Se v en S t or i e s Pr e ss Spring 2013
Dear Friends, With the spring 2013 season, please join us in welcoming associate publisher and executive editor Amber Qureshi along with so many new and returning voices— including Luis Negrón, author of the very short, exquisite story collection, Mundo Cruel, who along with his translator, the remarkable Suzanne Jill Levine, have stolen our hearts for the book’s bold sexuality but equally so for its dangerous innocence; Sarah Erdreich, whose Generation Roe is a cannonade on behalf of the rights of women; South African poet Antjie Krog, whose Skinned is both a summation of her life as a poet and an introduction to her work for American readers. Antjie’s last reading in America was an extraordinary one at Columbia University with Adrienne Rich. Catch Antjie if you can when she comes in midApril to Toronto and New York, and do read her marvelous book; and finally, Russ Kick and the more than one hundred graphic artists and illustrators who, here in Volume 3 of The Graphic Canon, continue, heroically, to make new the world’s legacy of classics. Here’s to that! Dan Simon Publisher
About Seven Stories Press Seven Stories Press is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we launched Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice and narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.
Recent Awards and Honors The Graphic Canon russ kick
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Graphic Books of the Season “The graphic literary publishing event of the year!” Suzanne Jill Levine
translator for mundo cruel
Winner of the 2012 PEN Center USA Translation Award
Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? johan harstad
Named a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction title of 2011 Named one of Electric Literature’s Most Beautiful Books of the Year, 2011 Tea of Ulaanbaatar
christopher r. howard
LoveStar
Chicago Center for Literature and Photography’s Best Small Press Wonder, 2011
Shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K. Dick Award
author of the night wanderers
Birth Matters
Special Achievement, Grand Press Award (Poland), 2011
andri snaer magnason
ina may gaskin
Named one of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Top 6 Books of 2011 Maonomics
loretta napoleoni
Wojciech Jagielski
A History of Marriage elizabeth abbott
Shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards, 2010 Love Like Hate
First prize for a work on Economics by the Italian Association for Economic Development
Winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize 2010
Ina May Gaskin
Once You Go Back
Winner of the Right Livelihood Award, 2011
Named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, 2010
author of birth matters
God Breaketh Not All Men’s Hearts Alike stanley moss
Winner of the Pushcart Prize for “Song of No God”
linh dinh
douglas martin
Racing While Black
leonard t. miller and andrew simon
Named a “Book to Read for 2010” by Autoweek Magazine
World Report 2013 Events of 2012
H u m a n R igh t s Wat ch Feb.
In the aftermath of 2011’s Arab Spring uprisings, unexpected new challenges appeared in their wake. Human Rights Watch’s 23rd annual World Report explores the human rights conditions and practices in more than ninety countries and territories worldwide. Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2013 is the global rights watchdog’s flagship annual review of global trends and news in human rights. An invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, it features not only incisive country surveys but also several hard-hitting essays highlighting key human rights issues, including: • An introduction by Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth on how the Arab Spring shows us that toppling dictators may yet prove to be easier than the tough, complicated process of building a rights-respecting democracy; • An essay on a Human Rights Council resolution on “traditional values” sponsored by Russia, and the implicit dangers this could mean for LGBT rights; • An essay on the failure of many global businesses to operate with sufficient regard to human rights, and of governments to oversee them— leading to abuses such as the use of forced labor on a Canadian construction site in Eritrea, or the gang rapes of women by security guards employed by an international mining giant in Papua New Guinea. World Report 2013 also features striking photo essays by award-winning photographers. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, headed by Executive Director Kenneth Roth, is one
of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, and operates in more than eighty countries. Its annual World Report is the most probing review of human rights developments available anywhere. TR • $30.00 6” x 9” • 688 pages 978-1-60980-482-4 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-483-1 16-page photo essay 4
“ T he reports of the New York-based Human Rights Watch have become extremely important . . . . Cogent and eminently practical, these reports have gone far beyond an account of human rights abuses. . . .” —Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books
• International press conferences in New York and Washington DC at publication, major media expected • National radio tour • Excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/worldreport13 5
The Albino Album A Novel
Chav i sa Wo ods
Mar.
Emerging author Chavisa Woods has been noted for capturing a “strange, troubling vision of domestic life in the rural US.” (Go Magazine). Here she presents a techno-colored vision of rural adolescence, the story of a girl with an unpronounceable name—a fiery, unhinged, growling, big-hearted country girl in a dirty black tutu and combat boots who travels along all the bizarre yet familiar byways of human desire from the cornfields of Indiana and the big brass sound of Mardi Gras to the heights of the Empire State Building. Turning the tradition of the southern gothic novel on its head, Woods presents a new land of contemporary misfits including fire-dancers, pseudo-Nazis who breed albino animals, gutter punks, horse thieves, and the archangel Gabriel. CHAVISA WOODS is a Brooklyn-based writer and artist, and recipient of the
2009 Jerome Foundation Award for emerging writers. Her debut collection of short stories, Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in the New York Quarterly, The Evergreen Review, Union Station, and The Brooklyn Rail.
