He finds fellowship and solace in the subject that drives many of these poems: birds, fish, and the ever-present...

A luminous and heartfelt collection of mourning poetry.Over the course of two decades and six books, Peter Markus has been making fiction out of a lexicon shaped by the words brother and fish and mud. In an essay on Markus's work, Brian Evenson writes, "If it's not clear by now, Markus's use of English is quite unique. It is instead a sort of ritual speech, an almost religious invocation in which words themselves, through repetition, acq...

The world of the child is a world where things aren't what they always seem to be. In The Fish and the Not Fish, Peter Markus brings us back inside that not-so-simple space and its slippery way of seeing and saying, a place that is primal and mythic in its re-making.

Twenty-three writers reflect on their experiences working with public school students as part of Detroit's innovative InsideOut Literary Arts Project.The InsideOut Literary Arts Project (iO) began in 1995 in five Detroit high schools, with weekly classroom visits by a writer-in-residence, the publication of a literary journal for each school, and the mission of encouraging students to use poetry to "think broadly, create bravely, and share their voices with the wid...

Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box is a terrifying, Hitchcockesque psychological horror that is sure to stay with you long after reading.This is a book extract including chapter 1 of Bird Box.Malorie raises the children the only way she can; indoors.The house is quiet. The doors are locked, the curtains are closed, mattresses are nailed over the windows.They are out there. She might let them in.The children sleep in the be...

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young African-American man, walking across the country in...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The definitive guide to telling an unforgettable story in any setting, drawing on twenty-five years of experience from the storytelling experts at The MothYou are a multitude of stories. Every joy and heartbreak, every disappointment and dizzying high, has the makings of an unforgettable story. Whether your goal is to deliver the perfect wedding toast, give a moving eulogy, ace a job interview or simply connect more deeply to th...

National Outdoor Book Award Winner • Independent Publisher Book Award Winner • Nautilus Book Award Winner • Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist"Engelhard locates life—biological, cultural, and geophysical—in every mile of this vast, wild landscape." —Robert Moor, author of On Trails: An ExplorationA lyrical memoir that interweaves wilderness, homeland, cultural connections, historical figures, humor, and gritty experie...

If we had the chance to do things again differently, would we?Hard to say when the snow began falling. In the 2020s, there were rumors of global warming, of severe weather changes and it was not all rumor. Many of us could feel the changes. Warm and then cold. Rain and then the sunniest of days. Then all went bad, warmer and warmer each day.

Love. Such a small word with a huge meaning. How many different kinds of love are there? Each one with its own little world of emotion, actions, and dreams. Several twisted, some passionate, a few real. But out of all of them, everyone is simply trying to get to the same goal, reach the similar point of no return, and smother identical desires. It all comes down to one thingone wantto love. And be loved.

There's a mantra that real writers know but wannabe writers don’t. And the secret phrase is this:NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T.Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional.From Chapter Four:“When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagin...

Gary Snyder's second collection, Myths & Texts, was originally published in 1960 by Totem Press. It is now reissued by New Directions in this completely revised format, with an introduction by the author.The three sequences in the book—"Logging," "Hunting," "Burning"—show the remarkable cohesiveness in Snyder's writings over the years, for we find the poet absorbed, then as now, with Buddhist and Amerindian lore and other interconnections East and West, bu...