Author Cass R. Sunstein introduces his 2016 book, The World According to Star Wars (HarperCollins) humbly enough:

I’m going to be covering some diverse topics here, including the nature of human attachment, whether timing is everything, how to rank the seven Star Wars movies, why Martin Luther King Jr. was a conservative, how boys need their mothers, the workings of the creative imagination, the fall of Communism, the Arab Spring, changing understandings of human rights, whether The Force Awakens was a triumph or a disappointment, the limits of human attention, and whether Star Wars really is better than Star Trek.

With the exception of that last point, which I still find open to debate, one of the joys of this book is that Mr. Sunstein accomplishes the tasks he sets out in a quick reading, well-documented short book that combines playful romps of unabashed Star Wars fandom with high level reviews of politics, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and film critique.  The book is engaging for nerfherders and Jedi Knights, alike.

[Guest post by Chris Curtis. Chris teaches psychology at Delta College: www.delta.edu/clcurtis.]

“I wanted to remember the absences that online life had replaced with constant content, constant connection.  I’ve remembered what it is to be free in the world, free from the obliterating demands of five hundred ‘contacts.’” 

Author Michael Harris shares this journal entry near the end of an “Analog August” (a self-enforced month without a smartphone and other internet devices) in his 2014 book, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (The Penguin Group).  Mr. Harris examines the loss of absence from the perspective of the digital immigrant generation—those of an age to recall life both before and after the ubiquitous online world.  Do you remember what it was like to cast an empty gaze out the window of the car on a long family trip?  To vaguely wonder what the couple down the street was discussing as you waited for your bus?  Do you remember being alone with your thoughts and just . . . being?  Mr. Harris takes a digital immigrant journey of exploration through our technology-infused society and technology-induced angst, culminating in his own attempt to recapture absence.

Since 2013, Noemi Press and Letras Latinas (the literary imitative at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame) have been co-publishing under the Akrilica Series to showcase innovative Latino writing.

You Ask Me To Talk About the Interior by Carolina Ebeid joins the ranks of the Akrilica Series, published in September 2016. Ebeid’s first book, You Ask Me To Talk About the Interior has been called “a book of listening and responding and listening again” (Shane McCrae) that uses “[t]he voice of a mother, of lover, of friend” (Julie Carr).

More information about the book and the series can be found at the Noemi Press website.

With October here, it’s time to announce a couple of the award-winning books slated for publication this month.

Winner of the 2016 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, Of This New World by Allegra Hyde, hit the shelves earlier this month. The collection starts at the Garden of Eden and ends on a Mars colony, each story wrestling with “conflicts of idealism and practicality, communal ambition and individual kink,” and asking the fundamental human question: “Is paradise really so impossible?” Of This New World is Hyde’s first collection, and it’s now available at the University of Iowa Press website (now currently on sale for the frugal reader!).

Love Give Us One Death: Bonnie and Clyde in the Last Days by Jeff P. Jones is the winner of the 2015 George Garrett Fiction Prize. Final Judge Tracy Daugherty says the book of the two famous outlaws shows “larger dimensions: the spiritual shadows and compulsive needs from which our nation springs and through which it has found its many forms of speech.” This is Jones’s first book, and copies are available from the Texas A&M University Press website.

September seems to be the month for award-winning book releases. This month, find the winners of Moon City Press’s 2015 Moon City Poetry Award, the 2015 The American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, and The University of Tampa Press’s 2015 Anita Claire Scharf Award.

Jeannine Hall Gailey brought home the Moon City Poetry Award with her fifth collection Field Guide to the End of the World, with a cover designed by the talented Charli Barnes (shown on the right). The poetry collection “delivers a whimsical look at our culture’s obsession with apocalypse.” Readers can pre-order copies from The University of Arkansas Press.

Likenesses by Heather Tone was chosen by Nick Flynn as the winner of The American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Flynn says Likenesses, is an origin myth in its “attempts to create a world by naming it.” Copies of Tone’s first full collection of poetry will be distributed by Copper Canyon Press.

