Although glitter from our Valentine's Day Card Contest still lingers on the floor of my office, it’s time again for you creative types to submit to another Alibi-exclusive competition. Yup, our fifth annual Photo Contest is officially in swing. This year's hoop-de-do is open to all styles of photography and unbound by categories, making it a photo free-for-all. Are you submittin' yet? Good. E-mail your digital images to amy@alibi.com or snail mail a few prints to Alibi Photo Contest, 2118 Central SE PMB 151, Albuquerque, N.M. 87106. All entries must be received by Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 5 p.m. There is a maximum of five photos per person. Winning entries will be reproduced in our March 13 issue and the photographers will receive prize packs to make any shutterbug swoon. Submit!

No, this isn’t a live-action version of the computer-animated film from 2005. You remember the one, right? With the usual menagerie of cutesy but annoying animals voiced by the likes of Ben Stiller and Chris Rock?

“Sherman Alexie meets Junot Diaz,” reads one of the many glowing blurbs for Dagoberto Gilb’s new novel, The Flowers. But “Kurt Vonnegut meets Philip Roth” may be a far more apt comparison. The Flowers reveals a writer at the height of his powers, at ease with characters both unique and archetypal, a plot that caroms like a heat-seeking missile, and thematic concerns from the many faces of love, racial prejudice and violence, and hope in spite of shattered dreams.