Eileen Pollack wins Lewis Wallant Award!

In the Mouth: stories and novellas by Eileen Pollack has been announced as the winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award! Past winners of the award include Chaim Potok, Cynthia Ozick, Curt Leviant, Allegra Goodman, Myla Goldberg, Thane Rosenbaum, and Jonathan Rosen. There will be an award ceremony and reading on April 13th 2009 at the University of Hartford.

Congratulations to Eileen on yet another moment of acclaim for this witty, darkly comic, and engaging collection of stories, one of which ("The Bris") was featured in Best American Short Stories 2007 . and Eileen was also described in 2008 as "an American talent" by Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review .

You can buy her critically-praised and much-loved collection of short stories and novellas, In the Mouth (Four Way Books, 2008), direct from Four Way at two-thirds of the retail price, 32% off.

Or, ask your local independent bookstore where their copies can be found!

National Anthem Best Poetry Book of the Year

Congratulations to Kevin Prufer, whose new book, National Anthem, has been selected by Virginia Quarterly Review as the Best Poetry Book of 2008! This is on the heels of Publishers Weekly naming it one of the five best poetry books of 2008



The list is a wonderful place to start for anyone looking to catch up on their 2009 poetry books. Ted Genoways describes National Anthem as "the collection of the year" and writes

These poems look back on America from a not-so-distant future during and after the apocalypse that toppled our empire. Prufer’s speaker shuttles between anger and ironic bemusement as he catalogs visions of destruction and the survival of the worst of us. When the speaker sets off to find what’s left of America, for example, only the Motel 6 and Waffle House seem to be thriving. It’s like Omega Man meets The Waste Land—which is to say that’s it’s a biting social critique of our times, but it also feels legitimately visionary (and scary)

You can listen to Kevin Prufer talking about National Anthem and his other books over at New Letters On The Air.

National Anthem is available directly from Four Way Books at a 32% discount. Order it, and all our other titles, here . We hope you'll take a look at Kevin's work, and the exciting books we've got lined up for 2009.