The annual international gathering of the best fiction, poetry, essays and memoirs from small, independent, literary presses, including more than 60 selections from 50 presses, chosen with the advice of 180 distinguished contributing editors.

The annual international gathering of the best fiction, poetry, essays and memoirs from small, independent, literary presses, including more than 60 selections from 50 presses, chosen with the advice of 180 distinguished contributing editors.

In last year's Pushcart Prize, editor Bill Henderson noted that the Pushcart Prize, the small good thing, has evolved into an international prize drawing nominations from small presses around the globe. As always, the selections are made by a distinguished panel of Guest Editors and hundreds of Contributing Editors. The list of authors selected and encouraged over the decades, is immense. (An index to previous volumes is included in each edition.)

The Pushcart Prize won the NBCC Sandroff Lifetime Achievement award, The Poets & Writers/ Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers citation and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the seminal publications in American publishing history.

When Pushcart Publisher Bill Henderson entered his 80's, he was blessed with identical twin grandsons. As they grew older, he began thinking about what he wanted to say to them after he was gone, and they came of age. Influenced by the letters of Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and others, he started writing to the boys telling them about his life and mining it for whatever wisdom he had gleaned along the way.

He intended the letters for private circulation. But at the urging of friends, he has collected them for a wider readership.

I write because there are things I can't sing. There are ways of writing that can't be sung. I write because I watch, says Jeb Loy Nichols, an internationally acclaimed musician and artist, about his literary art. In this unforgettable novel, Suzanne has arranged her life to suit her solitariness, living quietly on her untended hill farm. Her days are a word-shy negotiation, caught between indifference and uncertainty. Into this world comes Gertrude, a wandering donkey. Together they form an unlikely alliance; each protecting the solitude of the other.

Suzanne and Gertrude is a tale of intermittent griefs and wonderments. How do we live, not just with each other, but with memories, with impermanence, with the inevitable melancholy of being?

Suzanne and Gertrude is a spare novel with a profound impact.

The internationally celebrated collection of brilliant stories, poems, essays and memoirs from small presses around the world as selected by today's outstanding editors and a staff of distinguished Contributing Editors.

In last year's Pushcart Prize, editor Bill Henderson noted that the Pushcart Prize, the small good thing, has evolved into an international prize drawing nominations from small presses around the globe. As always, the selections are made by a distinguished panel of Guest Editors and hundreds of Contributing Editors. The list of authors selected and encouraged over the decades, is immense. (An index to previous volumes is included in each edition.)

The Pushcart Prize won the NBCC Sandroff Lifetime Achievement award, The Poets & Writers/ Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers citation and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the seminal publications in American publishing history.

For those few who still remember, the images are seared into their brains: the corpses floating down Main Street; the boats that drifted into the living rooms of flooded houses; the dead dogs and featherless chickens; the muck and fish stink; the moonscape of flattened houses; the residue of the last great hurricane to hit Long Island, the storm of 1938. - The New York Times

This is a story of that day - a day that began much like any other day at the ragtag end of the summer season on the eastern end of Long Island - better known as The Hamptons. The storm came without warning landing at three in the afternoon bringing with it unprecedented wind and rain and waves so high and powerful they were recorded on seismographs 5000 miles away in Alaska.

But A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER is not just a hurricane novel. The storm is a framing device for an historical tableau vivant of this near mythical place - The Hamptons - brought to life via the stories of townspeople, the wealthy summer colony, the fishing folk and the art crowd. Written by a natural tale-spinner and masterful portraitist of character and place, it does have one wild, furious storm at its center - an historic tempest that wreaked havoc on the little towns and villages that line the ocean front of the South Fork of Long Island.

Could it happen again? Yes - it will almost certainly happen again and no matter how many moguls build seaside monuments defying the odds, another hurricane like 1938 will surely be the deadliest in American history.

All My Dogs dogs is exactly as the title describes, a story in chronological order, beginning in childhood, of all the dogs Henderson has loved. Some were with him for a brief period, some were part of every moment in his life and the lives of his wife and daughter. But, as silly and bold and sometimes incorrigible as all of these dogs were, each of them loved Henderson and he returned that affection wholeheartedly. He is dog person and cannot imagine a life without canine companionship. So as he writes of navigating the waters as writer and publisher, pursuing a family life, moving from one home to another, engaging in a quixotic quest to build a tower in Maine and pondering how to live the best life possible, there is always a dog at his feet or by his side.Dogs have made his life richer by their company and, just as the best writing of Herriot and Durrell, All my Dogs is a love letter in return. Bookslut

Riley is a seven-year-old Jamaican-American girl whose curiosity and sense of adventure take her to magical places. In Riley and the Entrepreneurial Squirrel, Riley's friend Cambria the squirrel needs help.

Winter is just around the corner and the squirrels are running out of places to store their acorns. Riley's friend, Cambria, sees this as an opportunity, but most people think she's nuts to start a business. Not Riley, she has a clear picture of what they need to be successful.

Not so long ago dire forecasts of doom were the domain of splinter groups of Revelation-besotted Christians, back-country tub-thumpers, and leather-lunged street-corner prophets. Today, visions of the end of the world are presented afresh daily to anyone who reads the morning news or follows on-line media. Even the venerable New York Times has been salting its sophisticated offerings with doses of apocalypticism. Once a tiny dark corner of the obscure realm of theology, eschatology, the study of the end times, has been mainstreamed to the masses and the question of whether the world will end in fire or ice is parsed over coffee and at the dinner table, often with heated debates over the details. Suddenly those street-corner prophets aren't looking so crazy anymore.

