Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in October 2023 from CLMP members.
A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness by Angela Acosta
Red Ogre Review | October 1, 2023
Acosta’s poetry chapbook “roots space-age dreams in centuries-old human tradition, inflected with flicks of humor.”
Codhill Press | October 1, 2023
Rupture “weaves together the history of enslaved women in the Americas and themes of life, love, and loss.”
The Shape of Things to Come by John Blair
Gival Press | October 1, 2023
In this poetry collection, Blair “offers us penetrating meditation on the Manhattan Project and its consequences, in terms both historically recuperative and, mindful of a cautionary anxiety, deeply psychological.”
Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner by Zachary Cahill
Red Ogre Review | October 1, 2023
According to Corinne Halbert, this poetry chapbook “delicately guides us through the fermented sadness of a wounded heart.”
Watershed Press | October 1, 2023
Edited by Jason Wirth, Paul E. Nelson, and Adelia MacWilliam, this anthology asks, “Is there a connection between Zen practice, broadly construed, and the Cascadia bioregion?”
Yesteryear by Stephen G. Eoannou
Santa Fe Writers Project | October 1, 2023
Eoannou’s novel “takes us on a magical journey leading to an icon’s debut, a show that provided hope to Americans during the country’s darkest days.”
Songs for the Spirit / Canciones para el Espiritu by Robert L. Giron
Gival Press | October 1, 2023
Giron’s bilingual version of the psalms is, according to George Klawitter, “both refreshing to the soul and beautifully crafted.”
Tupelo Press | October 1, 2023
Groom’s memoir-in-essays “is the story of a restless search for a place to be—a way to live—after a series of devastating events.”
Sleep Tight Satellite by Carol Guess
Tupelo Press | October 1, 2023
According to Randall Brown, in this short fiction collection, Guess “builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire.”
Her: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
Gival Press | October 1, 2023
In this novel, Ha “weaves the lives of individuals we come to know and care about into the saga of Vietnamese-and American-history.”
Charlotte Lit Press | October 1, 2023
In her fourteenth poetry collection, Haskins “remembers poets who preceded her, Sappho to Blake to Merwin.”
Rescue is Elsewhere by Donald Illich
Red Ogre Review | October 1, 2023
The aliens in Illich’s chapbook of science-fiction poetry “represent something beautiful and otherworldly, something that can lift us out of the humdrum day-to-day focus on ourselves.”
Texas Review Press | October 1, 2023
This poetry collection “is a book of reckoning, a book of ghosts, a book of lineal fracture and generational fatherlessness.”
The Birth of The Best: The Making of The Best American Poetry by David Lehman
Marsh Hawk Press | October 1, 2023
The Best American Poetry editor David Lehman “gives readers a riveting behind-the-scenes look at the making of the yearly anthology he founded in 1988.”
GRAB by Kendra Preston Leonard
Red Ogre Review | October 1, 2023
According to Jack B. Bedell, each poem in this chapbook “builds myth line by line, linking us to ancient truths, mapmaking to lead us forward into our future.”
A Reaction to Someone Coming In by Wendy Lotterman
Futurepoem Books | October 1, 2023
In this poetry collection, “sex and love, girlhood and motherhood, are always in transition, dematerialized, and slightly comic.”
Conduit Books & Ephemera | October 1, 2023
This poetry collection “is a quiet yet expansive celebration, not just of life but the fractures within it, too.”
Closer to Freedom: Prose & Poetry From Maximum Security
Woodhall Press | October 2, 2023
In this anthology edited by Chris Belden, “dozens of incarcerated men share poems, stories, and essays that celebrate the power of the written word.”
Lily Poetry Review Books | October 2, 2023
The poems in this collection “hold the various facets of joy and mourning, and the spectrum in between.”
Woodhall Press | October 2, 2023
In this memoir, Moore “delves into the challenges that often come with seeking inclusion and acceptance, but she also highlights the joyous—and often hilarious—adventures of her childhood.”
Blood in the Holler by David Sangiao-Parga
Woodhall Press | October 2, 2023
In this novel, pro wrestlers “find themselves held captive on a farm, unsure of what will happen and desperate to escape.”
There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie
Coach House Books | October 3, 2023
Baillie’s memoir is a “richly layered response to her mother’s passing, her father’s life, and her sister’s suicide.”
Leda’s Daughters by K. Avvirin Berlin
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | October 3, 2023
The poems in this collection “traverse and transgress the temporal, re-envisioning African American and Native American women’s history as a history of poetics.”
