Soft Skull Press: 132 books

Pink stands out among writers who explore the thoughts and feelings we all have but hide or forget; he excavates moments of isolation, boredom, despair, and disgust with a singular honesty and humor. Pink writes with the minimalist humor and detachment of Mary Robison, the loving attention...

Written on the twentieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s death, Letter to Jimmy is African writer Alain Mabanckou’s ode to his literary hero and an effort to place Baldwin’s life in context within the greater African diaspora. Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along...

From Melville to Madoff, the Confidence Man is an essential American archetype. George Roy Hill’s 1973 film The Sting treats this theme with a characteristic dexterity. The movie was warmly received in its time, winning seven Academy Awards, but there were some who thought the movie was nothing...

Johns, Marks, Tricks & Chickenhawks: Professionals & Their Clients Writing about Each Other is the follow-up to Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, the groundbreaking anthology that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. "Eye-opening, astonishing, brutally honest...

From internationally acclaimed New Face of Fiction author Padma Viswanathan, a stunning new work set among families of those who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing, registering the unexpected reverberations of this tragedy in the lives of its survivors. A book of post-9/11 life, The Ever...

From the author of The Dogfighter, hailed by Geoff Dyer as “the most exciting debut…by an American writer since Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides,” comes Journeyman, a tightly wound novel about dwelling, building, belonging, love, and the value of a place to call home. Nolan Jackson is a journeyman...

When Pablo Escobar, Colombia's “King of Cocaine,” was killed, the world thought-or hoped-the cocaine industry would crumble. But ten years later the country's production had almost quadrupled, and since 2001, Colombia has produced more than 60% of all the cocaine consumed in the world. Cocaine...

Recently hailed by The New York Times as “An African Novelist Poised for Recognition in the U.S.,” Alain Mabanckou’s latest novel, Black Moses, was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize; this renewed spotlight provides the perfect opportunity to reissue one of his most celebrated works, Broken...

The way we absorb information has changed dramatically. Edison’s phonograph has been reincarnated as the iPod. Celluloid went digital. But books, for the most part, have remained the same-until now. And while music and movies have undergone an almost Darwinian evolution, the literary world now faces...

Michaelo O’Dell is hit by a car, and when he doesn’t die, he is surprised and pleased. But he can’t seem to move, frozen in the crash position. He can’t concentrate, or control his anger and grief, or work out what to do about much of anything. His professional life begins to crumble, and...

When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his “Anarcho-Sufi” hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned with his idol, Knight finds that his own...

Marian Lindberg grew up being told that Walter Lindberg, the man who raised her father, was a brave explorer who had been murdered in the Amazon. She took her father’s claims at face value, basking in her exotic roots, until she started to notice things. The unverified legend became a riddle she...

In her new collection, gifted poet and novelist Kim Addonizio uses her literary powers to bring to life a variety of settings, all connected through the suggestion that things in the known world are not what they seem. In “Beautiful Lady of the Snow,” young Annabelle turns to a host of family...

It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrator Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its...