Spare Change News is the nationÕs oldest street newspaper. Since 1992, the paper has been covering issues other media often ignore Ñ inequality, homelessness, culture and resistance. Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and those Touched by Homelessness, spans over 15 years of poetry the paper has published.

Poetry by Jennifer Barber, Michael Casey, Gary Metras, Jim Kelly and more..... Well, it is time for yet another Ibbetson Street. We are celebrating our 20th anniversary. That's a long time in the small press world. On the front and back covers of this issue, you can view the evocative paintings of Bridget Seley-Galway-a longtime contributor to Ibbetson Street. It has been an active few months for Ibbetson Street. Since we last talked, we published a new collection edited by Lee Varon and Marc Goldfinger, Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and those Touched by Homelessness. And the Ibbetson Street Press YoungPoet Series (directed by Emily Pineau) has released a new collection of poetry by a talented undergraduate, Daniel Calnan, entitled To Move a Piano.

“Here is a life story so unbelievable, it could only be true.” —Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street From bestselling author of the remarkable memoir The Distance Between Us comes an inspiring account of one woman’s quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and aspiring writer determined to build a new life for her family one fearless word at a time. As an immigrant in an unfamiliar country, with an indifferent mother and abusive father, Reyna had few resources at her disposal. Taking refuge in words, Reyna’s love of reading and writing propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Although her acceptance is a triumph, the actual experience of American college life is intimidating and unfamiliar for someone like Reyna, who is now estranged from her family and support system. Again, she finds solace in words, holding fast to her vision of becoming a writer, only to discover she knows nothing about what it takes to make a career out of a dream. Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to “a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild); a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist whose “power is growing with every book” (Luis Alberto Urrea, Pultizer Prize finalist); and a proud mother of two beautiful children who will never have to know the pain of poverty and neglect. Told in Reyna’s exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure.

There were eccentric characters in the hotel. The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words. There were the Rougiers, for instance, an old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extraordinary trade. They used to sell postcards on the Boulevard St Michel. The curious thing was that the postcards were sold in sealed packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy managed to be always half starved and half drunk. The filth of their room was such that one could smell it on the floor below. According to Madame F., neither of the Rougiers had taken off their clothes for four years.

Poetry of the Holocaust is a ground-breaking anthology of translated poetry written during, or about, the Holocaust. Featuring the work of over 90 poets writing in 20 languages, this multilingual anthology includes many poems translated into English for the very first time.

Drawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan Coop boards, Where We Stand is a successful black woman's reflection--personal, straight forward, and rigorously honest--on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them.

The poetry and prose in the collection explore the deep love instilled in a people for themselves and their homeland even as they battle loss in San Francisco's Mission District.