City Lights/Sister Spit – serie

Winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award In her debut collection of verse and prose, Moise moves deftly between memories of growing up as a Haitian immigrant in the suburbs of Boston, to bearing witness to brutality and catastrophe, to intellectual, playful explorations of pop culture enigmas like Michael Jackson and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Be it the presence of a skinhead on the subway, a newspaper account of unthinkable atrocity, or the 'noose loosened to necklace' of desire, the cut of Haiti Glass lays bare a world of resistance and survival, mourning and lust, need and process, triumph and prayer. Lenelle Moise is an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist and internationally touring performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about identity, memory and magic. Her poems and essays are featured in several anthologies, including: Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution and We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. Her writing has also been published in the Utne Reader, Make/Shift, Left Turn, and numerous other magazines and journals.A current Huntington Theatre Company Playwriting Fellow, her plays include Expatriate, Merit and The Many Faces of Nia. She lives in Northampton, MA where she was the 2010-2012 Poet Laureate. Haiti Glass is her long-awaited first book and she is available for interview. Praise for Haiti Glass: "Haiti Glass is a magnificent collection of poetry and prose. Part mantra, part lamentation, part prayer, this incredible book puts us wholly in the presence of an extraordinary and brave talent, whose voice will linger in your heart and mind long after you read the last word of this book."--Edwidge Danticat "Very powerful poetry and prose. The spoken word cadence to many of the poems works really well on the page. Moise takes up the complexities of Haitian culture, the immigrant experience, sexuality and gender, and bearing witness. Highly recommended."--Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State "With a bold, unblinking eye, Lenelle Moise shows us the tragic yet beautiful world in which we live and challenges us not to turn away, but to turn towards with hope, compassion, and love. With all my heart, I thank her for writing these poems."--Leslea Newman, author of October Mourning, A Song for Matthew Shepard "Haiti Glass is a book fierce with ambition: make the reader feel Haiti, make the reader think Haiti, make the reader understand Haiti. Lenelle Moise's poems render the abstract- policy, disaster, history, diaspora- specific. Her words make the political not just personal, but corporeal: the beautiful system of the human body as canvas and subject, perfect in all its attendant complications and complexity, and still ruled, undeniably, by a warm, beating heart."--Erin McKeown, musician "The year 2014 will be hard pressed to give us a more powerful debut poetry collection than Lenelle Moise's Haiti Glass ...This is the rare book of poetry that makes one pause while reading, look up from the page, whistle low."--Courtney Gillette, Lambda Literary Review Praise for Lenelle Moise: "Lenelle Moise brings fierce passion."--New York Times "Piercing, covering territory both intimate and political ...vivid and powerful."--Curve Magazine "See Moise push stories from her mouth like it might save your life."--The Root

The New York Times Bestseller! "This is The Most Inspiring Children's Book We've Ever Seen."--Refinery29.com "The very first kids' book released by the iconic publishing house City Lights, Rad American Women A-Z navigates the alphabet from Angela Davis to Zora Neale Hurston with colorful illustrations and short, powerful narratives. The perfect gift for the junior riot grrl in your life."--Bust Magazine "The History of Feminism--in an Awesome Picture Book. The ABCs just got a major girl-power upgrade."--Chantal Strasburger, Teen Vogue Like all A-Z books, this one illustrates the alphabet--but instead of "A is for Apple", A is for Angela--as in Angela Davis, the iconic political activist. B is for Billie Jean King, who shattered the glass ceiling of sports; C is for Carol Burnett, who defied assumptions about women in comedy; D is for Dolores Huerta, who organized farmworkers; and E is for Ella Baker, who mentored Dr. Martin Luther King and helped shape the Civil Rights Movement. And the list of great women continues, spanning several centuries, multiple professions, and 26 diverse individuals.There are artists and abolitionists, scientists and suffragettes, rock stars and rabble-rousers, and agents of change of all kinds. The book includes an introduction that discusses what it means to be "rad" and "radical," an afterword with 26 suggestions for how you can be "rad," and a Resource Guide with ideas for further learning and reading. American history was made by countless rad--and often radical--women. By offering a fresh and diverse array of female role models, we can remind readers that there are many places to find inspiration, and that being smart and strong and brave is rad. Rad American Women will be appreciated by various age groups. It is Common Core aligned for students grades 3 - 8. Pre-school and young children will be captured by the bright visuals and easily modified texts, while the subject matter will stimulate and inspire high-schoolers and beyond. "This is not a book. This is a guest list for a party of my heroes. Thank you for inviting us." --Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events books "I feel honored to be included in this book.Women need to take radical steps to become feminists, and to be strong to fight for their rights and those of others facing oppression and discrimination. The world needs rad women to create a just society." --Dolores Huerta, Labor Leader, Civil Rights Activist "It's almost always with a chuckle that I view a cartoon image of myself. But to see cartoon-me positioned (alphabetically) amongst so many of my women heroes and role models ...well, I just broke down and cried. Happy tears. I surely hope that this one-of-a-kind collection of radical American women reaches the hands of all children who want to grow up and become amazing women." --Kate Bornstein, author of My New Gender Workbook "I was totally in rapture reading this book. Bold women, bold colors, and fierce black paper cutouts. I cheer these histories of women who fight not for war or country or corporation, but for EVERYONE! I can't wait for my son to read this." --Nikki McClure, Illustrator of All in a Day

