Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in August 2021 from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
Sawgrass Sky by Andrew Hemmert
Texas Review Press | August 1, 2021
This debut poetry collection is “a coming-of-age story, a Floridian memoir-in-verse” addressing “religious disillusionment, sexual awakening, body image, environmental degradation, suburbia versus the wild, familial history, and the idea of home contextualized by distance.”
Teems Recedes by Caleb Nichols
Kelp Books | August 1, 2021
According to Holly Wren Spaulding, the poems in this debut collection “bring us closer to the sensuousness of the world, its marvels and devastations.”
Kelp Books | August 1, 2021
Edited by David M. Olsen, this anthology of short stories features work by Michael Scott Moore, Tod Goldberg, Naomi Hirahara, Charles Ardai, Antoine Wilson, Rob Roberge, and more.
The Whole Alphabet: The Light And the Dark
So Say We All | August 1, 2021
In this anthology of essays, “a collection of brave and creative authors from across America delve into their most personal experiences to deliver unexpected and original shots to the heart.”
Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist by Marc Ribot
Akashic Books | August 3, 2021
In this debut collection of essays and stories, the iconic guitarist “playfully interrogates our assumptions about music, life, and death.”
Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round by Amy Wright
Sarabande Books | August 3, 2021
According to the author, this essay “weaves a decades-plus-worth of questions and answers from a range of discussions I’ve had with artists, activists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, priests, musicians, and other representatives of the human population.”
Temporary Shelter by Olena Jennings
Červená Barva Press | August 4, 2021
According to Olga Livshin, in this novel “Jennings envisions Anna Akhmatova struggling against gender expectations and heteronormativity—even among fellow bohemians in 1910s St. Petersburg.”
Spirits Abroad: Stories by Zen Cho
Small Beer Press | August 10, 2021
Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award–winning debut collection of short stories “that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead.”
Welcome to Midland by Logen Cure
Deep Vellum | August 10, 2021
This poetry collection “is a queer coming-of-age narrative in verse set against the contested backdrop of conservative small-town Texas.”
Getting the the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction
Books by Hippocampus | August 10, 2021
This collection of craft essays offers thoughtful insights from speakers at the HippoCamp conference, including Eli Aharon, Steph Auteri, Sue Baldwin-Way, and Nicole Breit.
Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or, how I became a punk rock lawyer) by Juanita E. Mantz
Bamboo Dart Press | August 10, 2021
This multi-genre chapbook of memoir pieces, social justice essays, and poetry “describes the author’s love of punk rock and her quest to challenge the system of mass incarceration as a deputy public defender.”
Red Hen Press | August 10, 2021
Set after an environmental catastrophe, this novella “presents the past, present, and future in tandem, reshaping ancient and modern ideas of death and motherhood, grief and hope, endings and beginnings.”
Indebted to Wind by L.R. Beger
Deerbrook Editions | August 14, 2021
According to Stephen Tapscot, “The wind in these eloquent, elegant, tensile poems is present as spirit, of course; as spirit it can manifest as the longing or fate of the body (it expires), as intellectual momentum (it inspires), as power for social justice (it aspires).”
Politics of the Minotaur by Karla K. Morton
Texas Review Press | August 15, 2021
Morton’s poetry collection “embraces those changes, opens them up, rolls them into the delicious magic of this unpredictable, glorious world.”
Four Minutes by Nataliya Deleva
Open Letter Books | August 17, 2021
Translated by Izidora Angel, this novel centered around an orphan in post-Communist Bulgaria “takes a difficult, uncompromising look at modern life in Eastern Europe.”
Everything Never Comes Your Way by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell
Red Hen Press | August 17, 2021
In her third collection, O’Donnell “explores the landscapes of memory, argument, and wilderness” in poems that “deconstruct memoir, dig at the roots of philosophical argumentation, and critique the role of the poet as an observer of the natural world.”
Poisons & Antidotes by Andrea L. Fry
Deerbrook Editions | August 21, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Fry, “clear-eyed and with precise description, depicts plants, situations, people where the extremes of beauty and toxicity, allure and danger mingle and test us.”
The Book of Errors by Annie Coggan
A Public Space Books | August 24, 2021
This collection of three illustrated essays examines “the preservation of three historic houses–and the layered, messy process of reconstructing our past and reimagining history.”
Etruscan Press | August 24, 2021
This trio of books by previous Etruscan Press authors “exemplifies how women become a clandestine conduit for life, power, and loss, particularly in the shadow of an implacable patriarchy.”
Child in the Valley by Gordy Sauer
Hub City Press | August 24, 2021
This debut novel is “a gorgeously rendered tale cut from the turmoil of a fledgling America,” offering “a modern, incisive look into the complexities of masculinity, isolation, and the impenetrable nature of greed.”
Black Ocean | August 27, 2021
In this poetry collection, Hoks blends “research of animals’ nest making habits with poetic forms that create vivid imaginative spaces.”
Vestigial by Aja Couchois Duncan
Litmus Press | August 30, 2021
In her second poetry collection, Duncan “continues to investigate ecology and heritage as a story of entangled becoming, synchronizing movements of deep time with the transient substance of touch.”
Moon and the Mars by Kia Corthron
Seven Stories Press | August 31, 2021
Corthron’s novel is “an exploration of NYC and America in the burgeoning moments before the start of the Civil War through the eyes of a young, biracial girl.”
Nightboat Books | August 31, 2021
Javier’s poetry collection is “a comics poem and a manifesto on comics poetry; an experimental comic book sequel to a poem twenty years in the making; and an homage to the Mimeo Revolution, weird fiction, kamishibai, the political cartoon, Pilipinx komiks history, and the poet bp Nichol.”
Jane of Battery Park by Jaye Viner
Red Hen Press | August 31, 2021
According to Jennie Melamed, Viner’s novel “has the propulsiveness and gripping plot twists of a thriller but also meditates deeply on loss, belonging, and redemption.”
A Feeling Called Heaven by Joey Yearous-Algozin
Nightboat Books | August 31, 2021
Yearous-Algozin’s poetry collection “oscillates between grief and humor as it imagines the nonhuman world that will grow from the ruins of this one, cultivating a sense of presence and intimacy with the inevitable destruction of our global environment.”
