<DIV><P>Praise for Peter Plate:</P><P>"His San Francisco is a fiery hell, where the devil rides in a squad car, and God doesn&rsquo;t deign to put in an appearance."&mdash;<I>San Francisco Chronicle</I></P><P>"Plate is to San Francisco what Hubert Selby, Jr. is to New York: a gritty, honest speaker for the grimy masses and their everyday struggle to not just survive but triumph."&mdash;<I>Willamette Week</I> (Portland, OR)</P><P>Pete Plate&rsquo;s newest novel is his best yet. One foggy day in San Francisco brings together bloody ghosts, a dandyish thug, capricious cops, a suicidal punk rocker, a hyper--literate slumlord and a sweet old lady sent by God to hand out cash from a hijacked armored car. In <I>Fogtown</I>, Plate uses a loving hand to carve his characters out of hallucination, perversity and tenacity. Plate&rsquo;s noir sensibility gives him special fluency with the weary souls of urban America&rsquo;s down and out. Fogtown describes an age unmistakeably built on the 20th century of Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski.</P><P>Peter Plate taught himself to write fiction during eight years spent squatting in abandoned buildings. He is the author of seven previous novels, including <I>One Foot Off the Gutter</I> (1995), <I>Snitch Factory</I> (1997), <I>Police and Thieves</I> (1999) and <I>Angels of Catastrophe</I> (2001), all published by Seven Stories Press. Plate lives in San Francisco, where, at spoken word concerts or readings, he has been known to speak his novels from memory.</P></DIV>