FALL 2013 - Milkweed Editions

FALL 2013
NEW AND SELECTED BACKLIST
“Milkweed and its
reputation for publishing
good books and for
publishing them well. . . .
A home is exactly what my
fiction found, with all the
attendant associations that
word has with caring and family.”
—LARRY WATSON
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BRAIDING
SWEETGRASS
INDIGENOUS WISDOM, SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE AND THE TEACHINGS OF PLANTS
Robin Wall Kimmerer
OCTOBER 2013 | FALL 2013
An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and
personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native
American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John
Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing.
As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent
a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As
a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of
other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass,
Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as “the younger brothers
of creation.”
In essays that range from a retelling of the creation of Turtle Island, through the author’s childhood, to her struggles
as a female, indigenous scientist: to her evolution as a mother and her current fight for the rights of all beings
living around her upstate New York home, the book returns continually to plants, animals, and indigenous stories
for guidance. In an essay about boiling down maple sap for her daughters, she describes how squirrels showed
us the path to maple syrup. While recounting the history of Native displacement, she illuminates how trees speak
to one another in languages that drift on the wind. And in the story of her beginnings as a scientist we learn how
flowers can work together to create beauty and sustenance that appeals to humans and bees alike. As she explores
these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires
the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the
languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and
learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.
PRAISE FOR GATHERING MOSS
“This is a Native American woman speaking. This is a mother’s story. This is science revealed through the human
psyche. Robin Kimmerer is a scientist who combines empiricism with all other forms of knowing. Hers is a
spectacularly different view of the world, and her true voice needs to be heard.”
—JANISSE RAY, AUTHOR OF ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD
ROBIN WALL KIMMERER is a mother, a scientist, a decorated professor, and an enrolled member of
the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her first book, Gathering Moss was awarded the 2005 John Burroughs
Medal for outstanding nature writing. Her writings have appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and Stone
Canoe amongst many others. She lives near Syracuse, NY where she is SUNY Distinguished Teaching
Professor and Professor of Environmental Biology, and where she is also the founder and director of
the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
• AUTHOR TOUR: Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Syracuse, NY; Washington DC; Philadelphia, PA; Seattle, WA; Eugene, OR;
Corvallis, OR; East Lansing, MI; Ann Arbor, MI
• Digital ARCs available on Edelweiss
NONFICTION/ESSAYS
$24 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-335-5 | 320 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-871-8
Rights held: World
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EMPTY HANDS,
OPEN ARMS
THE RACE TO SAVE BONOBOS IN THE CONGO
AND MAKE CONSERVATION GO VIRAL
Deni Béchard
OCTOBER 2013 | FALL 2013
Based on the author’s extensive research and travel in Central Africa,
a fascinating account of one organization’s surprisingly successful efforts to
save the endangered bonobos and the Congolese rainforest they call home.
When acclaimed author Deni Béchard first learned of the last living bonobos—
matriarchal great apes that are, alongside the chimpanzee, our closest relatives in
the animal kingdom—he was astonished. How could the world possibly accept the extinction of this majestic species,
along with the rainforest they call home?
As he looked more closely, Béchard discovered that in fact one relatively small organization, the Bonobo Conservation
Initiative (BCI), has done more to save bonobos and their natural habitat than a number of far larger and wealthier
NGOs. Based on the author’s extensive travels, and hundreds of hours of interviews with conservationists, this book
explores how BCI has been so successful, offering in the process a powerful, truly postcolonial model of conservation.
In contrast to other traditional conservation groups Béchard finds, BCI works closely with Congolese communities,
addressing in the process the underlying problems of poverty and unemployment, which lead to the hunting of
bonobos. By creating jobs and building schools, they gradually change the conditions that lead to the eradication
of bonobos.
This struggle is far from easy. The Congo has been devastated by the worst military conflict since World War II,
and its forests continue to be destroyed by aggressive logging and mining. But Béchard’s fascinating and moving
account—filled with portraits of the extraordinary individuals and communities, Western and Congolese, who make it
all happen—offers a rich example of how international conservation must be reinvented before it’s too late.
