C. Dale Young's The Second Person a ForeWord BOTYA Finalist!

We're delighted to post news that C. Dale Young's second book of poems, The Second Person , has been announced as a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award Finalist. Find out about the awards, the magazine, and other titles at the ForeWord magazine website. Their press release is below.

Congratulations, C. Dale, we have our fingers crossed for you (which will explain any ttypos in this posting...). Winners announced May 29th.

You can buy The Second Person at the Four Way Books website where all our titles are available at a 32% discount. You'll be supporting independent publishing AND saving yourself money!

FOREWORD BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

ForeWord Magazine announces the finalists in the tenth annual Book of the Year Awards. These books represent some of the best work coming from today's independent press community.

Nearly 1,600 books were entered in 61 categories. These were narrowed to 658 finalists, from 350 publishers.

The winners will be determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers, selected from our readership. ForeWord's Book of the Year Awards program was designed to discover distinctive books across a number of genres.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners, as well as Editor's Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced at a special program at BookExpo America at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on May 29. The winners of the two Editor's Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each. The ceremony is open to all BEA attendees.

Kirkus Praises Eileen Pollack's In the Mouth

Kirkus Reviews will review Eileen Pollack's forthcoming collection of short stories and a novella, In the Mouth , week beginning March 1st.

In a sneak preview, we can reveal that they described her book as "Delicate but dazzling" and praise it for its "incisive, beautifully crafted stories about family relationships, focused especially on the dynamic between fathers and daughters."

"It’s hard to choose favorites here, for all are worthy," writes the reviewer. We heartily agree! Congratulations, Eileen.

Forrest Hamer's Rift reviewed

Cutbank has just posted a thoughtful and complimentary review of Forrest Hamer's Rift . The reviewer, poet Helen Losse, writes: "Rift is a book that begs to be read again and again, for in seeking reconciliation, we must notice the rift."

Read the full interview, and many more reviews and thoughts on poetry, on the Cutbank blog.

You can buy Rift at the Four Way Books website where all our titles are available at a 32% discount. You'll be supporting independent publishing AND saving yourself money!

(Thanks to Ron Silliman's blog for the link.)

Hear Eileen Pollack on Detroit Today

This Friday, February 8th, Eileen Pollack, author of the forthcoming In the Mouth , a collection of stories and a novella, will be featured on WDET 101.9FM's DETROIT TODAY program. An interview with her will air between 10 and 11am. If you're not in the Detroit area, you can listen live by clicking the link above.

If you're in Ann Arbor on Wed. March 19th at 7pm, catch Eileen live, reading and signing from In the Mouth , hosted by the great indie bookstore Shaman Drum. Full details here.

One of the stories from the collection, "The Bris," was featured in Best American Short Stories 2007 , and Eileen was recently described as "an American talent" by Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review

National Anthem a Good Read, say book critics

Kevin Prufer's National Anthem has been voted onto the National Book Critics' Circle's winter list of good reads. The list is a wonderful place to start for anyone looking for some early 2008 poetry reading, and don't forget that National Anthem will shortly be available directly from Four Way Books at a 32% discount. Order it, and all our other titles, here .

Congratulations, Kevin!

Kevin Prufer on Poetry Daily

Kevin Prufer, whose fourth book National Anthem is forthcoming from Four Way Books this April, will be Thursday's featured poem on Poetry Daily.



Of National Anthem , Marie Howe has written “From within the American Empire, [Prufer] is listening to the memory of the future. . . Can this be a poet who can writes the sentence we are, as a people, on the verge of saying?”

National Anthem will shortly be available directly from Four Way Books at a 32% discount. Order it, and all our other titles, here

Four Way at AWP

This Thursday to Saturday, come and find Four Way Books at the AWP Conference 2008 where we'll be offering significant discounts on our titles, where you'll be able to hear our authors read, and where you can get your books signed by some of them. We're celebrating our 15th anniversary, and almost all of our back catalogue will be available for purchase!

AWP Discount: $10 per book (less than 2/3 of cover price). Buy three or more and get them for $8 a book!

(Even if you're not registered for the conference, the Book Fair is open to the public on Saturday February 2nd.)

