Support small presses and indie bookstores this summer by picking a read from the list below, which features dozens of new books forthcoming in August from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
August 1
: once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio
Belladonna*; August 1, 2020
According to Anne Waldman, Alidio’s debut poetry collection is “a purring queering poem machine, a mix tape spitting forth enigmas for the tongue. Plots, struggles, like shooting stars.”
Tupelo Press; August 1, 2020
Camp’s fifth book of poetry is “a disquieting book about intimate relationships and what is seen and hidden.”
Tupelo Press; August 1, 2020
According to Natalie Shapero, the poems in Falck’s collection “are fraught machines that crack and fizzle, that think deeply and resist the low ground, that come from a place of uncanny wildness and heft.”
A Brief History of Burning by Cait O’Kane
Belladonna*; August 1, 2020
O’Kane’s debut poetry collection “discloses the moral crises of addiction, debt affliction, and an ascendant police state against communities of resistance in North Philadelphia and New York City.”
August 4
Akashic Books; August 4, 2020
This latest biography from the Edge of Sports imprint follows Lottie Dod, “a truly extraordinary sports figure who blazed trails of glory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
Akashic Books; August 4, 2020
Edited by Maaza Mengiste, this anthology of original noir stories explores “the wonderful, intriguing, vexing complexities of Addis Ababa.”
Celebrate People’s History (Second Edition)
Feminist Press; August 4, 2020
Edited by Josh MacPhee, this book features posters that “pay tribute to the long-standing human legacy of revolution, creative activism, and grassroots organizing.”
The Likely World by Melanie Conroy-Goldman
Red Hen Press; August 4, 2020
Acccording to Lidia Yuknavitch, this debut novel “vibrates between addiction, memory, nostalgia and being in a future landscape about ten second from our present tense.”
Guillotine by Eduardo C. Corral
Graywolf Press; August 4, 2020
Corral’s second poetry collection “traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayal’s lingering scars, the border itself—great distances in which violence and yearning find roots.”
Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition by Lisa Fishman
Wave Books; August 4, 2020
This hybrid work of lyric, prose, and visual forms “moves between observational directness and maddened speech, places and persons, humor and alarm.”
The Darkest Hearts: A D Hunter Mystery by Nelson George
Akashic Books; August 4, 2020
The fifth installment of George’s D Hunter mystery series “reflects the challenges of being a black businessperson in an era when the rules of entrepreneurship are constantly shifting beneath an increasingly polarized political environment.”
The River Always Wins: Water as a Metaphor for Hope and Progress by David Marquis
Deep Vellum; August 4, 2020
Marquis’s essay collection is “a meditation on water as metaphor for social change, based on the author’s experiences as an environmental activist.”
Restless Books; August 4, 2020
Translated from the Estonian by Adam Cullen, this children’s book is “a touching and profound tale of friendship, differences, and acceptance.”
Underworld Lit by Srikanth Reddy
Wave Books; August 4, 2020
Reddy’s third poetry collection is “a multiverse quest through various cultures’ realms of the dead.”
Akashic Books; August 4, 2020
Edited by Colette Bancroft, this anthology features “all new stories, each one set in a distinct location” in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Conspiracy to Riot: The Life and Times of One of the Chicago 7 by Lee Weiner
Belt Publishing; August 4, 2020
This memoir by one of several young men indicted by the federal government for conspiracy to incite a riot is “directly relevant to today’s efforts to change America for the better.”
August 10
great weather for MEDIA; August 10, 2020
great weather for MEDIA’s annual anthology features poetry and fiction alongside an interview with Cornelius Eady.
August 11
Thrown in the Throat by Benjamin Garcia
Milkweed Editions; August 11, 2020
Selected by Kazim Ali as a winner of the 2019 National Poetry Series, Garcia’s debut poetry collection is “a sex-positive incantation that retextures what it is to write a queer life amidst troubled times.”
Milkweed Editions; August 11, 2020
This debut novel follows “a woman in isolation, whose mind—fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art—attempts to betray her.”
Jean-Luc Persecuted by C. F. Ramuz
Deep Vellum; August 11, 2020
The first English translation of a classic Swiss novel, Jean-Luc Persecuted—translated by Olivia Baes—is “a masterful exploration of societal pressure’s explosive effects.”
