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Author/illustrator Jeanette Winter creates award-winning children's books on some very complicated subjects: She has explored other cultures, from Mali to Mexico, and has introduced the lives of artists as varied as Georgia O' Keeffe and Emily Dickinson to young readers.

Newmarket Press is packing some hot material in a brown paper bag. Well, at least it's designed to look like a brown paper bag. It's actually the cover of the trade paperback Kinsey: Public and Private, the official tie-in to the film Kinsey, which explores the life of famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.

While the recent announcement of the 2004 National Book Award finalists included many unfamiliar names, one very familiar name in publishing came up twice in the same category. Nominated for the Young People's Literature award were two titles bearing Little, Brown's Megan Tingley Books imprint: Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance by Laban Carrick Hill and Luna: A Novel by Julie Anne Peters.

Now that the presidential and vice-presidential debates are behind us and election day is less than two weeks away, all that's left to do is scrutinize and re-scrutinize the various shifting polls, bite your nails, rail to sympathetic ears or at unsympathetic ones, and read. Reading about the candidates, as the high number of political bestsellers shows, is how many are responding to a seemingly interminable wait until November 2.

Given the bucolic setting, poetic prose, and transcendental themes of The Green Age of Asher Witherow (Unbridled) -- a book that takes place in the late-19th-century coal-mining region of Northern California -- it comes as no surprise to learn that M.

Claude Anshin Thomas recounted the meditation retreat he attended in 1990, a gathering for Vietnam War veterans led by the renowned Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a profound experience for the decorated combat vet. "When I first heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak about Buddhist practice and principles, it was clear that the Vietnamese were no longer my enemy," Thomas told BTW in a recent interview. "If I had still seen the Vietnamese as my enemy, then I was still an enemy to myself and separate from my own humanity.

Five authors in six cities in six nights. That's the plan for the 2004 First Fiction Tour, which will bring five debut authors representing five publishing houses to venues on the West Coast and in the Southwest from October 17 - 22. An independent bookstore in each of the six cities has organized an event that will be hosted onstage at a local bar. "It'll be like a rock 'n' roll show," said Craig Popelars, director of marketing for participating publisher Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

From its beginnings, the Book Sense program has underscored the singular relationships between independent booksellers and authors. BTW is pleased to occasionally feature "Book Sense One-on-One," in which the bookseller who has nominated a title as a Book Sense Pick interviews that title's author.

Man Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist Announced

The six shortlisted books for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2004, announced this week, are Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, (Kwela Books); The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber); The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (Bloomsbury USA); Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (Random House); the June 2004 Book Sense Pick The Master by Colm Toibin (Scribner); and I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward (Vintage).

From her spot behind the counter at Diesel: A Bookstore, in Oakland, California, bookseller Melissa Lion recommends great reading from her current favorite genre, young adult fiction.

Christopher McCabe

Booksellers, publishers, and other industry professionals attending BookExpo America 2005, to be held in New York City from June 2 to 5, will see a new face as they travel up and down the aisles of the s