PRAISE FOR DENI BÉCHARD
“Stunningly poignant.” —O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
“Béchard has a voice and a vision all his own, both tough-minded and passionately emotional.” —+KIRKUS
“A clearly gifted writer.” —ROBERT OLEN BUTLER
DENI BÉCHARD’S first novel, Vandal Love, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He has also
authored a memoir, Cures for Hunger, and written for a number of magazines and newspapers, among
them the LA Times, Salon, Outside, the National Post, VQR, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard
Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, the Edward
Albee Foundation, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. He
has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and he has traveled in
more than fifty countries. When not abroad, he divides his time between Cambridge and Montréal.
• AUTHOR TOUR: New York, NY; Boston, MA; Washington, DC; Seattle, WA; San Francisco, CA; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
• Digital ARCs available on Edelweiss
• Radio satellite tour
• Author video chats available
• Color photography insert
NONFICTION
$26.95 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-340-9 | 320 Pages | 6 x 9 | E-book 978-1-57131-849-7
Rights held: World
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LET HIM GO
Larry Watson
SEPTEMBER 2013 | FALL 2013
The celebrated author of Montana 1948 (over 400,000 copies sold), returns
to the American West in this riveting tale of familial love and its unexpected
consequences.
Dalton, North Dakota. It’s September 1951: years since George and Margaret
Blackledge lost their son James when he was thrown from a horse, months since his
widow Lorna took off with their only grandson and married Donnie Weboy. Margaret
is steadfast, resolved to find and retrieve her grandson Jimmy—the one person in
this world keeping James’s memory alive—while George, a retired sheriff, is none too
eager to stir up trouble.
Unable to sway his wife from her mission, George takes to the road with Margaret by his side, traveling through the
Dakota Badlands to Gladstone, Montana. When Margaret tries to convince Lorna to return home to North Dakota and
bring little Jimmy with her, the Blackledges find themselves entangled with the entire Weboy clan, who are determined
not to give up the boy without a fight.
From the author who brought us Montana 1948, Let Him Go is pitch-perfect—gutsy and unwavering. Speaking to the
extraordinary measures we take for family and the overpowering instinct to protect those we love, Larry Watson is at
his storytelling finest in this unforgettable return to the American West.
PRAISE FOR LET HIM GO
“A brilliant achievement.” —ALICE LAPLANTE, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF TURN OF MIND
LARRY WATSON is the author of Montana 1948, American Boy, Justice, White Crosses, and several
other novels. He is the recipient of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the Friends of American Writers
award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and many other prizes and awards.
He teaches writing and literature at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he lives with this wife, Susan.
• AUTHOR TOUR: Milwaukee, WI and greater Wisconsin; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Chicago, IL
• NPR radio advertising campaign, digital ARCs available on Edelweiss, Midwest Connections and MIBA Holiday Catalog
ALSO AVAILABLE
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
MILKWEED NATIONAL FICTION PRIZE WINNER
MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS BOOKSELLER AWARD WINNER
FRIENDS OF AMERICAN WRITERS AWARD WINNER
BANTA AWARD WINNER
CRITICS CHOICE AWARD WINNER
ALA/YALSA BEST BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS WINNER
NEW YORK LIBRARY BEST BOOKS FOR THE TEEN AGE
ALA BOOKLIST EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD WINNER
AMERICAN BOY
JUSTICE
MONTANA 1948
978-1-57131-095-8
$15 | Trade Paper
E-book 978-1-57131-803-9
978-1-57131-092-7
$15 | Trade Paper
E-book 978-1-57131-847-3
978-1-57131-061-3
$14 | Trade Paper
E-book 978-1-57131-803-9
FICTION/NOVEL
$24 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-102-3 | 280 Pages | 5.5 x 8 | E-book 978-1-57131-890-9
Rights held: North America
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I WILL NOT LEAVE
YOU COMFORTLESS
Jeremy Jackson
AUGUST 2013 | FALL 2013 | NEW IN PAPERBACK
“[Jackson] has a poet’s touch with words—simple, lyrical, evocative.”
—WICHITA EAGLE
“A sweet record of a time and a place that was not Always On.”
—ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
“I Will Not Leave You Comfortless shines and glides beautifully onward with
Jackson’s eloquent language, his capturing of the subtle nuances, fears and joys
of growing up, and his poetic descriptions of those lovely moments of being a
child that many of us were fortunate to have experienced.”
