Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features dozens of new books forthcoming in February from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
MUSIC FOR EXILE by Nehassaiu deGannes
Tupelo Press | February 1, 2021
The poems in this debut collection “syncretize a host of lyrical, received and invented forms to beckon a “mythic assemblage,” an aggregation of personal and historical losses, intimate and en masse.”
The Readiness by Alan Gillis
Wake Forest University Press | February 1, 2021
Gillis’s poetry collection “moves fluently among various modes of poetic expression: the lyric, one of his most beautiful and assured; the gritty, one of his most familiar; and the comic, one of his most form-splitting.”
Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri
Akashic Books | February 2, 2021
This short story collection from Booker Prize–winning Okri “blurs parallel realities and walks the line between darkness and magic.”
Speculative Los Angeles
Akashic Books | February 2, 2021
Edited by Denise Hamilton, Speculative Los Angeles is the first installment in a “new city-based anthology series featuring all-new stories with speculative, sci-fi, and paranormal themes.”
Wild Swims by Dorthe Nors
Graywolf Press | February 2, 2021
Translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra, this short story collection “plumbs the depths of the human heart, from desire to melancholy and everything in between.”
This is What America Looks Like
Washington Writers Publishing House | February 2, 2021
Edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson, this “diverse, inclusive and incisive anthology” features work from 100 writers from Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.
Bug by Giacomo Sartori
Restless Books | February 2, 2021
Translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall, this novel is “a madcap story of family dysfunction, (dis)ability, intelligent robots, bees, and a family of misfit savants living outside the bounds.”
COME ON UP by Jordi Nopca
Bellevue Literary Press | February 9, 2021
According to Colm Tóibín, the short stories in this collection—translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem—”capture the unease of the times and the flux of contemporary life in Barcelona.”
Bestiality of the Involved by Spring Ulmer
Etruscan Press | February 9, 2021
Ulmer’s debut memoir asks the question, “What does it mean to want to become a mother as children around the world die of treatable diseases, are killed by bomb or bullet, are held in cages?”
Eleven Sooty Dreams by Manuela Draeger
Open Letter | February 9, 2021
Translated from the French by J. T. Mahany, this novel follows “a group of young leftists trapped in a burning building after one year’s Bolcho Pride parade.”
I See You Big German by Zac Crain
Deep Vellum | February 9, 2021
This lyric essay “follows Dallas Mavericks star player Nowitzki’s 21-year career, charting the highs and lows of his career and what he means to the city of Dallas.”
No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body by Asiya Wadud
Nightboat Books | February 9, 2021
“Drawing on the multi-disciplinary performances of Okwui Okpokwasili,” this poetry collection “evokes experiences of transmission to explore methods and modes of continuum, endurance, claustrophobia and stillness.”
Prometeo by C. Dale Young
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Young’s latest poetry collection is an “unflinching reckoning with the traumas of one’s life and those inherited through a history of exacted injustices.”
Everything by Andrea Cohen
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
In her new poetry collection, Cohen “approaches the idea of the macro through an elastic inquiry of the micro” and “examines logic through analogy.”
Sweetgum & Lightning by Rodney Terich Leonard
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
This debut poetry collection is, according to Mark Bibbins, “a cascade of image and song, charged by a voice that can pivot from reverence to gleeful vulgarity inside a single line.”
The Art of Fiction by Kevin Prufer
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Prufer’s eighth poetry collection is an “investigation, performed through storytelling, of the constructed beliefs of society and individuals.”
What Happens Is Neither by Angela Narciso Torres
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
According to Tim Seibles, in this poetry collection Torres “has jimmied the lock to a house of intricate family memory and sumptuous wisdom.”
Renditions by Reginald Gibbons
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
According to Ilya Kaminsky, “this one-man chorus sings the way Pasternak recommended when he whispered that poets should go across the borders, smashing those borders.”
Reliquary by Abigail Wender
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Wender’s debut poetry collection is “an introspective lyric on how the opiate crisis alters families and futures.”
Debris by Jonathan Wells
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
This poetry collection “offers a stark foil between the lyric world of the poem and an outside world that is violent, hard, and relentless.”
The Witch of Eye by Kathryn Nuernberger
Sarabande Books | February 16, 2021
According to V. V. Ganeshananthan, in this essay collection Nuernberger “stitches histories and hexes together, elegantly tracing the threads between how we talk about violence, nature, industry, and culture.”
Women’s Work by Madeleine Barnes
Tolsun Books | February 16, 2021
Women’s Work is “a hybrid poetry chapbook that treads the frontier between the handmade and the digital.”
when animals are animals by Betsy Johnson
Mayapple Press | February 19, 2021
According to Peter Grandbois, Johnson’s third book of poetry contains “poems that speak the truth of parables.”
Within These Woods by Timothy Goodwin
Riverfeet Press | February 22, 2021
In this illustrated series of nature essays, Goodwin “guides the reader on a personal and educational journey through the Northwoods of the Great Lakes Region.”
Right Guy, Wrong Time: A #MeToo Love Story by Louise MacGregor
Frayed Edge Press | February 23, 2021
This novel is an “offbeat feminist romance… dealing empathetically with sexual dysfunction, the ubiquity of rape culture, and what recovery can look like in the #MeToo era.”
Returning the Sword to the Stone by Mark Leidner
Fonograf Editions | February 23, 2021
Leidner’s poetry collection is “simultaneously profound and irreverent, in the same way that the world is flat as we walk and round as we live.”
The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri
Restless Books | February 23, 2021
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Champaneri’s debut novel “brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death.”
