“A wild rumpus of a book . . . an exuberant American tale of brothers wrestling demons and each other on opposite poles of their grab bag of a family” (PANK Magazine). Lewis Chopik has just graduated from Columbia University. Having been dumped by his girlfriend and in flight from the pressures exerted by his ambitious professor father, Lewis returns to Wichita in search of respite at the home of his New-Ager mother, Abby. But when Abby picks Lewis up from the airport, she reveals that she’s starting a storm-chasing business and indulging a polyamorous lifestyle. Another unexpected arrival is Seth, Lewis’s bipolar younger brother, who shows off a new tattoo on his chest: In Loving Memory of Seth Chopik. Things begin to resemble the land of Oz more than Wichita when Lewis, while minding Seth, joins Abby in the Flint Hills on a storm-chase with her first client. “[An] honest and raw look at brotherhood and what it means to rediscover your family.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “The world of Wichita is rich, subtle, and funny, . . . This is a truly striking novel.”—Sam Lipsyte, New York Times–bestselling author “Wichita is a novel about expectations and outcomes, about what is open and what is veiled. Its emotional terrain is touching and vast.” —The New York Times Book Review “Ziolkowski’s humor and trenchant observations make for startlingly gorgeous (and often hilarious) prose even in the midst of emergencies.” —Interview Magazine “[A] sparkling debut . . . There’s never a dull moment in a novel which fires us up with snappy and often very funny dialogue.” —Kirkus Reviews

The title of Michael Van Walleghen's new collection evokes thematic preoccupations that have shadowed him throughout his long career. Appearing as a phrase in the poems themselves, In the Black Window more generally points to Van Walleghen's enduring interest in the intersection between inner and outer worlds of experience--those liminal moments in other worlds where we become aware of ourselves. We live at once in a strictly personal, material dimension but also in a distinctly spiritual one. Yet, when looking from a lighted kitchen into a night-black window on a winter evening, we might perhaps become suddenly aware not only of our own reflection, but also of our complicity in some deeper mystery altogether.

After a terrifying incident of child abuse, Ruth Finley, as an adult, suffers from suicidal depression and dissociative behavior.

"Regional poetry at its best, where the strongly articulated local voice slips easily, persuasively, and movingly into the universal." -- J. R. Willingham, Choice "Uses the history and prehistory of the Sangamon river valley as his subject matter; the poems are laconic, earthy, full of sharply observed details, and are rendered with a flair for common speech." -- Library Journal "Knoepfle has long been misunderstood and underestimated among U.S. poets. . . . poems from the sangamon, his finest single collection to date, celebrates the Sangamon country around Springfield." -- Charles Guenther, St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Captures without nostalgia a time and a people in their essences, embodying their raw emotions, their dreams, and the bitter realities of being caught up in the twentieth century." -- Anne C. Bromley, Prairie Schooner