The texts in this list are curated through my personal interest and recommendations from publishing companies, authors, and publicists. Please contact me with upcoming releases. Understand that I will only include two texts per publishing company. I can be reached at jacob@entropymag.org.
Black Lawrence Press
Blood Box by Zefyr Lisowski
52 pages – Black Lawrence Press
“Blood Box, the deliciously haunting debut short collection from poet Zefyr Lisowski, takes us inside the infamous 1892 axe murders of Abby and Andrew Borden through twenty-six wide-ranging, stylistically experimental persona poems. Lisowski re-introduces us to mythologized spinster Lizzie Borden as we’ve never seen her before: a girl wielding an axe, yes, but also a girl trapped—in the boxes of age, of hunger, of loneliness, of blame. Lizzie, who was acquitted of the double murder of her father and stepmother, yet continues to haunt our cultural psyche over a hundred years later. Even now, ‘Violence dances with us like ghosts.’ In these pages, the notorious crime and its cast of characters serve as a jumping-off point for a textured exploration of inherited violence, queer intimacy, and the way family can be ‘another geometry, another violence too.’ Blood Box is Lizzie’s story, but it’s also the story of grief, of selfhood, of trans and queer becoming. Lisowski’s Lizzie Borden is as sweet, sad, spooky, and haunted as a girl with an axe ever can be.” –from the Black Lawrence Press website
Look Look Look by Callista Buchen
60 pages – Black Lawrence Press
“Drawing from surrealism, the grotesque, and even horror, Callista Buchen’s Look Look Look explores how alien one’s own body—one’s own self—becomes through pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. In these prose poems, Buchen’s mother-speaker ‘build[s] and dissolve[s],’ is both ‘double and half.’ The line between self and other, the line between construction and deconstruction, and ‘[t]he line between making and being made’ have never felt so thin, so permeable. This is a profound book of poems.” —Maggie Smith
Civil Coping Mechanisms
American Symphony: Other White Lies by Suiyi Tang
174 pages – Civil Coping Mechanisms
“American Symphony is a portrait of a portrait, a mirror’s reflection of someone that’s gone missing, a speculative memoir that takes cues and challenges from works by Kathy Acker, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Jenny Zhang. S has made it her duty to be the editor, piecing together how ! had disappeared, picking apart the words that ! had left behind in hopes of discovering what went wrong. Through a captivating assemblage of literary pieces, S solves the puzzle, inadvertently creating an impression of what people remember most of the missing and the dead. Melancholic and bravely honest, Suiyi Tang has achieved something thought to be impossible, taking linguistic fortitude and bending it into a new shape, achieving new emotional heights.” –from the Accomplices Website
Ghosts are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock by Hillary Leftwich
132 pages – Civil Coping Mechanisms
Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock is a multi-genre collection that examines grief, violence, heartbreak, and the universal challenge of living in a body that is always vulnerable. In this greyscale kaleidoscope of the familiar and the uncanny, muted voices shout, people commit to devastating choices, and mundane moments are filled with silent hauntings. A sleep paralysis and a séance of voices long dead, this collection’s characters illuminate both our own darkness and our strength, revealing how love can emerge from the most impossible of conditions.” –from the Accomplices website
Dzanc Books
Homesick by Nino Cipri
160 pages – Dzanc Books/ Amazon
“Dark, irreverent, and truly innovative, the nine speculative stories in Homesick meditate on the theme of home and our estrangement from it, and what happens when the familiar suddenly shifts into the uncanny. In stories that foreground queer relationships and transgender or nonbinary characters, Cipri delivers the origin story for a superhero team comprised of murdered girls; a housecleaner discovering an impossible ocean in her least-favorite clients’ house; a man haunted by keys that appear suddenly in his throat; and a team of scientists and activists discovering the remains of a long-extinct species of intelligent weasels. In the spirit of Laura van den Berg, Emily Geminder, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, and other winners of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, Nino Cipri’s debut collection announces the arrival of a brilliant and wonderfully unpredictable writer with a gift for turning the short story on its ear.” –from the Dzanc Books website
Fiction Advocate
Bizarro Worlds by Stacie Williams
94 pages – Fiction Advocate
“As a black woman and a comics geek, Stacie Williams identified strongly with one aspect of The Fortress of Solitude—its portrayal of gentrification. For Jonathan Lethem’s characters, and for Williams in her own life, gentrification is a stand-in for racism—the “Big Bad” that affects education, policing, and housing policy. Tracing her experience of living in Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Lexington, Kentucky, Williams tests the limits of how far Lethem’s superhero narrative frames the most American of experiences.” – from the Fiction Advocate website
