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GRAYWOLF PRESS
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G R AY W O L F P R E S S
Graywolf Press congratulates
Tomas Tranströmer
winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature
and author of The Half-Finished Heaven
NEW TITLES AND
S E L E C T E D BA C K L I S T
SPRING 2012
Graywolf Press
Visit our web site: www.graywolfpress.org
Graywolf Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher dedicated to the creation and promotion of thoughtful and
imaginative contemporary literature essential to a vital and diverse culture. Our work is made possible by the book
buyer, and by the generous support of individuals, corporations, foundations, and governmental agencies, to whom we
offer heartfelt thanks. We encourage you to support Graywolf’s publishing efforts. For information, check our web site
(listed above) or call us at (651) 641-0077.
G r ay wo l f S ta f f
Fiona McCrae, Director and Publisher
Marisa Atkinson, Marketing and Publicity Associate
Sara Barnaby, Accountant
Kit Briem, Development and Managing Director
Katie Dublinski, Associate Publisher
Leslie Koppenhaver, Sales and Business Manager
Erin Kottke, Publicity Director
Casey Peterson, Administrative Assistant
Stephanie Shockley, Development Assistant
Jeffrey Shotts, Senior Editor
Steven Woodward, Assistant Editor
B o a r d o f D i r e c to r s
Betsy Hannaford (Chair), Ronnie Brooks, Colin Hamilton, Shirley Hughes, Georgia Murphy Johnson, John Junek,
Ed McConaghay, Glenn Miller, Jennifer Melin Miller, Leni Moore, Wenda Moore, Bruno Quinson, Gail See, Kim
Severson, Kate Tabner, Kim Vappie, Joanne Von Blon, Melinda Ward
B oa r d E m e r i t u s
Ann Bitter, Page Knudsen Cowles, Sally Dixon, Diane Herman, Katherine Murphy, Mary Polta, Kay Sexton, Margaret
Telfer, Margaret Wurtele
N at i o n a l C o u n c i l
Bruno Quinson (Chair), Ann Bitter, David Breskin, Mary Carswell, Edwin Cohen, Jaune Evans, Ellen Flamm, David
Galligan, Betsy Gardella, Barbara Holmes, Georgia Murphy Johnson, Laura Kracum, Don Lee, Chris Mahai, Dan
McCarthy, Elise Paschen, Josephine Reed-Taylor, Susan Ritz, Eunice Salton, Stephanie Stebich, Kathryn B. Swintek,
Diane Thormodsgard, Charlotte Vaughan Winton
In t e r ns
Grace Gouker, Jacey Gulden, Robert Martin, Jessica Mattson, Rebecca Merrill, Anna Nething, Anastasia Scott,
Angela Tate, Michelle Wallin, Marla Zubel
A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s
This activity is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation
by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota general fund and its arts and cultural heritage fund with money
from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota,
and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional organizational support has been provided by the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation, the Bakeless Fund
of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College, the Boss Foundation, the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family
Foundation, the College of Saint Benedict, the Dorsey & Whitney Foundation, the Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family
Foundation, the General Mills Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the
Arsham Ohanessian Charitable Remainder Unitrust, the Elizabeth C. Quinlan Foundation, and Target.
Cover photo: Caroline Purser /
Photographer’s Choice / Getty Images
Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter
Logo created by Pat Wagoner
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The first publication of poetry by the
2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner,
Liu Xiaobo
“In this collection of poems entitled June Fourth Elegies,
Liu Xiaobo pays a moving tribute to the sacrifices made during the
events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Considering the writer himself
remains imprisoned, this book serves a powerful reminder of his
courage and determination and his great-hearted concern for
the welfare of his fellow country men and women.”
his holiness the dalai lama
from his Foreword
June Fourth Elegies
Poems
Liu Xiaobo
T r a n s l a te d f r o m t h e C h i n e s e b y J eff r e y Y a n g
Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
A L a n n a n T r a n s l a t i o n Select i o n
Liu Xiaobo has become the foremost symbol of the struggle
June Fourth Elegies presents Liu’s poems written in memory
for human rights in China. He was a leading activist during
of fellow protestors at Tiananmen Square. In this bilingual
the Tiananmen Square protests of June 4, 1989, and an author
volume, Liu’s poetry is for the first time published freely in
of Charter 08, the manifesto of fundamental human rights
both English translation and in the Chinese original.
published in 2008. In 2009, Liu was imprisoned for “incit-
Liu Xiaobo is a political activist and writer. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace
Prize. Jeffrey Yang is the author of two poetry collections and an editor at New
Directions Publishing.
ing subversion of state power,” and he is currently serving an
eleven-year sentence. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace
Prize for “his prolonged nonviolent struggle for fundamental
Brit., trans., audio: Graywolf Press
human rights in China.”
1st ser., dram.: Peter Bernstein