—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
“Jeremy Jackson’s swirling memoir is built upon layers of well-chosen detail—it remembers the weather, the
geography, the history of plowed earth, the coal-smoke taste of coffee and the aching love between the lines
of handwritten letters. The result is like peering through a new lens at a familiar hillside, or walking through the
pastures of your childhood and discovering they were bigger, not smaller, than you recall. Bigger, not smaller—now
that is the mark of a generous writer.”
—LEIF ENGER, AUTHOR OF PEACE LIKE A RIVER
“Jeremy Jackson writes about Missouri as the young Hemingway wrote about Michigan: with a clear eye; with hardedged nostalgia; and (here’s the thing) with brilliance. I was going to add that I Will Not Leave You Comfortless
reads like fiction, because it’s well designed—but it doesn’t read exactly like fiction. And maybe it’s because every
word of it is absolutely, searingly true.”
—DARIN STRAUSS, AUTHOR OF HALF A LIFE AND CHANG AND ENG
“In its openness, its lucidity, its leaps of empathy, and its quiet perfectionism, this is one of the most daring and
affecting memoirs.”
—KEVIN BROCKMEIER, AUTHOR OF THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD
Spanning one year of the author’s life, I Will Not Leave You Comfortless is the intimate memoir of a boy’s coming-toconsciousness in small-town Missouri, from a writer who “is known for beautifully expressive and strikingly lucid prose”
(Thisbe Nissen). 1984 is the year that greets Jackson with first loves, first losses, and a break from the innocence of
boyhood that will never be fully repaired. The seeming security of family is at once and forever shaken by the lifealtering events of that pivotal year. Through tenderhearted, steadfast prose—redolent of the glories of outdoor life
on the family farm—Jackson recalls the deeply sensual wonders of his rural Midwestern childhood—bicycle rides
in September sunlight, the horizon vanishing behind tall grasses. Reanimating stories both heart wrenching and
humorous, tragic and triumphant, Jackson weaves past, present, and future into the rich Missouri landscape. With
storytelling informed by profound sense of place and a remarkably sound emotional memory, Jackson stands poised
to join the ranks of renowned memoirists.
JEREMY JACKSON is the author of two novels, Life at These Speeds and In Summer. A graduate of
Vassar College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives in Iowa City. Jackson is also the author of young
adult novels under the name of Alex Bradley, and cookbooks including, The Cornbread Book, which was
nominated for a James Beard Award. He writes about food for the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post.
• Reading group guide included in the trade paper edition
NONFICTION/MEMOIR
$14 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-343-0 | 240 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-870-1
ALSO AVAILABLE: $24 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-332-4
Rights held: World
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THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
Galsan Tschinag | Translated by Katharina Rout
DECEMBER 2013 | FALL 2013
Written in the mythic style of great sagas, a majestic novel of a young
man’s journey to adulthood completes “Tschinag’s dazzling…Mongolian
triptych” (TIME Magazine).
As the story begins, we hear of the arrival of triplets to a woman who has birthed
three times previously, though each child died shortly thereafter. This time, however,
the delivery goes well, “as easy as birthing is for a nanny goat.” That same night, a
family of five suffocates in their beds from the smoke of their home fire. Telling the
tale is a young man, Dshurukuwaa, a child of the village, who comes to understand
his unique place as both a shaman and a storyteller in this far-flung world of the
Tuvan people.
The White Mountain is Galsan Tschinag’s wondrous final installment in a trilogy that began with Dshurukuwaa’s early
years in The Blue Sky and continued with his adolescence in The Gray Earth. It chronicles the coming-of-age of a
nomadic boy from Mongolia as he searches for personal identity amidst the tension between the modern socialist
education of Mongolia and the centuries-old traditions of his Tuvan people. As he develops his shamanic powers and
poetic gifts, Dshurukuwaa discovers the tragedy and magic of love, life, poetry, and dreams. Gripping, lyrical, and full
of mythic tales of life in beautiful, solitary regions of Mongolia, The White Mountain is sure to become a classic of world
literature written by one of its major figures.
