New & Noteworthy Books

New & Forthcoming Books from
Independent & University Presses

See full list of noteworthy books by category below

Posted on April 14, 2011

 

"neither wit nor gold" (from then)

Poetry by Ammiel Alcalay

Ugly Duckling Presse, April 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-933254-84-5

Paperback: 88pp; $14.00

"While putting together a manuscript of work written between 1975 and 1990, Alcalay became dissatisfied with the notion of a 'selected poems.' As a response, he began to comb through photographs, correspondence, memoribilia, and newspaper clippings from the era, and incorporated them into his book; the result is a personal investigation into the relationships of context to text, memory to nostalgia, and present attention to the multiple traces of the past."

 

Brook Trout and the Writing Life

The intermingling of fishing and writing in a novelist's life

Nonfiction by Craig Nova

Eno Publishers, May 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0-8920771-4-6

Paperback: 176pp; $15.95

"The central question, answered here in a series of stories, is how one family, facing difficulty, both personal and literary, can live with pleasure, satisfaction, and the right amount of humility."

 

Curses and Wishes

Poetry by Carl Adamshick

Louisiana State University Press, April 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-3776-5

Paperback: 56pp; $17.95

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.

 

Deepening Groove

Poetry by Ravi Shankar

National Poetry Review, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-935716082

Paperback: 78pp; $17.95

Wyn Cooper writes, "This is a book of saavy, delicious surprises."

 

Early/Late

New & Selected Poems

Poetry by Philip Fried

Salmon Poetry, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-907056-57-4

Paperback: 162pp; $21.95

In addition to new poems, this collection of work draws from Fried's four previous books, including Quantum Genesis, which A.R. Ammons called "a major new testament."

 

Four Cut-Ups, or, the Case of the Restored Volume

Poetry by David Lespiau

Translated from the French by Keith Waldrop

Burning Books, June 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-936194-04-9

Paperback: 72pp; $14.00

"Real and fictional characters […] circulate through the four parts of [this book], which, in the way of a mobile, uses constant movement to construct a precise form out of fragmented perceptions, ideas, stories, quotations. A form that gives a strangely uncanny sheen to the most realistic details.”

 

Ghosts and Doppelgangers

Poetry by Brad Liening

Lowbrow Press, December 2010

ISBN-13: 978-0982955321

Paperback: 104pp; $13.00

Dean Young writes, "Liening's poems capture that cuckoo clock moment when the bird comes out and sings the uneasy comforts of a fecund imagination…"

 

Lessness

Poetry by Brian Henry

Ahsahta Press, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-934103-20-3

Paperback: 112pp; $17.50

From the press release: "Henry's poems investigate how landscape and violence bear on how one sees and experiences the world."

 

Lid to the Shadow

Poetry by Alexandria Peary

Slope Editions, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0977769865

Paperback: 94pp; $14.95

Winner of the 2010 Slope Editions Book Prize.

 

Looking Up Harryette Mullen

Interviews on Sleeping with the Dictionary and Other Works

Nonfiction by Barbara Henning

Belladonna Books, May 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0-9823387-5-9

Paperback: 110pp; $14.00

"For poets and readers of poetry interested in witnessing how a brilliant, singular writer embarks on the journey of generating work to scholars researching the inception of Mullen's poems, this book informs by way of technique and vitality.”

 

Love/Imperfect

Fiction by Christopher T. Leland

Wayne State University Press, April 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-3495-9

Paperback: 192pp; $18.95

Michael Martone writes, "That forward slash--the pointed grout between Love and Imperfect--is telling punctuation bifurcating the title of this finely honed collection. These stories define definition, edge edgy…"

 

Making Home from War

Stories of Japanese American Exile

Nonfiction Edited by Brian Komei Dempster

Heyday Books, November 2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-59714-142-0

Paperback: 212pp; $18.95

"The twelve memoirs […] spotlight the thinly documented and sorely understudied chapter of Japanese American history generally known as 'resettlement.'"

 

New California Writing 2011

Anthology Edited by Gayle Wattawa

Heyday Books, April 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-59714-156-7

Paperback: 320pp; $20.00

Contributors include Michael Chabon, Brian Turner, Stephen Elliott, Sandra Beasley, and many more.

 

Severance Songs

Poetry by Joshua Corey

Tupelo Press, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-932195-92-7

Paperback: 72pp; $16.95

Winner of the Dorset Prize, selected by Ilya Kaminsky. Paul Hoover writes, "Joshua Corey's book of sonnets is formally playful and emotionally raw, with an intensity of expression that is at times harrowing…"

 

Simply Separate People, Two

Fiction by Lynn Crawford

Black Square Editions, 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-934029-20-6

Paperback: 153pp; $15.00

Peter Markus writes, "Crawford is a dead-on inventor of human dislocation. Her people, separated as they are from both themselves and the rest of the world, are skinlessly rendered by a writer who reminds us who we are inside our own skins.” 

 

Today & Tomorrow

Fiction by Ofelia Hunt

Magic Helicopter Press, May 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0-9841406-2-6

Paperback: 268pp; $15.95

"Set among the haunted parking lots and AM-PMs and home invasions of today's America, Today & Tomorrow melts identity, memory, and consciousness into a dark and stunning adventure of the body and mind, the haunting absurdity of what it means to be a person that can make up everything but itself."

 

Utopia Minus

Poetry by Susan Briante

Ahsahta Press, March 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-934103-19-7

Paperback: 104pp; $17.50

Rachel Levitsky says, "Briante is a detritus artist, a gleaner working in the banal of the contemporary world, molding the pieces she finds into vivid mosaics."

 

Waltzing with the Enemy

A Mother and Daughter Confront the Aftermath of the Holocaust

Nonfiction by Rasia Kliot, Helen Mitsios

Urim Publications, June 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-936068-21-0

Paperback: 286pp; $19.95

"Filled with insight and humor, this dual memoir by Rasia, born in Vilnius, Lithuania (who survived the Holocaust on a false identity), and her daughter Helen, born in Montreal, Canada, examines the long-term implications of being a survivor of the Holocaust and the unique pressures and anxieties the children of survivors inherit from their parents.”