Event Schedule

In Auction, her first poetry collection in eight years, the poet, novelist, and playwright Quan Barry travels the globe in her signature quest into the existential nature of experience. These poems explore the inner landscapes of both the human and animal realms, revealing them to be points along the same spectrum. At the heart of the book lies an extended study of toxic storytelling as an element of warcraft, but Barry also contemplates the death of a Buddhist master, the plight of migrants both at home and abroad, the ethics of travel and consumption, and the larger question of how and why we construct a self in order to navigate the world.  

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writers, the award-winning, best-selling author of Blonde. 

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide. 

In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates’s standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.

Joyce Carol Oates will be in conversation with local Madison and New York Times best-selling author, Chloe Benjamin.

Copies of Zero-Sum will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy of a gift from the Cheryl Rosen Weston Estate.

Presented in partnership with A Room of One's Own Bookstore. 

Don’t panic—Mercury Stardust, AKA The Trans Handy Ma’am is here to help!

For too many people, the simple act of contacting a plumber or repair person can feel like a game of chance. As a transwoman and a professional maintenance technician, Mercury Stardust has discovered (the hard way) that we live in a world with much to fear. If you’ve ever felt panicked about opening your home to strangers in order to fix a maintenance issue, this book is for you.

Renting a home can be a complex process—from finding a safe and affordable space, to hiring help for moving in and out, and of course, managing any repairs that come up during your stay. 

You deserve to feel empowered to take matters into your own hands—and it’s not as hard as you might think. In this book, Mercury will show you how to tackle the projects that need improvement in your home—from how to properly fix a clog in your bathroom sink and safely hang things on your walls to patching small and medium drywall holes.

Safe and Sound includes:

• Guidance for over 50 simple home maintenance projects, such as replacing your showerhead and troubleshooting a faulty garbage disposal.
• Chapters covering basic and handy repairs for your plumbing, electrical, carpentry, and safety needs. 
• Advice tailored to renters to minimize permanent changes.
• Helpful illustrations and QR code links to videos to help you on your journey.

Remember—a little bit of knowledge can go a long way toward making you feel more safe and in control of your own life.

The definitive seafood guide from the three-Michelin-starred chef of Le Bernardin, featuring gorgeous photography and step-by-step techniques alongside 85 accessible recipes for preparing incredible fish at home.

“I hope that this book is a source of inspiration and education, encouraging you to cook with confidence and approach seafood with joy, and even love. The secret to Seafood Simple is to trust the process, and yourself.”

In its three decades at the top of New York City’s restaurant scene, Le Bernardin has been celebrated as one of the finest seafood restaurants in the world and its iconic chef Eric Ripert as the expert in fish cookery. Now, in Seafood Simple, Ripert demystifies his signature cuisine, making delectable fish dishes achievable for home cooks of all skill levels—yet still with elegance and panache.

Breaking down cooking techniques into their building blocks, along with images to illustrate each step in the process, Seafood Simple teaches readers how to master core skills, from poaching and deep frying to filleting a fish and shucking an oyster. These techniques are then applied to eighty-five straightforward, delicious recipes, many of which include substitutions for maximum ease. Dishes like Tuna Carpaccio, Crispy Fish Tacos, Shrimp Tempura, Miso Cod, and Spaghetti Vongole show us how to bring out the vibrant flavor and incredible versatility of seafood. Each recipe is accompanied by a gorgeous image by renowned photographer Nigel Parry, as well as step-by-step photos for each of the twenty techniques taught in the book.

Stunning, delectable, and above all, actually doable, Seafood Simple is a master class from one of the world’s greatest chefs, created especially for the home cook.

In conversation with Judith Siers-Poisson.

Copies of Seafood Simple will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy of a gift from the Cheryl Rosen Weston Estate.

This semiannual sale is organized by the Friends to help to support public events and lectures, priorities identified by the Vice Provost, special purchases and preservation of library materials, and grants for the visiting scholar program. We accept donations for upcoming sales on a continual basis. The sale is free (except the preview sale) and open to the public. 80 – 100 community volunteers participate in this event that draws students, faculty, and visitors from around the Midwest. Books for the sale are donated by University of Wisconsin faculty, staff, students, and Madison-area residents.

• Wednesday, October 11
  Preview Sale:  4:00-8:00 P.M. ($5 entry)
• Thursday & Friday, October 12 – 13
  Regular Sale: 10:30 A.M.-7:00 P.M. (no entry fee)
• Saturday, October 14

Bag Sale: 9:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M. ($5 per bag) 

Bring your own grocery bag or purchase one for $1 

From 1:05-2:00 p.m. all remaining items are FREE

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter Angeline Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island in this high-stakes thriller about the power of discovering your stolen history.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is – the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won’t ever take her far from home, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.

