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 2024 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups of fiction, poetry, children’s books, and nonfiction as well.
Multi-Genre Anthologies
Solstice: A Winter Anthology (Volume 3)
Devil’s Party Press | January 1, 2024
This anthology edited by Terri Clifton includes writing by Renee Rockland, Alberto Ambard, Jill Wooddell Aller, Kim Hoey, Patricia Esposito, and more.
Regal House Publishing | January 2, 2024
Through vignettes, essays, snapshots, portraits, and poems, Music in the Halls “brings to light the visceral and emotional nature of childhood poverty and trauma and how it not only impacts a student’s ability to learn but also how it restricts their ability to live a full life.”
When a Woman Tells the Truth: Writings and Creative Work by Women Over 80
Many Names Press | May 4, 2024
This anthology features fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art by women in their 80s and 90s, reflecting on topics such as “sadness, grief, learning new things, adventure, romance, and activism.”
Fonograf Editions | May 14, 2024
Edited by Jyothi Natarajan and Dao Strom and collecting hybrid-literary works from thirty-six women and nonbinary BIPOC writer-artists, A Mouth Holds Many Things “illuminates and expands the interstitial spaces where text blends, blurs, and morphs with visual and other media.”
Exsolutas Press | June 4, 2024
Edited by Rhonda Rosenheck, this anthology of poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography explores how “human thriving comes about through awareness, truth-seeking, persistence, reframing, faith, questions, forgiveness, humor, generosity, and by cherishing the relationships that nurture us.”
The Feminine Voice of Malta: il-Leħen Femminili ta’ Malta Maltese
IHRAM Press | June 15, 2024
Curated by Bridget Reaume, this bilingual anthology of works in Maltese and English “captures the raw and poignant experiences of Maltese women throughout history, published in the midst of a crucial, cultural turning point.”
great weather for MEDIA | July 22, 2024
Beacon Radiant is an anthology “of poetry and short fiction by established and emerging writers from across the United States and beyond.”
En otra voz: Antología de literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos
Arte Público Press | August 31, 2024
Originally published in 2002, the updated and revised edition of this multi-genre collection contains “newly discovered texts, many by women whose work was even less available than their male contemporaries, and complete versions of masterpieces” by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, Luis Valdez, and Tomás Rivera.
A Very Indian Christmas: The Greatest Indian Holiday Stories of All Time
New Vessel Press | September 10, 2024
The essays, stories, poems, and hymns in this anthology capture “the distinctive flavor of Christmas in India and in the Indian diaspora,” featuring works by Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Khushwant Singh, Rabindranath Tagore, and more.
Wendy’s Subway | September 10, 2024
Incorporating various genres, the works in Language Arts “touch on themes of music and subculture, African diasporic language, visual art, and more.”
The Garden-Variety Grimoire: A Literary Anthology
The Words Faire | September 30, 2024
Edited by Tobi Brun, this anthology of multi-genre speculative works features writing by Grace Gibbons, Eliza Scudder, Isabella Bromberg, and more.
A Ukrainian Dictionary of War by Ostap Slyvynsky
Translated from the Ukrainian by Grace Mahoney and Taras Malkovych
Lost Horse Press | October 15, 2024
In a dual-language format, this multi-genre book presents Slyvynsky’s efforts as a “wartime lexicographer, carefully collecting and compiling a dictionary of witness to Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine.”
Connecticut Literary Anthology
Woodhall Press | October 22, 2024
Edited by Victoria Buitron, Summer Tate, and Christine Kandic Torres, this anthology has “constellated together the best poetry, nonfiction, and prose from Connecticut writers.”
José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas by José Martí
Seven Stories Press | October 22, 2024
This anthology of the writing of Martí features bilingual poetry, political essays, writings on Latin American culture, and his letters.
Orison Books | December 3, 2024
The ninth volume of this annual anthology, edited by Luke Hankins, Nathan Poole, and Karen Tucker, seeks to “collect the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals in the preceding year.”