“ R eaders may have trekked some of this toxic terrain before with writers like Dorothy Allison, but Chavisa Woods leads us through these narratives with a Doris Lessing-like metaphysical clarity. It is the author’s understated, wise beyond her years psychological perceptions that are the binding emulsion of this collection . . . Only the best narrative writing can provoke as this collection does. This is an extraordinary book.” —A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine
TR • $19.95 5.5” x 8.25” • 400 pages 978-1-60980-476-3 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-477-0 6
“ A s Flannery O’Connor beckons us into the restless, gothic American south . . . Chavisa Woods guides us through a strange, troubling vision of domestic life in the rural US.” —Go Magazine
• Author tour to NYC, Austin, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Eugene, Seattle • Lectures at Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, NYU, and elsewhere • Readings at the New York Vision Festival, the NYC HOWL festival, the Brooklyn Book Festival, the New York Hot Festival, and others • A RCs available • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/albinoalbum 7
Mundo Cruel Stories
Lu i s N e grÓn
t r a nsl at ed b y Suz a n n e J i l l L e v i n e
Mar.
Luis Negrón’s debut collection reveals the intimate world of a small community in Puerto Rico joined together by its transgressive sexuality. The writing straddles the shifting line between pure, unadorned storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world. LUIS NEGRÓN was born in the city of Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1970. He is
co-editor of Los otros cuerpos, an anthology of queer writing from Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora. The original Spanish language edition of Mundo Cruel, first published in Puerto Rico in 2010 by La Secta de Los Perros, then by Libros AC in subsequent editions, is now in its third printing. It has never before appeared in English. Negrón lives in Santurce, Puerto Rico. SUZANNE JILL LEVINE’s many translations include the works of Guillermo Ca-
brera Infante and Manuel Puig. She is the editor of the Penguin Classics Jorge Luis Borges series and author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. She is winner of the 2012 the PEN Center USA Literary Award for her translation of José Donoso’s The Lizard’s Tale. “ Hilarious and heart-wrenching, provocative and pitch-perfect, each story is a tiny, transgressive explosion. I feel inadequate to the task of expressing just how wonderful this book is . . . read it slowly, and listen close; here is a master storyteller at his finest.” —Justin Torres, author of We the Animals “ T hese nine stories are rude, beautiful, funny, tender, sarcastic but, above all, human.” —Guillermo Barquero, Sentencias inútiles TR • $13.95 5” x 8” • 96 pages 978-1-60980-418-3 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-419-0 8
let’s put this story in context. santurce, puerto rico, once known as Cangrejos, meaning Crabs, but no longer. Santurce. Blocks and blocks full of doctor’s offices and temples—Catholic, Evangelical, Mormon, Rosicrucian, Espiritista, Jewish, and yoga-ist, if that’s what you call it. The stench of sewers 24/7. Unbearable heat. Reggaeton, old school salsa, boleros, bachatas, jukeboxes, pool halls, slot machines. Topless bars, Dominican bars, gay bars. Catholic schools, beauty schools, vocational schools, and schools where you get a professional degree in just one year and without much homework. Fabric stores, arts and crafts stores, no-prescription drugstores, barbershops and hair salons. But the mecca is the 7 Eleven, which is like saying Santurce’s Plaza Las Americas. That’s where I met him. —from “The Vampire of Moca” in Mundo Cruel • Author events in New York, Boston, Washington DC • ARCs available • Excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/mundocruel 9
The Approaching Great Transformation
Toward a Livable Post Carbon Economy
Joe l M agn uson For e wor d b y H e l e n a Norbe rg -Hod ge Mar.
How should we act and think economically in the world as the era of cheap oil comes to an end? The Approaching Great Transformation begins to answer this massive question, focusing on the people and communities already at work on the transition: energy descent pioneers in the UK and the US educating their communities about the road ahead, small enterprises defying traditional “profit” in favor of permanence and sustainability, and cities preparing for a post carbon future. Highlighting the work of thinkers like John Ruskin and E. F. Schumacher, Magnuson here builds on his previous book, Mindful Economics. JOEL MAGNUSON is an independent economist based in Portland, Oregon.
He is a visiting fellow at the Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, serves as an international advisor to Anglia’s journal Interconnections, and is on the faculty at the East West Sanctuary in Nagykovácsi, Hungary. He is the author of Mindful Economics: How the US Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How It Could Be Different (Seven Stories, 2008).