In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot – will not – stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.

Sometimes, the truth shouldn’t stay buried.

This appearance with Angeline Boulley is a school visit only. All students will receive a copy of Warrior Girl Unearthed, courtesy of the American Girl's Fund for Children. 

As the Great War rages across Europe, Rand Brandt, an idealistic young forester in the north-woods of Wisconsin, discovers a remarkable gift: his touch can grow any plant in minutes. Overjoyed, he dreams of devoting his life to conservation, restoring to its former glory a landscape devastated by lumbering. At night, Rand tests his powers, pushing his physical limits and revealing his secret only to his lover, Gabriel. But his frequent absences from camp don’t go unnoticed, and it isn’t long before Rand is drafted to grow timber for the war effort. Along with Gabriel, he’s shipped to France—though the army is a dangerous place for two men in love. 

While at camp, Rand also realizes the true price of his gift: everything he grows withers and dies, leaving the soil empty of all living matter. Horrified, he throws himself into ever more self-destructive trials, buckling under the pressure of so many secrets. In order to survive, he must confront the terrifying possibility that his gift is actually a curse, upending everything he believes about nature, love, and himself.

An incisive analysis of how the Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority is overturning decades of law and leading the country in a dangerous political direction.

In The Supermajority, Michael Waldman explores the tumultuous 2021–2022 Supreme Court term. He draws deeply on history to examine other times the Court veered from the popular will, provoking controversy and backlash. And he analyzes the most important new rulings and their implications for the law and for American society. Waldman asks: What can we do when the Supreme Court challenges the country?

Over three days in June 2022, the conservative supermajority overturned the constitutional right to abortion, possibly opening the door to reconsider other major privacy rights, as Justice Clarence Thomas urged. The Court sharply limited the authority of the EPA, reducing the prospects for combatting climate change. It radically loosened curbs on guns amid an epidemic of mass shootings. It fully embraced legal theories such as “originalism” that will affect thousands of cases throughout the country.

These major decisions—and the next wave to come—will have enormous ramifications for every American. 

It was the most turbulent term in memory—with the leak of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the first Black woman justice sworn in, and the justices turning on each other in public, Waldman previews the 2022–2023 term and how the brewing fights over the Supreme Court and its role that already have begun to reshape politics.

The Supermajority is a revelatory examination of the Supreme Court at a time when its dysfunction—and the demand for reform—are at the center of public debate.

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are considered two of the most anxious generations in history, and with many intense generation-specific stressors facing them in recent years—including climate change, political polarization, systemic racism, gun violence, financial instability, and so much more, it’s easy to see why people are being diagnosed with anxiety at alarming rates. 

Dr. Lauren Cook, a therapist who specializes in treating Millennials and Gen Z clients, and is a Millennial who also lives with anxiety, understands the many nuanced reasons why these two groups are struggling in different ways than their predecessors. Taking a feminist and intersectional lens, Dr. Cook shares her own struggles with anxiety and provides easy, actionable steps to help readers ride the waves of anxiety rather than constantly swimming against them. This relatable, honest, and information-packed book incorporates thorough, evidence-backed psychological research and diverse client experiences to illustrate a broad range of presentations of anxiety and help readers gain insight into their own stressors and effectively work through anxiety.

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass--and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather’s body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honoring their mentor’s chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.

But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien’s own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate. . .

Presented in partnership with the UW-Madison Center for East Asian Studies.

From ages 10 to 20, Craig Thompson and his little brother Phil, toiled in Wisconsin farms. Weeding and harvesting ginseng—an exotic medicinal herb that fetched huge profits in China—funded Craig’s youthful obsession with comic books. Comics in turn, allowed him to escape his rural, working class trappings.

Now, for the first time in his career, Thompson is working in serial form, in a bimonthly comic book series. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay—all comic book—Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300 year long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers.

Four years in the making, the exact duration required to bring the prized crop to harvest, Ginseng Roots reaches its finale. Craig drives across the country for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and wrestles with the ghosts of his childhood. His mother dreams of the Christian Rapture, his father sleeps in a barn with Mexican migrants, Phil imbibes ginseng moonshine, and farmers leave the ginseng industry to grow marijuana instead. This double-length issue sprawls across rural Wisconsin, reflecting on aging parents, changing America, and where to find a sense of belonging. 

Established in 1998, the lecture was named to honor Charlotte Zolotow, a distinguished children's book editor for 38 years with Harper Junior Books, and author of more than 65 picture books, including such classic works as Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Harper, 1962) and William's Doll (Harper, 1972). Ms. Zolotow attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison on a writing scholarship from 1933-36 where she studied with Professor Helen C. White. The Cooperative Children's Book Center, a library of the School of Education of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, administers the event which each year brings a distinguished children's book author or illustrator to the campus to deliver a free public lecture. Registration is requested to facilitate seating and space needs.