PRAISE FOR GALSAN TSCHINAG FROM ABROAD
“Even Galsan Tschinag doesn’t know exactly how old he is – presumably about sixty or a bit older. But that isn’t so
important anyhow, for in reading him one has the sense that this is a man with millennia of experience.” —DER SPIEGEL
“A fascinating combination of ancient tradition and individual characterization.” —KÖLNER STADT ANZEIGER
“His language is marked by daily struggle with the forces of nature, and by the endeavor to maintain balance with
songs and prayer. This is the power of Galsan Tschinag’s language: it brings the reader back to the source.”
—THURGAUER ZEITUNG
“Tschinag’s books have reached well beyond his native Altai mountains, and with good reason. They speak of a true
partnership between people and nature, and in a language as clear and stark as the steppes.” —SÜDWEST PRESSE
“A wonderful discovery—Tschinag’s books must be called world literature.” —DIE ZEIT
GALSAN TSCHINAG is a major voice in world literature. Called Irgit Schynykbaj-oglu Dshurukuwaa in his
native Tuvan, he was born in the early forties in Mongolia. He studied at the University of Leipzig where
he adopted German as his written language. His novel, The Blue Sky, was the first of his books to be
available in English, though he is the author of more than thirty books which have been translated into
French, Spanish, Polish, and many other languages. As the chief of Tuvans in Mongolia, Tschinag led his
people, scattered under Communist rule, back in a huge caravan to their original home in the high Altai
Mountains. He currently lives alternately in the Altai, Ulaanbaatar, and Germany.
KATHARINA ROUT teaches English and Comparative Literature at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British
Columbia. Her translations from the German have been widely acclaimed.
• Digital ARCs available on Edelweiss
• Outreach to indigenous studies and Mongolian/Central Asian studies professors and cultural centers
FICTION/TRANSLATION
$24 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-072-9 | 272 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-882-4
Rights held: World (excluding Canada)
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THE GRAY EARTH
Galsan Tschinag | Translated by Katharina Rout
DECEMBER 2013 | FALL 2013 | NEW IN PAPERBACK
From a major voice in world literature comes the story of a native shepherd
boy caught between cultures and blessed with shamanic powers.
“This is a landscape we might never have known—a line of snow-white yurts
stretching across the steppes, the dark and frozen ground of the winter camps,
the disappearing glaciers, the flocks and herds. The ground beneath this novel
slips under your feet even as you read; a landscape threatened by global warming
and other environmental degradations; a way of life disappearing faster than you
can turn the pages—yak cheese, mutton and dried juniper. A language fighting for
its life.” —THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
“In lesser hands, The Gray Earth would be an easy screed against globalization or a boring jeremiad against
environmental vice. Tschinag leans in those directions, but his authorial voice never drowns out that of his brilliantly
complex boy narrator. Trickster Dshurukawaa makes this book, defamiliarizing things to make the alluring ordinary,
the ordinary alluring.” —TIME MAGAZINE
This powerful, sweeping novel tells the story of a Tuvan shepherd boy, Dshurukuwaa, who lives in the high Altai of
western Mongolia. Torn between the onset of visions and a deep interest in shamanism, and the pressure from his
family to attend a state boarding school, the adolescent Dshurukuwaa attempts to mediate the pulls of spirituality and
pragmatism, old ways and new.
Taken from his ancestral home, Dshurukuwaa reunites with his siblings at a boarding school, where his brother also
serves as the principal. Soon he comes to understand that one of the school’s main purposes is to strip the Tuvans of
their language and traditions, and to make them conform to party ideals. Struggling to escape oppression by excelling
in his studies, it is not long before Dshurukuwaa and his family are at odds with the system, placing his brother in
danger. When tragedy strikes, Dshurukuwaa begins to sense the larger import of his visions, and with it a way to honor
his native identity and heritage.
Rooted in the oral traditions of the Tuvan people and their epics, Galsan Tschinag interweaves the timeless tale of a
boy poised on the cusp of manhood with the story of a people on the threshold of modernity.
PRAISE FOR THE BLUE SKY
“[Tschinag] fuses the techniques of Eastern and Western storytelling with a universal reading
of the human condition.”