“A challenging and engaging exploration of what it will take to make the transition to an ecologically sustainable future. Magnuson exposes the false promises of green-wash capitalism and . . . puts the hopeful shoots of real alternatives squarely on the map.” —Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and author of America Beyond Capitalism
TR • $18.95 6” x 9” • 256 pages 978-1-60980-480-0 E-ISBN 978-1-60980-481-7 10
“ M agnuson pulls no punches regarding the coming collapse of the corporate-commercial-consumer society, or the inability of technological fixes and ‘green capitalism’ to bail us out of the historical crunch that is virtually upon us.” —Morris Berman, author of Why America Failed
• Author tour to Portland, Seattle, and Eugene Public Library • Excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/greattransformation 11
Generation Roe
Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement
S a r ah E r dr e ich
Mar.
Strong support among women was key to Obama’s reelection. It is time, forty years after Roe v. Wade, to finally demystify abortion. One-third of all American women will have an abortion by the time they are forty-five, and most will already be mothers when they do so. Yet the topic remains taboo. With Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-choice Movement, women’s health advocate and writer Sarah Erdreich, identified as a leading pro-choice activist by Newsweek, offers an antidote to the usual abortion debate. Involving issues of autonomy, privacy, and sexuality, the abortion debate remains ground zero for the culture wars in America. Yet there is more common ground than meets the eye, when so many American women of all political stripes have already chosen to have abortions and most want that choice protected. Generation Roe covers “abortion-recovery counseling,” “crisis pregnancy centers,” and the infamous anti-choice “black children are an endangered species” billboards; describes health care providers whose lives are threatened in this stigmatized field; outlines the outrageous legislative battles that have popped up all over the country; and takes to task pro-choice activists for allowing the terms of the debate to be controlled by anti-choice rhetoric (such as the term “pro-life”). Erdreich returns the conversation to its rightful place, asserting abortion, unabashedly, as a moral and fundamental human right. SARAH ERDREICH, women’s health advocate and writer has been identified as a leading pro-choice activist by Newsweek, and her incisive writings on abortion rights have been noted by Jezebel, Feministing, and the National Partnership for Women and Families. She has worked for several prominent pro-choice organizations, and has been published in On The Issues, Lilith, Feminists For Choice, and RH Reality Check. She has also worked editorially with the magazines HUES and Teen Voice. Generation Roe is her first book. TR • $16.95 5.5” x 8” • 288 pages 978-1-60980-458-9 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-459-6 12
• Author tour to DC, Baltimore, NYc, philadelphia, and Ann Arbor • generationroe.blogspot.com • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/generationroe 13
Parecomic
Michael Albert and the Story of Participatory Economics
Se a n M icha e l W i l son i l lus t r at ed b y Ca r l Thom pson i n t roduc t ion b y Noa m Chom sk y
April
Parecomic is a graphic novel about the system we live in—what’s wrong with it, and how we might be able change it for the better. The recent upsurge in popular protest around the world shows that people are not happy with the state of capitalism and desire an alternative that will work for the 99%, not just the 1%. Parecon is one such alternative, and Parecomic brings this to life in illustrated form. Parecomic is about Michael Albert—the visionary behind “participatory economics”—and his life’s struggle as a left-wing activist in the US, beginning with the heady days of 1960’s student demos and lifestyle rebellions; following the developments of the antiwar, civil rights, woman’s, and Black Panthers movements; to the establishment of alternative media like South End Press and ZNet; and the development of the participatory economics model. SEAN MICHAEL WILSON is a comic book writer from Scotland, currently
based in Japan, who has written fourteen books of comics and manga. His work includes a version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (with artist Mike Collins); Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; Oscar Wilde’s A Canterville Ghost; The Japanese Drawing Room (with RING horror manga artist Sakura Mizuki); and the documentary book Iraq: Operation Corporate Takeover (with artist Lee O’Connor). CARL THOMPSON is a cartoonist based in Minneapolis. A graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, he has worked with writer Sean Michael Wilson on the political comic strip “Green Benches,” published monthly in the British magazine Blue and Green Tomorrow.
