Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in February 2025 from CLMP members.
Lefty Blondie Press | February 1, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9860932-3-9
According to Anne Marie Macari, this bilingual tribute to Jean Valentine is a “poem, in ten short parts, about transition and the coming together of worlds.”
Phantom Number by Spring Ulmer
Tupelo Press | February 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961209-17-6
According to Vievee Francis, this poetry collection is a “courageous exploration of motherhood, culture and grief, within worlds charged by both beauty and inequity.”
When We Were Hardcore by Linda Michel-Cassidy
EastOver Press | February 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-50-1
The short stories in this debut collection are “born of the mountain areas in the American Southwest, and they depict the lesser-known lives of characters who discover, reckon with, and often seek to escape the mostly rural landscapes that made them.”
All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy by Bridget Bell
CavanKerry Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960327-08-6
The poems in this debut collection “push back against the rosy picture society paints of motherhood and instead lay bare the raw, neglected parts: the rage, the sorrow, the confusion, the ambivalence, the tentative joy.”
Monument Eternal by Alice Coltrane
Akashic Books | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-225-8
This book, originally published in 1977, “offers deep insight into Coltrane’s tremendous musical output, and shines a light on her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church organist and bebopper, to sage thought leader Swami Turiyasangitananda.”
The Delicate Beast by Roger Celestin
Bellevue Literary Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954276-36-9
According to Alice Kaplan, this debut is a “beautiful and devastating novel about a man born into horrifying political violence and condemned to experience the loss and sorrow he’s spent his whole life avoiding.”
Interficial ARTelligence: The Moments That Met Me by Chuck D
Akashic Books | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-204-3
In his newest graphic novel, Chuck D “details and illustrates his encounters with some of society’s most influential musicians, entertainers, politicians, athletes, and public figures.”
The Flight from Meaning by Stephen Haven
Slant Books | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63982-184-6
The poems in this collection “have been shaped by—and serve as responses to—an American predilection for violence, spectacle, and distraction—the ways they flatten and diminish our experience of the world.”
Woman in the Abbey by Mike Maggio
Vine Leaves Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-129-9
In this novella, “a young woman, fleeing the clutches of an abusive father, stumbles upon an abandoned abbey on the edge of a haunted forest.”
Fonograf Editions | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964499-30-7
This chapbook is “interested in the way that what appears as money is often funded by debt, while also taking into account the role of art, something that offers social capital without the accompanying wealth.”
The Real Story of Dinosaurs & Dragons: Science Sets the Fossil Record Straight by Philip J. Senter
Feral House | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-153-3
In this nonfiction book, Senter “examines a plethora of bizarre claims about dinosaurs and uses knowledge from modern scholarship to set the record straight.”
The Horse And The Girl by Madeleine F. White
Sea Crow Press | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961864-18-4
In this poetry collection, White “invites us to look beyond the road she rides on and beyond the page she writes, into the beating heart of our natural world and the relationships it contains, including that with herself.”
Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn by Jeff Copeland
Feral House | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-159-5
This memoir follows a “young, aspiring writer desperate for a break … and the legendary Andy Warhol superstar who gave him the story of a lifetime.”
Belle Point Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960215-32-1
Part fiction and part memoir, this book “gathers a chorus of Southern neighbors from pockets of rural America.”
Translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer
New Vessel Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954404-28-1
According to Booklist, this mixed-genre book is an “intense reading experience presenting the human body as a foreign specimen under the surveillance of judging, watchful eyes.”
People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi
Translated from the Indonesian by Lara Norgaard
Archipelago Books | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-953861-98-6
This debut novel “combines precise political recounting, stories adapted from articles in newspapers, and fables that Nesi overheard through Indonesia’s robust oral tradition.”
The Way of Florida by Russell Persson
Baobab Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-936097-54-8
This historical novel “recasts the tragic story of the failed Narváez expedition, which has trickled down through the centuries via La Relación, the official report published in 1542, as well as many other subsequent retellings.”
Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence by Emmett Wheatfall
Barclay Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-59498-152-4
According to Bob Horenstein, Wheatfall “transforms his masterful poetry into a profound commentary on the social and political existential ills plaguing America.”
Waveforms: A Short Course in Piano Tuning by Andrea Hackbarth
Small Harbor Publishing | February 13, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957248-44-8
According to Han Vanderhart, Hackbarth “shows so clearly the infinite possibility of attention and love, grounding both practices in the relationship of a piano tuner and their instrument.”
It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You by Daniel Meltz
Wandering Aengus Press | February 14, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-218-51324-5
According to Jeffrey Harrison, this debut poetry collection follows the “speaker’s circuitous search for the things that give meaningful connection to a life, which end up including kindness, friendship, love, and poetry itself.”
To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone by Kathryn Kruse
JackLeg Press | February 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1956907124
This debut collection of short stories “spills over with people building and breaking idols to find love and survival where they can.”
For now I am sitting here growing transparent by Yau Ching
Translated from the Chinese by Chenxin Jiang
Zephyr Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938890-34-5
This bilingual debut collection includes “astute political poems, understated love poems, urban anti-eclogues, and prose poems.”
The Eunuch’s Daughter & Stories by Khanh Ha
Blackwater Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9886158-8-0
According to Washington Writers’ Publishing House, this short story collection contains “extraordinary writing, interesting characters and a fascinating depiction of Vietnam’s history.”
I Would Define the Sun by Stephanie Niu
Vanderbilt University Literary Prize | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780826507716
The duplexes, sestinas, and couplets in Niu’s collection “declare the impossibility of defining something as immense as the sun while striving toward that impossible act.”
Vine Leaves Press | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-131-2
In this speculative fiction thriller, “the battle for the mind has begun—and the line between healing and manipulation is dangerously thin.”
Tales from the Scrapyard (One ‘n Done #11) by Nicole Zamlout
Read Furiously | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960869-18-0
This mixed-genre fantasy collection “creates an immersive mixed-media experience examining the very nature of the stories we choose to tell.”
Small Harbor Publishing | February 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957248-40-0
According to Meghan Sterling, the poems in Hockaday’s collection “contain the miraculous, the hideous, the joyful, and the grotesque as she recounts her pregnancy while reflecting on both her brother’s drug addiction and her father’s physical decline and passing.”
The Land of the Living by Timothy Crellin
Green Writers Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9904801-1-7
Crellin’s debut is a “historical novel that explores the themes of immigration and assimilation, war and its impact on families, the role of race and class in forging identity, and what it means to find home.”
The Heron Witch by Marnie Reed Crowell
Green Writers Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9883820-4-1
According to Doug Tallamy, this young adult novel based on tracking data from a real-life Great Blue heron is a “delightful tale about a city girl’s adventures in a Maine fishing village.”
The Singing River by Benjamin Morris
Belle Point Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960215-33-8
This poetry collection centered on the Mississippi Gulf Coast “asks what can be saved in a place of shifting landscapes and ancient memory.”
Vine Leaves Press | February 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-133-6
This speculative novel is a “disturbing journey into a world where empathy comes with a price, and virtual reality may be closer to home than we ever imagined.”