Dying For A Second Chance by Jenn Chapman
Woodhall Press | October 3, 2023
In this thriller, a woman killed in a car crash comes back to life in the body of the crash’s other victim.
Connecticut Literary Anthology 2023: Celebrating Authors From the Nutmeg State
Woodhall Press | October 3, 2023
Edited by Victoria Buitron, this anthology collects poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by dozens of Connecticut writers.
The Confessions by Fabián O. Iriarte
Translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Entre Ríos Books | October 3, 2023
Iriarte’s poems in The Confessions “are often elegiac and grieving as he struggles to give meaning to the newly missing.”
Floriography Child by Lisa C. Krueger
Red Hen Press | October 3, 2023
Krueger’s memoir-in-poems is “a book about salvation: what gives people strength in the face of adversity, not just to endure, but to move through and beyond our myriad human sufferings.”
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | October 3, 2023
This novel is “a coming-of-age journey toward redemption and self-awareness, skirting the lines between spirituality, skepticism, and faith.”
Wave Books | October 3, 2023
Lasky’s latest poetry collection “is an ekphrastic horror lyric that shapes an entirely unique feminist psychological landscape.”
Removal Acts by Erin Marie Lynch
Graywolf Press | October 3, 2023
The poems in Lynch’s debut collection “trace a path through the labyrinth of distances and absences haunting the American colonial experiment.”
Salt in the Veins by Mary E. McDermott
Sea Crow Press | October 3, 2023
In this memoir, McDermott explores Cape Cod’s “rich moments and sometimes amusing, always fascinating history.”
Copper Canyon Press | October 3, 2023
“An unflinching study of death,” Prufer’s ninth poetry collection “invites us to consider what it means to matter.”
El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez
Hub City Press | October 3, 2023
In this poetry collection, Ramirez “explores living in America as a first-generation American of Salvadoran and Mexican descent, living among conflicting histories.”
Wave Books | October 3, 2023
In this memoir, Scott “chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art.”
Restless Books | October 3, 2023
Illustrated by Kaitlin Chan, this new edition of Stoker’s classic features a foreword by Alexander Chee and an introduction by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
CavanKerry Press | October 3, 2023
This memoir-in-essays “traces the legacy of violence in an Italian American family, showing how abuse reverberates both in the body and mind of a family.”
Transplant by Bernardine Watson
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | October 3, 2023
This memoir is “a page-turning, personal journey into one Black woman’s battle with kidney disease and the American medical system.”
Leave Nothing Behind by Martin Willitts, Jr.
Fernwood Press | October 3, 2023
This poetry collection is “shaped by the techniques of Impressionism—light and shadow, the momentary, how no two moments are the same, and where light is forever chasing light.”
Discordant by Richard Hamilton
Autumn House Press | October 7, 2023
Hamilton’s second poetry collection offers “multilayered examinations of injustices—from mass incarceration to failing schools and right-wing fascism.”
Woman at the Crossing by Susan Okie
Grid Books | October 7, 2023
According to Garrett Hongo, the poems in this debut collection are “gathered from the passionate witnessing of human survival within creation’s natural splendors.”
Bait the Toad by Kendra Powers
Catalyst Press | October 7, 2023
In this book of photographs, a “tiny toad has a lot to teach us all about being comfortable in our own skin.”
Kingdom of Glass & Seed by Jules Jacob
Lily Poetry Review Books | October 9, 2023
Jacob’s poetry collection features “scenes of hardscrabble tenderness and sometimes unbearable cruelty, scavenged and placed ever so carefully side by side in memory’s reliquary.”
Letting in Air and Light by Teresa Tumminello Brader
Belle Point Press | October 10, 2023
In this memoir, Brader, “niece of the convicted art forger William Toye, retells her family’s experience as she discovers her uncle’s misdeeds after decades of secrecy.”
So Many People, Mariana by Maria Judite de Carvalho
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Two Lines Press | October 10, 2023
These short stories are “tough, unflinching accounts of women trapped by a culture that values them as workers or wives but not as people.”
Discount Ceremony by Timothy Day
Game Over Books | October 10, 2023
Day’s short fiction collection “explores friendship, arrested development, loneliness, and compromised dreams, played out against a series of surreal backdrops by turns comically absurd and strikingly bleak.”
Sadie X by Clara Dupuis-Morency
Translated from the French by Aimee Wall
Book*hug Press | October 10, 2023
This novel “explores humanity’s relationship to the rest of the world, and the role of rationale—and its limits in our multilayered, regenerative existences.”