TR • $18.95 6” x 9.875” • 224 pages 978-1-60980-456-5 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-457-2 B&W graphic novel 14
• Author tour Summer 2013 to include San Diego ComicCon, LA, and San Francisco, possible stops in Seattle and Portland • Issuu/Calameo link to excerpt 15
Told You So
The Big Book of Weekly Columns
Ra l ph Na de r
i n t roduc t ion b y J i m High t ow e r
April
The column is the most natural literary form for a citizen’s advocate, and Ralph Nader may be its most robust and forceful practitioner. Told You So presents a panoramic portrait of the problems confronting our society and provides examples of the many actions an organized citizenry could and should take to create a more just and environmentally sustainable world. Drawing on decades of experience, Nader’s columns document the consequences of concentrated corporate power; threats to our food, water and air; the corrosive effect of commercialism on our children; the dismantling of worker rights; and the attacks on our civil rights and civil liberties. Nader also offers concrete suggestions to spark citizen action and achieve social change. RALPH NADER is America’s leading consumer and citizen advocate. As a re-
sult of his efforts, cars are safer, food is healthier, and our environment is less polluted and our democracy is more robust. A lawyer and author, Nader has co-founded numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, Commercial Alert, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and the Center for Study of Responsive Law. For the past forty-five years he has challenged abuses by corporate and government officials and urged citizens to use their time, energy and democratic rights to demand greater institutional accountability. In 1965, Nader’s landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed changed the face of the automobile industry. The Atlantic Magazine named Nader as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, and Time and Life magazines honored him as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.
TR • $23.95 6” x 9” • 480 pages 9781-60980-474-9 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-475-6 16
“ W hat sets Ralph Nader apart is that he has moved beyond social criticism to effective political action.” —The New York Times
• Major events in NYC, Washington DC, and Baltimore • Book signings at Hudson airport stores • Radio tour for regional and local radio interviews • Co-op available • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/toldyouso 17
The Autism Puzzle
Connecting the Dots Between Environmental Toxins and Rising Autism Rates
Br i ta Be l l i
For e wor d b y Ca rol i n e Cox
April
With 1 in 88 American children now affected by autism, The Autism Puzzle is the first book to move beyond the distractions of the vaccine debate to address compelling new evidence that autism may be the result of the pairing of environmental exposures with genetic susceptibilities that together impact the brain development of children. Journalist Brita Belli brings us into the lives of three families with autistic children, each with different ideas about autism, as she explores the possible causes. She interprets for readers compelling evidence that environmental toxins—including common exposures from chemicals mounting in our everyday lives—may be sparking this disorder in vulnerable children. Belli calls for an end to the use of hazardous materials—like toxic flame retardants used in electronics and furniture—insisting that we cannot afford to experiment with our children. The Autism Puzzle puts a human face on the families caught in between the debates and offers a refreshingly balanced perspective. BRITA BELLI is the editor of E–The Environmental Magazine—the largest in-
dependent magazine dedicated to green issues. She is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home and editor of EarthTalk: Expert Answers to Everyday Questions About the Environment. Her articles have appeared in Plenty Magazine, MSN.com, Treehugger.com, Fairfield Magazine, Colorado Springs Independent, Black & White City Paper, Illinois Times, and Monterey County Weekly.
TR • $13.95 5.5” x 8.25” • 208 pages 978-1-60980-460-2 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-392-6 18
“ T he Autism Puzzle unlocks many alarming truths about this worldwide epidemic and raises the deeper question: What are you going to do about it?” — Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Autism Book (Sears Parenting Library)
• Events in Boston, Nyc, Philadelphia, washington DC, Baltimore, and Connecticut • Author to speak at National Autism Conference • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/autismpuzzle 19
Holistic Beauty from the Inside Out Your Complete Guide to Natural Health, Nutrition, and Skincare
J u l i e G a bri e l
April
Celebrated author of The Green Beauty Guide Julie Gabriel presents a comprehensive yet simple book that brings all four corners of the natural beauty paradigm together: natural skincare, holistic nutrition, stress-relief, and healthy lifestyle. A holistic nutritionist, Gabriel teaches her reader how to ‘eat yourself beautiful’ using building blocks from a wholesome diet, and as a long-time beauty writer and editor, reveals why beauty-boosting changes to our everyday lifestyles are essential in helping us to discover the allure we are looking for. Holistic Beauty from the Inside Out claims that true beauty radiates from inner physical and emotional harmony. Our body is equipped with a full set of tools to maintain and restore our intrinsic assets, and has enormous healing powers to rejuvenate our skin, hair, and nails. The book includes handy and straightforward lists of what products to avoid, what foods to eat, and natural skincare recipes. JULIE GABRIEL is a holistic nutritionist, founder of Petite Marie Organics,
and an advocate of natural living, organic beauty, and holistic nutrition. As a beauty writer and editor, she has worked with Harper’s Bazaar, L’Officiel de la Mode et de la Couture, Atmospheres, and WWD. She has been featured on AOL Health, and Martha Stewart’s Living Radio, and in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, Natural Health, Shape, and Better Homes & Gardens. She is the author of several books on beauty including The Green Beauty Guide and Green Beauty Recipes.