Patricia Hooper, the author of three previous books of poetry, received the Anita Claire Scharf Award, winners selected by the editors of the Tampa Review from among the manuscripts submitted to the annual Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Hooper’s collection, Separate Flights, “quite literally lifts off,” says Tampa Review Editor Richard Mathews, and is “musical and powerful in its impact.”

Check out these three award-winning poetry books, all hitting shelves sometime this month.

Who doesn’t appreciate a good play on words? The University of New Mexico Press has announced an anthology forthcoming in September, edited by Ilan Stavans, with a title that tickled my pun fancy.

The anthology of Jewish stories from Latin America is titled Oy, Caramba!, and put a smile on my face the moment it arrived. Even the bright, eye-catching cover mixes the Jewish and Latin American cultures: a sugar skull decorated with a hamsa, Chai symbols, and the Star of David.

First published in 1994 as Tropical Synagogues: Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, the anthology returns next month, expanded and updated.

Check out the UNM Press website for more information.

Winner of the 2014 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, Bruce Bond’s Black Anthem, was published this month. The sonnets in the collection are “wide-ranging in their investigations of the body, the psyche, metaphysical hunger, and its place in human conflict.” Black Anthem is available from the University of Tampa Press website in hardcover and paperback.

In June, A Different Wakeful Animal by Susan Cohen was published by Red Dragonfly Press. Winner of the 2015 David Martinson – Meadowhawk Prize, A Different Wakeful Animal “takes on the profound questions in language that catches the ear and the imagination. [ . . . ] A Different Wakeful Animal investigates what perishes and what might remain.”

Readers can grab a copy of Cohen’s poetry collection, and writers can still submit to the 2016 David Martinson – Meadowhawk Prize until August 31.

Looking back to May, Jennifer Barber’s Works on Paper was published by The Word Works. Winner of the 2015 Word Works Tenth Gate Prize. Her third poetry collection, Works on Paper “shows us the power of lyric restraint in the hands of a poet who draws from the well of the small moments of motherhood as well as the sweep of Jewish history.” This year’s Tenth Gate Prize just closed earlier in the month, with results announced on October 1^st. 

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is accepting submissions from publishers for the twenty-seventh annual Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Book Awards (known collectively as the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award).

The awards are designed to recognize and encourage authors and illustrators starting out in the field of children’s books who share Ezra Jack Keats’ commitment to children and diversity. The award is given annually to an outstanding new writer and new illustrator of picture books for children (9 years old and under). Publishers are encouraged to submit works by new writers and illustrators who are committed to celebrating diversity through their writing and art.

To be eligible, writers and illustrators must have had no more than three books published. A selection committee of early childhood education specialists, librarians, illustrators, and experts in children’s literature will review the entries, seeking books that portray the universal qualities of childhood, a strong and supportive family, and the multicultural nature of our world. The award includes an honorarium of $1,000 for each winner.

Deadline: December 15, 2016

Belt Publishing, publisher of city-based anthologies written by and for Rust Belt communities, are releasing a new anthology in the first week of July: Happy Anyway: The Flint Anthology. Edited by Flint writer and Belt Magazine contributor Scott Atkinson, Happy Anyway reveals Flint “at its funniest, its weirdest, and its saddest.”

There’s more to Flint than the water crisis that’s gathered the country’s attention in the past months. Preorder a copy of Happy Anyway to see all sides of this Michigan city, or check out the other anthologies which look at Detroit, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, with Akron and Buffalo anthologies in the making.

Forthcoming in July is the 2016 installment of the Western Press Books (University Press of Colorado) series, Manifest West. Published annually, the series produces one anthology focused on Western writing, and is edited and produced by students in the Certificate in Publishing program at Western State Colorado University.

The fifth volume of this annual anthology features the theme “Serenity and Severity.” The twenty-nine included writers explore the theme, the duality impacting identities, lifestyles, outlooks, worldviews, and values. Contributors include Rebecca Aronson, Heidi E. Blankenship, William Cass, David Lavar Coy, Gail Denham, John Haggerty, Ellaraine Lockie, Juan J. Morales, Scott T. Starbuck, and more.

