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Discover new and forthcoming books from independent publishers and university presses on the NewPages Book Stand.

New Book :: The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li

The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li by J.R. Solonche published by Dos Madres Press book cover image

The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li
Poetry by J.R. Solonche
Dos Madres Press, September 2022

When J.R. Solonche published The Five Notebooks of Zhao Li in November of 2021, it was called an “intriguing set of philosophical poems…a novel in verse [that] offers a glimpse into the most personal thoughts of a creative thinker.” Filled with more of the wise, witty, profound, silly, thoughtful, thoughtless, koan-like musings, The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li can be considered the sixth and final chapter in the tale of this 75-year-old poet/philosopher, who if asked which one he is, would answer: “Both, but not at the same time.”

New Book :: Creature Features

Creature Features poetry collection by Noel Sloboda published by Main Street Rag Publishing book cover image

Creature Features
Poetry by Noel Sloboda
Main Street Rag Publishing, June 2022

While the poems in Creature Features draw inspiration from several sources, many center on classic monsters author Noel Sloboda first encountered as a boy while watching the Creature Double Feature television show. In the 1970s and 1980s, this show introduced him to the Mummy, the Wolfman, the Blob — and more. What largely interested Sloboda and what he explores in this collection is how these monsters show us ourselves (or reflect our “features”). Readers may appreciate that there’s also a good deal of Shakespeare in the chapbook, since Sloboda teaches Shakespeare and has spent some time in theatre as a dramaturg. But the author also wanted to lend some of our popular culture nightmares — too often dismissed as disposable or as kitsch — the kind of pedigree they merit. Hence too — in part — the “borrowed authority” with the inclusion of cameos by eminent philosophers. Originally from New England, Noel Sloboda earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. His dissertation about Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein became a book. He sat on the board of directors for the Gamut Theatre Group for a decade, while serving as dramaturg for its nationally recognized Shakespeare company. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of English at Penn State York.

New Book :: Salem Revisted

Salem Revisited poetry by Charles K. Carter published by WordTech Editions book cover image

Salem Revisited
Poetry by Charles K. Carter
WordTech Editions, November 2021

In Salem Revisited, Charles K. Carter examines homophobic and transphobic violence in the United States. Many of the pieces look as if they have been pulled directly from yesterday’s headlines. Carter brings an awareness to these injustices by shining a harsh spotlight on what haunts many LGBTQ+ community members and their allies. The collection experiments with a wide range of poetic forms including blank verse, free verse, ghazal, and haiku as well as unconventional structures. Charles K. Carter (he/him) is a queer poet from Iowa. He is a volunteer video curator for Button Poetry, and his poems have been featured in several literary journals. Carter is the author of four chapbooks, including Salem Revisited (WordTech Editions). His first full-length collection, Read My Lips (David Robert Books), will be released in fall 2022. Sample poems can be read here.

New Book :: Unlettered Longings

Unlettered Longings poetry by Abin Chakraborty book cover image

Unlettered Longings
Poetry by Abin Chakraborty
ukiyoto, June 2022

Our hearts are not designed to beat to beaten tracks – they have rhythms and quests and seasons of their own which often veer away from established norms and the set motions of everyday existence. Naturally, therefore, we are always entangled in longings — conscious or unconscious which punctuate our days, nights, dreams, writings and much more. The poems in this collection are reflective of such longings, at times foolish, at times desperate, at times mundane, but always authentic. These longings stem from human beings — eternal quests for love, for beauty, for understanding, for solidarity, for recognition. Such quests, of course, are not always fulfilled and the failed and thwarted pursuits bring about their own notes of disillusionment, frustration, anger, self-loathing, and self-deception as well. These poems take all such affects into account while negotiating with the shadows that fall between dreams and reality, between desire and experience, between aspirations and limitations. It is hoped that the reader will find among these lines various echoes of their own myriad experiences which will better illuminate the labyrinthine mazes of our own hearts and souls while securing solace, pleasure, strength, and most importantly, a realm of communion beyond the sutures of the self.

New Book :: I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend

I Dreamed I was Emily Dickinson's Boyfriend by Ron Koertge published by Red Hen Press book cover image

I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend
Poetry by Ron Koertge
Red Hen Press, October 2022

I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend easily solidifies Ron Koertge’s reputation as a poet who is very funny and also very serious. In these surprising and delightful poems, a mannequin joins the Me Too movement, a summer job turns into a lesson in class distinctions, and Jane Austen makes a surprise appearance at a mall. Ron Koertge’s uniquely playful imagination is on display in poem after poem. Visit Koretge’s website to learn more about his numerous books of poetry, young adult titles, Academy Award-nominated short film, Negative Space, based on one of his poems, and learn about his famous home – Halloween and Jamie Lee Curtis fans, you’ll want to check that out!

New Book :: To Sleep With Bears

To Sleep With Bears poetry by Steve Nickman published by Word Poetry book cover image

To Sleep With Bears
Poetry by Steve Nickman
Word Poetry, April 2022

Steve Nickman’s poems in his newest collection, To Sleep With Bears, are about praise and amazement, as well as connection and the loss of it. They are about food, childhood, hiding, loneliness, small and large animals, and despair. They are about losing courage and regaining it, our capacity for good and evil, and finally about knowing that we won’t live forever. Steve Nickman is an almost-retired child psychiatrist in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 2006 he joined Barbara Helfgott Hyett’s workshop and learned that much of what his patients had to say was poetry. Working with adopted children has given him insight into the feeling of lost connection. Sample poems are available to read here.