Tragically, the deep chords of hope for a coming new age, which resounded throughout ancient accounts of the end-times, are too often unheard on today's stage. Little attention is given to Nature's powers of healing. Little thought is given to how to weather the storms and sail on to the new land, or to what that new land will be like. As a result, many people are overcome and paralyzed by fear, rage and hopelessness. Depression, suicide, anxiety and addiction, including wealth addiction, are rampant and threaten to crumble industrialized societies from within, playing into the hands of demagogues and the greedy.

Some Glad Morning is aimed straight at this malaise. Arranged in the circle of the seasons, this small volume will feed the soul and strengthen the heart for these times.

The annual international gathering of the best Fiction, Poetry, Essays and Memoirs from small independent literary presses, including more that 60 selections from 50 presses chosen with the advice of 160 distinguished Contribution Editors.

The best poetry and prose from the past quarter century of The Pushcart Prize editions selected by two multi-prize-winning editors. - Philip Schultz (Pulitzer Prize in Poetry); Bill Henderson (Highest Honors American Academy of Arts and Letters).

Pushcart Prize XLV is continuing evidence that much of today's vibrant writing appears only in small journals and book presses.The series has been selected for Publishers Weekly Carey Thomas Award, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof citation, and the Poets and Writers/Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers award among others.Here are 70 authors from more than 50 presses as selected from the nominations of 220 distinguished Contributing Editors and 800 participating presses.Recent reviews include: Essential. Library JournalMust reading Kirkus ReviewsDistinguished. New York Times Book Review

Pushcart Prize XLV is continuing evidence that much of today's vibrant writing appears only in small journals and book presses.The series has been selected for Publishers Weekly Carey Thomas Award, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof citation, and the Poets and Writers/Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers award among others.Here are 70 authors from more than 50 presses as selected from the nominations of 220 distinguished Contributing Editors and 800 participating presses.Recent reviews include: Essential. Library JournalMust reading Kirkus ReviewsDistinguished. New York Times Book Review

Over 60 brilliant stories, poems and essays from ?dozens of small presses, ?as selected from 900 presses worldwide by ?more than ?200 distinguished staff contributing editors.

Series Honors: The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Pushcart its 2020 recognition for Distinguished Service to the Arts.

The National Book Critics Circle cited Bill Henderson for its Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award in 2006.

In 2005 Poets &Writers / Barnes and Noble noted Pushcart for their Writers For Writers prize. And in 1978 Publishers Weekly's Carey-Thomas Award went to the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews of last year's edition:

Booklist - Resplendent...A perennial must have.

Publishers Weekly - A trove of fine writing.

Kirkus - Strong and wide ranging.

Library Journal (starred) - Fascinating ....A must have for all collections.

Over 60 brilliant stories, poems and essays from ?dozens of small presses, ?as selected from 900 presses worldwide by ?more than ?200 distinguished staff contributing editors.
Series Honors: The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Pushcart its 2020 recognition for Distinguished Service to the Arts.

The National Book Critics Circle cited Bill Henderson for its Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award in 2006.

In 2005 Poets &Writers / Barnes and Noble noted Pushcart for their Writers For Writers prize. And in 1978 Publishers Weekly's Carey-Thomas Award went to the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews of last year's edition:

Booklist - Resplendent...A perennial must have.

Publishers Weekly - A trove of fine writing.

Kirkus - Strong and wide ranging.

Library Journal (starred) - Fascinating ....A must have for all collections.

Married at a young age to an older man, neither he nor she doubted that he would predecease her; but she discovers that there is no preparing for the loss a beloved. Their marriage was a passionate 35 year love affair, as if the odds against its longevity engendered a rare intensity. She discovers that love has no boundaries, grief is not eternal and ?her husband's motto Life is a love story is so very true.

Ascher writes passionately about her unlikely marriage, her husband's illness and death and her ensuing sorrow. A witness to the insanity that grief visits upon its victims with a seeming determination to destroy, she gazes straight into the eye of grief and does not blink. In time she moves beyond that grief - her voyage out.

Ghosting is, by turns, moving and funny, tender and brutal .

The wonder of Ghosting is that Ascher, like Montaigne, calls forth Everyman.

About previous books:

Pat Conroy on Dancing In The Dark:
One of those books that wakes you up to the life you have failed to live, ...What a wonderful book.

Publishers Weekly on The Habit of Loving: ?
With her sharp, unflinching eye, she discovers wonder and truth at our very doorsteps.

Boston Globe on Landscape Without Gravity:
Her honesty touches the reader's heart, opens the scars of old wounds, and helps heal them...wrenching, insightful...compelling

Eudora Welty on Playing After Dark:
Barbara Ascher has a serious mind and the gift of a light touch.

In last year's Pushcart Prize, editor Bill Henderson noted that the Pushcart Prize, the small good thing, has evolved into an international prize drawing nominations from small presses around the globe. As always, the selections are made by a distinguished panel of Guest Editors and hundreds of Contributing Editors. The list of authors selected and encouraged over the decades, is immense. (An index to previous volumes is included in each edition.)

The Pushcart Prize won the NBCC Sandroff Lifetime Achievement award, The Poets & Writers/ Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers citation and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the seminal publications in American publishing history.