Ever wonder how roller derby began? What the hell is going on during a bout? Whether you’re woman enough to don a pair of skates? Now you’ll know.

A dark coming-of-age comedy about the trials of growing up among fundamentalist Jehovah's Witnesses

For more than fifty years, Leslie Fiedler played a pivotal role in the development of American literary culture as its most polarizing critic

An astonishing new voice reconfigures the classic love story as we know it; "This is a collection that marks its own territory and stamps it out with a textured beauty." --Aimee Bender

A fast-paced, comprehensive account of how digital killed the radio star

A startling look at the phenomenon of school and workplace shootings in America—newly expanded and updated.

A journey into the vanished world of the groundbreaking television show “New Wave Theater” and the brilliant and tragic story behind it.

The often fantastical, occasionally sobering, constantly surprising story of the raw friendship between two young, lovelorn squatters in South London

Are India and China in a race to dominate development in the twenty-first century?

Fear and Loathing in Mecca

How to Be Inappropriate tells of a young man’s effort to cut a swathe through a city inclined to completely ignore his existence.

A graphic novel based on the modeling adventures of the pint-sized underdog Isobella Jade in her quest to become a model.

Believe it or not, Jeff Martin has lived the most interesting thirty years in human existence.

A young journalist's foray down the rabbit hole of media-led reporting, a tale of disillusionment and self-examination set in the world's most headline-grabbing regions

An alternative book of music lists that celebrate popular music in all its eclectic, and sometimes guilty, glory.

A trilogy of letters to Americans of all backgrounds

Guerrilla street art on government-issued mailing labels never looked so good.

A Pandora's box of astringent and sentimental confections, each featuring that pairing our society seems to both love and loathe: celebrities and animals.

"An eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe."

The fantastical satirical follow-up to the cult underground classic, The Taqwacores.

Part psychedelic road-trip travelogue, part “Overheard-in-Graceland,” part mystic-religious devotional, Conrad’s prose-poetic novel puts a compound prism to the Elvis mystique to form a vibrant and fractured portrait of fandom, one adoring fanatic at a time.

Ripping critically into all sides of this nation's deepening spiritual divide, Robert Jensen stitches together a new theology of religious tradition, contemporary philosophy, and progressive politics.

Live Nude Elf is a funny, witty, irreverent, brave, and sometimes tragic portrait of The Reverend Jen Miller, The Patron Saint of the Uncool, and the challenges embedded in devoting one's personal and professional life to art.

With its journalistic approach to Islams intersection with race, gender, and Americanization, "Blue-Eyed Devil" offers a brutally honest but ultimately compassionate look at the marginalized underground of Islamic America.

Millar's most narcissistically neurotic creation, Lux, the poet, wanders blithely through urban riots, past bickering angels, with all manner of pissed-off violent men on his trail, searching for the lady he's appointed the love of his life, notwithstanding she's gay.

Intensely smart and startlingly clever, Travis Elborough looks at the history of the record and its cultural influence as it faces an uncertain fate in the age of the iPod.

A vivid, raw and ribald book, Watching the Door is an account of coming of age in 1970s Belfast that offers a unique look into the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, never once losing its passion, wit and irony even in the face of the most horrific circumstances.

Stories that glow with humor, eerie beauty, and fantastic peculiarity.
Winner of the Trillium Award!

An anthology of personal narratives by Hip Hop/Gen-X women exploring the complexities of motherhood and womanhood, especially among working class women, women of color, single mothers, and gay mothers.

Sarajevo. Jerusalem. Kabul. Belfast. Kosovo. Gaza. Basra. NYC. Every place where recent history advertises the stubbornness, intolerance, bloodlust and cowardice that sullies our collective record: there the intrepid Mueller goes, talking to the perpetrators, the fools and the optimists.

A young American writer's exploration of the many youth subcultures developing in China, one of the fastest-changing countries in the world. A Barnes & Noble Summer 2009 Discover Great New Writers Selections

Candy is just the girl next-door, except with better fashion sense and killer kung-fu skills. But when Candy turns down a date with the wealthy Preston Reign, she suddenly finds herself stalked by a guy who refuses take "no" for an answer....

An examination of American popular music, from hellfire hymnals though anarchic rock and roll, reveals the nation's collective fixation on disaster, revelation, and impossible salvation.

