Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in September 2023 from CLMP members.
Read Me: Selected Works by Holly Melgard
Ugly Duckling Presse | September 1, 2023
Read Me: Selected Works features “a representative selection of Holly Melgard’s formally experimental poetic works produced between 2008 and 2018.”
Tupelo Press | September 1, 2023
Partridge’s poetry collection “explores shifting iterations of the poetic self, both in body and in perspective, within the context of rapidly changing landscapes in the American West.”
Dead Men Cast No Shadows by Sergio Ramirez
Translated from the Spanish by Daryl R. Hague
McPherson & Company | September 1, 2023
In Volume 3 of The Managua Trilogy, “Inspector Dolores Morales undertakes a dangerous journey back into Nicaragua, hunted by agents of the secret police.”
Interior Landscape by Mirta Rosenberg
Translated from the Spanish by Yaki Setton and Sergio Waisman
Ugly Duckling Presse | September 1, 2023
In this poetry collection, Rosenberg “explores questions of life and death, of changes experienced in one’s body through time and the resulting changes in perspective.”
The Future Will Call You Something Else by Natasha Sajé
Tupelo Press | September 1, 2023
According to David Wojahn, the poems in this collection “are searching, canny, whip-smart, scrupulously self-aware, and effortlessly capable of moving from wit to pathos, from worry to delight.”
When the Night Breathes Electric by Max Talley
Borda Books | September 1, 2023
The stories in Talley’s collection “range from the fantastical to crime fiction to haunted fables to science fiction.”
Craft: A Memoir by Tony Trigilio
Marsh Hawk Press | September 1, 2023
Each chapter in this collection of linked personal essays “features an anecdote from the author’s development as a writer that illustrates craft elements central to his body of work.”
Child Craft by Amy Cipolla Barnes
Belle Point Press | September 5, 2023
This hybrid prose collection “explores family relationships—typically from the perspectives of mother and daughter—and the ways that we continually shape them into something that can either help or harm us.”
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
Edited by Gina Barreca, Fast Fallen Women “introduces 75 new essays about the dangerous and enthralling ways women fall—and how we get back on our feet, more deft, more decisive, and daring than ever.”
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
In this novel, “Margo Sharpe has a terrible secret. At 16, she played a role in her parents’ violent deaths on Cape Cod.”
BLF Press | September 5, 2023
Edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle, this multi-genre anthology “encompasses a broad spectrum of literary writing on Black joy.”
Heart of Stone by David W. Burns
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
Burns’s novel follows “a modern-day Medusa, making a living in Chicago as a hitwoman for hire.”
Maps You Can’t Make by Mariella Saavedra Carquin
June Road Press | September 5, 2023
Carquin “confronts hard truths in this powerful debut collection, pushing through layered complexities of immigration, race, and identity to find a way forward.”
Straitjackets and Lunch Money by Katya Cengel
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
Cengel’s novel is “a gut-wrenching account of childhood mental illness told from the inside interspersed with updates from experts in the field.”
The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm by Patricia Crisafulli
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
The second novel in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series is “a collision course with yet another murder and people who will stop at nothing.”
A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers
Akashic Books | September 5, 2023
In this anthology edited by Joyce Carol Oates, writers including Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, and Megan Abbott “explore, subvert, and reinvent one of the most vital subgenres of horror.”
The Town that Time Forgot by Elizabeth Donley-Leer
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
Donley-Leer’s YA novel follows a journalism student “down the treacherous rabbit hole that just might end with his demise.”
Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System by M. Chris Fabricant
Akashic Books | September 5, 2023
Innocence Project attorney Fabricant “presents an insider’s journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo.”
The Weight of Ghosts by Laila Halaby
Red Hen Press | September 5, 2023
Halaby’s memoir “is a circling of grief following the death of the author’s older son when he was 21.”
Graywolf Press | September 5, 2023
These poems and lyric fragments “make an inventory of truths that carry us through night’s reckoning with mortal hope into daylight.”
Mahabharata by Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes
Coach House Books | September 5, 2023
According to Robert Lepage, in this dramatic retelling of Mahabharata, “the 4,000-year-old Sanskrit poem comes to life and feels more universal than ever.”
The 3rd Thing | September 5, 2023
In this novel, “two women set out through the haze of social and environmental collapse in search of fertile soil.”