New Book :: Flutter, Kick

Flutter Kick by Anna VQ Ross published by Red Hen Press book cover image

Flutter, Kick
Poetry by Ann V.Q. Ross
Red Hen Press, November 2022

In Flutter, Kick, poet Anna V. Q. Ross plumbs motherhood, migration, childhood, and the cycles of violence and renewal that recur in each. These are poems of math homework and police sirens, where a fox pops out of a fairy tale to dig up the backyard, NPR News spirals the evening carpool into memories of girlhood and trauma, and a city gas leak conjures xenophobic backlash against refugees. In poems of reclamation and warning, Flutter, Kick brings readers to the center of this world—a place where “in those days, we were fast and best, but didn’t know it”—with a compassion learned of anger, memory, and joy.

New Book :: Fantasy Kit

Fantasy Kit stories by Adam McOmber published by Black Lawrence Press book cover image

Fantasy Kit
Fiction by Adam McOmber
Black Lawrence Press, June 2022

The strange and sometimes horrific stories in Adam McOmber’s Fantasy Kit could easily draw a comparison to the work of Angela Carter or even the master of lyrical horror, Edgar Allen Poe, but they are also entirely unique. Made up of fairy tales, myths, and traveling through mazes of space and time; each of these stories creeps through the mind long after the last page. Adam McOmber is the author of three novels as well as two collections of short fiction. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts where he is also the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hunger Mountain.

New Book :: Reflections Through the Convex Mirror of Time

Reflections Through the Convex Mirror of Time by EA Mares book cover image

Reflections Through the Convex Mirror of Time
Poems in Remembrance of the Spanish Civil War
By E.A. Mares
University of New Mexico Press, August 2022

In this poignant bilingual collection, preeminent New Mexican poet E. A. “Tony” Mares posthumously shares his passionate journey into the broken heart and glimmering shadows of the Spanish Civil War, whose shock waves still resonate with the political upheavals of our own times. Mares engages in dialogue with heroes and demons, anarchists and cardinals, and beggars and poets. He takes us through the convex mirror of history to the blood-stained streets of Madrid, Guernica, and Barcelona. He interrogates the assassins of Federico García Lorca for their crimes against poetry and humanity. Throughout the collection, the narrator is participant and commentator, and his language is both lyrical and direct. In addition to Mares’s parallel Spanish and English poems, the book includes a prologue by Enrique Lamadrid, an introduction by Fernando Martín Pescador, and an epilogue by Susana Rivera.

New Book :: Creativity: Where Poems Begin

Creativity Where Poems Begin by Mary Mackey published by Marsh Hawk Press book cover image

Creativity: Where Poems Begin
Nonfiction/Poetry by Mary Mackey
Marsh Hawk Press, September 2022

Mary Mackey’s Creativity: Where Poems Begin is a meditation on how the sources of creativity emerged from a vast, wordless reality and became available to a poet. As such, it is not only a memoir; it is an exploration of the power and process of becoming a poet. What is creativity? Where do creative ideas come from? What happens at the exact moment a creative impulse is suddenly transformed into something that can be expressed in words? To describe creativity is extraordinarily difficult because the moment of creation comes from a place where language does not exist and where the categories that determine what we see, hear, taste, and feel are not immediately present. In our daily lives, we tend to live on the surface, unaware of the complexity and richness of what lies below. Poetry creates itself, bubbling up from the depths until it reaches that part of our brains that transforms consciousness into words. Poetry chooses the poet. The poet did not choose it. This book is a journey to that place where all poems begin.

New Book :: Fandom, the Next Generation

Fandom, the Next Generation a collection of essays edited by Bridget Kies and Megan Connor book cover image

Fandom, the Next Generation
Essays edited by Bridget Kies and Megan Connor
University of Iowa Press, August 2022

Fandom, the Next Generation is the first collection of essays to offer a close study of fan generations, which are defined not only by fans’ ages but by their entry point into a canon or via their personal politics. Editors Bridget Kies and Megan Connor selected contributors to further the conversation about how generational fandom is influenced by and, in turn, influences technologies, industry practices, and social and political changes. As reboot culture continues, as franchises continue expanding over time, and as new technologies enable easier access to older media, Fandom, the Next Generation offers a necessary investigation into transgenerational fandoms and intergenerational fan relationships.

New Book :: The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds

The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds by Orlando Ricardo Menes book cover image

The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds
Poetry by Orlando Ricardo Menes
University of New Mexico Press, August 2022

The poems in The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds expand the sacred within a baroque, magical-realist poetics that immerses itself in the flora and fauna of the Caribbean and the region’s complex interplay of African, Judeo-Christian, and Taíno (Arawak) cultures. Menes engages with the Catholic sacraments, saints’ lives, and the artistic heritage of this universal faith as well as Cuban art through the use of a variety of poetic styles across the collection. An established poet, he pays homage to those writers who have made him the Caribbean poet that he is, specifically Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima, and even Hart Crane. Readers will want to join Menes on this journey as he travels the globe to explore the fantastic and the marvelous while searching for faith and divine grace.

New Book :: Eating Up Route 66

Eating Up Route 66 Foodways on America's Mother Road by T. Lindsay Baker published by The University of Oklahoma Press book cover image

Eating Up Route 66: Foodways on America’s Mother Road
U.S. History / Cookbook by T. Lindsay Baker
The University of Oklahoma Press, October 2022

From its designation in 1926 to the rise of the interstates nearly sixty years later, Route 66 was, in John Steinbeck’s words, America’s Mother Road, carrying countless travelers the 2,400 miles between Chicago and Los Angeles. Whoever they were—adventurous motorists or Dustbowl migrants, troops on military transports or passengers on buses, vacationing families or a new breed of tourists—these travelers had to eat. The story of where they stopped and what they found, and of how these roadside offerings changed over time, reveals twentieth-century America on the move, transforming the nation’s cuisine, culture, and landscape along the way. Describing options for the wealthy and the not-so-well-heeled, from hotel dining rooms to ice cream stands, Baker also notes the particular travails African Americans faced at every turn, traveling Route 66 across the decades of segregation, legal and illegal. T. Lindsay Baker, who holds the W. K. Gordon Chair in Industrial History at Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, is Director of the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History, Thurber, Texas, and editor of the Windmiller’s Gazette.