Poetry, 292 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-610-1), $26.00, April
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“A sharp, truthful, funny portrait of
contemporary manners that is also
unexpectedly moving.”
the times (london)
“A quiet triumph of understated realism. . . . This is one of those books
that leaves you not only with admiration for the novelist, but also with
a sense of wonder about the precision of the novel form itself.”
the guardian
(London)
“In Spring the gifted British writer David Szalay explores the complex
worlds of love and money, each with their surprises and vicissitudes.
This novel made me feel in the best way that I was eavesdropping on
a series of fascinating conversations. An insightful portrait
of contemporary England.”
margot livesey
Spring
A Novel
Dav i d S z a l ay
James is a man with a checkered past—sporadic entrepreneur,
tations, missteps, and tensions as James tries to win Katherine.
one-time film producer, almost a dot-com millionaire—now
Spring is a sharply tuned novel so nuanced and precise in its
alone in a flat in Bloomsbury, running a shady horse-racing tips
psychology that it establishes Szalay as a major talent.
operation. Katherine is a manager at a luxury hotel, a job she’d
David Szalay was born in Canada in 1974. He is the author of London and the
South-East, which won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize,
and The Innocent. In 2010, the Telegraph listed him as one of the twenty best
British novelists under forty. He lives in London.
intended to leave years ago, and is separated from her husband.
The novel unfolds in 2006, at the end of the money-for-nothing
years, as a chance meeting leads to an awkward tryst and James
tries to make sense of a relationship where “no” means “maybe”
Brit.: Random House Group Ltd
and a “yes” can never be taken for granted.
Trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: United Agents
David Szalay builds a novel of immense resonance as he
cycles though perspectives that add layers of depth to the hesi-

Fiction, 272 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-602-6), $15.00, January / Ebook available
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A blazingly original, wildly stylish,
and pulpy debut novel
“[Barry’s] work is hilarious and unpredictable—
and always brilliant.”
roddy d oyle
“The best novel to come out of Ireland since Ulysses.”
irvine welsh
“What an unforgettably wonderful novel: hilarious, unique,
utterly believable. It’s Joyce meets Anthony Burgess, and as funny as
Flann O’Brien. We Kevin Barry fans have known for a while that he is
a writer of rarest gifts, but this book is an electrifying masterpiece.”
joseph o’connor
“Kevin Barry is the real thing, and nothing can stop him.”
d av i d g u t e r s on
City of Bohane
A Novel
K e v i n B a r ry
Forty or so years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane
“Upend[s] the realm of modern Irish literature with a work of
on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and
such singular scope and voice that it is bound to be the talk of book
split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it
circles this year and possibly beyond. . . . His language is startling,
is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks
somehow a physical presence.”—Independent on Sunday (Ireland)
of the North Rises, and the eerie bogs of the Big Nothin’ that
Kevin Barry was born in Limerick in 1969 and now lives in Dublin. His short fiction
has appeared widely on both sides of the Atlantic, most recently in the New Yorker.
City of Bohane is his first novel.
the city really lives. For years it has all been under the control
of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy
gang. But there’s trouble in the air. They say Hartnett’s old
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Random House Group Ltd
nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambi-
1st ser.: Graywolf Press
tious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight.