A vital collection of essays and interviews exploring the film aspect of Beat culture, complete with the last interview with writer Allen Ginsberg recorded shortly before his death in 1997.

New York Times-bestselling author David Shields analyzes how confession is a crucial aspect of contemporary American culture, from Oprah to academia, in this contemporary classic of creative non-fiction.

The Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature

A manual for the soulful city dweller traversing the wonders and dangers of the concrete jungle, designed to inspire readers to activate their dreams and desires by taking daily action.

Every time he looks outside, there's a megalomaniac professor digging a hole outside his flat. His small stake in the amphetamine market in Brixton is being threatened by a mysterious Chinese man. And the Milk Marketing Board has taken out a contract on his life. Welcome to the bizarre, obsessive world of Alby Starvation.

A book about the greatest rebels of the twentieth century as well as an engaging history of humor in subversive art, Rebels Wit Attitude explores the history of rock music in America and the serious social impact that pointed humor has had on generations of American youth.

A career-spanning collection from a leading figure in the Beat, New York School and Factory scenes.

The story is the same, and yet it's entirely different. In this fascinating reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, artist Graham Rawle has stripped the epic story about Dorothy's journey to Oz of all remnants of Hollywood iconography. Gone are the Judy Garland braids, the Technicolor ruby slippers, the ethereal Glinda the Good Witch. In their place, Rawle has fashioned graphic-novelesque characters and scenery that are at once relentlessly modern and also devoutly loyal to Baum's original text.

A comprehensive and up-to-date exposé of the shadowy global network of private mercenary military firms.

The most original cartoon to emerge since . . . well ever. Raw, enraged, sardonic, hilarious, despairing, and impossible to pigeonhole.

Urban Life, Home-Schooling, Hip-Hop Leadership, the Cool Rich Kids Movement, a Hitchhiker's Guide to Community Organizing, and Why Philanthropy Is the Greatest Art Form of the 21st Century!

Reincarnating Hubert Selby and Kathy Acker as a Bi Latina junkie-artist, Cristy C. Road's debut novel is a gut-punch-beautiful punk paen to finding human connections amidst urban squalor and capitalist decadence

Always funny, frequently cringe-inducing, and often touching collection that is certain to connect with the millions of American men and women that work or have at one time or another worked in retail.

A lushly illustrated series of interviews between iconic indie film auteur Hal Hartley and film historian and educator, Kenneth Kaleta.

A working-class Bonfire of the Vanities, set in the literal and metaphorical underworld of Manhattan, featuring two brothers at brutal odds, one an underground construction worker the other an Irish mob boss.

"[A] picaresque, unsentimentally heartbreaking roman a clef."

A highly personal coming-of-age cocktail from Martin Millar, featuring his trademark self-deprecating humor, a splash of a parallel fantasy world and a twist of nostalgia.

A new essay collection by America's leading white anti-racist activist Tim Wise.

A political "historieta" in which Mr. Spic indeed goes to Washington, a satirical tale about norteno Latinos taking over the capital.

Cutting-edge filmmaker Alex Cox tells us how it was and how it will be: a manifesto on the future of film, and guidance for the directors of tomorrow.

An inspird and inspiring truth teller, dangerous and brave and scary all at once.

The final installment of the cult trilogy that began with the cult classic MOTORMAN and continued with the Village Voice Best of 2004, THE AGE OF SINATRA.

A freakishly charming tale of star-crossed, would-be step-sibling love in a family of failed bodybuilders in suburban Los Angeles.

Takes the vision of Hakim Bey's "Temporary Autonomous Zones," the incisiveness of Naomi Klein in her seminal treatise No Logo, and youthful idiosyncratic passion of William Upksi Wimsatt, and creates a new vision of political possibility for Generation Y. Click to download a sample chapter!

An intergenerational, multi-racial anthology edited by two gang members turned cultural workers, The Bandana Republic seeks to showcase the creative impulse that, along with violence, has always been a part of membership in urban gangs.

An effort to better understand how young black fathers relate to their children, as well as their own fathers, and to better understand their roles in families and communities.

A self-described slob and data-entry drone from Fresno, CA, Brecher is P.J. O'Rourke on Red Bull, writing with passion and profanity on the nature of warfare and the ongoing wars – those on the front page and otherwise – that are being fought every day around the world.

