Letters from the Edge: Outrider Conversations

By: Margaret Randall

By excerpting from letters she exchanged with five irreverent writers and artists, Margaret Randall constructs conversations that open windows on four pivotal moments in her life and on world events.

Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician 

By: Alice Rothchild

A remarkable autobiography—written entirely in free verse—of Alice Rothchild’s journey from 1950’s good girl to irreverent, feisty, feminist obstetrician-gynecologist forging her own direction in the contradictory, sexist world of medicine.

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty— 30th Anniversary Edition

By Anne Herbert, Paloma Pavel, Mayumi Oda

Foreword by Desmond Mpilo Tutu

A parable of hope and peace for all ages with beautifully crafted words and exuberant watercolor illustrations, Random Kindness offers a poetic and empowering message for world peace. Recognizing “we are right on the edge of destroying ourselves,” this modern allegory inspires taking joyful steps to end violence. 

Judith Letting Go: Six Months in the World’s Smallest Death Cafe

By Mark Dowie

The story of an old man learns how to die from a younger woman facing death, this book is ultimately about the lost human art of releasing everything that matters to the living in preparation for the inevitable. It is a rare lesson offered by a poet who somehow taught herself, and then the author, how to let go.

That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Institutions

Edited by Leigh Sugar

Poetry and prose by artists, writers, and activists who’ve taught workshops in U.S. criminal legal institutions, this is a book for anyone seeking to understand the prison industrial complex from a human perspective. 

All author royalties from this book will be donated to Dances for Solidarity, a project that brings arts opportunities to people incarcerated in solitary confinement.

The Book of Judith: Opening Hearts Through Poetry

Edited by Spoon Jackson, Mark Foss, and Sara Press

The Book of Judith honors Judith Tannenbaum and echoes her own determination to perceive contradiction without judgment. For the next generation of teaching artists in Corrections and elsewhere, the book serves as an inspiration on the qualities needed to survive and thrive in a multi-faceted, ever-changing environment.

More on The Book of Judith here.

Risking a Somersault in the Air: Conversations with Nicaraguan Writers (Revised edition)

By Margaret Randall

First published in 1984, Risking a Somersault in the Air is a collection of interviews with fourteen of Nicaragua’s most important writers-revolutionaries. Filling in the gaps with new photographs and updates on the writers in the time since the original edition, the book looks at the sacrifices, conflicts, and solutions of the creative artists of Nicaragua’s revolution. Randall shows how Nicaragua, like its poetry, is an expression of great love, imagination, and liberation.

American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice

Edited by William Reichard
Foreword by Ted Kooser
with contributions by Elizabeth Alexander, Linda Hogan, and Sherman Alexie

This new anthology of contemporary American poetry, short fiction and nonfiction, explores issues of identity, oppression, injustice, and social change.

By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives

By Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson

A two-person memoir that explores education, prison, possibility, and which children our world nurtures and which it shuns. At the book’s core are two stories that speak up for human imagination, spirit, and the power of art.