Fiction, 288 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-608-8), $25.00, March / Ebook available
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A deeply moving meditation on memory,
history, love, and art
“It is impossible to exaggerate the power of this short,
unbearably poignant novel. It is both brutal and lyrical.
Makine consciously invokes Chekhov but his grasp of history
is positively Tolstoy-like in scale. I can’t think of a writer who would
be a more deserving recipient of the Nobel literature prize.”
m a i l on s u n d ay ( lon d on )
“Makine’s laconic, sardonic portrait of the new Russia is
laced with fury . . . a bold and eloquent novel.”
the guardian (london)
The Life of an Unknown Man
A Novel
Andreï Makine
T r a n s l a te d f r o m t h e F r e n c h b y G e o ff r e y St r a c h a n
A L a n n a n T r a n s l a t i o n Select i o n
In The Life of an Unknown Man, Andreï Makine explores what truly
of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov
matters in life through the prism of Russia’s past and present.
encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just
another unknown man . . .
Shutov, a disenchanted writer, revisits St. Petersburg
after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his
Andreï Makine was born in 1957 in Siberia and has lived in France for more than
twenty years. His novels include Dreams of My Russian Summers, which has sold
more than a million copies. Geoffrey Strachan is an award-winning translator.
youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his
extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the
march on Berlin, and Stalin’s purges, and of a transcendent
Brit: Sceptre
love affair. Volsky’s life is an inspiration to Shutov—because
Trans., audio, dram.: Editions du Seuil
for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth
1st ser.: Graywolf Press

Fiction, 192 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-614-9), $15.00, June / Ebook available
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“A crazy ambidextrous delight.”
mich ael onda atje
“This is one of the most astonishing novels I’ve read in a long,
long while. To refer to The Legend of Pradeep Mathew as a book
about cricket is a sin tantamount to calling Moby-Dick a book about
a whale. I have not felt that tingle at the back of my neck since
my first experiences with Murakami and Bolaño.”
jamil zaidi
The Elliott Bay Book Company
“If you love cricket read this, if you love novels read this,
and if you love both, you know this one is for you.”
mohammed hanif
The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
A Novel
S h e h a n K a r u n at i l a k a
Aging sportswriter W. G. Karunasena’s liver is shot. Years
“The strength of the book lies in its energy, its mixture of humor
of drinking have seen to that. As his health fades, he embarks
and heartwrenching emotion, its twisting narrative, its playful
with his friend Ari on a madcap search for legendary cricket
use of cricketing facts and characters, and its occasional blazing
bowler Pradeep Mathew. En route they discover a mysterious
anger about what Sri Lanka has done to itself. . . . This book could
six-fingered coach, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths
be the best thing to happen to your life.”—The Guardian (London)
about their beloved sport and country. A prizewinner in Sri
Shehan Karunatilaka lives and works in Singapore. He has written advertisements, rock songs, travel stories, and bass lines. This is his first novel.
Lanka and a sensation in India and Britain, The Legend of Pradeep
Mathew is a nimble and original debut that blends cricket and
the history of modern Sri Lanka into a vivid and comedic swirl.
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Random House Group Ltd.
1st ser.: Graywolf Press

Fiction, 416 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback (978-1-55597-611-8), $16.00, May / Ebook available
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“Of my generation I most admire
Daniel Sada, whose writing project
seems to me the most daring.”
roberto bolao
“Sada will be a revelation for world literature.”
carlos fuentes
Almost Never
A Novel
D a n i el S a d a
T r a n s l a te d f r o m t h e Sp a n i s h b y K a t h e r i n e S i l v e r
Demetrio is torn, the poor cad. Naturally he tries to main-
Demetrio Sordo is an agronomist who passes his days in a dull
but remunerative job at a ranch near Oaxaca. It is 1945, but the
tain both relationships, continuing to frolic with Mireya and
bloody events of World War II have had no impact on a country
beginning a chaste correspondence with Renata. But problems,
that is only on the cusp of industrializing. One day, more bored
as they say, ensue in this antic, Rabelaisian tale of lust and
than usual, Demetrio begins an all-consuming and, all things
longing.
considered, perfectly satisfying relationship with a prostitute
Daniel Sada was born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1953. Almost Never was the winner of the prestigious Herralde Prize for Fiction. Katherine Silver’s recent translations include works by Horacio Castellanos Moya and César Aira.
named Mireya.
A letter from his mother interrupts Demetrio’s debauched
idyll: she asks him to return home to northern Mexico to
Brit., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
accompany her to a wedding. Much to his mother’s delight,
Trans.: Anagrama
Demetrio meets the beautiful and virginal Renata and quickly
falls in love—a most proper kind of love.

