Another small press roundup!
September 3, 2024 10:16 AM Subscribe
Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control, My Lesbian Novel, Mojave Ghost, Sean the Stick, and 37 other small press titles under the fold.
2024 titles from former SPD presses:
ana c. buena by Valeria Román Marroquín, trans. Noah Mazer (26 Sept 2024, Cardboard House Press): In a searing manifesto-poem of late capitalist debt, hunger, and women’s labor, Valeria Román reconstructs the survival of young migrant and worker ana c. buena amid the so-called Peruvian "economic miracle" and its turbulent political space. (Asterism)
As They Say by Robert Manery (15 Mar 2024, BlazeVOX [books]): “Don’t we always have a situation?” Rob Manery asks in poetry that induces the levitating voice to subside, to hesitate, and to “quit the wrong way.” (Amazon; Asterism)
Bad Forecast by Steffan Triplett (30 Sept 2024, Essay Press): A hybrid memoir told in lyric and fractured prose, depicting grief not just in the aftermath of a tornado in southwest Missouri, but in all that is unearthed from the grounds of adolescence and young adulthood. Triplett is a Black, queer writer raised in Joplin, Missouri. (Asterism)
Be Broken to Be Whole: New & Selected Poems by Tom Crawford (9 July 2024, Empty Bowl): Tom Crawford was a birder, a contemplative, an activist, and an enthusiast whose writing—infused with Eastern thought and a sense of mysticism—explores the natural world and our complex connection to it. (Asterism)
book of provocations by mónica teresa ortiz (27 July 2024, Host Publications): Tender and radical, these poems offer an unflinching look into the present, which they see with a brutal clarity. (Asterism)
Clearly Kabouter: Chronicle of a Radical Dutch Movement, 1969-1974 by Coen Tasman (26 Mar 2024, Autonomedia): Coen Tasman offers us an authentic account of the collective effort to create a greener car-free city center, shops with pesticide-free food, resistance to the developer-generated housing shortage, and many other innovative ideas that came to public attention in exuberantly playful ways, both within and outside the City Council. (Amazon; AK Distribution)
Doll Seed: Stories by Michele Tracy Berger (1 Oct 2024, Aunt Lute Books): Playful and provocative, these speculative stories cover a wide territory including sci-fi, contemporary fantasy, weird, horror and magical realism. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Enjoying the Evening: Last Poems: 2018-2024 by Clemens Starck (15 Apr 2024, Empty Bowl): Like all of Starck's work, the poems in Enjoying the Evening are expertly crafted, always intelligent, and often humorous. (Asterism)
The Fire Road by Nicholas Yingling (15 Apr 2024, Barrow Street Press): Poetry. Against the demands of our neoliberal, extractivist hungers, Yingling insists on carving out a space for mutualism and obligation, forgiveness and recovery. (Amazon)
Friends with Everyone by Gunnar Wærness, trans. Gabriel Gudding (15 Apr 2024, Action Books): Leading Norwegian poet Gunnar Wærness has been called a “punk” poet and a “wizard” whose poetry is a “vortex of precision and musicality” that moves in “surprising, disturbing and at times incomprehensible ways.” With Friends with Everyone, Wærness has written a monstrous book about spirit, speech and empire, migration and grief, belonging and freedom, language attrition and the ideological capture of literature. (Asterism)
The Goodbye Kit by Daneen Bergland (Sept 2024, Airlie Press): Themes of transgression and longing infuse these poems about girlhood, marriage, parenthood, aging, and nature. (Asterism)
Memory's Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort Worden edited by Bob Francis (15 May 2024, Empty Bowl): A retrospective look at a powerful piece of public art and a community’s responses to it. Created in 1988 at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Memory’s Vault was designed by artist Richard Turner and features the poems of Sam Hamill, cofounder of Copper Canyon Press. This richly illustrated collection includes an essay by Turner, the full text of Hamill’s poem sequence, and contributions by local residents. (Asterism)
No More Flowers by Stephanie Cawley (17 Sept 2024, Birds, LLC): Poetry serves as a resistance against suffering—their own, their loved ones’, humanity’s. A protest against meaninglessness. An antidote. The poems in believe in their ability to affect consequences with language, while being self-aware enough to know how absurd that belief is. (Asterism)
Phone Plays by Sam Cottington (30 Apr 2024, Montez Press): Intended to be performed live over the phone, these plays invite readers and audience members alike to engage with a series of unclear relationships and scenarios, invoked and mediated by contemporary communication technology. (Amazon; Asterism)
