THE WORD IS OUT!!
THE BALLAD OF THE FUGITIVE WILLIAM PARKER
A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America.
Coming Out September 8, 2026! Pre-Order Your Copy TODAY!
An extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels. The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker is a stylish, propulsive, in!mately human tale of farmers, socialites, and self-emancipated folk with little in common who came together to stand against injus!ce… and won.
“ The Ballad Of The Fugitive William Parker is brilliant and incredibly engaging… Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz takes to the story with a poet's heart and mind, which means that it is a story rich with the curiosity of someone who is as excited to tell it, as you will be to hear it.
I left this book thinking about how incredible it is to have a story of community-based resistance, at any time, but specifically at this time.”
Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction writer and poet. She is the author of eight books of poetry as well as the nonfiction books, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, which made 7 National “Best Books of 2014″ lists (including Amazon, The Onion’s AV Club, NPR’s Science Fridays and the UK newspaper The Guardian, among others) and Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, which Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.”
Cristin’s awards include the ArtsEdge Writer-In-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2011), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (2011) and the Amy Clampitt Residency (2013). Her eighth book of poetry, Against Vanishing, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2025. She has won the Writers’ League of Texas Book of the Year Award for Poetry (2013-2014). Her second book of nonfiction, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, was released by Gotham Books (Penguin) in Fall 2014, debuted at #7 on the New York Times Bestseller List for Books about Health and would stay on it for three months.
Her newest non-fiction book The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America will be released in Fall 2026. A seventh generation Pennsylvanian, Cristin lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Ernest Cline, and their family.
Classics
from
Cristin
DR. MUTTER’S MARVELS
17.00 PAPERBACK
HOW TO LOVE THE EMPTY AIR
$18.00 PAPERBACK
THE YEAR OF NO MISTAKES
$18.00 PAPERBACK
“…poet and writer Aptowicz, a woman whose various awards and publications attest to her formidable skill and style when dealing with an impressive diversity of subjects… provide[s] such a thorough and compelling account of Mütter’s life and times, his medical innovations and personal fortitude, his enduring legacy, as is to be found between the well-designed covers of this new book.”
⎯ The Austin Chronicle
New York Times Bestseller, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels
"Ms. Aptowicz rescues Mütter the man from undeserved obscurity, recreating his short life and hard times with wit, energy and gusto. Her book, like the Mütter Museum, is a reminder that the course of human suffering and the progress of medical science are often messy, complex and stranger than can be imagined." -- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Spoken Word is History
Author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz situates New York slam poetry in the history of oral tradition in poetry throughout history and around the world, with particular attention to the three major 20th century arts movements that helped set the stage for it: the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, and hip hop. Aptowicz explores the birth of slam at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café and the genre’s explosive growth as the media responded with events like Lollapalooza and MTV’s Unplugged. The book expands the canvas by examining the connections between academia and slammers, especially the poets of color, the youth slammers, and the burgeoning hip hop poetry scene. Interviews with key players like Chicago’s Marc Smith and San Francisco’s Gary Mex Glazner help tell this fascinating story from the inside.
Coming to Bookstores Nationwide in Fall 2026!
Coming to Bookstores Nationwide in Fall 2026!