ALSO
AVAILABLE
—WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
“In this pristine and concentrated tale of miraculous survival and anguished loss, Tschinag
evokes the nuturing warmth of a family within the circular embraces of a yurt as an ancient
way of life lived in harmony with nature becomes endangered.”
—BOOKLIST
“Book by book, Tschinag is championing his people and preserving their traditions.
He...gives a whole new meaning to the power contained in the written word.”
—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“One of those rare books that even when read in solitude makes you feel as if you’ve just been
told a story while surrounded by family and friends in front of a fire.”
—MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
THE BLUE SK Y
978-1-57131-064-4
$15 | Trade Paper
FICTION/TRANSLATION
$16 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-085-9 | 320 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-812-1
ALSO AVIALABLE: $24 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-065-1
Rights held: World (excluding Canada)
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WAITING FOR
THE QUEEN
A NOVEL OF EARLY AMERICA
Joanna Higgins
SEPTEMBER 2013 | FALL 2013
A surprising friendship develops between Eugenie, an escapee from
the French Revolution, and Hannah, a Quaker girl, when they unite in
the cause against slavery in this adventuresome tale of true nobility set
amidst the rugged, eighteenth-century Pennsylvania wilderness.
Fifteen-year-old Eugenie de La Roque and her family barely escape the French
Revolution with their lives and the clothes on their backs. Along with several other
noble families, they sail to America, where French Azilum, as the area came to be known, is being carved out of the
rugged wilderness of Pennsylvania. They don’t know that the village awaiting them is nothing like the home they’ve
left behind—there are no festive balls or carefully manicured gardens, to say nothing of the luxuries once provided by
their many servants.
Hannah Kimbrell is a young Quaker who has been chosen to help prepare French Azilum for the arrival of the aristocrats,
but Hannah wants nothing more than to be home with her mother and new baby brother. Her homesickness is only
deepened by the rude and capricious demands of the newly arrived French families, who are dismayed to find simple
log cabins as protection against the coming winter.
In this wild place away from home and the memories they hold dear, Eugenie and Hannah find more in common than
they first realize. With much to learn from each other, the girls unite to help free several slaves from their tyrannical
French owner, a dangerous scheme that requires personal sacrifice in exchange for the slaves’ freedom.
A story of friendship against all odds, Waiting for the Queen is a loving portrait of the values of a young America, and
a reminder that true nobility is more than a royal title.
PRAISE FOR WAITING FOR THE QUEEN
“French aristocrats in Early America? Quaker carpenters and housemaids? Slaves in New England? I never knew, but
Joanna Higgins brings to life their story through three very different girls who grow into courage, wisdom, tolerance,
and friendship. Their story is exciting, touching, and so real that I didn’t want it to end, and neither will you.”
—K AREN CUSHMAN
PRAISE FOR JOANNA HIGGINS
“[Higgins] renders the experiences of her characters with a refreshingly masterful hand. A memorable experience,
and a writer to watch.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
JOANNA HIGGINS is the author of A Soldier’s Book, Dead Center, and The Importance of High Places
(Milkweed Editions), a collection of short stories. She received her PhD from SUNY-Binghamton, where
she studied under John Gardner. An adoptive mother of two children, Higgins lives with her family in
upstate New York. Waiting for the Queen is her first book for young readers.
• Digital ARCs available on Edelweiss
• Promotion at educational, library, and trade conferences
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION
$16.95 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-700-1 | 256 Pages | 5.25 x 8 | E-book 978-1-57131-877-0
Rights held: World
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Silhouette of a Sparrow
SILHOUETTE OF
A SPARROW
Molly Beth Griffin
AUGUST 2013 | FALL 2013 | NEW IN PAPERBACK
WINNER OF MILKWEED PRIZE FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD
ALA RAINBOW BOOK LIST
MOLLY BETH GRIFFIN
AMELIA BLOOMER PROJECT LIST
“Silhouette of a Sparrow is an excellent example of an historical, coming-of-age lesbian young adult novel.
Written with a deft hand, based in the true history of its setting, and with characterizations that will ring true
to any teenager, it is a worthy and enjoyable read for anyone.”
