The poems in Matthew Zapruder’s fifth collection ask, how can one be a good father, partner, and citizen in the early twenty-first century? Zapruder deftly improvises upon language and lyricism as he passionately engages with these questions during turbulent, uncertain times. Whether interrogating the personalities of the Supreme Court, watching a child grow off into a distance, or tweaking poetry critics and hipsters alike, Zapruder maintains a deeply generous sense of humor alongside a rich vein of love and moral urgency. The poems in Father’s Day harbor a radical belief in the power of wonder and awe to sustain the human project while guiding it forward.

“Together the short lyrics of Jason Tandon’s The Actual World intone an aching, celebratory song of the everyday. The fabric of the poems—of rocks and tonics and bathroom tiles, frogspawn, eyelashes, pots of sage—is shot through with strands of dream and loss and imagination that illuminate and intensify everything around them. A meditative and stirring collection.” —Maggie Dietz

Patricia Colleen Murphy’s award-winning second book, Bully Love, follows the poet from Ohio to Arizona, from cows and cornfields to the Sonoran Desert, from youth to middle age, from daughter to orphan, from child to childfree, from loneliness to love. The poems in Bully Love examine the long-term effects of displacement. The collection examines how humans form relationships with both landscapes and lovers, all through the eyes of a woman who leaves a forlorn home, suffers relentless loss, and falls in love in and with one of the world’s harshest ecosystems. 

Dr. Abby Wilmore attempts to escape her past by starting over at the Grand Canyon Clinic. Silently battling her own health issues, Abby struggles with adjusting to the demands of this rural location. She encounters everything from squirrel bites to suicides to an office plagued by strong personalities. Abby finds herself entangled in an unexpected romance and trapped amidst a danger even more treacherous than the foreboding desert landscape. Sandra Cavallo Miller’s debut novel transports readers to the beautiful depths of Arizona and weaves an adventurous and heartwarming tale of the courage and strength it takes to overcome personal demons and to find love.

The Best Small Fictions anthology, now in its fifth year, presents one hundred and forty-­six pristinely crafted pieces from an array of authors representing twenty-­six nations and six continents. These short, elliptical works are varied and edgy, sorrowful and triumphant, provocative and visionary. The small fictions enclosed within this volume are always vibrant. They scintillate. They linger. With each story brief enough to savor at a stoplight or quick coffee break, the tales contained within 2019's The Best Small Fictions promise to leave a mark.

Presented bilingually with a new English translation by Man Booker Prize-winning translator Jessica Cohen, these brief fables by Israeli author Daniel Oz engage with vast concepts about human nature. Full of timeless, open-ended parables, Further Up the Path offers no answers, moralizing, or conclusion: only an uneasy bewilderment with the paradoxes of the human—and animal—condition.

Americans are losing touch with reality. From climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions wildly at odds with fact, rendering them unable to think sensibly about politics. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson explains the rise of a world of “alternative facts” and the slow-motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us. As dire as this picture is, Patterson sees a way forward and underscores its urgency. A call to action, he encourages us to wrest institutional power from ideologues and disruptors and entrust it to sensible citizens and leaders and to demand a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant information from our news sources.

A House on Stilts tells the story of one woman’s struggle to reclaim wholeness while mothering a son addicted to opioids. Paula Becker’s son Hunter was raised in a safe, nurturing home by his writer/historian mom and his physician father. He was a bright, curious child. And yet, addiction found him. More than 2.5 million Americans are addicted to opioids. For many of them, their drug addiction leads to lives of demoralization, homelessness, and constant peril. For parents, a child’s addiction upends family life. Within this ten-year crucible, Paula is transformed by an excruciating, inescapable truth: the difference between what she can do and what she cannot do.

Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture, Ed. Celia Lam & Jackie Raphael, University of Iowa Press

Fuego, Fuegito: Fire, Little Fire, Jorge Tetl Argueta, Arte Publico Press

Let's Work!: Mexican Folk Art Trabajos in English and Spanish, Cynthia Weill & Bryant Boucher, Cinco Puntos Press

When Julia Danced Bomba: Cuando Julia bailaba bomba, Raquel M. Ortiz, Arte Publico Press