We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of multi-genre anthologies, art and comic books, drama and performance books, and more published in 2022 by independent literary publishers! (Read our year-end roundups for fiction, poetry, children’s books, and nonfiction as well.)
Multi-Genre Anthologies
Good Printed Things | April 1, 2022
In this anthology, “nineteen writers share poems, prose, and short stories around the theme of motherhood—capturing the wonderful, the painful, and everything between.”
I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy
Read Furiously | June 6, 2022
This anthology edited by Samantha Mann “honors queer voices through the delightful pleasure in everyday occurrences.”
Green Writers Press | June 14, 2022
Edited by Rowland Russell and Cherice Bock, this volume’s “visual, poetic, fictional, and practical explorations” are meditations “on the urgency and the beauty of time.”
Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing
Red Hen Press | July 5, 2022
Edited by Anjum Hasan and Sampurna Chattarji, this anthology “brings together one hundred contemporary Indian poets and fiction writers working in English as well as translating from other Indian languages.”
great weather for MEDIA | August 10, 2022
Edited by Jane Ormerod, Thomas Fucaloro, and David Lawton, this anthology “is an invigorating collection of poetry and short fiction from sixty-four writers across the United States and beyond.”
Belle Point Press | September 20, 2022
This anthology features poetry, fiction, and essays by “forty talented writers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and other surrounding states that represent a unique part of American culture.”
Iskanchi Press | November 30, 2022
In this anthology of poetry, fiction, essays, and more, edited by Ukamaka Olisakwe and Tracy Haught, writers “hold a prism to humanity, opening minds to new ways of seeing, of knowing.”
Art Books & Illustration
Siglio Press | February 21, 2022
This “unconventional, illuminated biography, told in the first person in Saint Phalle’s voice and her own hand, dilates large and small moments in Saint Phalle’s remarkable life as an artist who pointedly challenged taboos.”
Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion
Nomadic Press | February 26, 2022
Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion “features a selection of Oakland murals that emerged between May and October 2020 in tandem with the inter/national protests against the police brutality/murder of Black people and systemic-institutional racism in the U.S.”
Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic by Anthony Romero, Daniel Tucker & Dan S. Wang
Soberscove Press | March 1, 2022
Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic is a collection of interviews, critical essays, and artist portfolios “that consider matters of life and death having to do with breath, both allegorical and literal.”
The Exquisite Egg: One Artist’s Embellished Creations by Isabel B. Anthony
Et Alia Press | March 1, 2022
The Exquisite Egg: One Artist’s Embellished Creations features the work of egg artist Isabel B. Anthony, styled and photographed by Arshia Khan.
A Few Collectors by Pierre Le-Tan
New Vessel Press | April 5, 2022
In this illustrated volume, “artist Pierre Le-Tan, known for designing New Yorker magazine covers and collaborations with fashion houses, summons up memories of inveterate art collectors.”
What I See: The Black Flag Photographs of Glen E. Friedman by Glen E. Friedman
Akashic Books | April 5, 2022
What I See is “a stunning collection of the most iconic photographs ever made of Black Flag, along with never-before-seen photos and a foreword by Chuck Dukowski.”
in abundance and in absence by Kelli Fox
fifth wheel press | September 15, 2022
in abundance and in absence is a “series of typewritten poetic prose juxtaposed over 35mm film.”
Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year by Arwen Donahue
Hub City Press | October 4, 2022
In these 130 ink-and-watercolor drawings, “the story of one year on a family farm in Kentucky unfolds in captured moments of daily life.”
Nextdoor in Colonialtown by Ryan Rivas
Autofocus Books | October 4, 2022
In this book, Rivas pairs photos of Orlando’s Colonialtown North neighborhood “with conversations assembled from the area’s Nextdoor.com posts.”
Comic Books
Pickles Tails Volume Two (2008-2020) by Brian Crane
Baobab Press | September 6, 2022
Pickles Tails Volume Two is “the second installment of Brian Crane’s Pickles strips dedicated to the hijinks of the beloved Pickles family pets, Roscoe and Muffin.”
Now and Other Dreams by Daryl Seitchik
Fieldmouse Press | October 4, 2022
The comics in this collection, made between 2012 and 2022, “guide the reader down into the depths of the unconscious, and through the mundane, mystical absurdities of being alive.”
Drama & Performance
The Lost Conversation by Sara Farrington
53rd State Press | April 28, 2022
The Lost Conversation is a “collection of interviews conducted between 2019-2021 with New York theater artists who have spent their lives working in and inventing the avant-garde.”
ASTRS by Karinne Keithley Syers
53rd State Press | May 1, 2022
Illustrated by Sara Smith, ASTRS is “a rabbit cosmogony, a libretto to be sung, spoken, and projected, a radio-play-folk-opera-duck-animation-with-dances.”
Untitled (1-5) by Nazareth Hassan
3 Hole Press | August 1, 2022
According to Aleshea Harris, this book is “a literary performance piece as existentialist musing, as self-reflection, as play with the temporal and typographical.”
bull-jean & dem/dey back by Sharon Bridgforth
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
bull-jean & dem/dey back “collects two performance/novels centering Sharon Bridgforth’s southern-Black-butch-sheroe, bull-jean.”
uncollected trash collection by Kate Kremer
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
uncollected trash collection “draws on a 3-month record Kremer kept of everything she threw away, along with the refuse of earlier writing projects.”
I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
This book is a “performance piece, a multi-disciplinary, dance-based work that explores the impulse to report on calamity, the shimmer of attention to realms unseen, and the evidence of the body as possessing a will to let go of living.”
John Ashbery Live at Sanders Theatre, 1976 by John Ashbery
Fonograf Editions | October 4, 2022
This archival LP includes “forty-seven minutes of poetry from Houseboat Days, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and The Double Dream of Spring” as well as liner notes with original essays by Douglas Crase, Dara Barrois/Dixon, and John Yau.
The African Desperate by Rocket Caleshu and Martine Syms
Nightboat Books | November 1, 2022
This screenplay “navigates the pitfalls of self-actualization and the fallacies of the art world.”