—LAMBDA LITERARY
“A positive breath of fresh air in a market bloated with opportunistic dystopian and paranormal romances. ”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Silhouette of a Sparrow is a keeper, and I will be adding it to the shortlist of lesbian teen books
I can recommend with no reservations.”
—THE LESBRARY
“Tenderly and touchingly realized ... a pleasant and diverting read.”
—BOOKLIST
“Garnet’s sexual awakening is suffused with lightness and joy, and her familial and identity struggles
will resonate with contemporary teens.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the summer of 1926, sixteen-year-old Garnet Richardson is sent to a lake resort to escape the polio epidemic in the
city. She dreams of indulging in ornithology and a visit to an amusement park—a summer of fun before she returns to
a last year of high school, marriage, and middle-class homemaking. But in the country, Garnet finds herself under the
supervision of oppressive guardians, her father’s wealthy cousin and the matron’s stuck-up daughter. Only a job in a
hat shop, an intense, secret relationship with a beautiful flapper, and a deep faith in her own heart can save her from
the suffocation of traditional femininity in this coming-of-age story about a search for both wildness and security in
an era full of unrest. It is the tale of a young woman’s discovery of the science of risk and the art of rebellion, and, of
course, the power of unexpected love.
MOLLY BETH GRIFFIN is a graduate of Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and
Young Adults, and a writing teacher at the Loft Literary Center in the Twin Cities. Her first picture book,
Loon Baby, came out with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. Silhouette of a Sparrow is her first novel.
• AUTHOR TOUR: St. Paul, MN; Minneapolis, MN; and regional events
• Downloadable bookstore event kit including do-it-yourself bird silhouette cutting and mobiles
• Social media campaign
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
$8 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-704-9 | 208 Pages | 5.25 x 8 | E-book 978-1-57131-861-9
ALSO AVAILABLE: $16.95 • Trade Cloth • 978-1-57131-701-8
Rights held: World
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VISITING HOURS
AT THE COLOR LINE
Ed Pavlić | Selected by Dan Beachy-Quick
AUGUST 2013 | FALL 2013
A NATIONAL POETRY SERIES SELECTION
By a poet whose “depth-perception and beauty of language resist
classification” (Adrienne Rich), Visiting Hours at the Color Line traces
experiences of American characters in explicitly politicized, often racialized
situations, illustrating “that ethics and erotics are one” (Dan Beachy-Quick).
Often the most recognized, even brutal, events in American history are assigned
a bifurcated public narrative. We divide historical and cultural life into two camps,
often segregated by a politicized, racially divided “Color Line.” But how do we privately experience the most troubling
features of American civilization? Where is the Color Line in the mind, in the body, between bodies, between human
beings? Ed Pavlić’s Visiting Hours at the Color Line attempts to complicate this black-and-white, straight-line feature
of our collective imagination, and to map its nonlinear, deeply colored timbres and hues. From the daring prose
poem to the powerful free verse, Pavlić’s lines are musically infused, bearing tones of soul, R&B, and jazz. Meanwhile,
joining the influence of James Baldwin with a postmodern consciousness the likes of Samuel Beckett, Pavlić tracks
the experiences of American characters through situations both mundane and momentous, and exposes the many
textures of this social, historical world as it seeps into the private dimensions of our lives. The resulting poems are
intense—at times even violent—ambitious, and psychological, making Visiting Hours at the Color Line a poetic tour de
force, by one of the century’s most acclaimed American poets.
PRAISE FOR ED PAVLIĆ
“Even after multiple readings, I am incapable of succinctly praising the poet’s immense talent and this new book’s
urgent, beautiful complexity.”
—TERRANCE HAYES
“The tension in Ed Pavlić’s poems is a language-cable wrought to swing you out over unnerving spaces, let you see
and hear what they really hold, and bring you back up more alive than you were before.”
—ADRIENNE RICH
“There’s a beauty embodied in this poet’s straightforward journey.”
—YUSEF KOMUNYAK AA
“Ed Pavlić’s poetry balances itself on a tightrope of musical strings strung across a precipice between the irrational
and the rational.”
—STANLEY MOSS
ED PAVLIĆ has been awarded the Honickman First Book Prize and is a National Poetry Series award
winner, in addition to receiving fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, Bread
Loaf, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. He is the author of four previous collections of
poems including, Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway. He lives in Athens, GA.
