Recently released by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

The contemplative second collection from Lowe (At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky) blends stories of childhood and family with astute reveries and allegories, fusing the familiar and the strange and evoking the qualities of a modern parable. At Lowe's best, she employs metaphor with kinetic, visceral lyricism...The confounding nature of pain and suffering is transformed by Lowe's modern and accessible verse. --Publishers Weekly

Metaphysical in concern and hypermodern in tone, Bridget Lowe returns in this appropriately titled, much-anticipated second collection, determined as ever to make meaning from the perversity of suffering. My Second Work is rare in its ability to be widely resonant, as Lowe transforms experiences of shame, disgust, and bewilderment into a kind of unexpected hope. Poems in this collection have appeared in The New Yorker and Poetry and were honored by the Poetry Society of America.

"There's a modern irony and rue to Lowe's poetry, a tinge of the surreal, even a suggestion of the horroristic, that makes it wholly contemporary." -Dana Levin

"There is bravery in Lowe's focus on emotions besides love and hate, in the rigor and ruthlessness with which she describes, instead, disappointment, disgust,humiliation, and mild surprise...The poems in this book go deep, beyond the beauty and the ugliness, as T.S. Eliot instructs, to 'the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.'" -The Kenyon Review

No poet writing today is more direct than Bridget Lowe: at the same time, no poet is more uncanny, more seductively strange. These poems love the world that does not always love them back. They're brilliant, scary, and heartbreakingly alive."-James Longenbach

Forthcoming September 2020, Wesleyan University Press.

Dancing between lyric and narrative, Hafizah Geter's debut collection moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes―linguistic, cultural, racial, familial―of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by immigration. The daughter of a Nigerian Muslim woman and a former Southern Baptist black man, Geter charts the history of a black family of mixed citizenships through poems imbued by migration, racism, queerness, loss, and the heartbreak of trying to feel at home in a country that does not recognize you. Through her mother's death and her father's illnesses, Geter weaves the natural world into the discourse of grief, human interactions, and socio-political discord. This collection thrums with authenticity and heart.

"This gorgeous debut troubles and reshapes notions of belonging against the backdrop of a country obsessed with its own exclusions, erasures, borders, institutions, and violence. Geter's poems simmer original forms of witness and resistance." ―Claudia Rankine, Citizen

"Here is the history of this country in all its blood and complication, with all its promise and betrayal. These poems are an accounting, a testimony, a prayer―poems meant to quiet the animal inside us." ―Nick Flynn, I Will Destroy You

"Like a high lyric conversation overheard...done with attention to what this one beautiful story says about the so-called American story." ―Jericho Brown, The Tradition

"Unflinching and undeniable, these poems edge against exile’s reverberating consequences, and in gorgeous language deliver a trenchant understanding of which worlds one can and cannot inhabit, ever aware of both the power of imagination—and its limits." ―Khadijah Queen, Anodyne

"A remarkable debut that troubles the meaning of 'protection'...an act of transformation that ferries love into poems of unapologetic and enlarging testimony. ―Catherine Barnett, Human Hours

In 1993, four writers—Jane Brox, Helen Fremont, Dzvinia Orlowsky, and Martha Rhodes—laid the groundwork for a small publishing enterprise that would become a highly respected literary press. Four Way Books published its first list of three poetry books in 1995, and currently publish sixteen to eighteen aesthetically diverse titles annually of poetry and short fiction. In the twenty plus years of operation, Four Way Books has not veered from its mission. They are comprised of four primary programs: a literary press, Pay a Book Forward, a prize program, and an electronic literary journal, Four Way Review.

In conjunction with Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and the Alliance for Young Writers.

Annually, five students are selected for one year of service as literary ambassadors, each representing a different geographic region of the country. By elevating and showcasing their work for a national audience, the Program strives to inspire other young people to achieve excellence in their own creative endeavors and promote the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success.

The National Student Poets Program—a collaboration of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers—strives to inspire other young people to achieve excellence in their own creative endeavors and promote the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success. The Program links the National Student Poets with audiences and neighborhood resources such as museums, libraries, and other community-anchor institutions and builds upon the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ long-standing work with educators and creative teens through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The Poets’ 2018 Appointment Events were hosted in cooperation with the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and held in conjunction with the National Book Festival.

Photo credit: Shannon Finney.