In 2000, I participated in an international artist workshop entitled "La Llama" (The Flame), on the Hacienda Tacata Arriba located approximately one hundred kilometers away from Caracas in the valleys of Tuy, Venezuela. This was the year after "Los Deslaves" (The Washaways), where thousands of Venezuelans were washed into the Caribbean Sea by landslides caused by days of torrential rain. This intense workshop became a period of reflection during which I tried to make sense of the contingent relation between nature, culture and the socio-political dynamics at play in Venezuela's capital city. The dramatic scars I had witnessed on the Caribbean mountainside when landing at Maiquetia airport testified to the breakdown of the fragile balance in the relationship between man and nature. I realized for the workshop, a series of riverside installations that led to points of reflection within the tranquil beauty of the workshop site. These ephemeral installations - constructed alongside and within the Guaire River - were assembled with building materials found on the hacienda, echoing the precariousness of shantytowns. Each installation consisted of different found construction elements that were installed on locations which connected visually from one site to the next, leading one along the river into the forest. The last installation was a structure composed of three door panels that created a personal cabin right in the middle of the river, a space seemingly suspended in time, where one could ponder on questions provoked by this natural disaster.

"In Babel's Shadow is an ambitious, sophisticated book that addresses crucial, timely issues in the study of life-writing, translation, translingualism, literary theory, and linguistics. Its range is extensive and its erudition and intellectual calisthenies dazzling."---Steven G. Kellman, author of The Translingual Imagination --

Shamus Award–winning author Michael Sears brings Queens, New York, to literary life in this crime series debut featuring a somewhat seedy lawyer with a heart of gold (or at least gold plate). Queens, New York—the most diverse place on earth. Native son Ted Molloy knows these streets like the back of his hand. Ted was once a high-powered Manhattan lawyer, but after a spectacular fall from grace, he has found himself back on his home turf, scraping by as a foreclosure profiteer. It’s a grubby business, but a safe one—until Ted’s case sourcer, a mostly reformed small-time conman named Richie Rubiano, turns up murdered shortly after tipping Ted off to an improbably lucrative lead. With Richie’s widow on his back and shadows of the past popping up at every turn, Ted realizes he’s gotten himself embroiled in a murder investigation. His quest for the truth will take him all over Queens, plunging him into the machinations of greedy developers, mobsters, enraged activists, old litigator foes and old-school New York City operators.

A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner! A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think. Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel -- infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City -- Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love–a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.