Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in December 2024 from CLMP members.
Really Shockingly Bad Things and Other Stories by Sam Asher
55 Fathoms Publishing | December 1, 2024
This collection of short stories “takes a hard, but often deeply moving look at a near-future dystopia, a time and place not too far from our present reality.”
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.’”
Forests, Temples, Glacial Rivers by Andrew Schelling
Empty Bowl Press | December 1, 2024
Schelling’s newest collection offers “poems ‘found’ among the canyons and buttes of the Southwest, a paean to the Sanskrit dictionary, odes and elegies to deceased poets, and a series of love songs ‘to the tune of a ballad.'”
Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree by Jennifer Martelli
Lily Poetry Review Books | December 2, 2024
According to January Gill O’Neil, this poetry collection “delves deep into the human psyche, exploring themes of desire, self-destruction, and the complexities of human existence.”
House of Jars by Hester L. Furey
Frayed Edge Press | December 3, 2024
According to Steve Davenport, “madness, both as crisis and as passage, is the cycle’s primary theme, which Furey handles masterfully via multiple characters.”
Mountains of the Moon by Irene Blair Honeycutt
Charlotte Center for Literary Arts | December 3, 2024
In this poetry collection, Honeycutt “takes readers on a journey from creeks of childhood through rivers and inlets all the way to the Red Sea and back again.”
Post-Volcanic Folk Tales by Mackenzie Polonyi
Akashic Books | December 3, 2024
In this poetry collection, Mackenzie “necessarily explores prescribed responsibilities of diasporic only daughterhood.”
Between the Joints & the Marrow by Garrett Soucy
Fernwood Press | December 3, 2024
According to Peter Leithart, Soucy’s “densely allusive, rugged poems surprise with twists on biblical themes, vivid moments of prayer and praise, sharp and shocking images.”
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.”
KUMI: New-Generation African Poets
African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books | December 3, 2024
Edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani, this limited-edition box set of chapbooks is the newest publication in the New-Generation African Poets series and features poetry by Nurain Oládèjì, Sarpong Osei Asamoah, Claudia Owusu, and more.
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.”
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.”
Blanket of the Night by Carl Little
Deerbrook Editions | December 4, 2024
According to Megan Grumbling, this poetry collection “bestows tender attention to myriad little miracles of daily life, nature, art, and community.”
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.”
Regal House Publishing | December 10, 2024
According to Megan Staffel, this novella is “a masterful puzzle, a one-way conversation that poses more questions than it answers as a wife tries to communicate with her husband.”
Sledding the Valley of the Shadow by Laura Foley
Fernwood Press | December 10, 2024
This poetry collection embraces “the acceptance of the imperfect as the perfect lesson, as welcome or necessary steps to wisdom, slipping and sliding a flash-lit, joyful, snowy way to an abiding gratitude.”
Red Ogre Review | December 13, 2024
According to Katie Beswick, Fulford’s poetry “feels the way memories of adolescence feel—that same nostalgic intensity most of us still carry, a kernel of our adult selves wrought in the fire of 90s teenage culture.”
Hanging Loose Press | December 15, 2024
Amirthanayagam’s newest collection is “multi-lingual, multi- coastal, multi-dimensional poetic record of a time in our collective history when our potential human demise loomed large.”
The Grimace of Eden, Now by Cody-Rose Clevidence
Fonograf Editions | December 17, 2024
This poetry collection “wanders through spacetime carrying irreverent theologies and exploring what it could mean to be living, sensate, and awake in this weird moment in time, exposing a mixture half of awe and half of madness.”
Purification in Queens by Kristalyn Gill
Fernwood Press | December 17, 2024
This collection of poetry “embodies Gill’s mission to reclaim the evangelical lexicon and introduce this vocabulary back into present-day vernacular.”
Many Poems by Roberta Iannamico
Translated from the Spanish by Alexis Almeida
The Song Cave | December 17, 2024
In Iannamico’s first full-length poetry collection to be published in English, “objects acquire voices, seasons move simultaneously across rural landscapes, and a mother and daughter share a unique vision of the past and present.”
trace press | December 20, 2024
Edited by Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj, this bilingual poetry anthology—in which “language dissolves into cities, landscapes, or portals that open to rubble, or only air”—features George Abraham, Eman Abukhadra, Omar Aljaffal, and more poets and translators writing in Arabic and English.
Well You Needn’t by Joel Lewis
Hanging Loose Press | December 20, 2024
Lewis’s seventh collection “gathers his poems about the music that has occupied him since his teenage years.”
Unsolicited Press | December 20, 2024
Edited by Cinnamon Kills First, Keya Mitra Lloyd, José Hernandez, Patricia Valdés, Charles Finn, and Shann Ray, this anthology consists of “poems from poets—nationally and internationally, emerging and award-winning—that stands against the current age of ego enragement, fracture, and disillusionment.”
Diary of a False Assassin by Anne Leigh Parrish
Unsolicited Press | December 21, 2024
The poems in Parrish’s third collection “reveal the miracles of nature, the enslavement of women, and the pain of family life.”
Rome | Pedestrians Beware by Rafael Alberti
Translated from the Spanish by Anthony Geist & Giuseppe Leporace
Swan Isle Press | December 30, 2024
In Alberti’s collection set in Rome, “the blending of classical tradition with post-modern echoes the darkness and luminosity that exist within the poems, tinged with longing, nostalgia, love, as well as hope.”
