Janet Mason’s new book is a novel, Hitching to Nirvana (Cycladic Press, $11.95 pb).  Hitching to Nirvana is a tale of midlife and adolescence.  Adrianne, a 45 year old photographer, has been running from her past all of her adult life.  When time calls on her to care for her elderly father and she returns to the working class tract house neighborhood where she grew up, the news that her old high school best friend has died resurrects the ghosts from her adolescence in the 70s.  The girls are modern Maenads – shining, wild, and doomed, trying to escape their soul deadening lives with alcohol, sex, and drugs.  When Adrianne hits turbulence in midlife – her long-term relationship hanging by a thread, a new love interest beckoning,  her job soon to be nonexistent – she finds that she must return to the past before she can go on.  Poet Maria Fama describes the novel as “experimental in the best sense of the word.  The writing takes chances that lead to a greater understanding of class, gender, mythology, love, friendship, and family.”

Philadelphia poet Jim Cory’s work has appeared, among many other places, in several landmark gay poetry anthologies such as Son of the Male Muse and A Day for a Lay. He’s published seven chapbooks of poems with more to come and will be reading from work that’s been published in the last year as well as from a work-in-progress called 777.