New Book :: Steeple at Sunrise

Steeple at Sunrise new poems by Burt Kimmelman published by Marsh Hawk Press book cover image

Steeple at Sunrise
Poetry by Burt Kimmelman
Marsh Hawk Press, November 2022

Burt Kimmelman’s new poems continue his exploration of syllabic forms. The book’s first section contains individual poems written in recent years, each standing on its own as a unique experience. “Plague Calendar,” which follows, consists of especially brief and understated poems presented in the order of their inception. They subtly chronicle an individual’s psychological endurance over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, person and landscape reveal a transformation in recent time, an individual’s experience of daily life. Steeple at Sunrise is Kimmelman’s eleventh collection of poems. His work is often anthologized and has been featured on National Public Radio. He has also published eleven books of criticism, most recently Visible at Dusk: Selected Essays and Zero Point Poiesis (a gathering of writings on George Quasha).

New Book :: Prize for the Fire

Prize for the Fire a novel by Rilla Askew published by The University of Oklahoma Press book cover image

Prize for the Fire
Fiction by Rilla Askew
The University of Oklahoma Press, June 2022

Lincolnshire, 1537. Amid England’s religious turmoil, fifteen-year-old Anne Askew is forced to take her dead sister’s place in an arranged marriage. The witty, well-educated gentleman’s daughter is determined to free herself from her abusive husband, harsh in-laws, and the cruel strictures of her married life. But this is the England of Henry VIII, where religion and politics are dangerously entangled. A young woman of Anne’s fierce independence, Reformist faith, uncanny command of plainspoken scripture, and—not least—connections to Queen Katheryn Parr’s court cannot long escape official notice, or censure. In a blend of history and imagination, award-winning novelist Rilla Askew brings to life a young woman who defied the conventions of her time, ultimately braving torture and the fire of martyrdom for her convictions. An evocation of Reformation England, from the fenlands of Lincolnshire to the teeming religious underground of London to the court of Henry VIII, this tale of defiance is as pertinent today as it was in the sixteenth century.

New Book :: What Follows

What Follows poetry by H.R. Webster published by Black Lawrence Press book cover image

What Follows
Poetry by H.R. Webster
Black Lawrence Press, June 2022

In What Follows, the poet writes: “It’s the end of the world and we can’t stop saying the word tender.” Tenderness runs through the book, even as Webster demonstrates brutality and strength in the face of life’s experiences. These poems explore the vastness of the human experience, from sexual powerplays and the crimes commited against fellows to the mundanity and beauty of factory work. There is very little that escapes H.R.‘s glance and raw lyricism. H.R. Webster has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, 32Poems, Muzzle, and Ecotone. You can read more poems at hrwebster.com

New Book :: The Plea

The Plea The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and His Struggle for Redemption by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf published by University of Iowa Press book cover image

The Plea: The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and his Struggle for Redemption
American History / True Crime by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf
University of Iowa Press, July 2022

On a moonlit night in 1889, Iowa farmer John Elkins and his young wife, Hattie, were brutally murdered in their bed. Eight days later, their son, eleven-year-old Wesley Elkins, was arrested and charged with murder. The community reeled with shock by both the gruesome details of the homicides and the knowledge of the accused perpetrator—a small, quiet boy weighing just seventy-five pounds. Accessible and fast-moving, The Plea delivers a complete, complex, and nuanced narrative of this horrific crime, while shedding light on the legal, social, and political environment of Iowa and the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Bryan and Wolf also coauthored of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in Amer­ica’s Heartland (Iowa, 2007). Both reside in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

New Book :: Taxonomies

Taxonomies Poetry by Erin Murphy book cover image

Taxonomies
Poetry by Erin Murphy
Word Poetry, April 2022

The demi-sonnets in Erin Murphy’s Taxonomies categorize elements of the human experience that defy simple classification. In this form of her own invention, Murphy holds a magnifying glass to issues of gender, aging, relationships, and social justice. Erin Murphy is the author or editor of thirteen books and has received numerous awards. In April 2022, she was named Poet Laureate of Blair County, Pennsylvania. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is Professor of English and creative writing at the Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College. Read sample poems here.

New Book :: My Aunt’s Abortion

My Aunt's Abortion poetry and narrative memoir by Jane Rosenberg LaForge published by BlazeVOX book cover image

My Aunt’s Abortion
Poetry / Narrative Memoir by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
BlazeVOX, February 2023

My Aunt’s Abortion is a series of poems and two essays that detail the effects of an illegal abortion the author’s aunt underwent in 1960’s California. Part cautionary tale and part retrospective, the essays recall family life before and after the abortion; the poems provide the perspective of the young girl who witnessed her aunt’s recovery from a mysterious disease and the disintegration of her parents’ marriage. Together, the poems and essays evoke a period of loss and shame that will likely return with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Sample pages can be read on the publisher’s website. Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of three previous collections of poetry; four chapbooks; a memoir; and two novels. Her 2018 novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing), was a finalist in two categories in the Eric Hoffer awards. Her 2021 novel, Sisterhood of the Infamous (New Meridian Arts Press), was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards in regional fiction (west). A reviewer for American Book Review, she reads poetry for COUNTERCLOCK literary magazine and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net.