TR • $19.95 6” x 9” • 288 pages 978-1-60980-461-9 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-462-6 B&W line art throughout 20
• www.petitemarieorganics.com • www.thegreenbeautyguide.com • Co-op available • Arcs available • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/holisticbeauty 21
Skinned Poems
Antji e Kro g
April
One of South Africa’s greatest living poets selects from her most recent poems and also from the poems and the themes that best represent her from across her long career. Part One of Skinned contains poems about writing, family and love poems. The poems in second part were chosen from a volume featuring a long epic poem based on the life of Lady Anne Barnard from Scotland, who accompanied her husband to Cape Town and lived in the castle there from 1797 until 1802. This volume was written during the height of apartheid and the poet chose Lady Anne as representative of the colonial vision. Part Three contains extracts from several speakers who lived in the land before the likes of lady Anne arrived. Krog includes here interviews with inhabitants of the stone desert, three re-workings of Bushmen or Xam narratives, as well as a translation of an oral Xhosa praise poem. Part Four represents the political turmoil of South Africa and the divisions within Africa. The poems come from volumes that explored how blacks and whites identifying with the oppressed were removed from official history. The present volume as a whole explores the necessity of “a change of tongue” in order to be. ANTJIE KROG has won major awards in almost all the genres and media in
which she has worked: poetry, journalism, fiction, and translation. Krog’s first volume of poetry was published when she was seventeen years old and she has since released thirteen volumes of poetry, receiving nearly every literary award available for works in Afrikaans. She is married to architect John Samuel, and is the mother of four children.
TR • $23.95 5.5” x 9” • 128 pages 978-1-60980463-3 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-464-0 22
Becomings Albacaye, Mountaga and Tidiane kneel against the dune in the plaincoloured shavings of their robes when they sit up straight - facing Mecca each forehead carries a blond blazon of sand when dusk implodes in our midst silence feeds down from a freight of stars poetry comes coming from a crackling of languages, accents, memory, translations: “the woman with the whitest eyes folds a cloth around her breasts whether she said ‘come in’ or ‘be greeted’ I do not remember I was lost may Allah make her mine before I lose my mind” “my horses the moon the dunes they know me” “when they break my pen my words take fire when they destroy my horses and camels my teeth hang from their wrists when they squash my breath I scorch their palms I am the revolution! I am the nomad! I live everywhere”
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“I don’t think, I sing I am the poet of silence” “I am the vagabond of the word, the nomad” “I swindle with the silence of words, because I live in them they are my tent and my waterhole, my everywhere tegument” “poetry is always busy with light” “the scars in tongues can write landscapes of breath April
but it has to glow from the inside” “it has to smell humane” it has to “embrace the shoulders of the stranger” “poetry is the ritual of draping sound over the unheard so as to live opened” I breathe suddenly I breathe light-footed and loose-limbed I breathe from a seam slowly sutured from scar-tissue colour and skin
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• excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/skinned 25
Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe
Noa m Chom sk y a n d L a r ay P ol k
April
“There are two problems for our species’ survival—nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, ” says Noam Chomsky in this new book on the two existential threats of our time and their points of intersection since World War II. While a nuclear strike would require action, environmental catastrophe is partially defined by willful inaction in response to human-induced climate change. Denial of the facts is only half the equation. Other contributing factors include extreme techniques for the extraction of remaining carbon deposits, the elimination of agricultural land for bio-fuel, the construction of dams, and the destruction of forests that are crucial for carbon sequestration. On the subject of current nuclear tensions, Chomsky revisits the long-established option of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, a proposal set in motion through a joint Egyptian-Iranian General Assembly resolution in 1974. Intended as a warning, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe is also a reminder that talking about the unspeakable can still be done with humor, with wit and indomitable spirit. NOAM CHOMSKY is an internationally renowned linguist, as well as a leading
radical intellectual. His many political books include, from Seven Stories, 9-11, Profit over People, and Media Control. His views have profoundly influenced both scientific and political thought around the world for the last half-century. LARAY POLK is a multimedia artist and writer. Her articles and investigative
reports have appeared in the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and In These Times. As a 2009 grant recipient from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, she exposed a radioactive waste disposal site in Texas situated in close proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer.