Chinaka Hodge came of age along with hip-hop--and its influence on her suitors became inextricable from their personal interactions. Form blends with content in Dated Emcees as she examines her love life through the lens of hip-hop's best known orators, characters, archetypes and songs, creating a new and inventive narrative about the music that shaped the craggy heart of a young woman poet, just as it also changed the global landscape of pop. Praise for Dated Emcees: "In the old tellings hip-hop was a woman, a certain kind--one needing, even begging to be saved. In Dated Emcees, Chinaka Hodge gives her a voice and she tells of her loves and desires, her traumas and pains in words as hard, as lit, as loving, cunning, cutting, ecstatic, as tender and devastating as her big world requires. This is poetry that, in its infinite power and intimate grace, will still turn in your mind long after the music is over."--Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America "Hodge writes with an unpredictable, rare honesty. This collection quietly and simply illustrates love in a complicated world."--Donald Glover AKA Childish Gambino "This is an absolute powerhouse of a book, and a new pinnacle for Chinaka Hodge. There's enough beauty and heartbreak and melancholy and humor and sorrow in here for three collections, or two lifetimes. Hodge's writing is so incredibly specific but somehow universal, so honest and raw but somehow polished to unimproveability. She deserves a wide audience, an attentive audience, an audience that wants to be astounded."--Dave Eggers, author of The Circle "Chinaka Hodge is hands down, unequivocally, my favorite writer of words. All day. Every day. She writes with the grace of a dancer, the bars of a rapper, the heart of your best friend, and all of the swag and soul of Oakland. Dated Emcees made me cry. And I don't really do that. It doesn't use Hip Hop as a lens. It is Hip Hop. In the way that we, who have grown up with rap as our brilliant, estranged, mythological, abusive lover/father/son, are all Hip Hop. Aware of his flaws, and his potential. And loving him unconditionally. These are poems to read every day. To make mantras from. They are the best poems you've ever read."--Daveed Diggs, Actor/Rapper, star of Hamilton on Broadway "Every time I hear new work from Chinaka Hodge I wonder if she was always this good. She was, I'm pretty sure. And yet somehow, she's leveled up again. Dated Emcees is a dropped microphone, and a direct challenge to anyone listening. Step your game up."--George Watsky, author of How to Ruin Everything: Essays "Ms. Hodge's collection complicates dogmatic notions of feminist principles and hip hop pathologies. She is the steward of a candid and sonorous new form, a lyrical journalism expressed in a meter that climbs from West Oakland's Bottoms to the peak of a Wonder-laced rocket love. Dated Emcees is outlined in the matter of black life, streamlined through the filter of black womb ...a smoke-filled lung in a sweat-filled club of safety and danger, and the bass of black moon."--Marc Bamuthi Joseph, arts activist, spoken word artist, US Artists Rockefeller Fellow

"Heartbreakingly beautiful writing; sometimes funny, sometimes shattering--always revolutionary. Truly amazing collection!"--Margaret Cho "Sister Spit is like the underground railroad for burgeoning queer writers. Not only in the van, but in the audiences trapped in the hinterlands of America and looking to escape. Sister Spit saves lives."--Justin Vivian Bond, author of TANGO: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels A collection of writing and artwork from the irreverent, flagrantly queer, hilariously feminist, tough-talking, genre-busting ruffians who have toured with the legendary Sister Spit. Co-founded in 1997 by award-winning writer Michelle Tea, Sister Spit is an underground cultural institution, a gender-bending writers' cabaret that brings a changing roster of both emerging writers and some of the most important queer and counterculture artists of the day to universities, art galleries, community spaces, and other venues across the country and worldwide.Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road captures the provocative, politicized, and risk-taking elements that characterize the Sister Spit aesthetic, stamping the raw energy and signature style of the live show onto the page. Bratty poets and failed priestesses, punk angst and tough love, too much to drink and tattooed timelines--this anthology captures it all in a collection of poetry, personal narrative, fiction, and artwork. Featuring a who's who of queer and queer-centric writers and artists, the collection functions as a travelog, a historical document, and a yearbook from irreverent graduates of the school of hard knocks. Includes contributions by Eileen Myles, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, MariNaomi, Cristy Road, Ali Liebegott, Blake Nelson, Lenelle Moise, and many more!

