Winner of the 2007 Christopher Isherwood Foundation Award for Fiction Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Memories from a Sinking Ship travels the landscape of a turbulent world seen through a boy’s steady gaze. Like Twain’s Mississippi River and Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted, Gifford’s Chicago, New Orleans, and the highways and byways between offer us mesmerizing lives lost in the kaleidoscope of postwar America, in particular those of Roy’s adrift and disappointed mother and his hoodlum father.

A world of poems as populous and diverse as it is ephemeral and evanescent, born of the world and of books and art in equal measure, yielding granite truths and feather truths of people's roller-coaster lives. The poet looks back, facing life and death and everything in between with equanimity, holding a steady hand to the quivering breast wherever there is breath. Published in The New Yorker, La Nouvelle Revue Française, and in nearly a hundred magazines and poetry journals from Los Angeles to Tokyo, from Lawrence, Kansas to Rome, Madrid, Paris, London, Beijing, and Bucharest, poems by Barry Gifford have been describing and changing our world for nearly half a century. Here in one volume for the first time is the poet's own choices from his nine previous collections, as well as a rich selection of new poems. Imagining Paradise sums up the tremendous achievement of an underground poet who lasted.

A childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s among grifters, show girls, and mob enforcers who embraced the boy and made him who he is. “These stories make for one of the most important and moving American bildungsromans of all time.” —William Boyle, The Southwest Review Roy tells it the way he sees it, shuttled between Chicago to Key West and Tampa, Havana and Jackson MS, usually with his mother Kitty, often in the company of lip-sticked women and fast men. Roy is the muse of Gifford’s hardboiled style, a precocious child, watching the grown-ups try hard to save themselves, only to screw up again and again. He takes it all in, every waft of perfume and cigar smoke, every missed opportunity to do the right thing. And then there are the good things too. A fishing trip with Uncle Buck, a mother’s love, advice from Rudy, Roy’s father: “Roy means king. Be the king of your own country. Don’t depend on anyone to do your thinking for you.” The stories in The Boy Who Ran Away to Sea are together a love letter and a tribute to the childhood experiences that ground a life. In the Author’s note, Gifford writes, “I have often been asked if I were interested in writing my memoirs or an autobiography. Given that the Roy stories come as close as I care to come regarding certain circumstances, I remain comfortable with their verisimilitude. They all dwell within the boundary of fiction. As I have explained elsewhere, these are stories, I made them up. Roy ages from about five years old to late adolescence. After that, with the exception of a sighting in Veracruz, I have no idea what happened to him.” “The way Barry Gifford lets people talk articulates everything about their unfamiliar inner lives, and ours." —Boston Globe

Winner of the 1999 Michael C. Meyer Manuscript Prize! This new book examines the social protests of popular groups in urban Mexico during and after the Mexican Revolution and also shows how the revolution inspired women to become activists in these movements. Andrew Grant Wood's well-researched narrative focuses specifically on the complex negotiation between elites and popular groups over the issue of public housing in post-revolutionary Veracruz, Mexico. Wood then compares the Veracruz experience with other tenant movements throughout Mexico and Latin America. He analyzes what the popular groups wanted, what they got, how they got it, and how the changes wrought by the revolution facilitated their actions. Grassroots organizing by house-renters in Veracruz began at a time of 'multiple sovereignty' when ruling elites found themselves in a process of regime change and political realignment. As the movement took shape, tenants expanded their opportunities through a dynamic repertoire of public demonstration, direct action, networking, and constant negotiation with landlords and public officials. During the height of the movement, protesters forced revolutionary elites to respond by requiring them either to negotiate, co-opt, and/or repress members of independent grassroots organizations in order to maintain their rule. The tenant movements demonstrate how ordinary women and men contributed to the remaking of state and civil society relations in post-revolutionary Mexico. This book analyzes the critical roles that women played as leaders and as rank-and-file agitators to keep the movements alive. The author has used a wide variety of primary sources to provide a vibrant portrayal of these urban social protesters. On a larger scale, this book shows that the voices of the urban poor were able to become part of the revolutionary dialogue and ideology. While others have highlighted the role of rural folk such as the Zapatistas, this work allows readers to appreciate the urban side of the po

The state of Veracruz, a lush strip of land running the length of Mexico's eastern coast, is home to some of the easiest, lightest, and most varied food in Mexico's repertoire. To enjoy dishes like Seafood Salad in Avocado Halves, Garlicky Stir-Fried Shrimp, Orange-Flavored Chicken, and Mushroom Empanadas, you won't need to hunt down obscure chiles or master complicated techniques. Spanish influences evident in accessible ingredients like olive oil, olives, capers, raisins, and almonds give the state's cuisine a familiar Mediterranean character. At the same time, Veracruz's Caribbean orientation and powerful Afro-Cuban legacy offer plenty of choices for cooks who want kitchen adventure. In all, Zarela provides more than 150 choices, perfect for festive parties or ordinary suppers. Much more than a cookbook, Zarela's Veracruz is a mesmerizing travelogue and an absorbing portrait of Mexico's most exuberant state."

A memoir from the beloved author behind the multimillion-copy bestselling A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS ‘One of our most dazzling literary conjurers.’ MICHAEL CHABON Known to most as Lemony Snicket, the tormented narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Daniel Handler spends his days writing – for children and adults; film and television; and, occasionally, the accordion. Mainly, he writes about horrible things: orphans, abusive uncles, poison, murder, arson, bad grammar… A love letter to the consoling and terrifying power of books, And Then? And Then? What Else? traces Handler’s life through morbid poetry collections, eccentric acting troupes, hazy midnight taxi rides, second-hand bookstores and psychiatric units. Traversing his personal canon from his first encounter with Baudelaire to Vladimir Nabokov, Elizabeth Bishop and The Pet Shop Boys, Handler offers a witty, poignant exploration of reading, writing and why we tell stories. 'Daniel Handler’s series did something other books would not: took children seriously… [A Series of Unfortunate Events] taught me that my own thoughts could be trusted, that my impulses to read and make things were not unusual, to find joy and sanctuary where there was none.’ GUARDIAN