The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg

by Mike Karpa

The author of delightful CRIMINALS (Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2022) and RED DOT, Karpa published a novel he’s been workshopping on Tuesday nights, THE WEALTHY WHITES OF WILLIAMSBURG. As a very positive Kirkus review puts it, this is a story of “an affluent Brooklyn family navigates family drama, career trouble, and long-kept secrets.” Told by several members of this family, this story pulls together several threads, each of which develops in unexpected ways, coming together at the end.

Buy this book on Amazon.

Sinking the Arc

by Tamim Ansary

Our own Tamim Ansary, who moderated the workshop for many years, has a new novel out! Published by Kajaki Press, it tells the story of a fictional “alternative” weekly in Portland, Oregon, the Rose City Ark, the newspaper of the city’s counterculture. In 1974, the paper embarks on a bold experiment: to dispense with all hierarchy and embrace pure democracy: no more managing editor, no more assigned roles, no more some-people-telling-other-people-what-to-do: under the new plan, every person will decide for themselves how to contribute to the paper.

Buy this book now on Amazon (and rate and review!)

Seven Fabulist Comedies

by Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller

Conrad and Elizabeth have been writing and performing together since 1971, running a theater ensemble, The Independent Eye. Their latest book, Seven Fabulist Comedies, is a compendium of plays they have produced over the years, some inspired by commedia dell’arte, and including solo shows, an urban fantasy, and a surreal black comedy.

This book is available for sale on their website.

Metamorphosis of a Bully: And Other Stories

by Luciano Aldana

A collection of linked stories that begins in a barrio on the southern side of the US-Mexico border. It’s 1950s, and a fearless sailor suddenly appears in the barrio and metamorphoses into a fearful bully of the town. He is a streetfighter with predisposition to fight. He provokes a young man who runs his family’s store. The young man gives him a good fight and this infuriates the bully so much that he swears to kill him . . .

This book is available for sale on Amazon.

Muslim American Writers at Home: Stories, Essays and Poems of Identity, Diversity and Belonging

Edited by Valerie Behiery, Kitty Costello and Hanan Hazime

This timely collection allows us to hear firsthand the amazingly diverse voices of North American Muslim writers speaking for themselves. Stereotypes are overturned on every page. Shaped by an impressive interweaving of cultures, languages and ethnicities, these writers reflect on what it means to find home-especially when prejudices and distortions abound-and how powerful it can be to feel heard, recognized, welcomed. Through stories, essays and poems, they share their family lore, spiritual journeys, childhood dreams, and memories of homes they left. They offer prayers for our world.

The book is available for sale from Freedom Voices publishing.

The Book of Bastards

by Ransom Stephens

Short-lived, hopeful tales of worthy knights, wizards, and druids emerged from every festival and fair. Crazy rumors of renegade princes and princesses popped up now and then, usually following the narrative of one old myth or another. A favorite involved peasants kissing toads and being transformed into royalty, but most of the gossip followed the usual theme: orphans and bastards, in out-of-the way villages unaware of their lineage, being manipulated by unsavory halflings. The Book of Bastards is a rollicking, riveting tale. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll sing! You’ll need a drink.

Trial by Fire

by Scott James

Trial by Fire tells a story of a devastating fire at a nightclub in Rhode Island that killed 100 people and injured hundreds. It took fifteen years to find out why this happened and who was responsible. Bestselling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Scott James, who was also a San Francisco Writers Workshop regular earlier in his career, investigates all the central figures. Drawing on firsthand accounts, interviews with many involved, and court documents, James explores the rush to judgment about what happened that left the victims and their families, whose stories he also tells, desperate for justice.

On Sale October 27, 2020. Preorders encouraged.

The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000 Year History of Human Conflict, Culture, and Connection

By Tamim Ansary

The Invention of Yesterday is a global history of the human journey from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age. It is built on the premise that the history of the world is a story we’re telling one another; and since there is no single circle of storytellers, there are many “world-histories”. This book looks at how various great world-historical narratives formed, and how they’ve interacted, and how they’ve meshed to form bigger stories, and how all the stories intertwining are, themselves, on the way to forming a single big story of our human journey on this planet. 

Find it wherever books are sold.

LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES

By Olga Zilberbourg

LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES is officially out now and available for purchase from WTAW Press. It’s also available on Amazon.

With settings that range from the Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet-era Perestroika to present-day San Francisco, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES, the first English-language collection from Leningrad-born author Olga Zilberbourg, looks at family and childrearing in ways both unsettling and tender, and characters who grapple with complicated legacies—of state, parentage, displacement, and identity. LIKE WATER is a unique portrayal of motherhood, of immigration and adaptation, and an inside account of life in the Soviet Union and its dissolution. Zilberbourg’s stories investigate how motherhood reshapes the sense of self—and in ways that are often bewildering—against an uncharted landscape of American culture.