Theo, our scruffy, big-hearted, and quick-witted heroine, is not so much down on her luck as delivered luckless into a culture where the winners and losers have already been decided. Her adventures in getting over take her from San Francisco to New York City, from dyke bars to telemarketing outfits, casinos to free clinics. With the signature poet's voice that has won her awards and acclaim, Ali Liebegott investigates the conjoined hearts of hope and addiction in an unforgettable story of what it means to be young and broke in America. Praise for Cha-Ching!: "...frank, funny and painfully realistic ...Liebegott has unleashed a book that's part road novel, part portrait of a would-be artist as a young woman and part unabashed romance."--Josh Davis, The Rumpus "Ali Liebegott's books evoke a life-affirming sensation that comes from embracing the pendular. Her ability to hit the right tone is scientific, almost violent in its precision--a single word or observation, well-placed, can have a reader crying or laughing aloud."--Evan Karp, Bomb Magazine "Cha-Ching!,[Liebegott's] latest novel, is one of those books that cause you to look up, blinking, realizing that you've read 75 pages and your coffee is cold. It's a rush of offtrack betting, impulsive road trips, liquor-fueled make-out sessions, and the sort of low-end jobs that are invisible in most fiction but everywhere in Liebegott's work."--San Francisco Magazine "Cha-Ching! is a rush - the clatter of youth on the angry move, the rattling of dreamy gambles in crappy apartments, the desperate crash of falling for someone despite the million reasons why and the bang! bang! bang! of our tender hearts."--Daniel Handler author of Why We Broke Up "Cha-Ching! is so raw with need that I found myself itching that addict's itch to chase the seemingly impossible."--Karolina Waclawiak, deputy editor of The Believer and author of How to Get Into the Twin Palms "An open-hearted, deeply romantic story about a fucked-up dyke, her pit bull, her search for love, her tenuous grasp on hope, a pretty girl and the literal spin of the wheel."--Sarah Schulman, author of The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination "...fresh and compelling ...the novel offers a subtle and compassionate depiction of addiction and its cycle of despair-and-hope, too."--Charlotte Bhskar, Zyzzyva About the Author: Ali Liebegott is the author of the award-winning books The Beautifully Worthless and The IHOP Papers. In 2010 she took a train trip across America interviewing female poets for a project titled, The Heart Has Many Doors; excerpts from these interviews are posted monthly on The Believer Logger. Her novel Cha-Ching! is the third in the City Lights/Sister Spit series. In addition, she is the founding editor at Writers Among Artists whose first publication, Faggot Dinosaur, was released in 2012.

Winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction. "The Beautifully Worthless is an outrageous act of kindness."--Eileen Myles "She's insanely talented, it's mad. The Beautifully Worthless crisscrosses the USA, like Close to the Knives, like Kerouac, desperately seeking out everything occluded and driven, a frenzy of seeking frozen into poetry."--Kevin Killian "Ali Liebegott's books evoke a life-affirming sensation that comes from embracing the pendular. Her ability to hit the right tone is scientific, almost violent in its precision--a single word or observation, well-placed, can have a reader crying or laughing aloud."--Evan Karp, Bomb Magazine A runaway waitress leaves her lover, grabs her dog, and hits the highway. Ali Liebegott maps her travels in a series of hilarious and heartbreaking letters to the girl she left behind, and some of the most exquisite poetry written about love, heartache, and madness.

"Nochita shimmers with humor and delight, she burns with stark raving intelligence."--Mary Gaitskill "In Nochita, Dia Felix builds an extraordinarily rich and inventive language to carry the kaleidoscopic point of view of her young protagonist. What a pleasure to open a book and find such exuberant and committed artistry. A stunning debut."--Janet Fitch "There is a way some writers say hello on the first page that gets me excited to be in their conversation. Nochita has it with teeth!! I love this book and the weird strong eye it has on the world, melting clothes off bodies with a creme brulee torch. Nochita is quite the dance to read through, kind of like shaking a bad morning off and realizing you really love this world. Makes me smile, like Dia Felix writes, 'I think I can latch on to this machine now."' BUY THIS BOOK, don't just stand there reading my fucking blurb!!"--CAConrad, author of The Book Of Frank Daughter to a divorced new age guru, Nochita wanders through the cracks of California's counter-culture, half feral child, half absurdist prophet.When tragedy strikes she is sent to live with her father, a working-class cowboy with a fragile grasp on sobriety and a dangerously mean fiancee. Stuck with adults chillingly unable to care for her, Nochita takes to the streets, a runaway with nothing to run from, driven forward by desperation, hope, and an irrepressible wonder. Nochita is a poetic novel dazzling in its detail, stylistically daring, by turns hallucinatory, darkly funny, and brutally real. At its heart is the singular voice of Nochita, tender and fierce, alone and alive and utterly unforgettable. Dia Felix is a writer and filmmakerand an award-winning digital media producer for museums (SF Exploratorium, Museum of Arts and Design). She currently teaches and mentors teens in experimental documentary filmmaking. She is the founder and editor of Personality Press. Born and raised in California, she currently lives in New York. Nochita is her first book.