New and forthcoming titles from independent book publishers and university presses. Blurbs provided by publishers.
New & Noteworthy
Posted August 22, 2018
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Absences
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- Subtitle A Sequence
- Book Type Poetry
- by John A. Griffin
- Publisher (link) Esthetic Apostle Books
- Date Published July 2018
- ISBN-13 978-0-692142868
- Format Chapbook
- Pages 32pp
- Price $10.00
Absences addresses the themes of loss of youth, loss of innocence, isolation, separation, exile, death, the absence of familiarity, affection, and above all the loss or absence of love. The sequence resonates with allusions to classical mythology, Virginia Woolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Franz Kafka, Johann Georg Hamann, Paul Celan, and Bruno Schulz, and tries to weave its patchwork aesthetic by drawing on their disparate but unified themes. Ultimately, the sequence is a celebration of life, even if life's great peroration is death, and even if we all die the same death over and over again.
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BAX 2018
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- Subtitle Best American Experimental Writing
- Book Type Anthology Ed.
- by Myung Mi Kim, Seth Abramson, Jesse Damiani
- Publisher (link) Wesleyan University Press
- Date Published August 2018
- ISBN-13 978-0-8195-7819-8
- Format Paperback
- Pages 360pp
- Price $19.95
Best American Experimental Writing 2018, guest-edited by Myung Mi Kim, is the fourth edition of the critically acclaimed anthology series compiling an exciting mix of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and genre-defying work. Featuring a diverse roster of writers and artists culled from both established authors—like Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Don Mee Choi, Mónica de la Torre, Layli Long Soldier, and Simone White—as well as new and unexpected voices.
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Claiming the B in LGBT
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- Subtitle Illuminating the Bisexual Narrative
- Book Type Anthology Ed.
- by Kate Harrad
- Publisher (link) Thorntree Press
- Date Published September 2018
- ISBN-13 978-1-944934-60-6
- Format Paperback
- Pages 344
- Price $24.95
Even as the broader LGBT community enjoys political and societal advances in North America, the bisexual community still contends with decades of misinformation stereotyping them as innately indecisive, self-loathing, and untrustworthy. Claiming the B in LGBT strives to give bisexuals a seat at the table. Kate Harrad's anthology of a thriving identity yearning to realize itself provides a vision of bisexuality that is beyond gay and straight, rather than left to merely occupy the space between.
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The Gatsby Affair
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- Subtitle Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal that Shaped an American Classic
- Book Type Nonfiction
- by Kendall Taylor
- Publisher (link) Rowman & Littlefield
- Date Published August 2018
- ISBN-13 978-1-53810-493-4
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320pp
- Price $27.00
The romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre has been celebrated as one of the greatest of the 20th century. Despite their love, both Scott and Zelda engaged in flirtations that threatened to tear the couple apart. But none had a more profound impact on the two—and on Scott’s writing—as the liaison between Zelda and a French aviator, Edouard Jozan. In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance from a fresh perspective.
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how do i net thee
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- Book Type Poetry
- by Shira Dentz
- Publisher (link) Salmon Poetry
- Date Published August 2018
- ISBN-13 978-1-910669-72-3
- Format Paperback
- Pages 86pp
- Price $21.00
how do I net thee is a diagram of a voice drawn through lyric, visual, and prose poems threading schisms— within a family, within a society brutalized by racial tensions, and within the space crossed in the transition from fertility to its loss.
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MASS
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- Subtitle A Sniper, A Father, and A Priest
- Book Type Nonfiction
- by Jo Scott-Coe
- Publisher (link) Pelekinesis
- Date Published Spring 2018
- ISBN-13 978-1-938349-73-7
- Format Paperback
- Pages 340pp
- Price $22.95
On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman performed the first televised mass shooting in American history. FBI agents then interviewed a Catholic priest in Alaska who had known Whitman and his family. Jo Scott-Coe discovered the report of this interview nearly fifty years later. As a stray Catholic, she was intrigued. The winding path of the priest’s buried story led deeper into the rabbit-hole of mid-century American (and mostly male) power structures in the Church, in middle-class white families, in marriages, in scouting, in the military. Employing a three-part structure, MASS probes the hidden wounds of paternal-pastoral failure and interrogates our collective American conscience.
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Quite Mad
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- Subtitle An American Pharma Memoir
- Book Type Nonfiction
- by Sarah Fawn Montgomery
- Publisher (link) Ohio State University Press
- Date Published September 2018
- ISBN-13 978-0-8142-5486-8
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320pp
- Price $23.95
Blending memoir with literary journalism, Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir examines America’s history of mental illness treatment to challenge contemporary narratives about mental health. Investigating the construction of mental illness as a “female” malady, Montgomery exposes the ways current attitudes towards women and their bodies influence madness. Montgomery’s Quite Mad is one woman’s story, but it offers a beacon of hope and truth for the millions of individuals living with mental illness, and issues a warning about the danger of diagnosis and the complex definition of sanity.
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Sacred Smokes
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- Book Type Fiction
- by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
- Publisher (link) University of New Mexico Press
- Date Published August 2018
- ISBN-13 978-08263-5590-2
- Format Paperback
- Pages 176pp
- Price $19.95
Growing up in a gang in the city can be dark. Growing up Native American in a gang in Chicago is a whole different story. This book takes a trip through that unexplored part of Indian Country, an intense journey that is full of surprises, shining a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. This dark, compelling, occasionally inappropriate, and often hilarious linked story collection introduces a character who defies all stereotypes about urban life and Indians. He will be in readers’ heads for a long time to come.
