Böcker i New Issues Poetry & Prose-serien

Fiction. Winner of the 2006 AWP Award for the Novel. Nicholas Delbanco, Judge. In his debut novel, THE TRUTH, Geoff Rips creates a moral universe in a series of tales narrated by the palsied hunchback Chuy Pingarron who spends his days on the front porch of a San Antonio whorehouse and is proud to be dubbed "the standard of perversion" by those whose stories he tells. Through his twisted perspective we meet the Midwife who is also the house's madam, the philosopher Don Apolo who lives in an iron lung, and Angelita, famous for her hands. Chuy relates the sad story of the impenetrable Soledad, deemed by her mother to be a saint; of la Ramona, whose one eye looks into your soul while the other looks away; and of the enigmatic la Verdad, whose customers seek her out to learn their fortunes. At turns comic and tragic, Chuy's story meditates on the most ancient questions: how do you live a life and what does it mean?

Poetry. Foreword by Harold Bloom "Lucid, yet luscious; rich, yet modest; full of spiritual insight, yet empty of bossy certainty, Serpas's book of love and death in a Louisiana landscape is as savory and abundant as the rhythms she employs" - Molly Peacock "Like Elizabeth Bishop, her strong precursor, Martha Serpas practices a severely chastened art of poetry . . . I am moved to prophesy a considerable poetic development for her"- from the Foreword by Harold Bloom.

Fiction. Short Stories. "Like Jean Stafford, Edna O'Brien and Shena Mackay, Sarah Smith reminds us that the turmoil of family and self is the short story's terrain, a complex space that is most fully seen in the clarity with which a highly focused, personal prose can detail the world. These are wonderfully vivid, well-crafted stories - sometimes raucous, always strangely disconcerting" - Michael Anania.