This was the only nonfiction submission we received, and it looks like a goodie so we're leading with it. Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world, becoming a powerful and influential voice for human rights around the globe. She was an activist human rights lawyer, spent 20 years in the Irish Senate, was Ireland's first woman president, and was the UN high commissioner for human rights. Her book Everybody Matters inspires readers to know that each person can, in their own way, help to change the world for the better. 

Another Irish one — the saga of the struggle between hard-living farmers and the church, set in rural Ireland in the 1950s, when poverty and church-led attacks on Celtic traditions forced Irish farmers into exile. The book describes not only a struggle between Catholic and pagan but also between classes, and between town and country. The Bodhran is a drum made from goat skin, and the Bodhran makers are poverty stricken people who never lost their dignity. 

The story of a fictional Old Hollywood star who, at age 79, gives a final interview to an unknown journalist. It's been translated for print into Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Serbian, Greek, Turkish, Lithuanian, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, French, Slovak, Hungarian, German, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, and Chinese in case you'd prefer one of those. The husbands include Poor Ernie Diaz; Goddamn Don Adler; Gullible Mick Riva; Clever Rex North; Brilliant, Kindhearted, Tortured Harry Cameron; Disappointing Max Girard; and Agreeable Robert Jamison. Sounds like a hoot. 

The satirical and darkly humorous WWII war novel often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses famously confusing opaque language, a non-linear plot, and story elements that alternate between highly grounded, bizarre, and horrific with great speed. Despite this, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, said that Catch-22 was the only war novel she ever read that made sense. 

A tragicomedy set in New Orleans starring Ignatius Reilly: slob extraordinaire, a fat Don Quixote and perverse Thomas Aquinas in revolt against the entire modern age, who between seizures of flatulence and eructations fills dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective. His mother thinks he needs to go to work. His girlfriend thinks he needs sex. Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, and glutton with gargantuan bloats and thunderous contempt in a one-man war against everybody and everything: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the excesses of modern times.And Mark's fave is...

Set in a primitive future society and told in a pidgin mishmash of broken, phonetically-spelled English with words deconstructed and reconstructed... where the vocabulary of atomic physics has been composted with bits of Christian theology, pre-Christian belief, and post-disaster invention. Twelve-year-old Riddley Walker tells his story in a language as fractured as the world in which he lives, wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape to find out what brought humanity here. As Riddley steps outside the confines of his small world, he finds himself caught up in intrigue and a frantic quest for power, desperately trying to make sense of things.Riddley Walker is probably most like Catch 22 — with none of the comedy, and the language play jacked up to 11. It's also like The Bodhran Makers though, with that repressive religious stuff. Riddley Walker is set in southeast England, about as far from Ireland as you can get in England, but Ireland and England are both in northeastern Europe so it's comfy enough to geographically lump it together with Everybody Matters and The Bodhran Makers. If we thought hard enough about it, we could probably force some overlap with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and A Confederacy of Dunces, but we can feel a piece of brain becoming lodged in our head so we're not going to push it.Here's an unexpected surprise — a friend of Stage 33 Live has offered to underwrite a pair of tickets for each of the contest participants beyond the first set.... everyone is a winner! A few more people get to enjoy the show, and the performers get paid a little more. How completely cool is that? The room is currently about half full. Plenty of space for more people with good folk taste.You winners with tickets headed your way, we'll be in contact directly by email shortly.