Playlist: A Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems by Michael Turner (Jun 2024, Anvil Press): documents the life and practice of a writer who grew up in a musical household, and spent his early adult years as a touring musician and his later years programming nightclubs, hotels, galleries, and festivals. Modelled after the American folk music revival songbooks of the 1950s and 60s, Playlist fiddles with a two-part writing system that begins with the songbooks’ contextual introductions and ends with the songs — or in this instance, poems — to which they refer. (Asterism)
Raw Materials by Astrid Lorange (2024, Atelos): By the author of How Reading is Written: A Brief Index to Gertrude Stein, Homework, and Labour and Other Poems. (looks like ordering can only be done by emailing orders@atelos.org currently)
Sean the Stick by Kevin Sampsell, ill. Emma Jon-Michael Frank (22 Aug 2024, Future Tense Books): Is it an existential children’s tale? A weird book for all ages? Is it a story about a person who becomes best friends with a stick? Is it a love story about nature? Nature versus nurture? This beautiful book combines a Kevin Sampsell short story told in simple (yet emotionally vast) short sentences with colorful drawings by Emma Jon-Michael Frank. (Amazon; Asterism; Bookshop)
Small Measures by Mercedes Lawry (29 Mar 2024, ELJ Editions): An inventive and haunting collection that explores human loss and loneliness. (Itasca Books Distribution)
So-Lair Storm by Andrés Ajens, trans. Erín Moure (9 July 2024, Black Sun Lit): A poetry of articulation and dis/articulation, of artifice, of disengagement and dismemberment, So-Lair Storm moves between broken narratives, different materialities (letters, emails, diary fragments), critical essay, and experience. In his diverse cultural scaffolding, Ajens combines indigenous writing and languages, the history of Western literature, post-structuralist philosophy and linguistics, manipulating geographical and scriptural boundaries, breaking down, chewing and digesting language like no other. (Asterism)
Stasio: A Novel in Three Parts by Tamas Dobozy (15 July 2024, Anvil Press): This detective novel — presented in three distinct novellas — traces the ever-deepening involvement of the protagonist Anthony de Stasio in a series of political nightmares, from a cursed firearm in “Steyr Mannlicher” that leads him through the world of a single mother’s hardscrabble poverty; to the tormented life of a daughter imprisoned in a world her father built for her in “Photo Array”; to the workings of a mysterious postwar utopian cult that traffics street kids in an attempt to engineer a universal refusal of the vote in “The Unaffiliated.” (Asterism)
Surface Studies by Mike Corrao (15 Apr 2024, Action Books): “Mike Corrao takes ‘close reading’ to a new level of radical intensity. His writing about the sprawling literature of the US underground is driven by profound fascination; his experience of the texts is somatic and dynamic. If Sontag asked for an erotics to take the place of a hermeneutics, Corrao reveals that the two can exist as one.” -Johannes Göransson (Asterism)
Treasurer of Piggy Banks by Vinod Kumar Shukla, trans. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (15 Feb 2024, Circumference Books): Infiltrator or inhabitant? In Treasurer of Piggy Banks, Indian poet Vinod Kumar Shukla sees the world through both lenses at once. All details are local yet canonical, and when inside his lyric mind, we are rooted, and the roots are spreading far and wide. (Amazon; Asterism)
United Left by Álvaro Lasso, trans. Kelsi Vanada (31 Jan 2024, Eulalia Books): Peruvian poetry about a left that never was. (Asterism)
Victors: A Novel of Love, War and Jazz by Heather Buchanan (May 2024, Aquarius Press): One hero will risk it all to save the world . . . and the woman he loves. In late World War I France, disillusioned American soldier and musician Sgt. David Pierce fights the German enemy and tours the French countryside with the famed Harlem Hellfighters Band. These “Men of Bronze” ae not only brave soldiers, but talented musicians who are conquering Europe with a secret weapon—Jazz. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Washing a Myna by Hwang InChan, trans. Eun-Gwi Chung (1 Aug 2024, Black Square Editions): Washing a Myna unveils the myriad questions caused by the relationships of things and people, and curiosities about existential exercises generated by points where prosaic language does not reach. The poet seems to enjoy the subtle stimuli that come from revealing rather than giving them metaphorical names. (Asterism)
A Wellness Check by Bri Gonzalez (10 Sept 2024, Game Over Books): There, in the night sky, projected over city smog and ghost stars—the Rat Signal. Followed by the rev of the Ratmobile’s custom made engine and the inevitable slam of Asylum doors. Bri Gonzalez’s debut collection snatches a beloved caped crusader and spins him on his head. (Asterism)
*
2024 titles from non-former-SPD small presses:
Bad Houses by John Elizabeth Stintzi (Arsenal Pulp, 3 Sept 2024): Featuring Stintzi's own expressive ink illustrations, Bad Houses is a book that feels like it was penned by a trans Alice Munro mixed with a bubblier Franz Kafka. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control by Betsy Phillips (16 July 2024, Third Man Books): Award-winning historian Betsy Phillips uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950’s and early 1960s. The book also implicates both the FBI and local law enforcement agencies. No understanding of the violent nationwide white response to desegregation efforts then and white supremacist actions now can be complete without reading Dynamite Nashville. (Amazon; AK Distribution; Bookshop)
A Grand Love: Stories for Grandparents of Transgender Grandchildren by Janna Barkin (21 Aug 2024, Jessica Kingsley): Be Love. Be Patience. Be Curious. Be Approachable. Be Supported. (Amazon; Bookshop)
In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press, Sept 2024): Aliette de Bodard adds to her acclaimed Xuya universe with a brand new novella. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Liquid Snakes by Stephen Kearse (13 Aug 2024, Soft Skull): What if toxic pollutants traveled up the socioeconomic ladder rather than down it? A Black biochemist provides an answer in this wildly original novel of pollution, poison, and dark pleasure. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Tin House, 3 Sept 2024): An Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan. (Amazon; Bookshop)
My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman (Dorothy, 3 Sept 2024): The latest in writer and visual artist Renee Gladman's ever-expanding body of imaginative investigation is a sui generis novel of queerness and art-making, philosophy and sex. (Amazon; Bookshop)
States of Emergency by Chris Knapp (Unnamed, 3 Sept 2024): In the summer of 2015, a young couple--an American and his French wife--undergo fertility treatment in Paris. They settle in to wait for the results as a heatwave paralyzes the city. As the heat rises, a state of emergency is declared and tempers flare, leaving cracks in the foundation of their marriage. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Trial of Anna Thalberg by Eduardo Sangarcía, trans. Elizabeth Bryer (Restless Books, 10 Sept 2024): Winner of the 2020 Mauricio Achar Award. Set in the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation, Eduardo Sangarcía’s tale of one woman’s witch trial opens the door to deeper horrors. (Amazon; Bookshop)
*
Bonus! A separate list of books by independent presses which appear on Bookshop.org’s Most Anticipated list (20% off until September 8th at 11:59pm PST with the code CANTWAIT):
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva (24 Sept 2024, Zando - Hillman Grad Books): The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness, showing us that sickness is a fact of life. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao (13 Aug 2024, Melville House Publishing): A mesmerizing epistolary tale of a sensual queer love affair set against the backdrop of Las Vegas' gritty underbelly. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Life in the Key of G by Kenny G and Philip Lerman (24 Sept 2024, Blackstone Publishing): Kenny G--the incomparable musician with the straight sax, the flowing hair, and some of the most memorable melodies in history--reveals the man behind the music in this indelible, fascinating, and funny memoir. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Mojave Ghost by Pulitzer Prize-winning Forrest Gander (1 Oct 2024, New Directions): Gander, trained as a geologist, walked along much of the 800-mile San Andreas fault toward the desolate town of his birth, and found himself crossing permeable dimensions of time and space, correlating his emotions and the stricken landscape with other divisions: the fractures and folds underlying not only our country, but any self in its relationship with others. The result is this moving new collection that unforgettably describes a spiritual and physical journey. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball (24 Sept 2024, Catapult): In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera (1 Oct 2024, Graywolf Press): New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas. Though the historical archive is silent about the eighteen months Juárez spent in New Orleans, Yuri Herrera imagines how Juárez's time there prepared him for what was to come. With the extraordinary linguistic play and love of popular forms that have characterized all of Herrera's fiction, Season of the Swamp is a magnificent work of speculative history, a love letter to the city of New Orleans and its polyglot culture, and a cautionary statement that informs our understanding of the world we live in. (Amazon; Bookshop)
*
Previous roundups: 1 (no theme), 2 (challenging work), 3 (no theme), 4 (Pride), 5 (Juneteenth), 6 (beach reads), 7 (writing craft books), 8 (SPD update), and 9 (Hawthornden grants).