DAN BEACHY-QUICK is the author of A Whaler’s Dictionary and, most recently,
Wonderful Investigations. He lives in Fort Collins, CO.
• AUTHOR TOUR: Regional events in Georgia and tie-in to author’s speaking engagements
• Promotion via National Poetry Series
POETRY
$16 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-460-4 | 156 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-901-2
Rights held: World
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HER BOOK
Éireann Lorsung
AUGUST 2013 | FALL 2013
With intelligence and crystalline clarity, a chorus of female voices
speaks through the poems in Her book, Éireann Lorsung’s inspired
second collection.
“In Her book, Éireann Lorsung inhabits the uncertain and fluid boundaries between the body and the world, the self
and the other. For the poet, the word searches out the image and gives it substance. For the reader, these poems
offer a materiality of their own: ‘[The body’s] speech packs around it like wasp / paper. Speaking a thin, permanent /
archive.’ The poems in this volume breach the ordinary parameters of space, time, and sense perception. To
experience them is to occupy the space between in a surprising and yet subtle way.”
—K ATHLEEN JESME
From the poet who brought us Music For Landing Planes By, Éireann Lorsung’s luminous voice is distilled through
multiple unnamed female speakers in her second collection. Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses
distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that
bring them together. This is also a book about translation (of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space)
and conversation (with, for instance, work by Kiki Smith, widely known as a feminist artist). Lorsung writes additionally
about her time spent in England and friendships she formed with women there. Together, these poems comprise both
her book (Lorsung’s), and hers (encompassing all who identify with that word).
PRAISE FOR MUSIC FOR LANDING PLANES BY
“There is always a voice in Lorsung’s book ‘calling you in the wilderness,’ and the result is pitch-perfect language
coupled with astounding imagery. These highly confident poems make up a wonderful debut collection.”
—AMERICAN POET
“In this amazing first book, Éireann Lorsung enters deeply into the everyday—only to emerge awestruck, open, and
generous. In her hands both the world and the word are transformed into something radiant.”
—NICK FLYNN
“Music for Landing Planes By is a young woman’s love song to the planet. Images flock from a vivid pastoral world,
uncarded fleece, wrens in thatch, chaff, lathe, and hasp, joining the speaker in her effort to stitch prayer and dream,
city and country, into one shimmering fabric of ardor.”
—LESLIE ADRIENNE MILLER
Native Minnesotan ÉIREANN LORSUNG’S first book, Music for Landing Planes By, was published by
Milkweed in 2007. Since then, she has lived in France, the UK, and Belgium. Lorsung edits the journal 1110
and co-runs MIEL Books, a small press.
• AUTHOR TOUR: Minneapolis, MN; St. Paul, MN; Los Angeles, CA; Tucson, AZ; San Francisco, CA; Portland, OR;
Seattle, WA; New York, NY; Boston, MA; Farmington, ME; Hartland, VT; and internationally in London, Paris,
and elsewhere
• Promotion on Milkweed’s website and social media campaigns
POETRY
$16 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-433-8 | 96 Pages | 7 x 7 | E-book 978-1-57131-879-4
Rights Held: World
milkweed.org
BLACK STARS
Ngo Tu Lap
Translated by Martha Collins and Ngo Tu Lap
NOVEMBER 2013 | FALL 2013
A beautifully rendered translation by Vietnamese poet Ngo Tu Lap and
acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, Black Stars introduces a man
who is both attached to his war-haunted childhood home and deeply
conversant with contemporary global life.
With poems simultaneously occupying past, present, and future, Black Stars
escapes the confines of time and space, suffusing image with memory, abstraction
with meaning, and darkness with abundant light. In these masterful translations,
the poems sing out with the kind of wisdom that comes to those who have lived
through war, traveled far, and seen a great deal. While the past may evoke village life and the present a postmodern
urban world, the poems often exhibit a dual consciousness that allows the poet to reside in both at once. From the
universe to the self—those two almost incomprehensible entities—we see Lap’s landscapes grow wider before they
focus: black stars receding to dark stairways, infinity giving way to now. Lap’s universe is boundless, yes, but also “just
big enough / To have four directions / With just enough wind, rain, and trouble to last.”