Fiction, 344 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-609-5), $16.00, April / Ebook available
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An unforgettable story of men and horses,
the American West,
and the dream of a ticket out
Praise for Ghosts of Wyoming:
“These eight burnished stories confirm Alyson Hagy’s importance
in American literature; her seamless blending of landscape and lives,
her very modern understanding of the vulnerability of kindness.”
los angeles times
“[Hagy’s] Wyoming is a harsh world,
but one shot through with transcendent moments.”
the boston globe
Boleto
A Novel
Al y s o n H a g y
Will Testerman is a young Wyoming horse trainer determined
sitely observed novel about our intimate relationships with
to make something of himself. Money is tight at the family
animals and money, against the backdrop of a new West that
ranch, where he’s living again after a disastrous end to his job
is changing forever.
on the Texas show-horse circuit. He sees his chance with a
Alyson Hagy is the author of Ghosts of Wyoming and Snow, Ashes. She lives in
Laramie, Wyoming.
beautiful quarter horse, a filly that might earn him a reputation,
and spends his savings to buy her.
Armed with stories and the confidence of youth, he devotes
Brit., trans.: Graywolf Press
himself to her training—first, in the familiar barns and cor-
1st ser., audio, dram.: Brandt & Hochman
rals of home, then on a guest ranch in the rugged Absaroka
Also available:
Mountains, and, in the final trial, on the glittering, treacherous
Ghosts of Wyoming, Fiction, Paperback (978-1-55597-548-7), $15.00
polo fields of Southern California.
Snow, Ashes, Fiction, Paperback (978-1-55597-468-8), $15.00
With Boleto, Alyson Hagy delivers a masterfully told, exqui-

Fiction, 288 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-612-5), $24.00, May / Ebook available
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The winner of the Bakeless Prize for Fiction,
a bold debut collection
“Ted Sanders is a fearless, wild, tremendously sensitive writer,
who seems to write not only about the three dimensions of the world
we live in, but also about the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth. . . .
Reading these stories is like looking into the eyes of an animal,
finding there both recognition and unbridled otherness,
a gaze returned to you that both is and isn’t from a reality you
already know and that may be ringed with fur, or legs.”
stacey d’erasmo
Bakeless Prize Judge
N o A n i m a l s We C o u l d N a m e
Stories
Ted Sanders
The animals (human or otherwise) in Ted Sanders’s inventive,
Ted Sanders teaches at the University of Illinois and Parkland College in UrbanaChampaign. His stories have appeared in the Georgia Review and the O. Henry
Prize Stories 2010, among other places.
wistful stories are oddly familiar, yet unlike anyone you’ve met
before. A lion made of bedsheets, with chicken bones for teeth,
is brought to life by a grieving mother. When Raphael the pet
Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
lizard mysteriously loses his tail, his owners find themselves
ever more desperate to keep him alive, in one sense or another.
A pensive tug-of-war between an amateur angler and a halibut
unfolds through the eyes of both fisherman and fish. And in
the collection’s unifying novella, an unusual guest’s arrival at a
party sets idle gears turning in startling new ways.