You'll find us at:
TABLES 42 and 43
Rhinelander Gallery, 2nd Floor


Author Signings (at our Tables)

Friday 2:00-3:00
Daniel Tobin & C. Dale Young

Friday 3:00-4:00
April Ossmann & Jeffrey Harrison

Friday 4:00-5:00
Laurel Blossom & Kevin Prufer



15th Anniversary Reading

Saturday 1:30-2:45
(Regent Parlor Hilton, 2nd Floor)

Laurel Blossom
Jeffrey Harrison
April Ossmann
Kevin Prufer
Daniel Tobin
C. Dale Young

April Ossmann's Anxious Music Reviewed

April Ossmann, whose debut collection Anxious Music Publisher's Weekly described as written in "a voice remarkable for its confidence and fierceness," has received a glowing review from Beth Kanell at the fabulous specialty mystery, poetry, and fine press shop, Kingdom books, who enthuses: "I'll be reading this collection again. And again."

If you're in Vermont, stop by Kingdom Books to pick up a copy of April's book. Or, you can buy Anxious Music at the Four Way Books website where all our titles are available at a 32% discount. You'll be supporting independent publishing AND saving yourself money!

April will also be reading and signing books at AWP this weekend, for those of you descending on Manhattan.

Deborah Bernhardt's Echolalia Reviewed and Recommended

Third Coast, the wonderful journal produced out of Western Michigan University, features a review of Deborah Bernhardt's Echolalia in its newest issue (Fall 2007). Check out the journal at the Third Coast website.

You can buy Deborah's fantastic book at the Four Way Books website where all our titles are available at a 32% discount. You'll be supporting independent publishing AND saving yourself money!

Eileen Pollack, Florida Writers Festival

Next month, Eileen Pollack, author of the forthcoming In the Mouth , a collection of stories and a novella, will read as part of the Florida Writers Festival.

One of the stories from the collection, "The Bris," was featured in Best American Short Stories 2007 , and Eileen was recently described as "an American talent" by Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review

Kevin Prufer reads

Dear all,

Please come along to the famous KGB Bar on Monday night to see Four Way poet Kevin Prufer read. National Anthem will be released in February 2008.

Date: Monday, November 19th
Time: 7pm
Place: KGB, 85 East 4th Street, NYC


The poets:

Wayne Miller is the author of Only the Senses Sleep
(New Issues, 2006), translator of I Don't Believe in
Ghosts (BOA, 2007), by Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo, and
co-editor, with Kevin Prufer, of New European Poets
(Graywolf,2008). He has received the Lucille Medwick
Award, the George Bogin Award, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship
and the Bess Hokin Prize. He lives in Kansas City and
co-edits Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing.

Kevin Prufer is the author, most recently, of National
Anthem (Four Way, 2008), Fallen From a Chariot
(Carnegie Mellon, 2005), and The Finger Bone (Carnegie
Mellon, 2002). With Wayne Miller, he is Editor of
Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing and General Editor
of New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008). With Joy Katz
he has recently edited Dark Horses: Poets on
Overlooked Poems (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2007). The
recipient of three Pushcart prizes, he lives in rural
Missouri.

Joy Katz is the author of two books of poems, Fabulae
and The Garden Room, the latter out recently from
Tupelo Press, and also is the co-editor (with Kevin
Prufer) of the anthology Dark Horses: Poets on
Overlooked Poems and a senior editor at Pleiades. She
was recently writer-in-residence at The University of
Misosuri and she teaches poetry workshops at The New
School.

Jeffrey Harrison Readings

Jeffrey Harrison, whose Incomplete Knowledge was on the Booksense Top Ten Poetry Books of 2007 list, has several upcoming readings. Come along - and bring friends!