PRAISE FOR BLACK STARS
“Reading Ngo Tu Lap’s poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me—nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country,
nostalgia for people I’ve loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. The French called PTSD ‘nostalgie.’ I feel
gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.”
—MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
“Underlying tensions animate these arresting poems by Ngo Tu Lap, movingly translated by Martha Collins and
the author. Coinhabiting past and present, the speaker conflates absence and presence so that ‘On the finger of a
woman who died young / A ring still sparkles / In the depths of the black earth.’ Inside this dual perspective, we, as
readers, are enriched.”
—ARTHUR SZE
NGO TU LAP has published three collections of poetry in Vietnam, as well as five books of fiction, five
books of essays, and many translations from Russian, French, and English. He has won seven prizes for
his writing, which has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, Czech, and Thai. A fellow
of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies at Korea University in Seoul in 2010-2011, he is currently
Dean of the Department of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Economics at the International School
(Vietnam National University, Hanoi).
MARTHA COLLINS is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Blue Front and White Papers. She has also
published two books of co-translations from the Vietnamese. Collins founded the Creative Writing Program at UMassBoston, and for ten years was Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. She is currently editorat-large for FIELD magazine and an editor for Oberlin College Press. Collins lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her
seventh poetry collection, Day Unto Day, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2014.
• AUTHOR TOUR: Translator events in the Boston area; Seattle, WA; Oberlin, OH; Washington, D.C.
• Bilingual edition in English and Vietnamese
POETRY/TRANSLATION
$16 • Trade Paper • 978-1-57131-459-8 | 118 Pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | E-book 978-1-57131-900-5
Rights held: World
milkweed.org
RECENT & SELLING
BEING ESTHER
JEWELWEED
Miriam Karmel
David Rhodes
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APOLOGY
THE HUNDRED GRASSES
Jon Pineda
Leila Wilson
MILKWEED NATIONAL FICTION
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AND THE COVE
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FUNDAMENTALS OF CAREGIVING
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in relation.”
—DAN BEACHY-QUICK
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“Like Lorine Niedecker, Wilson knows intimacy with nature
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THINGS THAT ARE
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THE LONG-SHINING
WATERS
ALL IOWA READS SELECTION
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ABOUT MILKWEED EDITIONS
Founded in 1980, Milkweed Editions is an independent book publisher. Our mission is to identify, nurture and publish
transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it. As a nonprofit organization, Milkweed Editions
depends on the generosity of institutions and individuals, in addition to revenue generated by sales of the books we publish.
In an increasingly consolidated book business, this support allows us to select and publish books on the basis of their literary
quality and transformative potential. Thank you for reading our books and supporting our authors.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADVISORY BOARD
STAFF
Ann Ness
Chair
Jonis Agee
Elizabeth Ireland
Administrative Assistant
Tracey Thayer Breazeale
Vice Chair
Louise Erdrich
Julie M. DuBois
Treasurer
Barry Lopez
Mary Aamoth
Noah Bly
Henry Buchwald
Libby Coppo
H. Emerson Blake
Patricia Hampl
Michael Pollan
Hilary Reeves
Scott Slovic
Terry Tempest Williams
Elizabeth Driscoll Hlavka
Joel Hoekstra
Daniel Slager
Publisher & CEO
Kate Strickland
Development Manager
Patrick Thomas
Editor & Program Manager
Allison Wigen
Associate Editor
John Gordon
Moira Grosbard
Sue Ostfield
Sales & Marketing Director
PUBLISHER EMERITUS
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Anna Weggel
Content Manager
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Elizabeth Moran
Shelia Morgan
Robin B. Nelson
Margaret Preska
Cheryl Ryland
Daniel Slager
Stephanie Sommer
Lawrence Steiner
Edward T. Wahl
OUR COMMITMENT TO THE ENVIRONMENT
Milkweed Editions is a member of the Green Press Initiative. Last year, 100 percent of our books were printed on paper with
recycled content, and 100 percent of our books were produced by FSC-certified printers. For decades we have chosen to
produce 100 percent of our books in North America. Milkweed is committed to minimizing negative social and environmental
impacts through these and other sustainable practices.
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