Fiction, 272 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-616-3), $15.00, July / Ebook available
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A quartet of audacious fictions
that capture the pathos and absurdity
of life in the age of the Internet
Praise for Witz:
“This anarchic energy recalls Thomas Pynchon and
David Foster Wallace. . . . A linguistic extravaganza.”
the new york times
book review
“The sort of postmodern epic that arrives like a comet
about once every decade.”
the new york observer
Four New Messages
Joshua Cohen
A spectacularly talented young writer has returned from the
an aspiring journalist finds himself in a village that shelters all the
present with Four New Messages, urgent and visionary dispatches
women who’ve starred in all the Internet porn he’s ever enjoyed.
that seek to save art, sex, and even alienation from corporatism
Highbrow and low-down, these four intensely felt stories
explain what happens when the virtual begins to colonize the
and technology run rampant.
In “Emission,” a hapless drug dealer in Princeton is humili-
real—they harness the torrential power and verbal dexterity
ated when a cruel coed exposes him exposing himself on a blog
that have established Joshua Cohen as one of America’s most
gone viral. “McDonald’s” tells of a frustrated pharmaceutical
brilliant younger writers.
copywriter whose imaginative flights fail to bring solace because
Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He is the author of five books, including A Heaven of Others and Witz. His nonfiction has appeared in Bookforum,
the Forward, Harper’s, and other publications. He lives in New York City.
of a certain word he cannot put down on paper. In “The College
Borough” a New York novelist exiled to the Midwest refuses to
read his students’ stories, asking them instead to build a replica
Brit., trans., audio: Graywolf Press
of the Flatiron Building. “Sent” begins mythically in the woods of
1st ser., dram.: Mary Evans, Inc.
Russia, but in a few virtuosic pages plunges into the present, where

Fiction, 208 pages, 5 x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-618-7), $14.00, August / Ebook available
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Winner of the Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction,
a childhood memoir of oppression and
persecution under Ceauşescu
“Carmen Bugan delivers neither a memoir of blame nor a hagiography.
What she has drawn, within the story of her own childhood, is a
complex portrait of an exasperating father. . . . But, while he may be
the driving force behind her story . . . it is her world that is revealed
here, a world she was forced to leave behind and that she looks
back on now with sorrow, pride, longing, and rage.”
lynn freed
Bakeless Prize Judge
B u r y i n g t h e Ty p e w r i t e r
A Memoir
Carmen Bugan
Carmen Bugan grew up in the 1970s and 1980s amid the
When he returned from prison and the family was put under
bounty of the Romanian countryside on her grandparents’
house arrest, they were forced to chart a new course for the
farm where food and laughter were plentiful. But eventually
future. A warm and intelligent debut, Burying the Typewriter
her father’s behavior was too disturbing to ignore. He hid
provides a poignant reminder of a dramatic moment in Eastern
pamphlets in sacks of dried beans and mysteriously buried and
European history.
reburied a typewriter. When she discovered he was a political
Carmen Bugan is the author of a collection of poetry, Crossing the Carpathians.
Her work has been published in Harvard Review, the Times Literary Supplement,
and Modern Poetry in Translation.
dissident she became anxious for him to conform. With her
mother in the hospital and her sister at boarding school, she
was alone and helpless to stop him from leaving for one last,
Brit., trans., dram.: Rogers, Coleridge, and White Ltd
desperate protest.
Audio, 1st ser.: Graywolf Press
After her father’s subsequent imprisonment, Bugan was
shunned by her schoolmates and informed on by her neighbors.

Memoir, 192 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-617-0), $15.00, July / Ebook available
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“Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre
of his own. . . . Freewheeling and fabulous.”
the times (london)
“A hammer-and-sickle version of Altman’s Nashville,
with central committees replacing country music . . . [Spufford] has
one of the most original minds in contemporary literature.”
nick hornby
The Believer
“A thrilling book that all enthusiasts of the Big State should read.”
michael burleigh
The Sunday Telegraph (London)
Red Plent y
F r a n c i s Sp u ff o r d
Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded
genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give
on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic
the tyranny its happy ending.
called “the planned economy,” which was going to gush forth
Red Plenty is history, it’s fiction, it’s as ambitious as Sputnik, as
an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could
uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different
never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of
from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.
the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is
Francis Spufford is the author of The Child That Books Built and two other
books. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches
writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.
about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it
went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership
of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of
Brit.: Faber and Faber Ltd
rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would
Trans., dram.: Aitken Alexander Associates
out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engi-
1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press
neered than a Porsche. It’s about the scientists who did their