The Writer’s Workout | December 3, 2024
The stories in this anthology—featuring Marie Anderson, Juliette Beauchamp, Carson Calkins, and more—reflect on how “food can bring people together or tear them apart.”
Art Books and Illustration
Flood Editions | February 20, 2024
Days presents pencil drawings made by Calvin over the course of a year that include “glimpses of family life, cubist portraits, drafts for sculptures, abstract compositions, and comic cartoons.”
Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation
Haymarket Books | September 3, 2024
This collection of “more than 200 full-color infographics is a vivid portrait of Israeli settler colonialism and the Palestinian struggle for freedom.”
To Washington Park, With Love: Documentary Photographs from Summer 1987 by Rose Blouin
Haymarket Books | September 10, 2024
The black-and-white photographs in this book capture “the events, people, and landscape of Chicago’s Washington Park during the summer of 1987.”
Depeche Mode: Live by Dennis Burmeister and Sascha Lange
Akashic Books | October 1, 2024
This book is a “visually stunning journey through four decades of international touring that captures the magic of Depeche Mode live.”
Green Writers Press | October 15, 2024
Created between 2020 and 2022, Weiss’s photographic study “speaks to the many moments of the pandemic cycle and allows the viewer to ponder those complex times and reflect on the feelings expressed.”
From a Basement in Seattle, the Poster Art of Brad Klausen by Brad Klausen
Akashic Books | November 5, 2024
According to Publishers Weekly, this book of poster art is “a must-have for any music fan, artist, or aspiring graphic designer.”
Comic Books
Northwood Meadows: Moments by Andy Chang
Read Furiously | May 7, 2024
Drawn in Chang’s “signature hybrid style of Sunday comics meets Japanese manga,” Northwood Meadows “tackles pop culture, politics, sports, food, and, of course, friendship.”
Drama and Performance
53rd State Press | June 10, 2024
404 Not Found is “a twisting, twisted work of intricacy, density, and despair netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, upended borders, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.”
Hotel Room Trilogy: Three One-Act Plays by Barry Gifford
Seven Stories Press | August 6, 2024
This trio of one-act plays depicts “the spooky, strange, and tragic passage of guests through the same New York City hotel room (number 603).”
Meronymy by Rachel Jendrzejewski
53rd State Press | August 27, 2024
In Meronymy, Jendrzejewski “builds a space in which to reckon with memory, loss, intrusion, and overflow amidst the cacophonic practice of living in language together.”
The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. by Sibyl Kempson
53rd State Press | December 1, 2024
This narrative drama “reinvents as many versions of the Frankenstein author Mary Shelley as there are definitions of the word ‘Gothic.’”
53rd State Press | December 5, 2024
In this “story ballet” originally written and performed by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, “a small but successful security company staffed with former actors has been hired to protect a certain precious theater curtain—and whatever mystery it conceals behind it.”
Hybrid/Other
Feather Rousing by Rebecca Meacham
Black Lawrence Press | March 26, 2024
This hybrid of historical fiction and personal memoir “nests in the spaces between caretaking and grief, secret and spectacle, recollection and imagination, global anguish and private joy.”
A Roll of the Dice by Stéphane Mallarmé
Translated from the French by Jeff Clark and Robert Bononno
Wave Books | April 16, 2024
Clark’s presentation of “one of Mallarmé’s most well-known and visually complex poems” is “typographically radical, mirroring the dark mystery of Mallarmé’s poem.”
Ugly Duckling Presse | May 1, 2024
According to Poupeh Missaghi, The Naif is “an abstract painting made of words and sentences and punctuation or lack thereof, a distant memory whose skin you get to touch and feel as you attempt to find your way through its centers and peripheries.”
Uncle Rabbit and the Wax Doll by Silvestre Pantaleón Esteva
Translated from the Nahuatl, Spanish, and English by Jonathan D. Amith
Deep Vellum | May 7, 2024
This trilingual book—presented in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl—“beautifully recounts a Nahuatl version of Brer Rabbit, one of the most widespread tales of both the Old and New Worlds.”