New Book :: Triptychs

Triptychs poetry by Sandra Simonds book cover image

Triptychs
Poetry by Sandra Simonds
Wave Books, November 2022

Sandra Simonds’s Triptychs is a brilliant intersection of poetic form and the passage of time. Initially crafted in handwritten strips on rolls of receipt paper obtained at a dollar store, then assembled into three textual columns that sit side-by-side on the page, these triptychs are joined or disjoined in several ways—through diction, through the special relation of words (evoking intimacy, touch, or, in contrast, alienation), and through thematic similarities or dissimilarities. As a result, the poems energize the confines of this writing space as they invite readers to recall painterly constructions and news headlines, wherein each pillar is in conversation with another, sequentially and simultaneously. With the same lyric attention found in all of Simonds’s poetry, the poems here mark an innovative shift in poetics that is both polyvocal and singular.

Books Received August 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Books” tag under “Popular Topics.” If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

American Bitch, Rae Hoffman Jager, Kelsay Books
Blood Snow, dg nanouk okpic, Wave Books
the Colored page, Matthew E. Henry, Sundress Publications
Creature Features, Noel Sloboda, Main Street Rag Publishing
In Our Now, Valyntina Grenier, Finishing Line Press
Intimacies in Borrowed Light, Darius Stewart, EastOver Press
Optic Subwoof, Douglas Kearney, Wave Books
Pacific Light, David Mason, Red Hen Press
possessions, Alan Botsford, Cyberwit.net
Slight Return, Rebecca Wolff, Wave Books
Steeple at Sunrise, Burt Kimmelman, Marsh Hawk Press
Triptychs, Sandra Simonds, Wave Books
What Follows, H.R. Webster, Black Lawrence Press
Whistling to Trick the Wind, Bart Edelman, Meadowlark Books

Fiction

Against the Wall, Alberto Roblest, Arte Público Press
Breathing Lake Superior, Ron Rindo, Brick Mantel Books
Chronicles of a Luchador, Ray Villareal, Arte Público Press
The Displaced, Rodrigo Ribera d’Ebre, Arte Público Press
Hayley and the Hot Flashes, Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, Small Town Girl Publishing
The Meadow and the Misread, Max Halper, Threadsuns Press
Midstream: A Novel, Lynn Sloan, Fomite Press
Prize for the Fire, Rilla Askew, The University of Oklahoma Press

Nonfiction

Eating Up Route 66, T. Lindsay Baker, University of Oaklahoma Press
Making Your Mark, Peter Davidson, Sweet Memories Publishing
The Plea, Patricia L. Bryan & Thomas Wolf, University of Iowa Press
Ships in the Desert, Jeff Frearnside, Santa Fe Writers Project
These Dark Skies, Arianne Zwartjes, University of Iowa Press
Warrior Spirit, Herman J. Viola, University of Oklahoma Press

New Book :: the Colored page

The Colored Page poems by Matthew E. Henry published by Sundress Publications

the Colored page
Poetry by Matthew E. Henry
Sundress Publications, July 2022

From the author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag), the Colored page by Michael E. Henry (MEH) is a visceral meditation on the multi-layered experience of a Black body in educational spaces. Sprawling with metaphors and allusions to both the contemporary and the historic, Henry brings readers an intense narrative chronicle of the speaker’s life as student, educator, and finally as a writer. At the center, there is a reckoning with the racism written into the pages of America, and Henry leads us from the microaggressions of educational oversight to the horror of blatant dehumanization. In pieces that directly call out those responsible—educators, institutions, and peers alike—the speaker moves via Henry’s generously vivid poems through open letters, vignettes, and poetic narratives that uncover the realities of an educator’s life’s work in the “United” States today. In a world that so often seeks to minimize Black experiences, the Colored page does not inflate, but neither does it look away. Yet, too, there is joy in these pages. Henry invites us to love, but please don’t touch, the beauty of Black hair, of Black lives, and of our Black students. Henry asks us to look at the vile and call it out, but then we are tasked to shift our focus to the glory that is the student who triumphs. Henry invites us, ultimately, to a celebration.

New Book :: Intimacies in Borrowed Light

Intimacies in Borrowed Light poetry by Darius Stewart published by EastOver Press book cover image

Intimacies in Borrowed Light
Poetry by Darius Stewart
EastOver Press, July 2022

Intimacies in Borrowed Light is Stewart’s first book-length collection of poems, bringing together works from his three previous chapbooks—The Terribly Beautiful, Sotto Voce, and The Ghost the Night Becomes—in addition to new poems. The result is a book that is more than the sum of its parts, but one that coalesces around themes of love, addiction, violence, sexual identity, and the corporeal body to betray the intimate moments that illuminate, especially, Black gay male experiences. Stewart received an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin (2007) and an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa (2020). In 2021, the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame honored him with the inaugural Emerging Writer Award. He is currently a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Doctoral Fellow in English Literary Studies at the University of Iowa.

New Book :: Whistling to Trick the Wind

Whistling to Trick the Wind poems by Bart Edelman published by Meadowlark Books book cover image

Whistling to Trick the Wind
Poetry by Bart Edelman
Meadowlark Books, November 2021

What does it mean to live a full life as the countdown is nearing its end? The variety of narrators and characters in this poetry collection provide answers in these snapshots of impactful moments. Fifty-four poems, divided into four sections–Yellow, Red, Black, and White–balance humor and seriousness, the savored and the fleeting, the makeup of human experience. Bart Edelman was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and spent his childhood in Teaneck. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Hofstra University and spent decades teaching at various colleges and universities, most notably Glendale College, where he edited the literary journal Eclipse. In addition to being one of the coolest dudes ever, Bart has had numerous roles in the literary community, published lots, and continues to live an amazing life that he shares through his poetry. If you don’t already know him, you should.