2024 titles from former SPD presses:
ana c. buena by Valeria Román Marroquín, trans. Noah Mazer (26 Sept 2024, Cardboard House Press): In a searing manifesto-poem of late capitalist debt, hunger, and women’s labor, Valeria Román reconstructs the survival of young migrant and worker ana c. buena amid the so-called Peruvian "economic miracle" and its turbulent political space. (Asterism)
As They Say by Robert Manery (15 Mar 2024, BlazeVOX [books]): “Don’t we always have a situation?” Rob Manery asks in poetry that induces the levitating voice to subside, to hesitate, and to “quit the wrong way.” (Amazon; Asterism)
Bad Forecast by Steffan Triplett (30 Sept 2024, Essay Press): A hybrid memoir told in lyric and fractured prose, depicting grief not just in the aftermath of a tornado in southwest Missouri, but in all that is unearthed from the grounds of adolescence and young adulthood. Triplett is a Black, queer writer raised in Joplin, Missouri. (Asterism)
Be Broken to Be Whole: New & Selected Poems by Tom Crawford (9 July 2024, Empty Bowl): Tom Crawford was a birder, a contemplative, an activist, and an enthusiast whose writing—infused with Eastern thought and a sense of mysticism—explores the natural world and our complex connection to it. (Asterism)
book of provocations by mónica teresa ortiz (27 July 2024, Host Publications): Tender and radical, these poems offer an unflinching look into the present, which they see with a brutal clarity. (Asterism)
Clearly Kabouter: Chronicle of a Radical Dutch Movement, 1969-1974 by Coen Tasman (26 Mar 2024, Autonomedia): Coen Tasman offers us an authentic account of the collective effort to create a greener car-free city center, shops with pesticide-free food, resistance to the developer-generated housing shortage, and many other innovative ideas that came to public attention in exuberantly playful ways, both within and outside the City Council. (Amazon; AK Distribution)
Doll Seed: Stories by Michele Tracy Berger (1 Oct 2024, Aunt Lute Books): Playful and provocative, these speculative stories cover a wide territory including sci-fi, contemporary fantasy, weird, horror and magical realism. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Enjoying the Evening: Last Poems: 2018-2024 by Clemens Starck (15 Apr 2024, Empty Bowl): Like all of Starck's work, the poems in Enjoying the Evening are expertly crafted, always intelligent, and often humorous. (Asterism)
The Fire Road by Nicholas Yingling (15 Apr 2024, Barrow Street Press): Poetry. Against the demands of our neoliberal, extractivist hungers, Yingling insists on carving out a space for mutualism and obligation, forgiveness and recovery. (Amazon)
Friends with Everyone by Gunnar Wærness, trans. Gabriel Gudding (15 Apr 2024, Action Books): Leading Norwegian poet Gunnar Wærness has been called a “punk” poet and a “wizard” whose poetry is a “vortex of precision and musicality” that moves in “surprising, disturbing and at times incomprehensible ways.” With Friends with Everyone, Wærness has written a monstrous book about spirit, speech and empire, migration and grief, belonging and freedom, language attrition and the ideological capture of literature. (Asterism)
The Goodbye Kit by Daneen Bergland (Sept 2024, Airlie Press): Themes of transgression and longing infuse these poems about girlhood, marriage, parenthood, aging, and nature. (Asterism)
Memory's Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort Worden edited by Bob Francis (15 May 2024, Empty Bowl): A retrospective look at a powerful piece of public art and a community’s responses to it. Created in 1988 at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Memory’s Vault was designed by artist Richard Turner and features the poems of Sam Hamill, cofounder of Copper Canyon Press. This richly illustrated collection includes an essay by Turner, the full text of Hamill’s poem sequence, and contributions by local residents. (Asterism)
No More Flowers by Stephanie Cawley (17 Sept 2024, Birds, LLC): Poetry serves as a resistance against suffering—their own, their loved ones’, humanity’s. A protest against meaninglessness. An antidote. The poems in believe in their ability to affect consequences with language, while being self-aware enough to know how absurd that belief is. (Asterism)
Phone Plays by Sam Cottington (30 Apr 2024, Montez Press): Intended to be performed live over the phone, these plays invite readers and audience members alike to engage with a series of unclear relationships and scenarios, invoked and mediated by contemporary communication technology. (Amazon; Asterism)
Playlist: A Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems by Michael Turner (Jun 2024, Anvil Press): documents the life and practice of a writer who grew up in a musical household, and spent his early adult years as a touring musician and his later years programming nightclubs, hotels, galleries, and festivals. Modelled after the American folk music revival songbooks of the 1950s and 60s, Playlist fiddles with a two-part writing system that begins with the songbooks’ contextual introductions and ends with the songs — or in this instance, poems — to which they refer. (Asterism)