History/Political Science, 448 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-604-0), $16.00, February / Ebook available
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The first work of prose by
the brilliant poet Kevin Young,
winner of the Graywolf Press
Nonfiction Prize
“This is a narrative of surprises—a book of secrets, too,
though many of those secrets, as we discover, are cunningly hidden
in plain sight (or in plain speech). The Grey Album investigates,
even as it also performs, an American covert history—the stories
behind any official or familiar story—as well as some emblematic
escapes from and into American history. Veering across many
vernaculars, from literature into music, theory into autobiography,
Kevin Young writes cultural criticism of the most audacious,
skillful, and ultimately touching sort.”
robert polito
Graywolf Nonfiction Prize Judge
The Grey Album
On the Blackness of Blackness
Ke vin You ng
Taking its title from Danger Mouse’s pioneering mashup of
“Kevin Young’s The Grey Album is a page-turning dynamo.”
Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatles’ The White Album, Kevin
—Yusef Komunyakaa
Young’s encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism,
Kevin Young is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Ardency and
Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for the National Book Award. He is a curator and the
Atticus Haygood Professor at Emory University.
and lyrical chorus to illustrate the African American tradition
of lying—storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, “jazzing.” What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways
Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press
that African American culture is American culture, and for the
Dram.: Lippincott Massie McQuilkin
centrality of art—and artfulness—to our daily lives. Moving
from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through
The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize is funded in part by endowed gifts from the
Arsham Ohanessian Charitable Remainder Unitrust and the Ruth Easton Fund of
the Edelstein Family Foundation.
the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.

Literature/Essays/Cultural Studies, 492 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-607-1), $25.00, March / Ebook available
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An innovative and fascinating
new version of Dante’s Inferno as it
has never been rendered
Stopped mid-motion in the middle
Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky—
Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.
—from Canto I
Inferno
A N e w Tr a n s l a t i o n
D a n te Al i g h i e r i
T r a n s l a te d , w i t h a n I n t r o d u ct i o n a n d N o te s , b y M a r y J o B a n g
Ill u s t r a te d b y He n r i k D r e s c h e r
Award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang has translated the Inferno at
Drescher, this is the most readable Inferno available in English, a
a moment when popular culture is so prevalent that it has even
truly remarkable achievement.
taken Dante, author of the fourteenth-century epic poem The
Dante Alighieri (c.1265­–1321) is the author of the Divine Comedy, a masterpiece of world literature. Mary Jo Bang is the author of six books of poetry, including Elegy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Divine Comedy, and turned him into an action-adventure videogame hero. Dante wrote his poem in the vernacular, rather than
in literary Latin. Bang has similarly created an idiomatically rich
contemporary version that is accessible, musical, and audacious.
Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLC
She’s matched Dante’s own liberal use of allusion by incorpo-
Also available:
rating cultural references familiar to contemporary readers:
The Bride of E, Poetry, Hardcover (978-1-55597-539-5), $22.00
Shakespeare and Dickinson, Freud and South Park, Kierkegaard
Elegy, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-540-1), $15.00
and Stephen Colbert. With haunting illustrations by Henrik

Poetry, 288 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-619-4), $20.00
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Now in paperback, the winner of the
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award
“D. A. Powell is one of the two or three major poets
now in mid-career. . . . We will still be reading D. A. Powell
a long time from now, both for the record he offers of the last
thirty years of American history and culture and for the new
possibilities he has created for poetry. He is both accessible and
challenging, saying something new, and saying it newly, with each
book, yet speaking with an authority as old as poetry itself.”
craig morgan teicher
2009 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist citation
Chronic
Poems
D . A . P o w ell
In these brilliant poems from one of contemporary poetry’s
D. A. Powell is the author of five collections of poetry, including Useless Landscape,
or A Guide for Boys. He lives in San Francisco.
most intriguing, singular voices, D. A. Powell strikes out for
the farther territories of love and comes back from those fields
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
with loss, with flowers faded, “blossom blast and dieback.”
Also available:
Chronic describes the flutter and cruelty of erotic encounter,
Cocktails, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-395-7), $14.00
temptation, and bitter heartsickness, but with Powell’s deep
lyric beauty and his own brand of dark wit.
“Powell turns the lyric form inside out. The work explodes off
the page like Molotov cocktails.”—John Freeman, Los Angeles Times

