Love Emiliano Ponzi's award-winning covers for Charles Bukowski books (some NSFW)

Anyone who’s ever read any Charles Bukowski knows it’s a fairly unforgiving experience. The brutalist bard of the stalled American Dream writes of drunks and dropouts, of seedy sex and unfulfilled potential, in a way that teeters on nihilism. To illustrate such a singular talent you need a creative with a similarly self-confident style, and Emiliano Ponzi certainly fits the bill. The artist has just won a gold medal at the Society of Illustrators New York for a series of Bukowski covers he did for Italian translations of the work, which communicate both the extraordinary books and the man behind them with atmospheric flair.