Edward Sanders, poet, historian and musician, is the author of America, a History in Verse, a nine-volume history of the United States, 1450-2000, three volumes of which have been published. The five volumes comprising the 20th century have been completed. An indexed CD package, America, a History in Verse, the 20th Century, featuring the first five volumes of the project, totalling more than 2,000 pages, will be published in the fall of 2008 by Blake Route Press. Other books in print include Tales of Beatnik Glory (4 volumes published in a single edition), 1968, a History in Verse; The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg; The Family, a history of the Charles Manson murder group; and Chekhov, a biography in verse of Anton Chekhov. Sanders has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in verse, and an American Book Award for his collected poems, among other awards. Sanders was the founder of the satiric folk/rock group, The Fugs, which has released numerous albums and CDs during its 44 year history. The most recent Fugs releases are The Fugs Final CD (Part 1, 2003), and a four-CD boxed set, Don’t Stop! Don’t Stop! (2008) which features over four hours of early Fugs recordings, two hours of which have never previously been released. His 2007 CD, “Poems for New Orleans,” featuring spoken text with musical accompaniment, was released by Paris Records, and was chosen as the best poetry CD of 2007 by the website poetry.about.com. The book version of Poems for New Orleans has been published by North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House, designed by Susan Quasha, with a brilliant cover image by Shawn Hall. Two of his books, The Family, and Tales of Beatnik Glory, are under option to be made into films. Kazuko Shiraishi is one of Japan’s foremost poets, and the most internationally acclaimed. She has published more than twenty books of poetry including Seasons of Sacred Lust (1975, edited by Kenneth Rexroth), A Canoe Returns to the Future (1978), Sand Families (1982), Let Those Who Appear (1996) and The Running of the Full Moon (2004). At the age of 17 Shiraishi became a member of the VOU surrealist group led by Katsue Kitasono. In the 1960’s, following such poets as Rexroth and Ginsberg, she advanced the jazz-poetry performance to an art form in Japan. Her poems have been translated into more than 20 languages. New Directions will publish her collection My Floating Mother, City in early 2009. Ms. Shiraishi will be accompanied by jazz trumpeter Itaru Oki.