New Uses for Failure by Adam Colman
154 pages – Fiction Advocate
“A brave new mode of literature is emerging in the work of Sheila Heti, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others. Call it what you will; Adam Colman calls it essayistic fiction. In this sharp, playful book, Colman dives deep into Ben Lerner’s 10:04 to create a “how to” manual for anyone who wants to write, or simply understand, essayistic fiction. A manifesto, a critical analysis, and a winking work of satire, New Uses for Failure marks the arrival of a sparkling new genre.” –from the Fiction Advocate website
Gaudy Boy
The Foley Artist: Stories by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco
150 pages – Gaudy Boy
“The Foley Artist: Stories is the much-awaited debut by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco—an incisive, probing work for fans and readers of the Filipino America brought vividly to life in the fiction of Elaine Castillo and Mia Alvar. At once deliciously bizarre and painfully familiar, The Foley Artist opens new regions of American feeling and thought as it interrogates intimacy, foreignness, missed connections, and silence in an absurd world. Here, these nine stories deftly give voice to the intersectional identities of women and men in the Filipino diaspora and queer community in America, from Des Moines, Iowa, to Boston, Massachusetts. A straight woman attends her ex-boyfriend’s same-sex marriage in coastal Maine; a gay, college-bound teenager encounters his deaf uncle in Manila; Asian American drag queens duke it out in the annual Iowa State Fair; a seventy-nine-year-old foley artist attempts to recreate the sounds of life.” –from the Gaudy Boy website
Indolent Books
Impure Acts by Ángelo Néstore (Trans. Lawrence Schimel)
80 pages – Indolent Press
“Ángelo Néstore’s poetry, his ‘impure acts,’ changes the whole cartography of desire with the beautiful perfection of a modern, dream-like demiurge who knows he is in absolute possession of his glory. Poem-temples, poem-traps, gaps in the disquiet for those who will have no better illumination than that which is offered by this dialogue between poet and reader. Communion, I would say, if communion were not sometimes dangerously conflated with religiosity. Poems which, in their exquisite and innovative craftsmanship, already demand a canonical place in our collective memory and anthologies.” —Carlos Pintado
Jamii Publishing
Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation by Cynthia Manick (Editor)
117 pages – Jamii Publishing
This anthology celebrates five years of Soul Sister Revue, a quarterly reading series for established and emerging poets who write in the narrative tradition of storytelling. The series was formed by poet Cynthia Manick to see diversity on stage, to promote storytelling, and to celebrate Soul in all its forms. In this anthology, two poets from each Soul Sister Revue performance contribute a poem and answers the question What does Soul mean to you?
KERNPUNKT Press
The Big Red Herring by Andrew Farkas
460 pages – KERNPUNKT Press/ Amazon
“In this latest work by Andrew Farkas, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, not enemies. The moon landing was a hoax filmed by Stanley Kubrick. The Space Race and the Cold War were diversions enacted to cover up the biggest secret ever kept. But Wallace Heath Orcuson (Wall to his friends) has more immediate problems to deal with. He’s just woken up in an apartment he’s never seen before. There’s a dead body under his couch. It’s his girlfriend’s husband, a man named “Senator” Kipper Maris. Meanwhile, at a donut shop, a radio narrator, who’s been forced to adopt the name Edward R. Murrow, reads Wall’s story. He hates it. He wants to change it. The problem: Murrow is a narrator, not a writer, and the penalty for altering a manuscript is death. Luckily for Murrow, his boss, “Senator” Kipper Maris, was recently murdered. So maybe no one will notice. Or maybe there’s a reason for the rule. But you can’t find out what’s in Pandora’s box until it’s opened, right? Who wants to see what’s inside?” –from the KERNPUNKT Press
The Nurseryman by Arthur Allen
133 pages – KERNPUNKT Press/ Amazon
“The Nurseryman is a verse novel told in polyphony as the collected account of a 17th Century voyage to Meta Incognita – the absolutely unknown ice-land at the top of the world. A composite of original sources and collected accounts of medieval voyages, The Nurseryman is a postmodern travel compendium that explores the hidden, magical worlds within our own.” –from the KERNPUNKT Press website
Rose Metal Press
Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions by Sheila O’Connor
280 pages – Rose Metal Press
