Every First Fifteenth

Dimitri Reyes describes his chapbook Every First & Fifteenth as "an ode to the month-to-month living, bodega store shopping, lotto ticket scratching, bus catching, 99-cent-Wednesday-washing existences of energy..." Situated in Newark, New Jersey's urban landscape of multi-lingual communities, Reyes' narrator, a street corner bard guided by the spirit of Jerry Gant, takes us on a journey of language alternations. Each poem is a negotiation between life on the streets and the joyful and sometimes perilous quest for self-discovery. Traversing the desires of wanting to fit in, to get something, to say something in secret - Reyes' eclectic poetic forms embody the duende, the cri de coeur, the hand-to-mouth hustle of life.

Wildly original, funny and moving, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is an extraordinary story of a life lived again and again from World Fantasy Award-winning author Claire North. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

In 1998, an Asian woman first joined the ranks of federal judges with lifetime appointments. It took ten years for the second Asian woman to be appointed. Since then, however, over a dozen more Asian women have received lifetime federal judicial appointments. This book tells the stories of the first fifteen. In the process, it recounts remarkable tales of Asian women overcoming adversity and achieving the American dream, despite being the daughters of a Chinese garment worker, Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II, Vietnamese refugees, and penniless Indian immigrants. Yet The First Fifteen also explores how far Asian Americans and women still have to go before the federal judiciary reflects America as a whole. In a candid series of interviews, these judges reflect upon the personal and professional experiences that led them to this distinguished position, as well as the nerve-wracking political process of being nominated and confirmed for an Article III judgeship. By sharing their diverse stories, The First Fifteen paints a nuanced portrait of how Asian American women are beginning to have a voice in determining American justice.