The Write Question

"I guess I’ve always tried to be a better guy than I am, but I’m like Horace, I always fall back on the things I love. I can’t help it." -- Willy Vlautin

A moving story about a man’s search for belonging in all the wrong places, "Don’t Skip Out on Me," is an understated yet powerful exploration of identity and loneliness pulled from deep within America’s soul. Publishing for the first time in hardcover, award-winning author Willy Vlautin follows in the footsteps of his earlier beloved novels, delivering another emotionally raw tale of a tragic and beautiful life.

"Bad Summon" explores the relationship between the majesty of nature and the quiet violence humans inflict upon themselves and others. The poems are dipped in loss, traveling between death and mountains, romance and rivers. They are addicted to the truth of experience and the energy behind regret. "Bad Summon" conjures its own ghost. According to David Baker, the judge who selected the winning manuscript, this is a “surprising, coherent, original collection of lyric poems. I felt peril, heartbreak, catastrophe, sorrow, genuine soulfulness. It’s also funny, yet its humor is not comic but possesses a terrible gravity.” This is a volume every poetry lover will want to explore.

"I learned about five years ago that honey bees can’t pollinate tomatoes. Honey bees are not native to North America, which I did know, but I was surprised that I did not know that honey bees can’t pollinate tomatoes because I’ve been a gardener for decades. I was like, “How did I miss this?!” I felt sort of like a dope, and then I started asking other people and hardly anybody knew that honey bees can’t pollinate tomatoes but that are a number of our native bees, those that evolved right here, can. So I thought, “People should know about this. I’m going to write gardening articles, and I’m going teach gardening for pollinators classes, because people should know who’s out there pollinating their tomatoes.” And I started reading about the bees and I sort of fell in love with them." -- Paige Embry on her love affair with native bees.

What if labor does not end with pregnancy but continues into a mother’s postpartum life? How can the fiercest love for your child and the deepest wells of grief coexist in the same moment? How has society neglected honest conversation around the significant physical changes new mothers experience? Could real healing occur if generations of women were fluent in the language of their bodies? 

The bestselling author of "The Dog Stars" returns with a luminous and captivating novel about an eccentric, glamorous private eye who specializes in reuniting long-lost family members, seeking reparations for her own fractured past.