Issue 5 Is...

Roland Kelts on the streets of Japan; Samantha Hunt on Parris Island; Lucy Begg in Richard Linklater’s treehouse; Jervey Tervalon in Baltimore & Hollywood; Steve Featherstone in latrines; James Lasdun in a greenhouse; Jesmyn Ward on the road; Ernst Weiss on a ship full of rats; Leslie Jamison in Nicaragua; Peter Trachtenberg in sixth-century Rome; Wells Tower in a new house; Mario Bellatin in Times Square; Craig Morgan Teicher in the woods; Robyn Schiff in an inventor’s workshop; Zoe Strauss in El Paso; and more.

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Congratulations to Michael Thomas

The New York Times Book Review has named Michael Thomas' first novel Man Gone Down one of the Ten Best Books of 2007. This essay, "Who's Your Daddy?", appears in Issue 4 of APS.

It would seem simple for most: my brother, who still lives in Boston, has managed to get tickets to game two of the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Yankees, enough for me to take my son and two friends. But after leaving work, I stop before entering the subway: I have a momentary lapse of faith, and it keeps me from going underground.

I hesitate for different reasons: The first is that I’ve always been scared of riding the New York City subway—being greeted by the turnstile arm to the genitals, and then the blast of inhuman-human odor, mixed with dead rat in the walls: like the filthy mop-head smell I remember from being a stock boy in a grocery, it reminds me of being a chump.

The second is that I have a plan, and going under symbolizes my commitment to it—that I believe, on some level, it will work. Back in my drinking days, before I had children, I would’ve stopped in a bar and thought about it over pints and shots until it was too late to do anything—a foolproof system for a fool—keeping me and mine safe from any notion that my ideas make sense, that they matter, and are good.

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Matthea Harvey's Modern Life

Modern Life, another excellent poetry collection by Issue 1 contributor Matthea Harvey, has just been published by Graywolf Press. If you're looking for some thought provoking poetry about robots, humans, and the future of terror (or even if you aren't), pick it up.

“Matthea Harvey's vision of America is spooky, apocalyptic, and beautiful: proof that there is wonder in even a dark time like ours.” - George Saunders

Jim Shepard Nominated for
National Book Award

Congratulations to Issue 4 contributor Jim Shepard, whose story collection Like You'd Understand, Anyway was nominated for a National Book Award in Fiction.