New Book :: Breathing Lake Superior

Breathing Lake Superior a novel by Ron Rindo published by Brick Mantel Books book cover image

Breathing Lake Superior
Fiction by Ron Rindo
Brick Mantel Books, October 2022

Overcome with grief following the death of his youngest child, Cal Franklin uproots his wife and teenaged children to a ramshackle subsistence farm in far northern Wisconsin. Withdrawn and estranged from all they know, JJ and her stepbrother, John, struggle to adapt to life off the grid and to Cal’s increasingly erratic behavior. Without electricity or even running water, the family suffers a series of calamities until Cal feels a call to preach. He builds a small log church on the property, and his unconventional message soon attracts a following. When elderly locals profess to be healed by the touch of Cal’s hands, word spreads, and desperate people descend on the church from across the country. Though overwhelmed and doubtful of his powers, in a final act of love and faith, Cal seeks to raise his young son from the dead. Narrated by Cal’s stepson, John—named for “the chronicler of Christ’s miracles”—Breathing Lake Superior is an exploration of the mystic borderland where the mental strain of overwhelming grief becomes entangled with the promise and hope of ecstatic faith.

New Book :: American Bitch

American Bitch poetry collection by Rae Hoffman Jager published by Kelsay Books book cover image

American Bitch
Poetry by Rae Hoffman Jager
Kelsay Books, April 2022

American Bitch is Rae Hoffman Jager’s debut collection of poems that portrays a woman starting a family in an impossibly violent and impersonal world. Jager’s book juggles an unlikely pairing of poems about football, Judaism, pregnancy, and becoming a parent. This collection is a funeral march and a celebration with allusions to Greek mythology, Marshawn Lynch, Rothko, and an ever-growing crack in the ice shelf. Jager holds a BA from Warren Wilson College and an MFA from Wichita State University. Her poetry has been published in a variety of online and print journals. In 2016 She was named The New Voice Poet out of Salina, Kansas. This book originally was a finalist with Sundress and Birdcoat Quarterly before finding a home with Kelsay Books.

New Book :: Buy a Ticket

Buy a Ticket: New and Selected Poems Poetry by Judith R. Robinson book cover image

Buy a Ticket: New and Selected Poems
Poetry by Judith R. Robinson
Word Poetry, February 2022

Buy a Ticket by Judith R. Robinson is a collection of poems about life—its imperfect beauty, its poignance, and the forces that propel it forward. Toggling among life stages—from a child’s recollections of school with its “blue-lined grainy first-grade paper” to an adult’s look back through the eyes of shared reminiscence with a boon companion, these poems resonate with a sense of time’s passage, its transience, and elasticity. Grief and disappointment compete with an indomitable will to continue despite setbacks and loss. Whether through the eyes of teenage Holocaust survivor, Dora, who gleans the forest floors in her quest to live, or the “jobless-wounded-welfar-ians” who keep on dreaming of the windfall that will make it all better, the human beings in Robinson’s poems may be beaten and bruised by life’s hard knocks, but they are not down for the count. Read sample poems here.

New Book :: Hayley and the Hot Flashes

Hayley and the Hot Flashes a novel by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer published by Small Town Girl Publishing book cover image

Hayley and the Hot Flashes
Fiction by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer
Small Town Girl Publishing, June 2022

Hayley Swift, a country music diva who has slipped out of the limelight, gets more attention when she’s mistaken for Taylor Swift’s mom than for her former glory days. When she’s invited to perform at her 35th high school reunion, a bus accident puts her backup singers in a hospital, Hayley begs her long-gone-domestic quartet from high school to join her onstage for the gig. They’re such a hit that she invites the women to fill in on a low-budget tour for a couple of weeks while her singers recover. Thrilled at the chance to flee routine for a dream deferred for decades, the friends readily accept. Nefarious flirtations, indiscriminate mood swings, equipment malfunctions, and a few nasty cat-fights combine to wreak havoc on the Retro Rodeo tour, but it’s a crazed stalker, an overzealous fan, and an unexpected pregnancy that ultimately derail the road trip. In the midst of the mayhem, friendships and fantasies are redefined as the women come together to face one’s debilitating illness. True love emerges from the tragedy, though, and the friends discover new strengths and aspirations as this adventure ends and new ones begin.

New Book :: Optic Subwoof

Optic Subwoof poetry by Douglas Kearney book cover image

Optic Subwoof
Poetry by Douglas Kearney
Wave Books, November 2022

Optic Subwoof is a collection of talks that poet and National Book Award finalist Douglas Kearney presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2020 and 2021. As kinetic on the page as they are in person, these lectures offer an urgent critique of the intersections between violence and entertainment, interrogating the ways in which poetry, humor, visual art, music, pop culture, and performance alternately uphold and subvert this violence. With genius precision and an avant-garde sensibility, Kearney examines the nuances around Black visibility and its aestheticization. In myriad ways, Optic Subwoof is a book that establishes Kearney as one of the most dynamic writers and thinkers of the twenty-first century.

New Book :: possessions

possessions poems in american poetry by alan botsford book cover image

possessions: poems in american poetry
Poetry by Alan Botsford
Cyberwit.net, May 2022

Author Alan Botsford has penned three other poetry collections—mamaist: learning a new language (Minato no Hito); A Book of Shadows (Katydid Press) with William I. Elliott; and mamaist: a different sort of light (dark woods press). He has also published the hybrid essay-dialogue-poetry collection Walt Whitman of Cosmic Folklore (Sage Hill Press). This newest collection consists of a large cast of poets, of multiple voices, over 150, including many contemporaries. As Botsford writes, “this book is a love letter to the art of American poetry, a tribute to American poetry’s pedigree. Its method is simple—I tried to synthesize what the poets wrote with my own music.”

