From the Stacks: September 29, 2006

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Light Work has been promoting up-and-coming photographers for more than 30 years, and the organization's publication, Contact Sheet, is one of the oldest art photography magazines available. Issue No. 137 is the special Light Work Annual, showcasing the work of photographers selected for their exclusive artist-in-residence program based out of Syracuse University. Some highlights are Angelika Rinnhofer's modern-day take on paintings of Christian suffering, and Hank Willis Thomas' pictorial collaboration using GI Joe action figures to portray his cousin's violent death. -- Rachel Anderson

The Austin-based Texas Observer calls itself 'A Journal of Free Voices Since 1954.' Writers and editors plug away at that mission with tenacious political reporting (the Observer took top honors in political coverage in last year's Utne Independent Press Awards), but there's also fine fodder for the mind in the magazine's 'Books and the Culture' section. The Sept. 22 literary lineup is diverse, with a local focus, containing an interview with '[p]oet, professor, human rights activist, and well-known Austinite Raúl Salinas,' and poems on death and deadbeat dads by Jesse Herrera and Trinidad Sanchez Jr., respectively. In 'The Real Facts of Life,' a review of Texas author Antonya Nelson's Some Fun, Emily Rapp picks apart the complexities of Nelson's novella, citing characters whose lives oscillate between their external social lives and their secret lives of pleasure and disaster. They are characters, says Rapp, who find grace within the messes they make of life. -- Suzanne Lindgren

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