TR • $13.95 5” x 7” • 176 pages 978-1-60980-454-1 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-455-8 26
• aRCs available • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/doc/nuclearwar 27
The Graphic Canon, Volume 3
From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest
Rus s k ick
May
The third volume of Russ Kick’s groundbreaking canon includes work by more than 100 of today’s best comics artists, illustrators, and other visual artists. Volume 3 brings to life the literature of the twentieth century, from the Modernists to the Postmodernists, through the Beats, magical realism, Existentialism, jazz, southern gothic, avant-garde science fiction, hard-boiled detective fiction, war poetry, theoretical physics. . . . Here Ted Rall brings his signature style to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Dame Darcy adapts Cormac McCarthy, Milton Knight reacquaints readers with a little-known play by Zora Neale Hurston, Molly Crabapple renders a Colette novel as a single tantalizing image, and Molly Kiely does a striking Kathy Acker, among seventy-five other pieces, including hard-to-find short works by Faulkner, Hemingway, Pynchon, and Robert Crumb’s rarely seen adaptation of Sartre’s Nausea. With Kafka considered by both R. Sikoryak and Peter Kuper, and Ulysses represented by David Lasky and Robert Berry with Josh Levitas, Volume 3 rounds out this unprecedented trilogy with extraordinary heft, as complex and enlightening as the history of literature itself. The New York Times dubbed best-selling anthologist RUSS KICK (You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, among others) “an information archaeologist,” and Utne Reader named him one of its “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Then, in 2009, Kick embarked on an entirely new kind of project, returning to his love of literature and art and to comics art in particular. For his groundbreaking new series of books The Graphic Canon, the world’s great literature as comics and visuals, Kick has commissioned new work from over 160 artists, as well as re-introduced existing work that wasn’t easy to find, identifying the artists and works contributing to a shift in the reading experience, expanding readers’ visual vocabulary through the creation of a new kind of canon. TR • $44.95 8.5” x 10.875” • 576 pages 978-1-60980-380-3 Full-color throughout 28
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell • illustration by Lesley Barnes
Chéri by Colette • illustration by Molly Crabapple
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“The Graphic Canon is startlingly brilliant.” —School Library Journal “ T his meaty slab is laced with more wit, beauty, social commentary and shock than one might expect. . . .” —Kirkus Reviews “ T his is not only a survey of the world’s diverse artistic past, but also a breathtaking glimpse of this young medium’s incredible future.” —Booklist (starred review)
May
“The graphic publishing literary event of the year.” —Publishers Weekly “An exciting new benchmark for comics!” —Library Journal “ T he Graphic Canon is absolutely the most ambitious book I’ve picked up this year.” —Newsday
Crash by J. G. Ballard • art/adaptation by Onsmith
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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad • illustrations by Matt Kish
“ B old, brilliant. . . . By turns playful and beautiful, this visual treatment is more than entertainment; it offers a new perspective for understanding these enduring works.” —Reader’s Digest “A treasure trove for literary comics fans.” —Wired’s GeekDad blog “ It takes time to read this book, but it is a book worth taking time over.” —The Comics Journal 31
“Every page sends you further down the rabbit hole, and before you know it, hours have passed... [T]hese works of literature do not reside just on the shelves of academia; they flourish in the eye of our imagination.” —The New York Times Book Review “ A kicky examination of love, sex, death, violence, revolution, money, drugs, religion, family, (non)conformity, longing, transcendence, and other aspects of the human condition that literature and art have always wrestled with.” —Russ Kick, from the introduction to The Graphic Canon, Volume 3 May Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco • art/adaptation by Julia Gfrörer
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• Events with editor and artists in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tuscon, Nyc, Cleveland, Nashville, Portland • Presence at major comics conventions: MoCCA (April), Toronto Comic Arts Festival (May), and SPX and New York Comic Con (Fall) • www.graphiccanon.com • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/graphiccanon3 • Video flip throughs of volumes 1 and 2 33
What Makes a Baby
Cory Si lv e rbe rg i l lus t r at ions b y Fion a Sm y t h
May
Geared to readers from preschool to age seven, What Makes a Baby is a book for every kind of family and every kind of kid. It is a twenty-first century children’s picture book about conception, gestation, and birth, which reflects the reality of our modern time by being inclusive of all kinds of kids, adults, and families, regardless of how many people were involved, their orientation, gender and other identity, or family composition. Just as important, the story doesn’t gender people or body parts, so most parents and families will find that it leaves room for them to educate their child without having to erase their own experience. Written by sexuality educator Cory Silverberg, and illustrated by award-winning Canadian artist Fiona Smyth, What Makes a Baby is as fun to look at as it is useful to read. Raised by a children’s librarian and a sex therapist, CORY SILVERBERG grew
up to be a sexuality educator and writer. He received his Masters of Education from the University of Toronto, and was a founding member of the Come As You Are Co-operative. He teaches across North America on topics including sexual communication, sexuality and disability, technology, access, and inclusion. Cory is the Sexuality Guide for About.com and the coauthor of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability with Miriam Kaufman and Fran Odette. What Makes a Baby is the first book in a series of kid’s books Cory is writing for Seven Stories Press about sexuality, sexual health, and gender. FIONA SMYTH is a Toronto-based painter, illustrator, and cartoonist. Her first
graphic novel, The Never Weres, was published in 2011. Fiona teaches illustration and comics at OCAD U in Toronto. Triangle Square, ages 3–7 HC • $16.95 9” x 9” • 36 pages 978-1-60980-485-5 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-486-2 Full-color throughout 34
Most books about where babies come from leave many of us out. They tell a nice story (mommy + daddy + intercourse = you!) but more and more of us are acknowledging the help we get to bring children into our lives. That help might be a doctor, fertility clinic, adoption or foster agency; it might be a turkey baster and a friend; it might be a sperm donor or a surrogate.