New Book :: The Meadow and the Misread

The Meadow and the Misread a novel by Max Halper published by Threadsuns Press book cover image

The Meadow and the Misread
Fiction by Max Halper
Threadsuns Press, June 2022

X Parke Penate, a college freshman, realizes she has no memories from before the age of 12 or 13. Determined to understand why, she boards a plane home over winter break to speak with her parents. But her plane crashes, and X Parke is stranded alone in the cold forest. What ensues is a journey—equal parts surreal and hyperreal, epic and interior, esoteric and harrowing, strange and familiar—to uncover the truth about her missing memory. Max Halper is the author of the novella, Lamella, and numerous short fictions. He lives in upstate New York.

New Book :: Against the Wall

Against the Wall Stories by Alberto Roblest book cover image

Against the Wall
Stories by Alberto Roblest
Arte Público Press, March 2022

In the prologue to this inventive collection, the exhausted protagonist finally reaches the doors to paradise after an arduous journey, but the longed-for entrance doesn’t have a handle or keyhole and there’s no bell or intercom. He considers climbing over it, but the wall reaches to the sky. He thinks of magic words that might open it and even kicks it, to no avail. The long, difficult trip has brought him to nothing except a concrete wall surrounded by desert. The characters in these seventeen stories find themselves with their backs against the wall, whether literally or figuratively. They run the gamut from undocumented immigrants to faded rock and soap-opera stars and even the Washington Monument. The eyes of the world focus on the blackened obelisk, which is covered in millions of insects, as government forces attempt to deal with this national emergency! Several pieces deal with people who are lost or long to go back in time. In one, Ramírez wakes up disoriented to discover he—along with untold others—is trapped in a bus terminal, unable to leave the Lost & Found area that’s piled high with thousands of suitcases, trunks, backpacks and packages.

New Book :: Ships in the Desert

Ships in the Desert environmental travel essays by Jeff Fearnside published by Santa Fe Writers Workshop Books cover image

Ships in the Desert
Essays by Jeff Fearnside
Santa Fe Writers Project Books, August 2022

In this linked essay collection, author Jeff Fearnside analyzes his four years as an educator on the Great Silk Road, primarily in Kazakhstan. Peeling back the layers of culture, environment, and history that define the country and its people, Fearnside creates a compelling narrative about this faraway land and soon realizes how the local, personal stories are, in fact, global stories. Fearnside sees firsthand the unnatural disaster of the Aral Sea—a man-made environmental crisis that has devastated the region and impacts the entire world. He examines the sometimes controversial ethics of Western missionaries and reflects on personal and social change once he returns to the States. Ships in the Desert explores universal issues of religious bigotry, cultural intolerance, environmental degradation, and how a battle over water rights led to a catastrophe that is now being repeated around the world.

New Book :: Warrior Spirit

Warrior Spirit by Herman J. Viola published by University of Oklahoma Press book cover image

Warrior Spirit: The STory of Native American Patriotism and Heroism
Military History by Herman J. Viola
The University of Oklahoma Press, March 2022

For decades, American schoolchildren have learned only a smattering of facts about Native American peoples, especially when it comes to service in the U.S. military. They might know that Navajos served as Code Talkers during World War II, but more often they learn that Native Americans were enemies of the United States, not allies or patriots. In Warrior Spirit, author Herman J. Viola corrects the record by highlighting the military service—and major sacrifices—of Native American soldiers and veterans in the U.S. armed services. Warrior Spirit introduces readers to unsung heroes, from the first Native guides and soldiers during the Revolutionary War to those servicemen and -women who ventured to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Herman J. Viola is Director of Quincentenary Programs in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Other contributors include Ellen Baumler, Cheryl Huges, and Michelle Pearson, with a foreword by Debra Kay Mooney.

New Book :: Without Goodbyes

Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake Poetry by Ginny Lowe Connors book cover image

Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake
Poetry by Ginny Lowe Connors
Turning Point, December 2021

Without Goodbyes by Ginny Lowe Connors is a collection of poems based on a historical event: the infamous 1704 raid on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts. More than 100 Deerfield residents: men, women, and children, were captured. Then they began the 300-mile trek to New France, the French colony, in Quebec. The poems, which trace a narrative but are lyrical in nature, focus on Joanna Kellogg, an eleven-year-old girl, and two of her siblings. They were adopted into Mohawk families in the village of Kahnawake, a Mohawk community centered around a Jesuit mission. The physical journey Joanna and her siblings took to reach Kahnawake was grueling; of even greater interest is the journey she took to truly become a member of the Mohawk community. Read sample poems here.

New Book :: Slight Return

Slight Return poetry by Rebecca Wolff book cover image

Slight Return
Poetry by Rebecca Wolff
Wave Books, October 2022

In her new collection, renowned publisher and poet Rebecca Wolff voyages in the myopia of American consumer consciousness—erotic regard, spiritual FOMO, gentrification, branding—without destination. Labyrinthine in their paradoxical musings and incisive in their witty recriminations, these poems grapple with the hubris and dysmorphia of the soul. Wolff is a poet that is unafraid to be a querent, not only of sages (“I only hang out with people / who are psychic / anything else is a / waste of precious / continuity”) but of language itself (“How else is one to know how to proceed / How is one to make a motion against— / electric word life”) In Slight Return, the journey is infinite and elusive—aspiring in the best way toward a point of diminishing returns and withholding any promise of a comfortable landing.

New Book :: The Displaced

The Displaced a novel by Rodrigo Ribera d'Ebre book cover image

The Displaced
Fiction by Rodrigo Ribera d’Ebre
Arte Público Press, June 2022

Mikey and Lurch are worlds apart, even if they’re from the same Mexican neighborhood in West Los Angeles. Mikey just graduated from UCLA and is determined to get out. Lurch, the leader of the Culver City gang, loves the hood—its projects, beat-up apartments, and crackheads—more than his own life. They hook up with a doctor, who is from the same area. He put himself through medical school selling dope and now is back, running a clinic across from the Mar Vista Gardens housing project. All three notice changes. Suddenly there are outsiders everywhere: white people with beards, wearing V-neck sweaters and plaid shirts, running in jogging outfits or riding bikes with helmets, oblivious to the gangbangers. They’re artists, students, developers and entrepreneurs; a plague, pushing people out of their homes. Old people on fixed incomes start getting evicted or foreclosed on and the residents of the projects are being relocated, but some of the locals aren’t going to sit by without a fight. Soon they are fortifying the housing projects and stockpiling assault weapons! This absorbing novel follows a group of people who are determined to save their homes and neighborhood from gentrification, even if it means turning to violence.