Poetry, 88 pages, 7 x 9, Paperback (978-1-55597-606-4), $15.00, February
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New poetry by D. A. Powell, “the best poet of his
generation—and arguably the most important
poet under fifty” (Time Out New York)
I have this rearrangement to make:
symbolic death, my backward glance.
The way the past is a kind of future
leaning against the sporty hood.
—from “Bugcatching at Twilight”
Useless L andscape, or A Guide for Boys
Poems
D . A . P o w ell
In D. A. Powell’s fifth book of poetry, the rollicking line he has
“No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no
made his signature becomes the taut, more discursive means to
poet as original is this accessible.”—Stephen Burt, The New York
describing beauty, singing a dirge, directing an ironic smile, or
Times Book Review
questioning who in any given setting is the instructor and who
D. A. Powell is the author of five collections of poetry, including Chronic, winner
of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He lives in San Francisco.
is the pupil. This is a book that explores the darker side of divisions and developments, which shows how the interstitial spaces
of boonies, backstage, bathhouse, or bar are locations of desire.
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
With Powell’s witty banter, emotional resolve, and powerful
1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press
lyricism, this collection demonstrates his exhilarating range.

Poetry, 120 pages, 6 x 9, Hardcover (978-1-55597-605-7), $22.00, February
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The not-at-all-everyday new poetry collection
by Albert Goldbarth, twice winner of the
National Book Critics Circle Award
I brought a book of many words
to an emptiness in my heart,
and I shook them out in there, to fill it.
In my time I wrote this very thing.
In your time you read it.
—from “What We Were Like”
Ever yday People
Poems
Albe r t G o l d b a r t h
Virtuoso poet Albert Goldbarth returns with a new collection
Albert Goldbarth is the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, including
To Be Read in 500 Years and The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems
1972–2007. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.
that describes the wonders of everyday people—overprotective
parents, online gamblers, newlyweds, Hercules, and Jesus.
In Goldbarth’s poetry—expansive, wild, and hilarious—he
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
argues that our ordinary failures, heroics, joy, and grief are
1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press
worth giving voice to, giving thanks for. Everyday People is an
Also available:
extraordinary new book by a poet who “in thirty-five years of
writing has amassed a body of work as substantial and intel-
To Be Read in 500 Years, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-525-8),
$16.00
ligent as that of anyone in his generation” (William Doreski,
The Kitchen Sink, Poetry, Paperback (978-1-55597-526-5), $18.00
The Harvard Review).

Poetry, 196 pages, 7 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-603-3), $18.00, January
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The long-awaited fourth collection by
one of America’s foremost poets
O Lord of indirection and ellipses,
ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction.
Slow our heartbeat to a cricket’s call.
—from “Prophecy”
Pity the Beautiful
Poems
Dana Gioia
Pity the Beautiful is Dana Gioia’s first new poetry book in more
is clearly a poet whose words are heard, whose positions ignite
than a decade. Its emotional revelations and careful construc-
debate, whose work constantly and unflinchingly searches out
tion are hard won, inventive, and resilient. These new poems
new ways to counter what he calls ‘our sentimental, upbeat age.’ ”
show Gioia’s craftsmanship at its finest, its most mature, as
—American Book Award citation for Interrogations at Noon
they make music, crack wise, remember the dead, and in a
Dana Gioia is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and
currently serves as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the
University of Southern California. He lives in Washington, DC.
long, central poem even tell ghost stories.
“Gioia concerns himself with every aspect of his craft: its tradi-
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
tions, its movements toward and away from rhyme and meter,
1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press
and its ancient roots in the sound of the human voice. . . . Gioia

