Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in January 2022 from CLMP members.
Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens by Corey Van Landingham
Tupelo Press | January 1, 2022
This poetry collection “considers the way that the absence of touch—in acts of war via the drone, in acts of love via the sext, in aesthetics itself—abstracts the human body, transforming it into a proxy for the real.”
The Lantern Room by Chloe Honum
Tupelo Press | January 1, 2022
According to Allison Titus, The Lantern Room “is stunning and harrowing, built of poems that interrogate the wound of grief, the wound of love, and insist on asking an impossible question.”
Shrapnel from a Writing Life by Ian Gouge
Coverstory books | January 1, 2022
Drawing from 37 years of Gouge’s notebooks, Shrapnel from a Writing Life is “neither fiction nor poetry, though it contains elements of both; nor is it strictly autobiographical, though it does present a partial life seen through a very particular lens.”
Autumn House Press | January 4, 2022
Winner of the 2020 Fiction Prize, selected by Dan Chaon, this debut novel “tells the story of nine-year-old Raymond, nicknamed ‘Ray Moon’ by Molly, his adoptive caretaker, a waitress, and the former partner of his recently deceased uncle.”
White Bull by Elizabeth Hughey
Sarabande Books | January 4, 2022
Winner of the 2020 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry judged by Alberto Ríos, this poetry collection is “composed entirely of words taken from the letters and public statements of the notorious segregationist Bull Connor.”
The Tenderest of Strings by Steven Schwartz
Regal House Publishing | January 4, 2022
In this novel, Schwartz explores “what it takes to survive as a family in a small Western town that beckons from afar but will put its newcomers to the test of their lives.”
Zephyr Press | January 4, 2022
Presented bilingually in Burmese and English, these poems by Ko Ko Thett “bring oddball lists, linguistic inventiveness, and sardonic humor to the brutal contradictions of life and history in and outside of his native Burma.”
Regal House Publishing | January 7, 2022
According to Ashley Holstrom, in this children’s novel “a blind twelve-year-old girl wants to be known for what she does, not by the fact of her disability.”
Out Front the Following Sea by Leah Angstman
Regal House Publishing | January 11, 2022
Out Front the Following Sea is “a historical epic of one woman’s survival in a time when the wilderness is still wild, heresy is publicly punishable, and being independent is worse than being scorned—it is a death sentence.”
The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon
Translated by Natasha Lehrer
New Vessel Press | January 11, 2022
This memoir “takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.”
Coolest Stories Press | January 11, 2022
In this anthology edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey, “America’s most talented storytellers share their most courageous, compelling, unputdownable work in a collection made for story lovers.”
Complete Poems by Jim Harrison
Copper Canyon Press | January 11, 2022
Introduced by Terry Tempest Williams, this collection “contains every poem Harrison published over his fifty-year career and displays his wide range of poetic styles and forms.”
Europa Editions | January 11, 2022
Winner of the Sala Novel Award, this “riveting, feminist reply to the book considered to be Coetzee’s masterwork is also a moving story of one woman trying to put her life back together after trauma.”
Fight Like a Girl by Mike Lewis
Regal House Publishing | January 15, 2022
Illustrated by Hila Ronis, this children’s book tells the stories of “women warriors in nearly every century, country, and culture.”
McMullen Circle by Heather Newton
Regal House Publishing | January 17, 2022
The twelve linked stories in this collection “explore the intertwined lives of faculty families at the McMullen Boarding School in Tonola Falls, Georgia, in 1969–70.”
The Agents by Grégoire Courtois
Translated by Rhonda Mullins
Coach House Books | January 18, 2022
In this novel, Courtois “turns his hand from literary horror to futuristic dystopianism in this unforgettable marriage between The Office, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Tron.”
I Knew I Was a Rebel Then by Wendy Atkinson and David Lester
Bamboo Dart Press | January 18, 2022
Horde of Two’s I Knew I was a Rebel Then features a six-song CD and an accompanying chapbook, which includes “two intertwined stories on the nature of triumph, defeat and legacy.”
Boccaccio in the Berkshires by Alan Govenar
Deep Vellum Publishing | January 18, 2022
Inspired by The Decameron, this novel “chronicles the foibles of seven women and three men, all in their twenties, who meet in an online chat room for asymptomatic pandemic survivors.”
Seasons of Purgatory by Shahriar Mandanipour
Translated by Sara Khalili
Bellevue Literary Press | January 25, 2022
In this short fiction collection, “the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions.”
The Getting Place by Frank Soos
Red Hen Press | January 25, 2022
According to Peggy Shumaker, the nine stories in this collection “spring from the places Frank Soos loved best: the coal hills of southwest Virginia, the coves of coastal Maine, and the rivers and tundra around Fairbanks, Alaska.”
The Tradition: Civic Dialogue Edition by Jericho Brown
Copper Canyon Press | January 25, 2022
In this special edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, which includes a discussion guide and an interview with the author, readers “are invited to participate in an urgent dialogue—sparked by poetry—about what it means to be human.”