“In an ambitious blend of fact and fiction, including family secrets, documents from the era, and a thin, fragmentary case file unsealed by the court, novelist Sheila O’Connor tells the riveting story of V, a talented fifteen-year-old singer in 1930s Minneapolis who aspires to be a star. Drawing on the little-known American practice of incarcerating adolescent girls for “immorality” in the first half of the twentieth century, O’Connor follows young V from her early work as a nightclub entertainer to her subsequent six-year state school sentence for an unplanned pregnancy. As V struggles to survive within a system only nominally committed to rescue and reform, she endures injustices that will change the course of her life and the lives of her descendants. Inspired by O’Connor’s research on her unknown maternal grandmother and the long-term effects of intergenerational trauma, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions is a poignant excavation of familial and national history that remains disturbingly relevant—a harrowing story of exploitation and erasure, and the infinite ways in which girls, past and present, are punished for crimes they didn’t commit. O’Connor’s collage novel offers an engaging balance between illuminating a shameful and hidden chapter of American history and captivating the reader with the vivid and unforgettable character of V.” -from the Rose Metal Press website
Saint Julian Press
Alone in Church by Andrea Messineo
76 pages – Saint Julian Press
Messiah by Anne Babson
108 pages – Saint Julian Press
“Anne Babson’s Messiah takes an energetic leap of faith into sound and spirit. This is the Bible on acid, King James’ cadence meets a jazzy barbaric yawp that is distinctly American. Babson knows her way around the testaments—old and new—and insists the stories they contain are relevant for our times. She invites us to “Live powerfully, strongly kneeling, singing!” Reader, be you heathen or believer, you may find yourself saying Amen.”—Grace Bauer
Santa Fe Writers Project
Body Broker by Daniel M. Ford
255 pages – Santa Fe Writers Project
“When a teenager disappears from an elite boarding school, local police throw the seemingly innocuous case to their neighborhood PI. Enter Jack Dixon: college dropout, ex-cop, and ex-cook. What should be a simple case quickly turns sour, pushing Jack into the path of Nordic biker cultists and vicious drug dealers. But the houseboat-dwelling PI is determined to find the truth—and the missing kid—even though his persistence leads him into a thorny tangle of drugs and violence that could rip his sleepy waterfront life apart.” –from the Santa Fe Writers Project
Stalking Horse Press
Madcap: Poems by Jessi Janeshek
152 pages – Stalking Horse Press
“Jessie Janeshek channels the madcap dead of occult Hollywood, and her ouija board is a synthesizer, summoning Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, Veronica Lake, Carole Lombard, Marilyn, and Madonna to her mysterious House of Wax. These are daring poems calling on Dracula, drugs, and Dick Tracy; a velvet underground of film, fantasy, and nostalgia. the new wave and gothic invention of Madcap establishes Janeshek as one of contemporary poetry’s great risk-takers. Madcap is her third full-length collection. ” –from the Stalking Horse Press website
The Psychotic Dr. Schreber by D. Harlan Wilson
164 pages – Stalking Horse Press
“Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911) came to prominence as one of history’s most famous madmen in the wake of Sigmund Freud’s “Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia” (1911). Freud’s study psychoanalyzed Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, a detailed account of the German Judge’s psychotic breakdowns in which he battled against numerous antagonists, from God and the Devil to his own body and lexicon. D. Harlan Wilson’s Schreberfiktion case study is at once about, around and beyond Memoirs as well as the many secondary texts it has engendered. As the formerly make-believe aspects of the science fiction genre continue to materialize in the real world, Schreber’s pathology becomes more and more relevant; his imagination and intellect, his anxiety and dread, his solipsism and megalomania point to the pathological unconscious that animates contemporary technological society. Thoroughly researched and transgressive, The Psychotic Dr. Schreber is part speculative (anti)fiction, part (auto)biography, part theatre-of-the-absurd, part writing tutorial, part literary nonsense and criticism. Wilson riffs on and satirizes post-everything, signaling the inevitable death of the reader and rebirth of the real. Science fiction explored the effects of the New in the Next, the Near and, in some cases, the Now. Galvanized by Schreber, this book maps the next stage: the New in the Never.” –from the Stalking Horse Press website
Thick Press
selfcarefully by Gracy Obuchowicz
84 pages – Thick Press
“selfcarefully is where Gracy puts together her teachings in one place, sharing her unique definition of self-care and her vision of a more careful and caring world. The book contains 30 vignettes, including: self-care and setting boundaries, self-care and soaking grains, self-care and the moon, self-care and racism, self-care and consumerism, self-care and perfectionism, self-care and community, and more. It also contains excerpts of interviews with justice-seekers about leadership and self-care in action.” –from the Thick Press website