Winter Season by Carolina Esses
Translated from the Spanish by Allison deFreese
Entre Ríos Books | October 10, 2023
This bilingual poetry collection is “a journey into the darkest season where familial remembrance and longing become entangled in the memory of nature itself.”
Building a Nest from the Bones of My People by Cara-Lyn Morgan
Invisible Publishing | October 10, 2023
In these poems, Morgan “explores the complexities of generational and secondary abuse, intertwined as they are with the impacts of colonization.”
Autofocus Books | October 10, 2023
Oquendo’s poetry collection “is a sigil where each stroke of trauma and healing manifests in language.”
Searching for Home by Robert Pack
Slant Books | October 10, 2023
This poetry collection features “sequences of poems about three figures, each a seeker after some physical or conceptual home where uncertainties are overcome.”
Swimming in Gilead by Cassie Premo Steele
Yellow Arrow Publishing | October 10, 2023
This poetry chapbook follows “the journey of a woman who, empowered to express herself through the feminist spirit of a writing group, explores what it means to be a woman and an ally in an era of uncertainty.”
Invisible Publishing | October 10, 2023
This fifteenth anniversary edition of the “haunting lifeline between archive and memory, law and poetry” features a new introduction by M. NourbeSe Philip.
The Thomas Salto by Timmy Straw
Fonograf Editions | October 10, 2023
This poetry collection “takes its name from a difficult and dangerous move in gymnastics, a leaping triple flip popularized during the last years of the Cold War.”
June Road Press | October 10, 2023
Whitney’s second poetry collection “juxtaposes the conflicted emotions of motherhood and domesticity with the intoxicating promises of transgression.”
Choosing to be Simple: Collected Poems by Tao Yuanming
Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine
Copper Canyon Press | October 10, 2023
This bilingual collection of over 160 verses “chronicles Tao Yuanming’s path from civil servant to reclusive poet during the formative Six Dynasties period (220-589).”
People You Know, Places You’ve Been by Hana Shafi
Book*hug Press | October 12, 2023
Shafi’s poetry collection “offers a sense of shared recognition and nostalgia, ultimately asking: what if seemingly mundane places are actually the foundations of who you are?”
Queers Like Me by Michael V. Smith
Book*hug Press | October 12, 2023
Smith’s latest collection is “a broad tapestry that explores growing up queer and working class, then growing into an urban queer life.”
Closing Melodies by Rainer J. Hanshe
Contra Mundum Press | October 15, 2023
In this book, “Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent van Gogh unknowingly traverse proximate geographical terrain, nearly circling one another like close but distant stars.”
Songs for Olympia by Tomoé Hill
Sagging Meniscus | October 15, 2023
A response to Michel Leiris’s The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat, this essay collection is “an ode to the both the ribbon and the memory: what leads us to constantly rediscover ourselves and a world so easily assumed as viewed through a single frame.”
Acre Books | October 15, 2023
In his fourth poetry collection, Minicucci “examines masculinity and gun violence as he brings to life the grammatical concept of the dual, a number that is neither singular nor plural.”
The Art of Mercy: New & Selected Poems by Robert L. Penick
Hohm Press/Shō Poetry Journal | October 15, 2023
Penick’s first full-length collection “contains excerpts from four chapbooks, as well as fifty-seven new and previously uncollected poems.”
Taking to Water by Jennifer Conlon
Autumn House Press | October 16, 2023
The poems in this debut collection “question gender and embrace queerness through the natural world of North Carolina.”
JackLeg Press | October 16, 2023
In this book written after a 1992 voyage across the Pacific, “there are diary excerpts and ship’s log entries; there is myth, story, and fascinating facts about whales.”
Autumn House Press | October 16, 2023
In these braided essays, Wade “invites readers on a journey of self-discovery framed by memory, literature, and popular culture.”
None of the Above by Travis Alabanza
Feminist Press | October 17, 2023
In this memoir, Alabanza “considers the meaning of gender, and the role it plays in a world that rigidly and aggressively enforces the binary.”
Coach House Books | October 17, 2023
Berger’s novel is “a reverse cautionary tale about a young woman exploring the boundaries of sex and belonging in the early 2000s.”
My Modest Blindness by Russell Brakefield
Autofocus Books | October 17, 2023
In this poetry collection, Brakefield “traverses this blurry landscape, drawing connections to art, literature, natural history, and pop culture.”