America's first historieta, a bawdy border comic in the Mexican pulp fiction tradition.

"Searing...affecting."

A long-needed and wished for resource, Reproduce and Revolt is a collection of original anti-copyright graphics to be freely used for various political posters, flyers, and campaigns.

A revised and expanded edition of the book that defines the new anti-assimilationist queer movement.

The Solitary Vice will make you rethink your own relation to reading. Brottman is wonderful at reminding us what a very complicated act—of fantasy, recompense, adventurism, and (sometimes) perversity—reading a book can be.

"No matter how much you want to disagree with McCarthy. . .his chatty style is so forcefully confident and his argument so tightly constructed and so well-supported, that by the end you're throwing your arms up in surrender. . . . It's brilliant."

The latest urban fantasy from Martin Millar, featuring a parallel world of werewolves of every stripe and character causing intentional and unintentional mayhem on the streets of London and the moors of Scotland...

The latest collection from Firecracker and Audre Lorde Award-winning poet Daphne Gottlieb, channeling the voices of the world's dead women.

New and selected poems from the 20 years of Kevin Powell's poetry.

A lyrical and unsentimental arresting and arrested coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old boy dying of bone cancer...by the winner of the Governor-General's Prize for Literature

A brilliant work of contemporary urban archaeology from the leading activist zinester of San Francisco, author of SCAM and formerly known as Iggy Scam.

Characterized as a work of genius both by the Times of London and by Absolutely Fabulous's Joanna Lumley, WOMAN'S WORLD is a page-turning, gender-bending, mind-blowing novel and work-of-art...

The first poetry collection from the Ferro-Grumley finalist Douglas A. Martin.

A wonderfully disrespectful story of a boy, enwrapped in a completely unraveling family, who descends into depression but, in a singular act of defiance, claws his way out.

Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Trans and Genderqueer Fiction and for the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction! And Richard Labonte's Top Ten Book of 2005!!!

A funny, poignant memoir from a Bosnian ex-pat about assuming the uncomfortable identity of refugee

"An eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe."

The Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature

"Searing...affecting."

Millet's most stunning work yet follows a preternaturally gifted young real estate developer's passage from anodyne greed to an obsession with endangered animals so great he breaks into zoo cages at night to sleep alongside them, a journey culminating in a Conradian trip deep into a hurricane-ravaged Caribbean island...

“[A] welcome antidote to the encomiums heaped upon America’s mayor after Sept. 11th, 2001 by so many people who forgot or never bothered to find out where Mr. Giuliani stood on Sept 10.”

A simple woman looks back on her harsh life with extraordinary insight and unexpected joy in Millet's PEN USA Award-winning novel.

A fantastical and dystopian re-telling of the Jamestown Colony story by the author of the breakout TODAY SHOW Book Club selection THE SLEEPING FATHER.

A novel of remarkable perception, grace, and understanding that functions as a microcosm of America, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY is the most ambitious novel yet from the author of NBCC finalist and NY Times Notable, No Lease on Life.

Inspired by the recent Abu Ghraib torture photos, this is Griffith's journey through the vast catalogue of violent and sexual images that have accumulated in our collective unconscious, a journey he seeks to understand through filters ranging from Flannery O'Connor to Susan Sontag to Andy Warhol.

A masterfully crafted literary and philosophical tour-de-force that moves from the poetic to the hilarious to the dreamily apocalyptic, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart imagines the small foibles and grand moral negotiations of the "genius" A-bomb scientists. By the winner of the 2003 PEN USA Award.

...Her New York has everything and nothing to do with the real world, which is a reminder of something very simple: books don't need to get all pompous about our social disasters in order to make the grandest possible statements about them.

"A sublimely frisky novel…[Fountain at the Center of the World] reads like what you’d get if Tom Wolfe clambered inside the head of Noam Chomsky.... The talismanic Catch-22 of the anti-globalization protest movement, the fictional complement to Naomi Klein’s influential treatise No Logo.... As ferocious as a jar of freeze-dried Paul Krugman columns.”

"[A] rare find: an ironist who actually seems to like other people.

Now available!… dark as your hat: sex-and-death with a side-order of extra death. A masterful and outrageously readable first novel.

An alternative book of music lists that celebrate popular music in all its eclectic, and sometimes guilty, glory.