Memory’s Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort Worden
Empty Bowl Press | May 15, 2024
Edited by Bob Francis, Memory’s Vault “offers a retrospective look at a powerful piece of public art and a community’s responses to it.”
Dionysos Speed by Rainer J. Hanshe
Contra Mundum Press | May 31, 2024
Written as “a burst of epigrammatic sequences,” this book is “an act meant to give birth once again to dissonant desire through the powers of the dice throw.”
Moonlight Over Sea Trees by Edgar Heap of Birds and Michael Maxwell
Burrow Press | June 28, 2024
This book—containing visual art by Heap of Words and Maxwell as well as an artist talk and three essays contextualizing their works—explores “the ways both artists engage with the natural world through abstraction.”
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Graywolf Press | July 9, 2024
First published in 2004, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is “a crucial guide to surviving a fractured and fracturing American consciousness—a book of rare and vital honesty, complexity, and presence.”
Diary of a Hunger Striker and Four and a Half Steps by Oleh Sentsov
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan and Kate Tsurkan
Deep Vellum | August 13, 2024
This two-book volume includes Sentsov’s account of his 145-day-long hunger strike in a Russian prison, and his collection of short stories.
From Almeda to Zilphia: Arkansas Women Who Transformed American Popular Song by Stephen Koch
Et Alia Press | September 17, 2024
This book of 30 portraits and profiles features “a wide cross-section of inspirational creatives with the common thread of ties to a state in the American South with a deep musical heritage.”
Drowning Girl by Kurt Cole Eidsvig
Unsolicited Press | September 24, 2024
According to Michael Davis, the writing in Eidsvig’s experimental debut “synthesizes the aesthetics of pop art with street-level romantic minimalism, bound together in a worldview apprenticed at once to visual arts, poetry, fiction, and screenwriting.”
No Ship Sets Out to Be a Shipwreck by Joan Wickersham
EastOver Press | September 24, 2024
Wickersham’s hybrid collection is “a poetic and philosophical meditation ignited by a beautiful, frightening, mysterious object: the seventeenth-century Swedish warship Vasa, which sank only minutes into its maiden voyage.”
FlowerSong Press | September 27, 2024
Inspired by the ancient Greek tragedies, PUTINOIKA is a “multi-genre epic about frenzy and plague in the era of Putin and Trump.”
Gwenda, Rodney by Olivia Cronk
Meekling Press | October 1, 2024
This is an “exquisitely genre-ambiguous” book “about reading novels, ekphrasis, and the gaze, transcribed in a mode as ethereal as air filling a garment left to hang.”
The 3rd Thing | October 8, 2024
This work of poetry and graphic narrative “conjures geographic and creative uncertainty as the necessary condition for navigating the climate crisis and its sorrows.”
The Kármán Line by Daisy Atterbury
Rescue Press | October 15, 2024
This hybrid collection “glides between off-planet simulations, uranium mining, queer erotics, military rockets, galactic zones of avoidance, and settler logics to arrive in the ‘outside of outside.’”
Wendy’s Subway | October 22, 2024
Published here alongside libretti and an essay by Anahid Nersessian, Mobarak’s “multimedia and multispecies reimagining” of the first opera, Dafne, “splinters the opera’s Italian libretto.”
The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on Altered Sight by Naomi Cohn
Rose Metal Press | October 23, 2024
This memoir about progressive vision loss “shapeshifts between lyric essay and prose poetry and traverses the divides between lived experience, history, and scientific knowledge.”
Distant Story Blue by Magdalena Louise Hirt
Sea Crow Press | November 5, 2024
This book “takes readers along this journey with poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, interwoven, stretched, and pulled like the lines of a taunt sail.”
Verb Animate: Poetry and Prompts from Collaborative Acts by Heid E. Erdrich
Trio House Press | December 4, 2024
This collection of poems and reflections “explores the nuances and joys of Erdrich’s artistic collaborations with Twin Cities choreographers, visual artists, digital artists, and others.”