If You Turn to Look Back by Tom Hazuka
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
If You Turn to Look Back “combines memoir with political, social, and economic investigations of what it means to be an American and a citizen of the world.”
Made in Maine by Shawn Samuelson Henry
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
In this YA novel set in the aftermath of a mill closure, “a tragic accident sends the town spiraling further into despair.”
Regal House Publishing | September 5, 2023
This novel “dramatizes one family’s terror-filled crisis even as it explores the boundaries of familial and erotic love.”
The Deadly Trade by Barbara Kyle
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
According to C. S. O’Cinneide, “Kyle masterfully weaves together mystery, suspense, and advocacy in a thought-provoking and heart-pounding thriller.”
Finding His Way Home by Katie Mongelli
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
According to Elizabeth B. Splaine, “Finding His Way Home is a celebration of the most important aspects in our lives (family, love, friendship).”
Graywolf Press | September 5, 2023
Patel’s debut novel “offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.”
Wave Books | September 5, 2023
In this book of essays, Ruefle “generously invites us to query ourselves as readers and thinkers in a world that will eventually endure without us.”
One Soldier’s Minute by Teresa M. Shafer
Woodhall Press | September 5, 2023
In this novel, a sniper at the end of his military career “recalls those who lost their lives for him and how many lives he had taken since.”
The Last Window-Giraffe by Peter Zilahy
Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson
Sandorf Passage | September 5, 2023
Zilahy’s autobiographical fiction “serves up the absurdity of all manner of authoritarianism that resonates as much today as it first did upon publication in 1999.”
Small Harbor Publishing | September 7, 2023
According to Brontez Purnell, “the constant through line in this collection, of course, is rage, and the voice takes an unapologetic tone as such.”
Mountain Lion Blues by Adam Greenfield
Pelekinesis | September 8, 2023
Mountain Lion Blues is “a surreal, dark comedy about the obstacles we place in our way that keep us from the love, success and well-being we’ve been taught since childhood are ours to expect.”
Love Is a Shore by Hilary Sallick
Lily Poetry Review Books | September 8, 2023
According to Jennifer Barber, the poems in this collection “encompass sadness and gratitude, self and other, dream-like vision and the manifold truths of the day-to-day.”
No One Is on the Line by Mohsen Mohamed
Translated from the Arabic by Sherine Elbanhawy
Laertes Books | September 9, 2023
The poems in this collection “arose from the depths of incarceration, from the throat and intellect of Mohsen Mohamed (sentenced to five years of harsh imprisonment after a campus protest).”
Translated from the Spanish by Alexis Almeida, Daniel Beauregard, Daniel Borzutzky, Whitney DeVos, Jèssica Pujol Duran, Patrick Greaney, and Robin Myers
Ugly Duckling Presse | September 11, 2023
This poetry collection “immerses readers in the State-sponsored terror during this period and the effects it would continue to have on Chile.”
Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories by Janice Deal
New Door Books | September 12, 2023
In Deal’s linked story collection, “everyday people navigate the uncertainties of life in the American heartland, seeking order in chaos with a very human mix of resilience and folly.”
OKPsyche by Anya Johanna DeNiro
Small Beer Press | September 12, 2023
In DeNiro’s novel, “an unnamed trans woman is on an epic journey to find the place where she belongs.”
Feminist Press | September 12, 2023
This debut novel “is an intimate sprawl of memory, migration, and queer desire—charting the messy layers of love and loss that constitute a life.”
Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante
Book*hug Press | September 12, 2023
In this debut short fiction collection “merging horror, fairy tales, pop culture and sci-fi, women challenge the boundaries placed on their bodies.”
The 3rd Thing | September 12, 2023
In this poetry collection, Hart “navigates the twisting dynamics of a family that is both Native and settler.”
Hub City Press | September 12, 2023
Hill’s debut short fiction collection “delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South.”
Love Language by Nasser Hussain
Coach House Books | September 12, 2023
According to Ilya Kaminsky, “These are poems that long to dismiss the lyric’s most recent pretty mask of polite propriety and instead take us to the lyric’s ancient roots.”
Fishing for the Little Pike by Juhani Karila
Translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers
Restless Books | September 12, 2023
In this novel, “a young woman’s annual pilgrimage to her home in Lapland to catch an elusive pike in three days is complicated by a host of mythical creatures, a murder detective hot on her trail, and a deadly curse hanging over her head.”
Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura
Red Hen Press | September 12, 2023
In this novel, a professor of magic “must survive his own failing mental health and a tenuous partnership with a dangerous ally in order to save the city of Astrum from a spreading curse.”
Self-Portrait in Green by Marie NDiaye
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump
Two Lines Press | September 12, 2023
In this tenth-anniversary edition of the “genre-defying classic,” NDiaye “combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness.”
That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump
Two Lines Press | September 12, 2023
According to Abby Walthausen, this novel “is a rumination on (and a cackle at) the stark differences between privileged urban and disenfranchised provincial life.”
Dream Apartment by Lisa Olstein
Copper Canyon Press | September 12, 2023
In this poetry collection, Olstein “builds a world of night-rabbits, bodiless shadows, and networks of wind where ode and elegy meet.”
Empty Bowl Press | September 12, 2023
Pai “weaves poems about social unrest, conflict, solidarities, friendships, the mindset of an activist, and her experiences as a woman, mother, artist, and daughter.”
Snakes of St. Augustine by Ginger Pinholster
Regal House Publishing | September 12, 2023
In this novel, the theft of two snakes “coincides with the disappearance of a troubled young man named Gethin Jacobs.”
The Last Election by Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche
Akashic Books | September 12, 2023
The Last Election is “a unique political thriller about an outlandish yet frighteningly possible—even probable—scenario in America’s near future.”
Muscadine by A. H. Jerriod Avant
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
Avant’s debut poetry collection “cultivates the vine of familial memory, eulogizing our collective losses while exalting the succor of this human life.”
Status Pending by Adrian Blevins
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
The poems in this collection “comprise a stenography of our lives as the buffering consciousness between voided states.”
Back to the Woods by Cynthia Cruz
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
In this collection, Cruz “heeds the urgency of our wandering, the mandate that we must get back to the woods, not simply for the forest to devour us.”
Steady Diet of Nothing by Cynthia Cruz
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
Cruz’s novel “follows a teenage girl, Candy, after her arrival at the Blue House—an abandoned home inhabited by other children seeking shelter from the world.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
In this collection, Dumanis “expertly cultivates the multiplicity of language and makes of ‘creature’ a marvelous contronym.”
The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani
Perugia Press | September 15, 2023
Hotchandani’s debut poetry collection “is a study in shifting cultural and personal identities as well as in belonging—to our bodies, our memories, our stories, ourselves, our families, our cultures.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
In these poems, Lea “affirms the luster of fruit long labored for: a resilient and happy marriage; the rewards of parenthood and, later, grandchildren; a profound intimacy with northern New England.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
This collection “examines the humpback whale as a zoomorphic analog of the queer, brown, migratory speaker breaching these pages.”
The Disordered Alphabet by Cintia Santana
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
Santana’s “poetic encyclopedia chronicles life’s ubiquitous elegies alongside the world’s innumerable wonders.”
Four Way Books | September 15, 2023
The Mansions is “an epic trilogy of book-length poems which examine exemplary 20th-sentury figures Georges Lemaître, Simone Weil, and Teilhard de Chardin.”
First Matter Press | September 16, 2023
According to Corinne Manning, Diamond’s collection “shows how reality, even belonging, is ‘poised for adaptation.’”
ten-cent flower & other territories by Charity E. Yoro
First Matter Press | September 16, 2023
According to Michele Glazer, Yoro’s poems “perform a richly textured quick-step that is bold, sly, funny, tender, fierce.”
Sister Golden Calf by Colleen Burner
Split/Lip Press | September 19, 2023
According to Alexis Smith, the sisters in this novel “face questions of longing and belonging, of how to care for each other and themselves, and of what artifacts to carry as they carry on.”
Bruising Bone: life in bloom by Perry Gasteiger and Rebecca Payne
fifth wheel press | September 19, 2023
Bruising Bone: life in bloom is “a book of art and poetry that examines the nostalgia, anxiety, and angst of growth and loss.”
Tumbling for Amateurs by Matthew Gwathmey
Coach House Books | September 19, 2023
This poetry collection features “anaphoras, list sonnets, erasures, palimpsests and concrete poems, all working from tumbling’s limited vocabulary and central focus of acrobatics and gymnastics.”