• Author tour to coincide with lecture schedule • Princeton Children’s Book Festival in Sept. 2013 • www.what-makes-a-baby.com • Author-created video available for posting and distro • excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/whatmakesababy 35
“A Singing in Every Moment and Inch of Me” Letters from Barney Simon to Lionel Abraham
B a rn e y Si mon
May
Set in the 1960s in Johannesburg, London, and New York, and told in a young theater director’s letters home to a friend who is a struggling novelist, here is the true story of one of South Africa’s national treasures, co-founder of the Market Theatre, director of the early productions of the plays of Athol Fugard, and mentor to a generation of South African actors. BARNEY SIMON (1932–1995) was the legendary artistic director, writer, and cocreator of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, one of the most influential and distinguished theaters in South Africa and the world. Armed with little more than the conviction that culture can change society, the Market Theatre challenged the apartheid regime, and became recognized as one of the most influential, distinguished theaters in South Africa and beyond. The World in an Orange: Making Theater with Barney Simon, was published by Seven Stories in 2006.
HC • $23.95 5.5” x 8.25” • 176 pages 978-1-60980-442-8 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-443-5 36
• excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/barneysimon 37
Yudl
A Novel and Selected Short Stories
L ay l e Si l be rt
June
Set in 1920s Chicago, the short novel Yudl follows its eponymous protagonist, a middle-aged editor at a left-leaning newspaper called The Yiddish Courier. Yudl and his wife have decided to become landlords, purchasing a vacant lot and hiring an acquaintance—aptly named Mason—to oversee the construction of their future apartment building. However, delays in the construction leave Yudl and his family without a home, forcing them to stay with Mason and his family until the construction is finally complete. Told with wry wit and a masterful sensibility for metaphor, the story explores gender, Zionism, and the immigrant experience in the US. The selection of short stories that follow the novel in this volume were selected by the author from her deathbed during her last weeks and then hours on earth. Silbert’s graceful short stories focus on the family, allowing the reader glimpses of a child’s happiness, the cripplingly contradictory demands of femininity, the complexity of grief, and a sustained meditation on life and death. LAYLE SILBERT (1913–2003) grew up in Chicago in a Russian immigrant house-
hold. She made a career as a photographer, mostly of writers like her friend Nelson Algren, and had more than thirty exhibits in the US and internationally. She wrote poems and a handful of personal essays, but primarily considered herself a writer of short-fiction, publishing hundreds of stories in literary magazines throughout her life. She is the author of a previous story collection, The Free Thinkers (Seven Stories Press, 2000).
TR • $17.95 5.25” x 8” • 240 pages 978-1-60980-440-4 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-441-1 38
• excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/yudl 39
Order without Power An Introduction to Anarchism, History and Current Practices
Nor m a n d B a i l l a rge on
July
With the rise of the global protestor—from Arab Spring to the Occupy movement—the term “anarchist” has been littered throughout mainstream media as never before. But just as frequently, its definition is skewed or left wanting: anarchists are painted as nihilists, supporters of chaos, or even terrorists. In Order without Power, an informative primer, Normand Baillargeon thoroughly defines anarchism and recounts its long history. In outlining the forerunners of this movement, he illuminates the differences between collectivists, federalists, communists, syndicalists, and further strains such as anarcho-feminism, pacifist anarchism, and religious anarchism. With sharp examples and concise, lively language, Baillargeon describes the contributions from early anarchists like William Godwin, Max Stirner, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Pierre Kropotkin, through Noam Chomsky, as well as the uprisings, struggles, revolts, and revolutions that tested or expanded the theories. From the International Workingmen’s Association to Haymarket, from the Russian Revolution to May 1968, Baillargeon unpacks anarchism’s position on various issues and reveals this political theory’s vibrant heart: anti-authoritarianism, or the rational and conscious refusal of any form of illegitimate authority and power. Militant anarchist and educator NORMAND BAILLARGEON teaches the fundamentals of education and museum studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is the author of four other books, including A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense, which was published in English by Seven Stories Press in 2008.
TR • $16.95 5.25” x 8.25” • 244 pages 978-1-60980-471-8 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-472-5 40
• excerpt available: issuu.com/sevenstories/docs/orderwithoutpower 41
Recently Released
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits
How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps
Gr e g Pa l a s t Com ics b y T e d Ra l l I n t roduc t ion b y Robe rt F. K e nn e dy, J r .
