"Kilmer Watts makes his living teaching piano lessons, but when automatic pianos arrive in town, he realizes he's out of a job. He spots a "Help Wanted" sign at the poem factory and decides to investigate -- he's always been curious about how poems are made. The foreman explains that machines and assembly lines are used for poetry these days. So Kilmer learns how to operate the "meter meter" and empty the "cliché bins." He assembles a poem by picking out a rhyme scheme, sprinkling in some similes and adding alliteration. But one day the machines malfunction, and there is a dramatic explosion at the poem factory. How will poetry ever survive? Kyle Lukoff's funny story, rich in wordplay, is complemented by Mark Hoffmann's lively, quirky art. The backmatter includes definitions of poetic feet, types of poems (with illustrated examples) and a glossary of other terms."--

A special twenty-fifth anniversary edition relaunches this beloved classic coming-of-age nove, which was called "one of those rare delights... as wise as it is funny" (Alix Kates Shulman, Ms. magazine). This endearing novel chronicles the growth of the young Allegra in pre-World War II Brooklyn as she learns about sex, death, bigotry, family limitations, and what it means to be young and female and independent. Marketing Plans for "Allegra Maud Goldman": Advance review copies to booksellers Twenty-fifth anniversary press kit Strong media push Edith Konecky is the author of a second novel, "A Place at the Table," as well as short fiction and poetry.

"An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capitol of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater).The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar, where conversations are actually being read from multiple karaoke screens arrayed around the barroom. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite," when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters."--Publisher.