July 2022 eLitPak :: Get These Summer 2022 Titles from Livingston Press

Screenshot of Summer 2022 Titles from Livingston Press flyer for the June 2022 eLitPak
click image to open PDF

New from Livingston Press! Aftershock by George H. Wolfe is a novel about GI’s returning from WWII to about-face and enter colleges under the GI Bill. Zero to Ten: Nursing on the Floor by Patricia Taylor is a story collection about nursing, its joys, frustrations, and heartbreak. See flyer for more details or visit website.

Not a NewPages Newsletter subscriber yet? View the full July 2022 eLitPak here.

New Book :: Pacific Light

Pacific Light poetry by David Mason book cover image

Pacific Light
Poetry by David Mason
Red Hen Press, August 2022

David Mason was born in Washington State, forty-odd degrees north latitude, and now lives on the Australian island of Tasmania, forty-odd degrees south latitude. That Pacific crossing is the work of a lifetime of devotion and change. The rich new poems of Pacific Light explore the implications of the light as well as peace and its opposing forces. What does it mean to be an immigrant and face the ultimate borders of our lives? How can we say the word home and mean it? These questions have obsessed Mason in his major narrative works, The Country I Remember and Ludlow, as well as his lyric and dramatic writing. Pacific Light is a culmination and a deepening of that work, a book of transformations, history and love, endurance and unfathomable beauty, by a poet “at the height of his powers.”

New Book :: American Narratives

American Narrative poetry by T.P. Bird book cover image

American Narratives
Poetry by T.P. Bird
Turning Point, November 2021

In this newest collection of poems, American Narratives, T.P. Bird offers the reader narratives of America that portray the grit of the street, the noise of the crowd, and the softness of the heart in a manner as large and capacious as a myth and a country. Bird is a retired industrial drafter/designer and minister now living in Lexington, Kentucky with his spouse. He has published widely in literary journals and is the author of two previous chapbooks, Mystery and Imperfections and Scenes and Speculations. Read sample poems here.

New Book :: Not a Soul but Us

Not a Soul but Us A Story in 84 Sonnets by Richard Smith book cover image

Not a Soul but Us: A Story in 84 Sonnets
Poetry by Richard Smith
Bauhan Publishing, April 2022

Not a Soul but Us: A Story in 84 Sonnets by Richard Smith is the winning collection of the 2021 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. In it, Smith tells the story of mid-fourteenth century Yorkshire, when the plague pandemic wipes out half the inhabitants of a remote village. Left behind is a twelve-year-old shepherd boy, who, with the help of his dog, survives near-starvation and a brutal winter and keeps his flock alive. In the months and years that follow, he struggles to reconnect with the life around him. Judge Meg Kearney said this of her selection, “A mastery of craft. Music. An undulating urgency of tone that leaves no doubt about the emotional impulse that drives the work. A voice that you trust, even when the syntax or the material is difficult. And that material needs to feel relevant, of substance, necessary. Not a Soul But Us is an achievement on every front.”

New Book :: The Girl I Never Knew

The Girl I Never Knew Who Killed Melissa Witt a true crime book by LaDonna Humphrey book cover image

The Girl I Never Knew: Who Killed Melissa Witt?
True Crime by LaDonna Humphrey
Genius Book Publishing, April 2022

For over two decades, the identity of Melissa Witt’s killer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest. Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa’s killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other, at times her own safety at risk from those who want this mystery to remain unsolved. LaDonna Humphrey is a writer, documentarian, investigative journalist, private investigator, and advocate for victims of crime. “I’m hopeful that the book will put some pressure on some of those people who know they are being looked at [as suspects] but have not been named publicly.” Visit the publisher’s website for links to radio and news media interviews with the author.

New Book :: Blood Snow

Blood Snow poetry by dg nanouk okpik book cover image

Blood Snow
Poetry by dg nanouk okpik
Wave Books, October 2022

American Book Award–winning poet dg okpik’s second collection of poems, Blood Snow, tells a continuum story of a homeland under erasure, in an ethos of erosion, in a multitude of encroaching methane, ice floe, and rising temperatures. Here, in a true Inupiaq voice, okpik’s relationship to language is an access point for understanding larger kinships between animals, peoples, traditions, histories, ancestries, and identities. Through an animist process of transfiguration into a shaman’s omniscient voice, we are greeted with a destabilizing grammar of selfhood. Okpik’s poems have a fraught relationship to her former home in Anchorage, Alaska, a place of unparalleled natural beauty and a traumatic site of devastation for Alaskan native nations and landscapes alike. In this way, okpik’s poetry speaks to the dualistic nature of reality and how one’s existence in the world simultaneously shapes and is shaped by its environs.

New Book :: These Dark Skies

These Dark Skies: Reckoning with Identity, Violence, and Power from Abroad a collection of essays by Arianne Zwartjes book cover image

These Dark Skies: Reckoning with Identity, Violence, and Power from Abroad
Essays by Arianne Zwartjes
University of Iowa Press, June 2022

In These Dark Skies, Arianne Zwartjes interweaves the experience of living in the southern Netherlands—with her wife, who is Russian—and the unfolding of both the refugee crisis across Europe and the uptick in terrorist acts in France, Greece, Austria, Germany, and the Balkans. She probes her own subjectivity, as a white American, as a queer woman in a transcultural marriage, as a writer, and as a witness. The essays investigate and meditate on a broad array of related topics, including drone strikes, tear gas, and military intervention; the sugar trade, the Dutch blackface celebration of Zwarte Piet, and constructions of whiteness in Europe and the U.S.; and visual arts of Russian avant-garde painters, an Iraqi choreographer living in Belgium, and German choreographer Pina Bausch.