Open Letter has announced they will be publishing Gesell Dome by Guillermo Saccomanno this upcoming August. Translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger, the novel won the 2013 Dashiell Hammett Award (annually given to a book published in the field of crime-writing), and chronicles the passion, violence, crime, and corruption that take place during a winter in Villa Gesell. Recording the various voices in the town is Dante, the local newspaperman, resulting in a thrilling and captivating read.

Preorder a copy of Gesell Dome now at the Open Letter website, where you can also find an excerpt of the novel.

In July, readers can find copies of Michael Homolka’s debut poetry collection Antiquity on shelves. Homolka’s collection (with a cool, minimalist, textured cover) won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry in 2015 and was chosen by Mary Ruefle. Ruefle writes in her introduction, “The poems in Antiquity very much abandon themselves to language, to the collective poetic endeavor, and they do so in a rich, textured, and sustained voice . . . ”

Readers can preorder copies of Antiquity from the Sarabande Books website, where advance praise can also be found.

Forthcoming from Able Muse Press in August 2016 is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a new Modern English translation by John Ridland. Advance praise calls this edition one of the most readable and complete translations of the classic tale. Illustrations by Stephen Luke are found inside the pages, and provide the front and back cover art, the cover design similar to that of an old fairytale storybook.

A great addition to classic collections, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is now available for preorder from Able Muse Press.

If you haven’t joined the adult coloring book bandwagon yet, now is a great time to hop on. Black Squirrel Books, an imprint of The Kent State University Press, released a new coloring book last month. The Inklings Coloring Book—with illustrations by fantasy illustrator James A. Owen—features 15 line drawings inspired by the works of Oxford’s famous Inklings.

Inside, J. R. R. Tolkien has tea, Christopher Tolkien stands outside the Tolkien Home, Charles Williams is at Oxford, and these illustrations are all mixed in with dragons, dwarves, elves, and more, with the Bandersnatch hidden in many of the images.

Fans of fantasy literature can take a break from their latest adventure and relax with some fantastical coloring with The Inklings Coloring Book, available now.

Spring has sprung at Cleveland State University Poetry Center with freshly published titles added to their spring catalog, including the Editor’s Choice for the 2015 First Poetry Competition, Residuum by Martin Rock; the winner of the 2016 First Book Poetry Competition selected by Eileen Myles, My Fault by Leora Fridman; the winner of the 2015 Open Book Poetry Competition selected by Lesle Lewis, Shane McCrae, and Wendy Xu, The Bees Make Money in the Lion by Lo Kwa Mei-En; and the winner of the 2015 Essay Collection Competition selected by Wayne Koestenbaum, A Bestiary by Lily Hoang.

Readers can learn more about the individual titles (all four of them decked out in beautiful cover art) at the CSU Poetry Center website where links to interviews, past works, and author websites can also be found.

Every year, the University of Arkansas Press awards the Miller Williams Poetry Prize to four authors: one winner and three finalists, all of which are published with the winner receiving $5,000 in cash.

March 2016 saw the publication of the three 2016 finalists: When We Were Birds by Joe Wilkins, See You Soon by Laura McKee, and Cenotaph by Brock Jones.

Series Editor Billy Collins writes in each book’s preface:

See You Soon, the casual title of Laura McKee’s book, contains poems of powerful feeling that seem composed in the kind of tranquility of recollection. [ . . . ] [R]eaders will find in Brock Jones’s Cenotaph a new way of thinking and feeling about the reailties of combat. [ . . . ] Joe Wilkins’s [ . . . ] When We Were Birds, as the title indicates, is full of imaginative novelty as well as reminders that miraculous secrets are hidden in the fabric of everyday life.

All three titles—as well as the winning [explicit, lyrics] by Andrew Gent—are now available at the University of Arkansas Press website.

Last month, Coffee House Press announced their partnership with Brooklyn-based feminist publishing project, Emily Books (part bookstore/publisher/book club). Together, they’ve created a new imprint for “original books that speak to the aesthetic excellence, experimental boldness, and social concerns of both organizations.”

July 2016’s forthcoming Problems by Jade Sharma marks the first book coming from the imprint, with two new Emily Books titles to be published by Coffee House Press annually.