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter Angeline Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island in this high-stakes thriller about the power of discovering your stolen history.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is – the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won’t ever take her far from home, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.

In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot – will not – stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.

Sometimes, the truth shouldn’t stay buried.

Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.

In this essential look at the regrowth of the American Midwest, tech journalist Rebecca A. Fannin chronicles her return to America’s heartland, revealing the dramatic entrepreneurial comeback that is transforming the Rust Belt into the Tech Belt. 

Change is sweeping across the American heartland. For too long ignored as “flyover country,” the once-mighty Midwest is experiencing a quiet but compelling revolution powered by savvy venture capital, high-tech innovation, entrepreneurial boldness, and good old American moxie. What has been known as the Rust Belt is now developing the shine of a tech belt. The former pinnacle of the US economy is making a comeback, which bodes well not only for the heartland but for our economy and morale nationwide. 

Rebecca A. Fannin explores this twenty-first century transformation from the inside. And she does it the old-fashioned way—by putting hard miles on her Honda Element and visiting women and men from Flint, Michigan, to Huntington, West Virginia, who are planning, financing, and building this latest version of the American Dream. A heartlander herself, Fannin brings readers on an investigative tour that starts in her hometown of Lancaster, Ohio, and takes in six states, dozens of cities, and hundreds of enterprises. 

Silicon Heartland tells the story of a comeback with personal stories of some of the remarkable people Rebecca meets who are restoring the region’s vibrancy and prosperity with a social and economic turnaround that is diverse, contemporary, and solidly realized. What Rebecca discovered on the way—about America, about her family, about herself—is surprising and inspiring and makes her book timely documentation about a reviving economy and also a moving reminder of the importance of family and heritage.

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It’s during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers. 

For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and eventually drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.

Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM and a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.

The stories in Kind of Blue juke and jive in an unpredictable voice-driven romp. Set in rural Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee, Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, and South Florida, these are stories that start and stop and surprise, swerving all over the road. These are stories of wanderlust and music, loss and misdirection, disasters large and small. With the sound and rhythm of language driving each tale, Christopher Chambers gives voice to the working- and middle-class worlds of the American Midwest and the South. 

Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win tells the fascinating true story of Helen Shiller, a radical organizer turned independent politician, and her 40-year struggle for justice in Chicago. 

Helen Shiller went from radical anti-war activist in Wisconsin, to a white ally of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, building community coalitions that led her to ultimately win a seat on the city council, while helping to break the back of the radicalized opposition to Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor. 

Shiller participated, when few others did, in the historic fight against the gentrification of a unique economically and racially mixed Uptown community on Chicago’s Northside. With insight into community organizing and political battles in Chicago from the 1970s through 2010, this book details the many policy fights and conflicts in Chicago during this time, illuminating recurrent political themes and battles that remain relevant to this day. 

Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win is a compelling, insightful, must-read for all those struggling for a better world today.

Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.

The New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bounty—and now great peril—all over the world.

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.”

The story of phosphorus spans the globe and vast tracts of human history. First discovered in a seventeenth-century alchemy lab in Hamburg, it soon became a highly sought-after resource. The race to mine phosphorus took people from the battlefields of Waterloo, which were looted for the bones of fallen soldiers, to the fabled guano islands off Peru, the Bone Valley of Florida, and the sand dunes of the Western Sahara. Over the past century, phosphorus has made farming vastly more productive, feeding the enormous increase in the human population. Yet, as Egan harrowingly reports, our over-reliance on this vital crop nutrient is today causing toxic algae blooms and “dead zones” in waterways from the coasts of Florida to the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. Egan also explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide—which risks rising conflict and even war.

With The Devil’s Element, Egan has written an essential and eye-opening account that urges us to pay attention to one of the most perilous but little-known environmental issues of our time.

For more than three centuries, Americans have pursued strategies of security that routinely make them feel vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability probes this paradox by examining American attachments to the terror of the sublime, the fear of uncertainty, and the anxieties produced by unending racial threat.

Challenging conventional approaches that leave questions of security to policy experts, Russ Castronovo turns to literature, philosophy, and political theory to show how security provides an organizing principle for collective life in ways that both enhance freedom and limit it. His incisive critique ranges from frontier violence and white racial anxiety to insurgent Black print culture and other forms of early American terror, uncovering the hidden logic of insecurity that structures modern approaches to national defense, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. Drawing on examples from fiction, journalism, tracts, and pamphlets, Castronovo uncovers the deep affective attachments that Americans have had since the founding to the sources of fear and insecurity that make them feel unsafe.