New Book :: Chronicles of a Luchador

Chronicles of a Luchador YA fiction by Ray Villareal book cover image

Chronicles of a Luchador
YA Fiction by Ray Villareal
Arte Público Press, June 2022

Jesse Baron, the son of the American Championship Wrestling star known as the Angel of Death, is about to graduate from high school. His parents expect him to attend the University of Texas and study mechanical engineering, something he’s not interested in. The young man knows he would be a natural at professional wrestling, and with his father’s help, he might even reach the same level of fame and success. But the Angel of Death, retired from the ACW and running a wrestling promotion and school, refuses to train his son for fear he will choose sports entertainment over a college degree. Jesse decides that once he gets settled at UT, he’s going to look for another place to wrestle. To keep his father from finding out, he’ll promote himself as a masked luchador from Oaxaca, Mexico, named Máscara de la Muerte. When no one will hire him, Jesse reluctantly considers joining a lucha libre organization, even though he doesn’t speak Spanish. Will the fans and his fellow wrestlers see him as a luchador—or just a gringo with a mask?

New Book :: The Ultimate Havana

The Ultimate Havana: A Willie Cuesta Mystery by John Lantigua book cover image

The Ultimate Havana: A Willie Cuesta Mystery
Fiction by John Lantigua
Arte Público Press, March 2022

Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police detective turned private investigator, is struggling to pay the bills when he receives a call from an old family friend. Cesar Mendoza is the blind, elderly owner of Tabacos El Ciego, a cigar store in Little Havana. Cesar is worried about Victoria Espada, a friend from the old days in Cuba. As a young woman, she was so beautiful that cigar makers competed to put her image on their boxes. She came from a long line of tobacco growers and married a man from an old, respected clan of cigar makers. The couple, who represented one of the great cigar dynasties of all time, fled the island after the revolution, but things didn’t go well. Ernesto Espada ultimately committed suicide, leaving his widow with two young children to raise. Now, her son, a less-than-successful cigar salesman, has gone missing, and the detective is tasked with finding him.


New Book :: Out of Patients

Out of Patients a novel by Sandra Carallo Miller book cover image

Out of Patients
Fiction by Sandra Carallo Miller
University of Nevada Press, August 2022

After practicing medicine for more than thirty years in the sweltering suburbs of Phoenix, Dr. Norah Waters is weighing her options, and early retirement is looking better and better. At age fifty-eight, she questions whether she still needs to deal with midnight calls, cranky patients, and the financial headaches that come with running a small clinic. Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one final year to find the fulfillment and satisfaction she remembers from the early years of her once-cherished career. Supported by her steadfast dog, a misfit veterinarian, and a thoughtful radiologist, Norah wrestles through a surprising assortment of obstacles, sometimes amusing and sometimes dreadful, on her way to making a final decision about her future.

Books Received July 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Books” tag under “Popular Topics.” If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

American Narratives, T.P. Bird, Turning Point
Book of the Cold, Antonio Gamoneda, World Poetry Books
Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic and Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020
Buy a Ticket, Judith R. Robinson, Word Poetry
Cold Fire, Veronica Zondek, World Poetry Books
Coming To, J.R. Solonche, David Robert Books
Flutter Kick, Anna V.Q. Ross, Red Hen Press
Gold Hill Family Audio, Corrie Lynn White, Southeast Missouri State University
Hechizo, Mark Statman, Lavendar Ink
Hers, Maria Laina, World Poetry Books
I Dreamed I was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend, Ron Koertge, Red Hen Press
Living in a Red State Blues, M. Scott Douglass, Paycock Press
The Lowly Negro, James Smith, Revolutionary Books
Love Poems in the Apocalypse, Dani Gabriel, Main Street Rag Publishing
Love’s Universe, Nin Carey Tassi, Cherry Grove Collections
Lynchings: Postcards from America, Lester Graves Lennon, WordTech Editions
The Ones with Difficult Names, David Brendan Hopes, Kelsay Books
Oxblood, Nicole Caruso Garcia, Able Muse Press
Salem Revisited, Charles K. Carter, WordTech Editions
Sheltered in Place, CJ Giroux, Finishing Line Press
A Woman Somehow Dead, Amy Locklin, David Robert Books

Continue reading “Books Received July 2022”

New Book :: Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life Poetry by Peter Neil Carroll book cover image

Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life
Poetry by Peter Neil Carroll
Turning Point, January 2022

In this newest collection, Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life, Peter Neil Carroll employs a multiplicity of voices to ensure that no one is, truly, a stranger. Carroll is the author of several previous collections, including Fracking Dakota, Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem and A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places, which won the Prize Americana in 2012. Other books include the memoir Keeping Time. His poems have appeared in many journals. He has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco, taught history and American Studies at Stanford and Berkeley, and hosted “Booktalk” on Pacifica Radio. Read sample poems here.

New Book :: Hechizo

Hechizo
Poetry by Mark Statman
Lavender Ink, January 2022

Lavender Ink poetry by Mark Statman book cover image

An hechizo is a spell, an incantation that attempts to effect change in the world via language. Mark Statman’s Hechizo is woven through a world of personal demons, past and present, a world facing a pandemic and social, political, and environmental dissolution. These incantations take aim at the world from the smallest lizard that crawls into view to overarching political structures. It’s a register not seen in his work before—of foreboding, the forbidden, concluding in tentative, possible joy.