Raw Materials by Astrid Lorange (2024, Atelos): By the author of How Reading is Written: A Brief Index to Gertrude Stein, Homework, and Labour and Other Poems. (looks like ordering can only be done by emailing orders@atelos.org currently)
Sean the Stick by Kevin Sampsell, ill. Emma Jon-Michael Frank (22 Aug 2024, Future Tense Books): Is it an existential children’s tale? A weird book for all ages? Is it a story about a person who becomes best friends with a stick? Is it a love story about nature? Nature versus nurture? This beautiful book combines a Kevin Sampsell short story told in simple (yet emotionally vast) short sentences with colorful drawings by Emma Jon-Michael Frank. (Amazon; Asterism; Bookshop)
Small Measures by Mercedes Lawry (29 Mar 2024, ELJ Editions): An inventive and haunting collection that explores human loss and loneliness. (Itasca Books Distribution)
So-Lair Storm by Andrés Ajens, trans. Erín Moure (9 July 2024, Black Sun Lit): A poetry of articulation and dis/articulation, of artifice, of disengagement and dismemberment, So-Lair Storm moves between broken narratives, different materialities (letters, emails, diary fragments), critical essay, and experience. In his diverse cultural scaffolding, Ajens combines indigenous writing and languages, the history of Western literature, post-structuralist philosophy and linguistics, manipulating geographical and scriptural boundaries, breaking down, chewing and digesting language like no other. (Asterism)
Stasio: A Novel in Three Parts by Tamas Dobozy (15 July 2024, Anvil Press): This detective novel — presented in three distinct novellas — traces the ever-deepening involvement of the protagonist Anthony de Stasio in a series of political nightmares, from a cursed firearm in “Steyr Mannlicher” that leads him through the world of a single mother’s hardscrabble poverty; to the tormented life of a daughter imprisoned in a world her father built for her in “Photo Array”; to the workings of a mysterious postwar utopian cult that traffics street kids in an attempt to engineer a universal refusal of the vote in “The Unaffiliated.” (Asterism)
Surface Studies by Mike Corrao (15 Apr 2024, Action Books): “Mike Corrao takes ‘close reading’ to a new level of radical intensity. His writing about the sprawling literature of the US underground is driven by profound fascination; his experience of the texts is somatic and dynamic. If Sontag asked for an erotics to take the place of a hermeneutics, Corrao reveals that the two can exist as one.” -Johannes Göransson (Asterism)
Treasurer of Piggy Banks by Vinod Kumar Shukla, trans. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (15 Feb 2024, Circumference Books): Infiltrator or inhabitant? In Treasurer of Piggy Banks, Indian poet Vinod Kumar Shukla sees the world through both lenses at once. All details are local yet canonical, and when inside his lyric mind, we are rooted, and the roots are spreading far and wide. (Amazon; Asterism)
United Left by Álvaro Lasso, trans. Kelsi Vanada (31 Jan 2024, Eulalia Books): Peruvian poetry about a left that never was. (Asterism)
Victors: A Novel of Love, War and Jazz by Heather Buchanan (May 2024, Aquarius Press): One hero will risk it all to save the world . . . and the woman he loves. In late World War I France, disillusioned American soldier and musician Sgt. David Pierce fights the German enemy and tours the French countryside with the famed Harlem Hellfighters Band. These “Men of Bronze” ae not only brave soldiers, but talented musicians who are conquering Europe with a secret weapon—Jazz. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Washing a Myna by Hwang InChan, trans. Eun-Gwi Chung (1 Aug 2024, Black Square Editions): Washing a Myna unveils the myriad questions caused by the relationships of things and people, and curiosities about existential exercises generated by points where prosaic language does not reach. The poet seems to enjoy the subtle stimuli that come from revealing rather than giving them metaphorical names. (Asterism)
A Wellness Check by Bri Gonzalez (10 Sept 2024, Game Over Books): There, in the night sky, projected over city smog and ghost stars—the Rat Signal. Followed by the rev of the Ratmobile’s custom made engine and the inevitable slam of Asylum doors. Bri Gonzalez’s debut collection snatches a beloved caped crusader and spins him on his head. (Asterism)
*
2024 titles from non-former-SPD small presses:
Bad Houses by John Elizabeth Stintzi (Arsenal Pulp, 3 Sept 2024): Featuring Stintzi's own expressive ink illustrations, Bad Houses is a book that feels like it was penned by a trans Alice Munro mixed with a bubblier Franz Kafka. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control by Betsy Phillips (16 July 2024, Third Man Books): Award-winning historian Betsy Phillips uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950’s and early 1960s. The book also implicates both the FBI and local law enforcement agencies. No understanding of the violent nationwide white response to desegregation efforts then and white supremacist actions now can be complete without reading Dynamite Nashville. (Amazon; AK Distribution; Bookshop)
A Grand Love: Stories for Grandparents of Transgender Grandchildren by Janna Barkin (21 Aug 2024, Jessica Kingsley): Be Love. Be Patience. Be Curious. Be Approachable. Be Supported. (Amazon; Bookshop)
In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press, Sept 2024): Aliette de Bodard adds to her acclaimed Xuya universe with a brand new novella. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Liquid Snakes by Stephen Kearse (13 Aug 2024, Soft Skull): What if toxic pollutants traveled up the socioeconomic ladder rather than down it? A Black biochemist provides an answer in this wildly original novel of pollution, poison, and dark pleasure. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Tin House, 3 Sept 2024): An Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan. (Amazon; Bookshop)
My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman (Dorothy, 3 Sept 2024): The latest in writer and visual artist Renee Gladman's ever-expanding body of imaginative investigation is a sui generis novel of queerness and art-making, philosophy and sex. (Amazon; Bookshop)
States of Emergency by Chris Knapp (Unnamed, 3 Sept 2024): In the summer of 2015, a young couple--an American and his French wife--undergo fertility treatment in Paris. They settle in to wait for the results as a heatwave paralyzes the city. As the heat rises, a state of emergency is declared and tempers flare, leaving cracks in the foundation of their marriage. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Trial of Anna Thalberg by Eduardo Sangarcía, trans. Elizabeth Bryer (Restless Books, 10 Sept 2024): Winner of the 2020 Mauricio Achar Award. Set in the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation, Eduardo Sangarcía’s tale of one woman’s witch trial opens the door to deeper horrors. (Amazon; Bookshop)
*
Bonus! A separate list of books by independent presses which appear on Bookshop.org’s Most Anticipated list (20% off until September 8th at 11:59pm PST with the code CANTWAIT):
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva (24 Sept 2024, Zando - Hillman Grad Books): The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness, showing us that sickness is a fact of life. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao (13 Aug 2024, Melville House Publishing): A mesmerizing epistolary tale of a sensual queer love affair set against the backdrop of Las Vegas' gritty underbelly. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Life in the Key of G by Kenny G and Philip Lerman (24 Sept 2024, Blackstone Publishing): Kenny G--the incomparable musician with the straight sax, the flowing hair, and some of the most memorable melodies in history--reveals the man behind the music in this indelible, fascinating, and funny memoir. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Mojave Ghost by Pulitzer Prize-winning Forrest Gander (1 Oct 2024, New Directions): Gander, trained as a geologist, walked along much of the 800-mile San Andreas fault toward the desolate town of his birth, and found himself crossing permeable dimensions of time and space, correlating his emotions and the stricken landscape with other divisions: the fractures and folds underlying not only our country, but any self in its relationship with others. The result is this moving new collection that unforgettably describes a spiritual and physical journey. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball (24 Sept 2024, Catapult): In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera (1 Oct 2024, Graywolf Press): New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas. Though the historical archive is silent about the eighteen months Juárez spent in New Orleans, Yuri Herrera imagines how Juárez's time there prepared him for what was to come. With the extraordinary linguistic play and love of popular forms that have characterized all of Herrera's fiction, Season of the Swamp is a magnificent work of speculative history, a love letter to the city of New Orleans and its polyglot culture, and a cautionary statement that informs our understanding of the world we live in. (Amazon; Bookshop)
*
Previous roundups: 1 (no theme), 2 (challenging work), 3 (no theme), 4 (Pride), 5 (Juneteenth), 6 (beach reads), 7 (writing craft books), 8 (SPD update), and 9 (Hawthornden grants).
amazing, thanks for these compilations
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 8:40 PM on September 5
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 8:40 PM on September 5
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posted by HearHere at 1:44 PM on September 3 [1 favorite]