Variations in the Key of K by Alex Stein
Etruscan Press; August 11, 2020
Stein’s debut novel “begins where history leaves off, delving into imagined lives of Kafka and other great artists.”
Red Hen Press; August 11, 2020
According to Elizabeth Bradfield, this debut poetry collection “clearly is emplaced in family, community, geography, history, and the seasonality of animals and plants in Western Alaska.”
August 14
The Parasol Flower by Karen Quevillon
Regal House Publishing; August 14, 2020
According to Janet Turpin Myers, this debut novel is “an engrossing tale of two impassioned women, separated by a century, both hunting for treasure.”
August 15
The Odd Years by Morgan Bassichis
Wendy’s Subway; August 15, 2020
A collection of Bassichis’s weekly to-do lists, The Odd Years is “one response to the oddness of times in which intensified crisis becomes ordinary.”
The Mercy of Distance: New and Selected Poems by Harley Elliott
Hanging Loose Press; August 15, 2020
Translated by Saba Riazi and winner of the Loose Translations Award, this poetry collection portrays life in contemporary Tehran.
August 18
Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader by Sallie Bingham
Sarabande Books; August 18, 2020
This collection of fiction and drama from across Bingham’s career “showcases the range of a writer at the height of her powers.”
Summer of the Cicadas by Chelsea Catherine
Red Hen Press; August 18, 2020
Catherine’s novel tells the story of “a West Virginian town where a brood of Magicicadas emerges for the first time in seventeen years.”
Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis
Feminist Press; August 18, 2020
Originally published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, this work of short fiction “paints a bleak and incisive portrait of nineteenth-century industrial America.”
Villa of Delirium by Adrien Goetz
New Vessel Press; August 18, 2020
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer, this novel is “a sweeping tale about an illustrious family that builds itself a fabulous vacation retreat on the French Riviera—a replica of an ancient Greek palace in which they seek perfection and beauty.”
Deep Vellum; August 18, 2020
Translated by Thomas Bunstead, this short story collection—the first literary translation from Sierra Zapotec—”meshes magical realism with the everyday reality of indigenous life in Mexico.”
Restless Books; August 18, 2020
Translated from the Spanish by Robert Croll, this academic thriller is “a bracing critique of American culture and an exploration of privacy and politics in an era of rapid technological advancement.”
August 24
No, Dear; August 24, 2020
Published through the Archive Series in collaboration with Small Anchor Press, this debut chapbook is, according to Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves, “a playful record of memory’s cosmic entanglement with future.”
No, Dear; August 24, 2020
According to t’ai freedom ford, this debut chapbook, published through the Archive Series in collaboration with Small Anchor Press, is “a solemn meditation on a humble vessel that contains all of who we are—our blood, spit, tears, and sweat.”
August 25
And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again
Restless Books; August 25, 2020
In this anthology edited by Ilan Stavans, “dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists, and translators from more than thirty countries send literary dispatches from life during the pandemic.”
Dance on Saturday: Stories by Elwin Cotman
Small Beer Press; August 25, 2020
According to Kelly Link, Cotman’s short fiction collection features “inventive, incandescent stories, rich in strangeness.”
Coffee House Press; August 25, 2020
The essays in this collection “reconsider the creative potential of the American suburb” through a combination of “personal experience, cultural reportage, and history.”
Breathing Technique by Marija Knežević
Zephyr Press; August 25, 2020
Translated from the Serbian by Sibelan Forrester, this bilingual poetry collection features “poems that often read as narratives, replete with characters, humor, pathos, and unexpected twists.”
Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State by Sebastian Matthews
Red Hen Press; August 25, 2020
In this memoir in essays, Matthews recounts attempts to reengage with others “in a fractured society no longer recognizable.”
Bellevue Literary Press; August 25, 2020
Translated from the German by David Herman, this novel “serves as a testament to our tenuous and intimate relationship with nature.”
Sugar, Smoke, Song by Reema Rajbanshi
Red Hen Press; August 25, 2020
This collection of linked stories “following the secrets and passions of young women” is set in the Bronx, California, India, and Brazil.