English as a Second Language and Other Poems by Jaswinder Bolina
Copper Canyon Press | October 17, 2023
Bolina’s poetry collection “skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor.”
Until We Talk by Darrell Bourque
Etruscan Press | October 17, 2023
This collection is “a set of jazz-inflected ghazals tied to epigraphs from Colum McCann’s award-winning novel Apeirogon and illuminated with Bill Gingles’ abstract expressionist paintings.”
Histories of Memories by Shome Dasgupta
Belle Point Press | October 17, 2023
This hybrid prose collection “is a testament to the burdens as well as the delights of our own narratives—how they keep us tied to each other whether we realize it or not.”
Numamushi: A Fairy Tale by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh
Lanternfish Press | October 17, 2023
According to Thersa Matsuura, this novella is “a hauntingly beautiful tale of friendship, family, healing, and transformation.”
Blessed Hands by Frume Halpern
Translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Frayed Edge Press | October 17, 2023
The stories in this collection “present the lives of protagonists who are working-class poor, social outcasts, and those experiencing illness, disability, and racism.”
The Tailor Shop at the Intersection by Ahn Jaesun
Translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell
Transit Books | October 17, 2023
This children’s book is “about family, resilience, fashion, and staying true to who you are—told through three generations of tailors in a rapidly changing Seoul.”
Red Hen Press | October 17, 2023
Magowan’s eighth poetry collection is “an invitation to witness an artist’s life recounted through the warm slant of memory.”
T’shuvah by Richard Jeffrey Newman
Fernwood Press | October 17, 2023
According to Andrea Carter Brown, “Newman explores in this book the underpinnings of t’shuvah, the Jewish tradition of acceptance, reconciliation, and forgiveness.”
Soul Jar: 31 Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors
Forest Avenue Press | October 17, 2023
Edited by Annie Carl, this anthology features stories by disabled authors, “imagining such wonders as a shapeshifter on a first date, skin that sprouts orchid buds, and a cereal-box demon.”
Translated from the French by Kit Schluter
Black Sun Lit | October 17, 2023
In this short fiction collection, “the limits of excess themselves are stifling, erotic immoderation no longer satisfies, and worldly anguish reveals itself as ever crueler, more evident.”
SKiNFoLK: An American Show by Jillian Walker
53rd State Press | October 17, 2023
SKiNFoLK: An American Show is “a quilted ritual of liberation, bearing witness to the playwright-performer’s identity, heritage and legacy as a Black woman in this America.”
LittlePuss Press | October 17, 2023
The seven stories in this collection are “about young transgender life from the Upper Midwest to New York City.”
Half a Cup of Sand and Sky by Nadine Bjursten
Alder House Books | October 17, 2023
This debut novel is “a masterful portrait of one woman’s search for love and belonging cast against a nuanced backdrop of political turmoil.”
Nena, y Roberta ¿dónde está? by Marie Biskai
Editorial Destellos | October 20, 2023
In this Spanish-language children’s book, a granddaughter and grandmother search through fantastical worlds for the latter’s lost memories.
Threesome in the Last Toyota Celica & Other Circus Tricks by m. mick powell
Host Publications | October 21, 2023
This poetry chapbook “sings about Black queer femmehood in harmonies of multiple voices, asserting the self as ever-changing and voluminous.”
Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance
Sarabande Books | October 24, 2023
Edited by Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis, this anthology “on the lived experience of addiction” includes poems by Joy Harjo, Afaa Michael Weaver, Diane Seuss, Layli Long Soldier, and more.
A Place Here, Volume 3: Thoughts and Recipes for Nurturing Community by Beth Brown Ables
Good Printed Things | October 24, 2023
This book is “a collection of essays and recipes centered around food and its nurturing role in our communities.”
Coolest Stories Press | October 24, 2023
The third volume of the annual short story anthology—edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey—features fiction by Cynthia Weiner, Tara Laskowski, D. W. Gregory, and Matthew Goldberg.
Daddy Lessons by Steacy Easton
Coach House Books | October 24, 2023
“Part memoir, part literary study, part formalist exercise in excitement,” this book is “a transgressive text of pleasure, bodies, the Lord, and the West.”
Duncan Park: Stories of a Classic American Ballpark by Edwin C. Epps
Hub City Press | October 24, 2023
Duncan Park: Stories of a Classic American Ballpark “recounts the history of Spartanburg’s oldest wooden grandstand stadium,” built in 1926.