Timely and urgent, American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability sheds critical light on how and why the fundamental political desire for security promotes unease alongside assurance and fixates on risk and danger while clamoring for safety.

New York Times Notable Author and Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela has been praised by J.M. Coetzee, Ali Smith, and Rachel Cusk, among others, for her rich and nuanced novels depicting Islamic spiritual and political life. River Spirit follows an embattled young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War in 19th century Sudan. With her characteristic prose, “clear, lovely, and resonant as a ringing bell” (Washington Post), Aboulela weaves a spellbinding narrative of the years leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898 and offers a deeply human look at the tensions between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. River Spirit gives us the unforgettable story of a people who—against the odds and for a brief time—gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice.

When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant, Yaseen, who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power – the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam – Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur’an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. Everything each of them is striving for—love, freedom, safety—is all on the line in the fight for Sudan. 

Through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, Aboulela’s latest illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age, and unshakeable devotion—to a cause, to one’s faith, and to the people who become family.

In 1971, a white, Jewish, former ballerina chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing to his absenteeism. In My Life in the Sunshine, their son Nabil Ayers recounts a life spent living with the aftermath of that decision, and his journey to build an identity of his own despite his father’s absence. Even though Nabil has only met him a handful of times, his father has been a steady influence in his life. Like Roy, Nabil became deeply involved in the music industry, first as a musician, and currently as the President of Beggars Group USA, where he has worked with musicians such as The National, St. Vincent, and Big Thief. The title of his memoir is a homage to the opening lyric from his father’s 1976 song, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” which has always followed Nabil as both a painful and hopeful reminder of his connection to his father-- reflecting the passion and ambition that they share as well as the close relationship that they don’t. 

In Nabil’s search to connect with his father, he ultimately discovers the existence of several half-siblings as well as a paternal ancestor who was enslaved. Following these connections, Nabil meets and befriends the descendant of the plantation owner, which, strangely, paves the way for him to make meaningful connections with the extended family he never knew existed. A thoughtful meditation on biracial identity, intimacy, and finding true community; My Life In The Sunshine upends our conventional understanding of family and redefines its boundaries.

Copies of My Life In The Sunshine  will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy of a gift from the Cheryl Rosen Weston Estate.

Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.

Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained?

Optimal Illusions traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America’s founding principles to its modern manifestations, found in colorful stories of oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, Silicon Valley technologists, lifestyle gurus, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. Optimization is now deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality but what we make of it.

Coco Krumme’s work in mathematical modeling has made her acutely aware of optimization’s overreach. Streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. The malaise of living in an optimized society can feel profoundly inhumane. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.

A small town's dark secrets turn deadly…

When an early morning call brings Deputy Ben Packard to the scene of a home invasion, he finds Bill Sandersen shot in his bed. Bill was a well-liked local who chased easy money his whole life, leaving bad debts and broken hearts in his wake. Everyone Packard talks to has a story about Bill, but no one has a clear motive for wanting him dead. The business partner. The ex-wife. The current wife. The high-stakes poker buddies. Any of them―or none of them―could be guilty.

As the investigation begins, tragedy strikes the Sheriff's department, forcing Packard to make a difficult choice about his future: step down as acting Sheriff and pursue the quiet life he came to Sandy Lake in search of, or subject himself to the scrutiny of an election for the full-time role of Sheriff, a job he's not sure he wants.

There's a hidden history to Sandy Lake that Packard, ever the outsider, can't see. Bad blood and old secrets run deep. But an attempt on Packard's life means he's getting uncomfortably close to the dangerous legacy of the quiet Minnesota town. And someone will do anything to keep it hidden.

The inside story of A League of Their Own—one of the most beloved, enduring, and genre‑busting baseball movies of all time—featuring exclusive interviews and behind‑the‑scenes memories from the original cast and creators, and chronicling how the Penny Marshall classic developed from an unheralded piece of American history into a perennial cinematic favorite.

No Crying in Baseball is a rollicking, revelatory deep dive into a one‑of‑a‑kind film. Before A League of Their Own, few American girls could imagine themselves playing professional ball (and doing it better than the boys). But Penny Marshall’s genre outlier became an instant classic and significant aha moment for countless young women who saw that throwing like a girl was far from an insult.

Part fly‑on‑the‑wall narrative, part immersive pop nostalgia, No Crying in Baseball is for readers who love stories about subverting gender roles as well as fans of the film who remain passionate thirty years after its release. With key anecdotes from the cast, crew, and diehard fanatics, Carlson presents the definitive, first‑ever history of the making of the treasured film that inspired generations of Dottie Hinsons to dream bigger and aim for the sky.

This Is Salvaged is a collection of stories of uncanny originality by a prize-winning writer who pushes intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty. 

A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.