The House of the Lost on the Cape by Sachiko Kashiwaba
Translated from the Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa
Restless Books | September 19, 2023
This children’s book is “the moving story of three generations of women adapting to their new home, and its mythical inhabitants, in the tragic aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake disaster.”
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy
Red Hen Press | September 19, 2023
You Were Watching from the Sand is “a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities.”
Book*hug Press | September 19, 2023
Anecdotes is “a hybrid collection in four parts examining the pressing realities of sexual violence, abuse, and environmental collapse.”
Under the Canopy of Unpruned Leaves by Nina Prater
Belle Point Press | September 19, 2023
In this debut chapbook, “domestic and outdoor worlds converge in the internal life of a speaker attuned to the transformative potential within everyday moments.”
Tree Spirits by Louise Wannier
Red Hen Press | September 19, 2023
Tree Spirits is “an interactive picture book that encourages creativity, social emotional intelligence, and seeing the world with fresh eyes.”
If You Meet the Devil, Don’t Shake Hands by Sylvia Whitman
Regal House Publishing | September 19, 2023
In this children’s book, “twelve-year-old Gavin Baker, son of a warrior, is a born worrier.”
Graywolf Press | September 19, 2023
Wong’s novel “follows an impenetrable rectangle as it changes hands in a collapsing metropolis, causing confluences, conflicts, rifts, and disasters.”
Late Nights at Full Moon Records by Sarah Edmonds
Thirty West Publishing House | September 23, 2023
In this novella, a 19-year-old is finally taken in by an elderly couple who “only have one rule: don’t go in the basement.”
Thirty West Publishing House | September 23, 2023
Haeger’s novella follows “two men navigating the tenuous space between devastation and oblivion.”
Thirty West Publishing House | September 23, 2023
This novella’s unnamed narrator, who believes he is a lizard person, is “sent to a coastal resort for intensive therapy to confront the truth of his peculiar identity.”
WTAW Press | September 26, 2023
In these essays, Acevedo “portrays a young memoirist’s experience of a life that is broken, beautiful, and confusing all at once.”
Red Hen Press | September 26, 2023
The poems in this collection are “confrontationally queer, urgently wounded, deeply political, and metaphysically transported.”
Junior Miles and the Junkman by Kevin Carey
Regal House Publishing | September 26, 2023
According to Naomi Shihab Nye, this children’s book is “a tender, transformative novel for all who sometimes feel they don’t fit in.”
Copper Canyon Press | September 26, 2023
Edited by Michael Wiegers and Kaci X. Tavares, Come Shining is “a compendium of stories about the importance of poems in people’s lives, accumulating a remarkable history of Copper Canyon Press.”
Translated from the French
Two Lines Press | September 26, 2023
In Elektrik, “eight women writers from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe come together to explore, in poetry and prose, the complex nature of Caribbean existence.”
Public Abstract by Jane Huffman
Copper Canyon Press | September 26, 2023
Public Abstract “examines illness and recovery, loss and addiction: the ripples of influence an addict has on their family circle, and vice versa.”
The King of Terrors by Jim Johnstone
Coach House Books | September 26, 2023
Johnstone’s poetry collection is “a meditation on living with illness and the forces required to heal.”
The Beloved Community by Patricia Spears Jones
Copper Canyon Press | September 26, 2023
In her fifth poetry collection, Jones “interrogates the necessity and fragility of human bonds: sensual, familial, societal.”
The Legend of Baraffo by Moez Surani
Book*hug Press | September 26, 2023
In this novel, “a boy named Mazzu grapples to understand the motivations of Babello, a man imprisoned for an act of arson.”
Under Normal Conditions by Karl Koweski
Roadside Press | September 29, 2023
According to Rebecca Schumejda, Koweski “brings us on a voyeuristic journey into the grit and strife of an everyday working-class man, showing what it takes to transcend daily struggles into an artful interpretation of an industrialized landscape.”
Details of an Hourglass: Poems from the Gulag by Mykola Horbal
Translated from the Ukrainian by Myroslava Stefaniuk
Lost Horse Press | September 30, 2023
Details of an Hourglass: Poems from the Gulag “chronicles the anti-world of Soviet prison camps in miniature-poem reflections.”
Winter King by Ostap Slyvynsky
Translated from the Ukrainian by Vitaly A. Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova
Lost Horse Press | September 30, 2023
Winter King “presents a selection from a decade and a half worth of work by one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary voices in poetry.”