A Watershed Runs through You by Freeman House
Empty Bowl Press | October 24, 2023
The essays and talks in this collection explore “the central place of salmon in the ecology and culture of the Cascadia bioregion and the critical role of human communities in the restoration of its home watersheds.”
The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories by Kij Johnson
Small Beer Press | October 24, 2023
This short fiction collection features “speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories.”
Loving & Lasting: A FEMS Anthology
Game Over Books | October 24, 2023
Loving & Lasting: A FEMS Anthology is a poetry anthology “that celebrates our generative and varied relationships to femininity.”
The Neorealist in Winter by Salvatore Pane
Autumn House Press | October 23, 2023
The Neorealist in Winter is a collection of eleven short stories “that explore what it means to be human in an age of media oversaturation.”
Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most
Copper Canyon Press | October 24, 2023
Edited by Carl Phillips and Erin Belieu, this anthology features “fifty-eight author-selected poems and accompanying essays that explain how and why each poet chose a poem as their ‘personal best.'”
The Hurricane Book: A Lyric History by Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones
Rose Metal Press | October 24, 2023
In this debut memoir, Acevedo-Quiñones “pieces together the story of her family and Puerto Rico using a captivating combination of historical facts, poems, maps, overheard conversations, and flash essays.”
Book*hug Press | October 24, 2023
This poetry collection “offers a breathtaking, harrowing immersion in cruelty behind different veils: the medieval hunt, ecological collapse, and intimate partner violence.”
Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life by Nancy Ludmerer
WTAW Press | October 25, 2023
Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life is historical fiction “based on the life of the title character, who was confined in the Jewish ghetto in Venice from her birth in 1592 until her death forty-nine years later.”
Publishing Genius | October 25, 2023
Fudge is “a collection of minimalist long poems that find holy the tedium and calamity that shapes our lives.”
Tepozteco’s Belly by José Agustín
Translated from the Spanish by Nicolás Kanellos
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
An “adventure story about Aztec gods,” Tepozteco’s Belly “introduces teens to Mexican indigenous traditions.”
The Rain Sweeps Through by John Brandi
Empty Bowl Press | October 31, 2023
The haiku in this collection “are culled from wherever they first landed: pocket pad, a paper napkin, a daily journal, the palm of the author’s hand, or in notes accompanying his field sketches.”
Grandma, Where Will Your Love Go? / Abuela, ¿adónde irá tu amor? by Adriana Camacho-Church
Translated from the Spanish by Gastón Hauviller
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
Camacho-Church’s bilingual picture book explores “the joy of intergenerational relationships.”
Mariano’s First Glove / El primer guante de Mariano by Robert Casilla
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
This bilingual children’s book explores “the life of an acclaimed major league baseball player.”
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Transit Books | October 31, 2023
In this novel, “a man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road.”
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Transit Books | October 31, 2023
The three volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected here in a new paperback release, are “a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience.”
Huizache Women by Estella Gonzalez
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
In this novel set in Mexico, Texas, and California, “three generations of women grapple with the complexities of love.”
Glowing Animals by Amanda Hartzell
Game Over Books | October 31, 2023
The poems in Hartzell’s collection “explore love, motherhood, family, and the siren-songs we sing in this strange, unruly world.”
A Calendar Is a Snakeskin by Kristine Langley Mahler
Autofocus Books | October 31, 2023
In these three connected essays, Mahler “excavates personal meaning from astrology, tarot, mothering, siblinging, and homesickness.”
Testimony of a Shifter by Emma Pérez
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
In this nonlinear narrative, Pérez “offers a fascinating speculative novel about alternate histories, while pondering race, discrimination and transgender people.”
Phantom Captain by Kim Rosenfield
Fence Books | October 31, 2023
This poetry collection “explores the poetry of psychoanalysis, feminism and gender, questions of the 21st century self, and the accelerating pressures of standardizing capitalism upon the human mind.”
Arte Público Press | October 31, 2023
This bilingual memoir in verse for teens “relates the development of a reader and writer while honoring his Mexican-American community.”
The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer by Tomas Tranströmer
Translated from the Swedish by Patty Crane
Copper Canyon Press | October 31, 2023
The poems in this bilingual collection—which is “a stunning testament to an illustrious career”—“range from agile haiku to cinematic prose.”
Coach House Books | October 31, 2023
Pervatory is “a novel about Berlin: a city for artists and libertines, a perfect place to find love and madness.”