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Anthology Posted August 22, 2018
At Home in the Dark: Conversations with Ten American Poets, Ed. David Elliott, Keystone College Press
BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing, Ed. Myung Mi Kim, Seth Abramson, Jesse Damiani, Wesleyan University Press
The Circle: A Brussels Anthology, Ed. Patrick Ten Brink, Harvard Square Editions
Suitcase of Chrysanthemums, Ed. Jane, Great Weather for Media
They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, Ed. Simone Muench, Dean Rader, Black Lawrence Press
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Fiction Posted August 22, 2018
A Bright and Pleading Dagger, Nicole Rivas, Rose Metal Press
The Easiness and the Loneliness, Asta Olivia Nordenhof, Open Letter
The Half-Life of Everything, Deborah Carol Gang, Bancroft Press
The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Amberjack Publishing
Katz or Cats, or How Jesus Became My Rival in Love, Curt Leviant, Dzanc Books
Nameless Serenade: A Commissario Ricciardi Mystery, Maurizio de Giovanni, Europa Editions
The One That Got Away, Joe Clifford, Down & Out Books
The Patron Saint of Lost Girls, Maureen Aitken, Southeast Missouri State University Press
Perpetua's Kin, M. Allen Cunningham, Atelier26 Books
Sacred Smokes, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., University of New Mexico Press
Swift: God's Knight-Errant, Betty Jean Tucker, Livingston Press
Thank Your Lucky Stars, Sherrie Flick, Autumn House Press
Unofficial History of Pi Wei, Brendan Connell, Snuggly Books
Voices after Evelyn, Rick Harsch, Ice Cube Press
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Nonfiction Posted August 22, 2018
Finding God in Ordinary Time: Daily Meditations, Christine Marie Eberle, Green Writers Press
A Fractured Life, Shabnam Samuel, Green Writers Press
Island in the City, Micah McCrary, University of Nebraska Press
Junkie Love, Joe Clifford, Vagabondage Press
Paris on the Brink: The 1930s Paris of Jean Renoir, Salvador Dali, Simone De Beauvoir, Andre Gide, Sylvia Beach, Leon Blum, and Their Friends, Mary McAuliffe, Rowman & Littlefield Pub
The Pendulum: A Granddaughter's Search for Her Family's Forbidden Nazi Past, Julie Lindahl, Rowman & Littlefield Pub
Washington's Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, The Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists, Joseph Dalton, Rowman & Littlefield Pub
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Poetry Posted August 22, 2018
Absences: A Sequence, John A. Griffin, Esthetic Apostle Books
The Arrangements, Kate Colby, Four Way Books
Be With, Forrest Gander, New Directions Books
Beauty in the Unrequited Landscape, John Goode, Rain Mountain Press
Beholder, Liz Abrams-Morley, WordTech Editions
The Book of Sharks, Rob Carney, Black Lawrence Press
Bury It, sam sax, Wesleyan University Press
The Charnel House on Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Rob Cook, Rain Mountain Press
Debt, David Armand, Blue Horse Press
Falling Back, Carol L. Gloor, WordTech Editions
Form From Form, Christopher Bolin, University of Iowa Press
Fractured Woman, Toni Ortner, WordTech Editions
Gather the Night, KatherineDiBella Seluja, University of New Mexico Press
Gathering, MaryEllen Letarte, WordTech Editions
Girl Paper Stone, Laurie Filipelli, Black Lawrence Press
The Good Girl is Always a Ghost, Anne Champion, Black Lawrence Press
Heloise & Abelard: The Exquisite Truth, Ann Taylor, WordTech Editions
House of the Cardamom Seed, Penelope Scambly Schott, Cherry Grove
Inside Me an Island, Lehua M. Taitano, WordTech Editions
Just to See How It Feels, Allison Cundiff, WordTech Editions
Love Letter to an Afterlife, Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi, Black Lawrence Press
Mnemosyne's Hand, Charles W. Brice, WordTech Editions
Old Poets, Michael Skau, WordTech Editions
Pre-, Barbara Tomash, Black Radish Books
Quiet Insurrections, Daniel Klawitter, Kelsay Books
Rewilding, January Gill O'Neil, CavanKerry Press
The Sabbath Bee, Wilhelmina Gottschalk, Ben Yehuda Press
Scorpio, Katy Bohinc, Miami University Press
Secure Your Own Mask, Shaindel Beers, White Pine Press
Spell, Ann Lauterbach, Penguin
The Sunshine Special, Donovan Hufnagle, Turning Point
Surge, Etel Adnan, Nightboat Books
Tears, Martha Deborah Hall, WordTech Editions
Texts to the Holy, Rachel Barenblat, Ben Yehuda Press
Transaction Histories, Donna Stonecipher, University of Iowa Press
Uncertainty Principle, Allen C. West, WordTech Editions
White Goat Black Sheep, Kimberly Ann Priest, Finishing Line Press
Wobble, Rae Armantrout, Wesleyan University Press
WTF: Poems, Laura Foley, WordTech Editions
Your Person Doesn't Belong to You, Isabel Sobral Campos, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press
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Children's Lit Posted August 22, 2018
The Curse of the Bully's Watch: A Mickey Rangel Mystery, Rene Saldana, Pinata Books
Forgiving Moses, Gloria L. Velasquez, Pinata Books
The Season of Rebels and Roses, Virginia Sanchez-Korrol, Pinata Books
