Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in August 2022 from CLMP members.
The Future Perfect: A Fugue by Eric Pankey
Tupelo Press | August 1, 2022
Winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award, this long polyphonic poem is, according to John Yau, “an intricate work of decisive oscillation, of tender and careful attention shifting swiftly and precisely between the infinitesimal and the vast.”
Flare Stacks in Full Bloom by Katherine Hoerth
Texas Review Press | August 1, 2022
This collection of eco-feminist poetry is “a chronicle of Hurricane Harvey—before, during, and after the storm, through formal poetry (sonnets, villanelles, and blank verse narratives).”
Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner
Cider Press Review | August 1, 2022
Winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize, this poetry collection “toggles between the world of fairy tales and the world we live in, both of which are gruesome and tender, beautiful and dangerous,” according to Maggie Smith.
Bodies & Words by Celia Lisset Alvarez
Assure Press | August 1, 2022
The poems in this collection “challenge gender stereotypes about love, women, marriage, desire, infidelity, and aging.”
Coffee House Press | August 2, 2022
This book-length essay “takes shape atop a polluted aquifer in Minnesota, beside trains that haul fracked crude oil, as Kathryn Savage confronts the transgressions of U.S. Superfund sites and brownfields against land, groundwater, neighborhoods, and people.”
Out of Mesopotamia by Salar Abdoh
Akashic Books | August 2, 2022
In this novel following an Iranian war reporter, Abdoh “captures the horror, confusion, and absurdity of combat from a seldom-glimpsed perspective.”
Flying Home; Daybook IV by Toni Ortner
Deerbrook Editions | August 6, 2022
According to Vincent Panella, this poetry collection “casts an unflinching eye on the cruelty of politics, on personal loss, on young love, aging, and death.”
Dearth & God’s Green Mirth by Cody-Rose Clevidence
Fonograf Editions | August 9, 2022
The two projects in this chapbook “discard formalisms—even their own—to investigate the relationship between the space of the whole universe and god.”
Beyond the Rio Gila by Scott G. Hibbard
Riverfeet Press | August 9, 2022
This historical novel “follows the U.S. Army and a Mormon Battalion—with families in tow—on an 1840s perilous trek across the daunting wilderness of the American frontier—the longest march in U.S. infantry history.”
Sarabande Books | August 9, 2022
In this essay collection, Petrosino “contemplates the enduring, deeply personal legacies of enslavement and racial discrimination in America.”
Missing Shaun by Thomas R. Thomas
Bamboo Dart Press | August 10, 2022
According to Alexis Rhone Fancher, “Thomas has created a loving tribute to his son Shaun, whose cut-short life is both mourned and celebrated in this exquisite, moving collection.”
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.”
Consecration Pond by Laura Bonazzoli
Toad Hall Editions | August 10, 2022
The linked stories in this novel, all set at the same pond in rural Maine, “offer a meditation on the nature of wisdom, the risks and gifts of allowing ourselves to be seen, and the challenge of creating meaning in the wake of loss.”
Breath on a Coal by Anne Haven McDonnell
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | August 15, 2022
According to Todd Davis, this poetry collection “captures the transient nature of existence in narratives that combine revelatory beauty with compassionate wisdom.”
Ambivalent Souls: A True Translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin
Translated from Russian by Robert E. Tanner
Poets and Traitors Press | August 15, 2022
This translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin features “original stanzas, rhymes, and reflections.”
Translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Restless Books | August 16, 2022
Winner of the 2019 French Voices Grand Prize, this novel is “about a family torn apart by secrets and the legacy of colonialism and held together by nine-year-old Pina, a girl shouldering the immeasurable weight of her family’s traumas.”
Water Over Stones by Bernardo Atxaga
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa and Thomas Bunstead
Graywolf Press | August 16, 2022
This novel “follows a group of interconnected people in a small village in the Basque Country” whose “lives run together and, over time, technology and industry bring new changes as the wheel of life turns.”
Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation by Nuar Alsadir
Graywolf Press | August 16, 2022
Alsadir’s prose debut is “an invigorating, continuously surprising book about the serious nature of laughter.”
Such Color: New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith
Graywolf Press | August 16, 2022
Such Color: New and Selected Poems “traces an increasingly audacious commitment to exploring the immense mysteries and conundrums of human existence.”
Talking With Trees by Lucia Coppola
Plants & Poetry Journal | August 17, 2022
This collection of poetry and photography is “the story of a magical journey into the garden and the extraordinary adventure of ordinary things.”
No. Wait. I Can Explain. by Brad Rose
Pelekinesis | August 20, 2022
In this collection of prose poetry, “speakers take liberties with standard colloquial speech, invent unusual similes, and employ unconventional variants of American idioms.”
Let No One Sleep by Juan José Millás
Translated from Spanish by Thomas Bunstead
Bellevue Literary Press | August 23, 2022
Let No One Sleep is a novel “in which the mundane and extraordinary collide, art revives and devastates, and identity is unhinged by the treacherous forces of contemporary society.”
Rules for Escaping by Nick Farriella
word west press | August 23, 2022
In the stories in this collection, “each of the characters have undergone or are in the midst of trauma/suffering, and are in one way or another looking for an escape.”
Selected Books of the Beloved by Gregory Orr
Copper Canyon Press | August 23, 2022
This poetry collection is “an expansive, lyric testament to the formidable mystery of love, spanning several previous volumes all in dedication to the beloved.”
Autofocus Books | August 23, 2022
Cleave is “a tight collection of epistolary creative nonfiction that examines the ambiguous grief of being a birth mother caught in the momentum of adulthood and the constant choices that come along with it.”
Song of the Chimney Sweep by Tamatha Cain
Orange Blossom Publishing | August 30, 2022
According to Liza Nash Taylor, this novel “captures a city in time, with a well-researched, atmospheric story of love, sacrifice, family, and loss, told against the backdrop of the sixties music scene in Florida.”
Out Stealing Water by Roxane Doty
Regal House Publishing | August 30, 2022
According to Patricia Grady Fox, this novel follows “a makeshift family facing eviction from their trailers on a dirt lot in the city of Tempe.”
Enjoy Me among My Ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald
Feminist Press | August 30, 2022
This experimental manifesto “combining feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and memoir… draws together a kaleidoscopic archive of Juniper Fitzgerald’s experiences as a queer sex-working mother.”