Late 2007

Concord Poetry Center
40 Stow Street
Concord, MA

Sunday, November 18, 2007
3:00 pm

George Washington University
Washington, DC
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
8:00 pm
Marvin Center, third floor amphitheater
800 21st St. NW

2008

AWP in New York
“Four Way Books 15 Years”
Saturday, February 2
1:30-2:45 pm
With Daniel Tobin, Laurel Blossom, April Ossmann, C. Dale Young, Kevin Prufer
Hilton New York
53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas

PEN New England / Hotel Marlowe Reading Series
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
6:15 pm (with Wine Hour starting at 5:00)
Hotel Marlowe
25 Edwin H. Land Blvd.
Cambridge, MA

The Ruskin Art Club
800 S. Plymouth Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
With Carol Muske-Dukes
Sunday, February 24
2:00 pm

Idyllwild Arts Academy
Idyllwild, CA
Monday, February 25, 2008
7:30 pm
Parks Exhibition Center

University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert campus
Frank Sinatra Drive (at the corner of Cook St.)
Palm Desert, CA
February 26, 2008
7:00 pm
Auditorium, Room B-100

Casa Romantica
415 Avenida Granada
San Clemente, CA
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
7:00 pm

Pegasus Books
2349 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
With Cathleen Michaels
March 13, 2008
7:30

Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madiera, CA
March 14, 2008
7:00 pm

Emory University, Atlanta
A Fine Excess: A Celebration of Waywiser Press
(April 2-4, with Richard Wilbur, W.D. Snodgrass, Mark Strand, J.D. McClatchy, Mary Jo Salter, and other Waywiser poets)
With Eric McHenry
Thursday, April 3, 2008
1:30 pm
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University

Brookline Poetry Series
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard St.
Brookline, MA
With Afaa Michael Weaver
May 2, 2008
7:00 pm

Deborah Bernhardt Reading

Meteorologists! Climatologists! Forecasters of Atmospheric Phenomena!

We got your weather right here.

Listen as Nancy Kuhl, Cathy Eisenhower & Deborah Bernhardt , author of Echolalia

Thunderstorm, Squall and Exquisitely Precipitate!


This Friday, November 9th, 7pm -- FREE!


Deborah Bernhardt received an MFA in Creative Writing from the
University of Arizona and fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for
Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, the Fine Arts Work Center
in Provincetown, Penn State Altoona, Writers@Work, Summer Literary
Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer Fishtrap in Wallowa, OR,
and the Hessen-Wisconsin Writers Exchange, Germany. Her poetry
collection Echolalia was published by Four Way Books as the winner of
the 2005 Intro Prize.

Nancy Kuhl's first full-length collection of poems, The Wife of the
Left Hand, was published in 2007 by Shearsman Books. She is co-editor
of Phylum Press, a small poetry publisher ( www.phylumpress.com). She
is Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at
the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Cathy Eisenhower is a poet and librarian in Washington, DC. Her first
full-length collection is forthcoming from Edge Books.


Only at Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(718) 302-3770

"L" to Lorimer, "G" to Metropolitan.


Visit http://www.multifariousarray.blogspot.com/ for links to their
work and email me for more information.

Four Way Books announces TWO November Readings

We hope you'll be able to join us at one or both of these November readings, celebrating Fall '07 and Spring '07 poetry releases

Four Way Author in Best American Short Stories

Congratulations to Four Way Books author Eileen Pollack, author of the forthcoming In the Mouth , a collection of short-stories. Her story "The Bris" was selected by Stephen King and Heidi Pitlor for the Best American Short Stories 2008 , out now from Houghton Mifflin.

In the Mouth is due out in March 2008. “Eileen Pollack writes with great acuity, humor, and intelligent resignation about the various ways family love is called upon and revealed. This book is terrific company,” comments Lorrie Moore.

Taking on the hidden surfaces and interior worlds beneath any family unit, In the Mouth , is witty, affecting, and irresistible. These five stories and a novella are one moment light-hearted and the next tinged with sadness or frustration. In them, Pollack shows us how secrets that might sunder a family often become its strongest connection. Whether in the form of an unopened safe a family is selling in a yard sale, or a son realizing his father is guilty of murder, these stories investigate the nerve endings of human relationships. Pollack masterfully places the reader into her characters’ innermost worlds: we think their thoughts, feel their insecurities. “That reflection you see […] may be your own,” warns Rob Cohen, while Gish Jen applauds Pollack's work as “funny, rueful, wise stories, steeped in absurdity, pain, possibility -- the work of a writer who has lived.”

