This inaugural volume of The &Now Awards recognizes the most provocative, hardest-hitting, deadly serious, patently absurd, cutting-edge, avant-everything-and-nothing work from the years 2004-2009. The &Now Awards features writing as a contemporary art form: writing as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as an art, and as a practice explicitly aware of its own literary and extra-literary history. This work is as much about its form, materials, and language, as it about its subject matter. The &Now conference - moving from the University of Notre Dame (2004), Lake Forest College (2006), Chapman University (2008), and the University at Buffalo (2009) - sets the stage for this aesthetic, while The &Now Awards features work from the wider world of innovative publishing and serves as an ideal survey of the contemporary scene.