Steve Almond has a little fun with Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and others at Fox News in this trailer for his story collection God Bless America, forthcoming from Lookout Books in October. 

In this excerpt from P.O.P. (Poets on Poetry), an ongoing documentary shot and edited by Rachel Eliza Griffiths in partnership with the Academy of American Poets, poet Carl Phillips, whose eleventh collection, Double Shadow, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011, reads a poem and talks about a song that matches the mood of the poems he’s been writing lately.

In September Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish South African author Jacques Strauss's debut novel, The Dubious Salvation of Jack V., about eleven-year-old Jack Viljee, whose hometown of Johannesburg in 1989 is still ruled by apartheid.

Seth Fried, whose story collection The Great Frustration was published by Soft Skull Press in May, finds a simple way of getting good placement of his debut book in the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York City.

Percival Everett, whose nineteenth novel, Assumption, will be published by Graywolf Press in November, discusses the role of art in society.

Terese Svoboda's fifth novel, Bohemian Girl, forthcoming from Bison Books next month, is one of twelve new and noteworthy books featured in the latest installment of Page One. Watch the trailer then read an excerpt from the first chapter.

Simon & Schuster employees have a little fun reading from Nicholson Baker's new erotic novel, House of Holes, which was reviewed on the cover of last Sunday's New York Times Book Review by Sam Lipsyte, who called it a "hideously glorious filthfest."

The official pub date for Justin Torres’s We the Animals (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is September 1, but already the debut novel is racking up superlatives typically reserved for more established authors. Michael Cunningham calls it “heartbreaking” and “beautiful.” Paul Harding calls it “an indelible and essential work of art.” And Benjamin Percy, in the current issue of Esquire, calls it “a knock to the head that will leave your mouth agape.”

Published this month by Melville House, Christopher Boucher's novel, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, tells the story of a newspaper reporter living in western Massachusetts and trying to raise his son, a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. To promote the book, Boucher yesterday set off on a road trip from Los Angeles to Boston in a 1972 Beetle.

Ukranian-born singer-songwriter Alina Simone released her latest album, Meet Your Own Danger, in June, the same month Faber and Faber published her first book, a collection of essays titled You Must Go and Win. Here's Simone performing "My Love Is a Mountain" at Union Hall in New York City.