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Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.    The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743077572881,"sku":"NGR9781637680353","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51042607137041,"sku":"NIN9781637680353","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51325827383569,"sku":"CIN163768035XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/163768035X.jpg?v=1750721129"},{"product_id":"myth-of-pterygium-book-diego-gerard-morrison-9781637680292","title":"Myth of Pterygium","description":"The story of a failed poet struggling with vision loss, personal crises, and what it means to be an arms dealer in a quasi-dystopian Mexico City.     This debut novel is set in a vaguely dystopian, yet also realistic, Mexico City—endless traffic jams, relentless clouds of pollution, economic hardships, and the ever-present threat of drug cartels. The unnamed narrator of the novel, at times referred to as Arthur—in part because of the growing similarity of his life with Arthur Rimbaud’s—struggles with the dissonance of leading an artistic life while providing for his family. A failed, penniless poet with a child on the way, he is forced to take a job in his family’s weapons dealing enterprise, which he soon discovers is connected to the corrupt Mexican armed forces and drug cartels, who are responsible for the increasing death toll in the country. All the while, the narrator struggles with a growing condition in his right eye, a pterygium, that is slowly taking over his vision, blurring the events of his life, including his wife’s complicated pregnancy, extortions by the drug cartels, and his own relationship to his writing. As the narrator gradually finds his life spiraling out of control, the novel moves quickly to a startling conclusion.  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Duncan conjures her home, the New Jersey Shore, in clear and unsentimental lines: “Call of the grackle, \/ whine of the turkey vulture. Blighted clams, \/\/ raw and red in their half-shells.” Duncan’s poems also explore the devastation brought to this place and its community by Superstorm Sandy and the continued impacts of climate change.     Interwoven into this thread is the narrator’s miscarriage; the parallels between the desecrated landscape and the personal catastrophe further contribute to the layers of tenderness in this collection, as Duncan urges us to remember and to witness. Despite tragedy and loss, Given is imbued with persistent, dogged hope, showing how survival persists amongst the wreckage, and from this debris is a path towards healing our grief.  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Playful and experimental, these sixteen stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where structures of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply. The protagonists grapple with the roles they choose and with those that are thrust upon them as they navigate their ever-evolving emotional lives. A woman lists her vagina on Airbnb, Sleeping Beauty is a yoga teacher who lies in state on the dais of her mother’s studio, and a museum intern writes a confession of her affair in the form of a hijacked museum audio guide.    Half-Lives is the 2023 Rising Writer Prize winner, selected by Matt Bell.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753549865233,"sku":"NGR9781637680919","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49763410641169,"sku":"CIN1637680910G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51043205644561,"sku":"NIN9781637680919","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816185131281,"sku":"CIN1637680910VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1637680910.jpg?v=1751151494"},{"product_id":"magdalena-is-brighter-than-you-think-book-grace-spulak-9781637681169","title":"Magdalena Is Brighter than You Think","description":"\"With care and attention to its brilliantly complicated and kaleidoscopic characters, Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think is a breathtaking collection that is rooted in place, people, and the full scope of who you are and who you get to be. Exploring queerness, gender, poverty, generational trauma, and the ways in which we are formed and form others, the stories in this collection have the scope of sagas and the intimacy of untold secrets.\" —K-Ming Chang, author of Exhausted Monsters    “Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for April 2026,” Autostraddle “Our Most Anticipated Books of 2026,” Chicago Review of Books “Reads for the Rest of Us: The Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026,” Ms. Magazine     Inventive and emotionally nuanced, Grace Spulak’s debut story collection explores the complexities of gender, queerness, trauma, and resilience through characters who live in the margins and imagine new ways to survive there.   Pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives and forms, these stories suggest paths for picking up our pieces—and for transforming and escaping the realities that constrain us. 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And a separating couple embarks on one last errand together to unburden themselves of an unsettling memento.   Set in rural New Mexico—a place of isolation, strange beauty, and potential transformation—this collection offers unexpected flashes of grace and hope.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53113437716753,"sku":"NGR9781637681169","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53338952466705,"sku":"NIN9781637681169","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53595582791953,"sku":"NLS9781637681169","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/autumn-house-press-rising-writer-prize-ser-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}