Date: June 20th 2008

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions,
is located at the end of this message.)
__

Bon Soir Soft Skull disciples,

In honor and reverence of the impending Summer Solstice, we are eager to announce that our anthology of insomnia, "Awake: a Reader for the Sleepless," is available for sale from our online store. "Awake" is a collection of stories, essays, poetry, comics, and art designed to entertain you on the most pacing, restless of nights. Featuring contributions from Chales Simic, Jonathan Ames, and Louise Bourgeois, the anthology will perfectly compliment any sleep-deprived evening.

And what better occasion to invest in such a useful volume than tomorrow, the longest and most wretchedly sunny day of the year: the dreaded Summer Solstice! Picture a day, if you dare, with so many hours of sunlight that darkness becomes a forgotten substance and sleep a laughably extinct possibility. How, dear readers, will you fill those endless hours of horrid wakefulness? Your answer, nay, your SALVATION, lies in pages of this handsome text...


Awake!
A Reader for the Sleepless
Edited by Steven Lee Beeber

1-933368-79-9
Trade Paper Original 6 x 9 256pp.
Fiction $14.95

Awake is an exploration of the connection between creativity and sleeplessness...and the ideal book to read when you can’t sleep!

Stories (including previously unpublished pieces by Aimee Bender and Arthur Bradford); probably true fictions (like Jonathan Ames’s masturbation solution to insomnia); essays (from Yale neurobiologists to Priscilla Becker); comix (Howard Cruse, Shannon Wheeler); poems (Charles Simic, Rebecca Wolff), even found texts from Davy Rothbart of FOUND magazine, drawings from Louise Bourgeois, and a photographic insomnia diary from one of the Suicide Girls … all combine to offer a nighttime companion for the sleepless. As varied as the genres are, each contributor’s approach to the seemingly endless night is very much his or her own. Humorist Steve Brykman decides to enter a sleep study at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston; writer Steve Almond depicts Lincoln as a man who listens to his nightmares. Priscilla Becker takes the trash out in her sleep, while Matt Zapruder writes a novel called The Pajamaist in his. Jonathan Messinger’s girl born with small wings on her back dreams onl
y of falling and Bob Hicok’s man should have stuck with the red wine.

AWAKE! is divided into sections, one for each day of the week, and is compiled in such a way as to evoke the experience of insomnia. Millions can’t sleep; millions more sleep with those who can’t sleep. Both groups now have ever more reason to emerge bleary-eyed into the dawn.

The contributors:
Steve Almond, Jonathan Ames, Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Nicholson Baker, Priscilla Becker, Aimee Bender, Gwenda Bond, Louise Bourgeois, Arthur Bradford, Steve Brykman, W. Bruce Cameron, Edward Champion, Claro, Joshua Cohen, Karen Condon, Howard Cruse, A. Roger Ekirch, Brian Evenson, Myles Gordon, Rose Gowen, Franklin H. Head, Bob Hicok, Michael Koenig, Molly Kottemann, Catie Lazarus, Gary Lucas, Lydia Lunch, Jonathan Messinger, Mark Mirsky, C.O. Moed, Nicholas Montemarano, Joyce Carol Oates, Robin Palanker, Bud Parr, Neal Pollack, Matthew Rohrer, Davy Rothbart, John Sayles, Charles Simic, Frank Stack, Susan Steinberg, Darin Strauss, Cricket Suicide, James Tate, Lynne Tillman, William Waltz, Joe Wenderoth, Shannon Wheeler, Dara Wier, Rebecca Wolff, Beth Woodcome, Franz Wright, and Matthew Zapruder

About the editor:
Steven Lee Beeber’s study of the New York Jewish origins of punk rock, “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk,” recently appeared from A Cappella Books. A freelance writer of fiction and non-fiction, he has written for the Paris Review, Fiction, Conduit, the New York Times, Mojo, Spin, and elsewhere. A regular insomniac, he nonetheless seems to be well rested—or, at least, so he likes to think. His website is www.jewpunk.com.


--
The following information is a reminder of your current mailing
list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list:
Soft Skull Announce

using the following email:
example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by
visiting the following URL:

<http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/>;

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the
entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break
this automatic unsubscribe mechanism.

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

<http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce>;

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

<mailto:publicity@softskull.com>;

The following physical address is associated with this mailing list:



Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail
http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/