Books in the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction series

An exploration of perfection. Study in Perfect winds its way around and through the many permutations of this most hermetic and exalted concept and proceeds with the full consciousness that perfection's exact definition is subjective, reliant on who is speaking, and easily unmoored by time, geography, and the vagaries of taste.

This work blends poetry with narrative, ethnography with autobiography, and philosophy with literature. It begins and ends with meditations on place, the first an excavation of the underground depths of New York City and the conclusion a travelogue of Italy.

This is Jill Christman's account of her first 30 years. Her story runs the gamut of dramatic life events, including childhood sexual abuse, accidental death and psychological trauma, but her memoir is more than a litany of horrors: it is an open-eyed, wide-hearted look at a life worth surviving.

Gives a portrait of the resilience and richness of the natural world in Philadelphia and of the ways that gardening can connect nature to urban space. This book explores the city as a part of its ecosystem and animates the lives of individual gardeners and naturalists working in the area around her home.