More information about the partnership and the individual presses can be found at the Coffee House Press website blog.

The American Indian Library Association (AILA) has selected “Little You” (2013), published by Orca Book Publishers, written by Richard Van Camp [pictured] and illustrated by Julie Flett as the 2016 Best Picture Book; “In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse” (2015), published by Amulet Books and written by Joseph Marshall III as the 2016 Best Middle School Book, and “House of Purple Cedar” (2014) Cinco Puntos Press, written by Tim Tingle as the 2016 Best Young Adult Book.

The American Indian Youth Literature Awards are presented every two years. The awards were established as a way to identify and honor the very best writing and illustrations by and about American Indians. Books selected to receive the award will present American Indians in the fullness of their humanity in the present and past contexts. For a full list of Honor Books as well as a printable color brochure of the award winners, visit the AILA website.

Three new titles for Hemingway lovers from The Kent State University Press:

Hemingway’s Spain: Imagining the Spanish World – a collection of thirteen essays edited by Carl P. Eby and Mark Cirino. The collection explores “Hemingway’s writing about Spain and his relationship to Spanish culture and ask us in a myriad of ways to rethink how Hemingway imagined Spain—whether through a modernist mythologization of the Spanish soil, his fascination with the bullfight, his interrogation of the relationship between travel and tourism, his involvement with Spanish politics, his dialog with Spanish writers, or his appreciation of the subtleties of Spanish values. . . a particular strength of Hemingway’s Spain is its consideration of neglected works, such as Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War stories and The Dangerous Summer.”

Teaching Hemingway and War edited by Alex Vernon – fifteen original essays on such topics as:

The Violence of Story: Teaching In Our Time and Narrative Rhetoric
Hemingway’s Maturing View of the Spanish Civil War
Robert Jordan’s Philosophy of War in For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway, PTSD, and Clinical Depression
Perceptions of Pain in The Sun Also Rises
Across the River and into the Trees as Trauma Literature

The final section provides three undergraduate essays examples.

Teaching Hemingway and Modernism edited by Joseph Fruscione presents “concrete, intertextual models for using Hemingway’s work effectively in various classroom settings, so students can understand the pertinent works, definitions, and types of avant-gardism that inflected his art. The fifteen teacher-scholars whose essays are included in the volume offer approaches that combine a focused individual treatment of Hemingway’s writing with clear links to the modernist era and offer meaningful assignments, prompts, and teaching tools.”

Editor of Latina Authors and Their Muses Mayra Calvani was inspired to create an anthology showcasing Latina authors writing in English in the United States. She writes in her Editor’s Preface that she envisioned “An inspirational, entertaining, and informative tome focusing on the craft of writing and the practical business of publishing, one that would provide aspiring authors with the nuts and bolts of the business. A book that would not only showcase prominent figures but emerging voices as well, writers working on a wide range of genres from the literary to the commercial.”

After submitting the book proposal to numerous agents, Calvani signed with one who spent a year pitching the book to top editors before the agent gave up. Publishers, Calvani was told, thought the audience was “too niche, too narrow” (How could the publisher possible market such a book?).

Latina Authors and Their Muses found a home with Lida Quillen of Twilight Times Books in Kingsport, Tennessee. The book, Calvani writes, “has been a labor of love in every aspect. It has also been a completely selfish project. I wanted to hear what these authors had to say, hoping I wasn’t alone. I wanted to relate to them and learn from them – and learn I have, so very much! In a way, they’ve all become my mentors.”

The book features interviews with 40 Latina authors, including Marta Acosta, Julia Amante, Jennifer Cervantes, Zoraida Córdova, Sarah Cortez, Liz DeJesus, Teresa Dovalpage, Iris Gomez, Rose Guilbault, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Josefina López, Sandra Ramos O’Briant, Caridad Piñeiro, Toni Margarita Plummer, Lupe Ruiz-Flores, Esmeralda Santiago and Diana Rodriguez Wallach.

Calvani notes, “In spite of their different backgrounds, education levels, and jobs, two factors more than any others bind these writers together: their passion and commitment to their craft and to sharing their stories with the world in spite of the odds.”