Poetry, 80 pages, 5½ x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-613-2), $15.00, May
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The second collection by Catherine Barnett,
whose “poems are scrupulously restrained
and beautifully made”
e dwar d h i r s ch
The Washington Post
Everyone asks us what we’re afraid of
but children aren’t supposed to say.
We could put loneliness on the list.
We could put the list on the list, its infinity.
We could put infinity down.
—from “Fields of No One to Ask”
The Game of Boxes
Poems
C a t h e r i n e B a r n ett
In Catherine Barnett’s The Game of Boxes, love stutters its way
“If death could be undone by love—that deathless human
in and out of both family and erotic bonds. Whittled down to
wish—if death could be undone by formidable mindfulness
song and fragments of story, these poems teeter at the edge of
and immaculate craft, these poems would revive the dead.”
dread. A gang of unchaperoned children, grappling with blame
—Linda Gregerson
and forgiveness, speak with tenderness and disdain about “the
Catherine Barnett is the author of a previous poetry book, Into Perfect Spheres
Such Holes Are Pierced. She has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a
Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City.
mothers” and “the fathers,” absent figures they seek in “the faces
of clouds” and in the cars that pass by. Other poems investigate
the force of maternal love and its at times misguided ferocities.
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
The final poem, a long sequence of nocturnes, eschews almost
1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press
everything but the ghostly erotic. These are bodies at the edge
of experience, watchful and defamiliarized.

Poetry, 88 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-620-0), $15.00, August
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Winner of the 2011 Bakeless Prize for Poetry,
the debut collection by Jo Sarzotti
I have learned three things in the north:
The sea has a lung,
The dead do not eat grass, nor
Do they return.
—from “The Origin of Salt”
Mother Desert
Poems
J o S a r z o tt i
In these poems, Jo Sarzotti portrays a personal geography rang-
“Mother Desert is a gathering of purely solid poems. Every line
ing from the desert of the title to the far north, from the mother
is steady—a unit of sense and clarification—and each word feels
to the father. In between are found ocean floor, mountain peak,
necessary. Reading them, I was steadied as well as surprised
jungle, beach, ancient and modern cities, as well as animal and
both at how good they are and how well they trade in crafted
human companions, including the famous or notorious. With
revelations.”—Billy Collins
emotional clarity and beauty, Sarzotti’s debut is uncompromising
Jo Sarzotti teaches literature at the Juilliard School. Her poetry has appeared in
Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, and
elsewhere. She lives in New York City.
in its craft and evocative in its imagistic power.
“I am changed by Sarzotti’s poems, my sense of the world is
Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press
changed—for that, I am grateful. Bewildered, also—‘My map
1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press
is in pieces.’ How else can the journey of surprise begin? Mother
Desert is an arresting debut.”—Carl Phillips, Bakeless Prize Judge

Poetry, 72 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-615-6), $15.00, June
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R e c e n t
B a c k l i s t
In Caddis Wood
The Other Walk
A Novel
Essays
M a ry F r a n ço i s
Ro c kc a s t l e
Sven Birkerts
Literature/Essays, 192 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-593-7), $15.00
Ebook available
Fiction, 240 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-592-0), $15.00
Ebook available
Child Wonder
Midnight Lantern
A Novel
New and Selected Poems
Roy J aco b s e n
Tess Gall agher
Tr a n s l a t e d fr o m
t h e N o rw e g i a n b y D o n
B a rt l e t t w i t h D o n S h aw
Poetry, 352 pages, Hardcover
(978-1-55597-597-5), $28.00
Fiction, 272 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-595-1), $15.00
Ebook available
The Wilding
Vanishing-Line
A Novel
Poems
Benjamin Percy
J e ffr e y Y a n g
Fiction, 288 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-596-8), $15.00
Ebook available
Poetry, 144 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-594-4), $15.00
Assumption
Coming to That
A Novel
Poems
P e rc i va l E v e r e t t
D o r o t h e a Ta n n i n g
Fiction, 240 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-598-2), $15.00
Ebook available
Poetry, 64 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-601-9), $15.00
Erasure
The Rest of the Voyage
A Novel
Poems
P e rc i va l E v e r e t t
Bernard Noël
Fiction, 272 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-599-9), $15.00
Ebook available
Tr a n s l a t e d fr o m t h e
French by Eléna River a
Poetry, 120 pages, Paperback
(978-1-55597-600-2), $16.00

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