BITCHFest
Edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler

Publisher's Comments
In the wake of Sassy and as an alternative to the more staid reporting of Ms., Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape reflects and impacts women’s lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence at the way pop culture informs feminism—and vice versa—and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine’s first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It’s a recent history of feminist pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism’s future.

Editor Lisa Jervis and Bitch contributing writer Jen Maher will read from BITCHFest at Broad Vocabulary on Thursday, October 19! See the calendar for details.

A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing
Edited by T Cooper and Adam Mansbach

Publisher's Comments
History is distorted the moment it's recorded--and in these politically dishonest times, challenging the stories we're told is more important than ever. In this groundbreaking anthology of original fiction, a diverse group of America's best writers takes on the task of creating counter-narratives to mainstream American history. Here are some of the moments and the people left out of the textbooks. Here is what else happened--on the margins of American life, and in between the lines of our history books.

A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing brings together an eclectic array of celebrated authors and cartoonists to create a patchwork, anecdotal history of this complicated country. From the Chinese discovery of America in 1426 to the new McCarthyism of a post-9/11 world, this collection recasts everything from the moon landing to the Lindbergh kidnapping, westward expansion to the sexual proclivities of Civil War officers. Riveting, inventive, and politically vital, this anthology picks up--and yanks on--America's supposed commitment to seeking the truth . . . even if that truth is revealed in fiction.

A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America
David Griffith

Publisher's Comments
In the wake of Abu Ghraib, Americans have struggled to understand what happened in the notorious prison and why. In this elegant series of essays, inflected with a radical Catholic philosophy, David Griffith contends that society's shift from language to image has changed the way people think about violence and cruelty, and that a disconnect exists between images and reality. Griffith meditates on images and literature, finding potent insight into what went wrong at the prison in the works of Susan Sontag, Anthony Burgess, and especially Flannery O’Connor, who often explored the gulf between proclamations of faith and the capacity for evil. Accompanying the essays are illustrated facts about torture, lists of torture methods and their long-term effects, and graphics such as the schematics of the "pain pathways" in the human body. Together, the images and essays endow the human being with the complexity images alone deny.

A Little Piece of Ground
Elizabeth Laird

Publisher's Comments
12 year-old Karim Aboudi and his family are trapped in their Ramallah home by a strict curfew. Israeli tanks control the city in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing. Karim longs to play football with his mates - being stuck inside with his teenage brother and fearful parents is driving him crazy. When the curfew ends, he and his friend discover an unused patch of ground that's the perfect site for a football pitch. Nearby, an old car hidden intact under bulldozed buildings makes a brilliant den. But in this city there's constant danger, even for schoolboys. And when Israeli soldiers find Karim outside during the next curfew, it seems impossible that he will survive... A Little Piece Of Ground is an exciting, enlightening and important story that brings to life the reality of events reported daily in the news, and will help young readers understand more about one of the worst conflicts afflicting our world today.

Three Fallen Women
Amy Guth

Publisher's Comments
Amy Guth's violent and shimmering debut novel is the story of three women caught in the vortex of breaking down. For Helen,a painter reawakening after a long period of self-destruction, peace is the choice between the love of her life and her new-found freedom. For Carmen, addiction will define the final throes of her broken heart. And for Frieda, the perfect housewife, catharsis is defined by sex and murder.

Three Fallen Women unapologetically weaves graphic adventure with heartbreak and sweetness to fashion a new brand of fiction. Equal parts feminist battle cry, anti-love story, and twisted metamorphosis, this is a novel that refuses conventional storytelling and lands a hard suckerpunch in the gut of the patriarchy.

Amy Guth has garnered a solid reputation in indie-lit circles as a consistently dynamic and entertaining live performer. Her readings are nothing short of performance art spectacles, including audience participation, props, and a punk rock energy that always attracts a large and enthusiastic crowd. Her debut novel brings that same energy to print.