Fall 1999 Titles:
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The Old Ballerina In her third novel, Ellen Cooney tells a story about the creative process, and how art can and must happen everywhere, including in a small mill town. A story of teaching and learning.

Pictures of a Dying Man Is a human life merely the sum of other people’s perceptions of it, a compilation of rumors and hearsay? What happens if those views are erroneous? When Gladstone Belle is found hanging from a beam in his own house, everyone in the village tries to understand who he really was, and why he killed himself.

Taking the Wall The wildly popular sport of auto racing is a backdrop for exploration of the creative and destructive aspects of obsession. In farmhouses, mobile homes, and roadside trailer courts, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters all try to figure out how to keep their families running as smoothly as their cars. Taking the Wall is rich with details about racing and rural life, and richer yet in insight into that part of the human spirit that just doesn’t know how to quit.

Among Prisoners In this searing new collection of stories by the acclaimed author of The Cockfighter, Frank Manley continues his deft exploration of the underside of the American experience. Manley presents a cultural snapshot that is poignant, ironic, and ultimately riveting, as he examines the bleak landscape of racial prejudice and fear that isolates people from one another and lies at the heart of their own loneliness.

Choruses With oracular power and the boldness of jazz improvisation, these poems by the acclaimed biographer of Miles Davis celebrate modern African American life without shying away from sharp critiques of social injustice. Where ahead-of-the curve ideas and canonical form intersect, there you will find our best modern-day troubadour, Quincy Troupe.

Teducation One of the first black poets to become involved in surrealism and a first generation Beat, Ted Joans is an expatriate poet whose work is enjoying renewed interest. Teducation is the first single-volume collection of poems representing the life’s work of Joans, a once roommate of Charlie Parker and a contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and Bob Kaufman.