The story of the billionaires and why they want to buy an election is matched with the nine ways they can steal the election. paper • $14.95 • 5” x 7” • 244 pages 978-1-60980-478-7 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-479-4
Live Through This
On Creativity and Self-Destruction 2nd Edition Edi t ed b y S a br i n a Chap Nan Goldin, bell hooks, Eileen Myles, Inga Muscio, and fourteen other artists who have experienced cutting, eating disorders, drug and alcohol addiction, and/or abusive relationships traverse the pains and passions that sometimes motivate, sometimes destroy, women artists. paper • $19.95 • 6” x 8” • 280 pages 978-1-60980-436-7 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-012-3
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Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes
M a rt h a L ong For e wor d b y A l ice Wa l k e r
Virtually uneducated, Martha Long is natural-born storyteller, as she tells of her life growing up in Ireland in the 1950s. One can’t help but cheer on this mischievous, quickwitted, and persistent little girl who has captured hearts across Europe. Cloth • $19.95 5.5” x 8.25” • 480 pages 978-1-60980-414-5 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-415-2
The Rich Don’t Always Win
The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970
S a m Pi zz ig ati
For the 99%, this book tells how income inequality developed in the early years of the century. By tracing how average Americans took down plutocracy over the first half of the 20th Century The Rich Don’t Always Win will outfit Occupy Wall Street America with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream. paper • $18.95 • 6” x 9” • 384 pages 978-1-60980-434-3 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-435-0
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The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics
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From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars lays out the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world with a new economic paradigm. paper / limited Ed. Hardcover slipcase $29.95 / $100.00 8.5” x 11” • 400 pages 978-1-60980-473-2 • 978-1-60980-432-9 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-433-6
Bobby’s Book
E m i ly H a a s Dav i dson; A s t ol d b y B ob P ow e r s Pho t o gr a ph s b y
Bruce Dav i dson
Through the reflections of the former drug addict and petty criminal, Bobby Powers is today, at 69, a nationally respected drug addiction counselor who has aided a wide spectrum of people, including former gang members. His story represents a brutal and inspiring lesson in human frailty, degradation, and transformation. paper • $19.95 6” x 9” • 176 pages 978-1-60980-448-0 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-449-7 44
The Graphic Canon, Volume 2
From “Kubla Khan” to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray edi t ed b y Rus s Kick Vol. 2 delivers a nineteenth-century cornucopia that includes Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly’s versions of Poe’s visions, Eisner Award-winning artist Bill Sienkiewicz’s take on Moby-Dick, and, for the first time, a selection from Huckleberry Finn exactly as Twain wrote it. A fiery speech from freed slave Frederick Douglass is rendered in stark black and white by Seth Tobocman, and P. Craig Russell puts a new spin on Wagner’s colossal Ring cycle of operas (which won him two Eisner Awards), along with many other canonical works in new guises.
paper • $39.95 8.5” x 10.875” • 480 pages 978-1-60980-378-0
Censored 2013
Dispatches from the Media Revolution Edi t ed b y Mick e y S. H u ff a n d a n dy l e e
ro t h w i t h pro j e c t Ce nsor e d
Censored is dedicated to the stories that ought to be top features on the nightly news, but that are missing because of corporate media bias and self-censorship. paper • $19.95 5.5” x 8.5” • 464 pages 978-1-60980-422-0 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-423-7
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S t e pha n i e McM i l l a n Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
Can a cartoonist and millions of random strangers change the world? The initial stages of their attempt are chronicled in this book of comics-journalism and written observations. With delightful drawings, interviews, dialogue, description, and insightful reflections, this book chronicles the first several months of the fragile and contradictory movement. paper • $16.95 8” x 8” • 114 pages 978-1-60980-452-7 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-453-4
LoveStar A Novel
Andri Snær Magnason Indridi and Sigrid, two happy young lovers, have their perfect worlds threatened when they are “calculated apart” by the LoveStar Corporation, and their journey to prove their love puts them on a collision course with LoveStar, the enigmatic founder, who is on his own mission to find what might be the last idea in the world. paper • $16.95 5.5” x 8.25” • 320 pages 978-1-60980-426-8 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-427-5 46
Prince of the World Stories
Ch r i s t oph e r Howa r d In Prince of the World, Christopher R. Howard asks us to explore human morality when pushed to the limit. In the inimitable style of lyrical yet brutal narration that distinguished his award-winning debut novel, Tea of Ulaanbaatar, Howard ponders the cataclysms looming over life on earth and our individual struggles for love and dignity. paper • $16.95 5.25” x 8” • 256 pages 978-1-60980-438-1 E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-439-8
Recently Released in Paperback
Unstuck in Time
Maonomics
paper • $18.95
paper • $18.95
6” x 9” • 368 pages
5.75” x 8.75” • 384 pages
978-1-60980-430-5 •
978-1-60980-431-2•
E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-360-5
E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-352-0
Gregory D. Sumner
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Loretta Napoleoni
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