Levis Poetry Prize Winner annonced: Farrah Field

We are pleased to announce that Farrah Field's collection RISING is the winner of the Four Way Books Levis Poetry Prize, selected by Tony Hoagland. Farrah lives in Brooklyn, New York, and earner her MFA at Columbia University.

Thank you to all who entered the Levis Poetry Prize.

In 2008, we will run the Intro Prize in Poetry for first books. The judge will be Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Guidelines will be available in November 2007.

In 2009, we will run the Levis Prize, open to all poets. The judge will be Mary Jo Bang.

C. Dale Young featured by Robert Pinsky in The Washington Post

"Night Air," from C. Dale Young's critically acclaimed new book of poems, The Second Person (Four Way Books, April 2007), was selected by Robert Pinsky for his "Poet's Choice" column in The Washington Post on Sunday August 19th.

Introducing the poem, Pinsky wrote, "Sometimes the ability to convey information compactly and quickly has moral grace. Economy in writing can put garrulous narration or evasive speechifying to shame. Here is the first poem in a new book by C. Dale Young:"

You can find the poem here and buy C. Dale Young's book here, here, or from your local (independent) bookstore.

David "Awesome" Lawrence on WKCR

David "Awesome" Lawrence, former professional boxer, former CEO, trainer at Gleason's Gym, ex-con, English Ph.D., poet, author of the forthcoming Lane Changes will appear on New York radio station WKCR this Tuesday, 3rd July, at 9.30pm. David will be interviewed by Eric Hirsch about the changes that have governed his life, about the inspiration for his debut collection of poems, and about what it means to be a boxer and poet. He'll also read from Lane Changes . The show is called "Arts and Answers."

If you miss David on the radio, you'll be able to catch him at two readings in November: Saturday 17th November at 6pm at Gleason's Gym, and Thursday 29th November at 7pm at McNally Robinson bookstore in Soho, when Four Way Books launches its Fall list with readings by David, Laurel Blossom ( Degrees of Latitude ), April Ossmann ( Anxious Music ), and Spring author Terri Ford ( Why the Ships are She ).


About Lane Changes :
The boxing ring. The interior of a federal prison. Where your luck runs out and you find yourself living on instinct and chance. Making a comeback, hitting the canvas, picking yourself up and beginning again. The wild, aggressive, unapologetic poems of Lane Changes : will take you on the most extraordinary ride, from encounters with John Gotti to the way a thrown punch can be an expression of affection. “Your injuries are a form of dialogue with loneliness,” writes Lawrence, and his poetry makes us look at despair and sadness alongside exhilaration. This is book that soars the highs and plumbs the depths, finding that it’s often difficult to tell the difference.

Four Way Books June Reading Period

Four Way Books invites you to submit Poetry and Fiction manuscripts during their June Reading Period.

In recent years Four Way has accepted Sarah Manguso's Siste Viator (2006) and C.S. Carrier's forthcoming After Dayton (2008).

Please click on the link above for full details about what and how to submit, and for more information on how the reading period works.

Jeffrey Harrison reviewed by P. H. Liotta in the Chautauqua Literary Journal

Incomplete Knowledge has been called a "major achievement" in an insightful review by P.H. Liotta:

"In America, poetry remains the isolated art. And the quiet genius of Jeffrey Harrison, clearly, requires space and meditation. Yet, Incomplete Knowledge , while driven with the same polish and technique of his earlier work, goes much, much further. His lines are looser, images more direct, and his impact is often astonishing. For any reader, there is true discovery here. A poet of Harrison's genius is uncommon."

Catch Jeffrey reading at Bryant Park this week:

The Academy of American Poets presents:
Bryant Park Word for Word Poetry Series
Tuesday, June 12
Jeffrey Harrison, Peter Gizzi, and Jon Woodward
6:30 p.m.

You can read some of his work from Incomplete Knowledge on Ted Kooser's web site American Life in Poetry

Jeffrey will be reading in Maine, Minneapolis, Cambridge and elsewhere in MA during the summer and fall...keep visiting this blog for full details.