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

At forty, Sarah Einstein is forced to face her own shortcomings. She must come to terms with the facts that she is not tough enough for her job managing a local drop-in centre and that her new marriage is already faltering. Just as she reaches her breaking point, she meets Mot, a homeless veteran who lives a life dictated by frightening delusion.

One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. Eschewing sentimentality, this memoir offers a meditation on what it means to hunger and shows that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down.