The story is the same, and yet it's entirely different. In this fascinating reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, artist Graham Rawle has stripped the epic story about Dorothy's journey to Oz of all remnants of Hollywood iconography. Gone are the Judy Garland braids, the Technicolor ruby slippers, the ethereal Glinda the Good Witch. In their place, Rawle has fashioned graphic-novelesque characters and scenery that are at once relentlessly modern and also devoutly loyal to Baum's original text.

Always funny, frequently cringe-inducing, and often touching collection that is certain to connect with the millions of American men and women that work or have at one time or another worked in retail.

An exhaustive and hilarious compendium of curses and expletives, rendered in at least 69 different languages.

Just in time for the holidays!

THE book to read when you can't sleep.

The incandescent fictionalized biography of the Woolf's monkey MITZ hailed by Alice Sebold in an Amazon.com reader review as an "inventive, intelligent, thoroughly researched and alive creation."

An antidote to "Daily Affirmations," from John S. Hall, lead singer of the cult 90's band King Missile ("Detachable Penis," "Jesus Was Way Cool")

By turns tragic and funny, religious and heartbreaking, angry and surprisingly familiar, Half/Life represents the altogether diverse memories and reflections of a handful of Half-Jews, among them Thisbe Nissen, Katharine Weber, Jennifer Traig, Jeff Sharlett, and Joyce Maynard.

Famous writers, humorists, musicians and cartoonists comment on America by channeling their observations through the lens of seminal comic Bill Hicks.

All the poetry Soft Skull will publish in 2006, with a few 2005 bonus tracks!

The Neighborhood Story Project is a community documentary program based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. In the weeks leading up to Hurricane Katrina, they celebrated the release of five books written by students at John McDonogh Senior High. The books were best-sellers in the city and stand as a testament to New Orleans' community spirit and as a map back from disaster. Through interviews, photography, and story-writing, these New Orleans teenagers explored their families, their neighborhoods, and their city. All proceeds from the sales of these books will go to the authors and the Nieghborhood Story Project as it seeks to document the stories of the hurricane and its aftermath.

A humorous Christmas book about Santa’s Elves who are tired of being third-rate drones in his oppressive sweatshop.

The first book to ever seriously explore the culture of video and online games.

Ages 8 and up • 35 color illustrations • Co-published by Radiation Press • A Winter 2003/2004 Children’s Booksense 76 Pick!


Snoot is a Drudgebot, and a confused one at that. He can’t figure out why the Halobots, who run Dome City, get so much extra light (all robots need light to survive). He thinks so much about this he gets easily distracted and is consequently the least productive of all robots. He is also oddly shaped and the others make fun of him. Curious about what exists in the awful darkness outside the Dome, he ventures forth and discovers that all it not as it seems. Snoot vows to restore equality to Dome City. With guile, cunning, and good old-fashioned courage, Snoot, aided by some special friends, returns to Dome City to free the Drudgebots.

A revised and expanded edition of the book that defines the new anti-assimilationist queer movement.

Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Trans and Genderqueer Fiction and for the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction! And Richard Labonte's Top Ten Book of 2005!!!

A genre bending novel of biographical fiction about the sole Bronte brother, Branwell Bronte, which details his tragic demise under the weight of great expectation, while his sisters cultivate their genius in the background.

Cynical yet sweet (but never oversweet) and frequently hilarious, this first novel captures the free-fall, occasionally magical hell of being a freak in high school as well as anything I've ever read. If you ever got called faggot or lezzy on the school bus, you'll find this instantly recognizable. If you didn't, maybe it's time to find out how it felt.

In 1982, Bruce Springsteen departed from an upbeat rock and roll sound to release Nebraska--a spare, haunting piece of story-telling populated by deadbeats, desperadoes, and the poor souls unfortunate enough to fall in love with them. In Deliver Me From Nowhere, the shadowy folk fables of Springsteen's mastework are re-imagined in stories that trace a proud but perilous journey across the class and gender badlands of Middle America.

Juicy Mother is a cartoon anthology with work by and about queers, women and people of color. The collection showcases comics by such well-known cartoonist as Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), Howard Cruse (Wendal, Stuck Rubber Baby), Diane DiMassa (Hothead Paisan), and Ariel Schrag (Definition, Potential).

“This is an astonishing book, as much for the brilliance of its form as the richness of its subject matter…A dense, witty, and disturbing novel.”