We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of memoirs, essay collections, and other works of nonfiction published in 2023 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups of fiction, poetry, children’s books, and art and drama as well.
Memoir
A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy by Ron Kovic
Akashic Books | February 13, 2024
Kovic “completes his Vietnam Trilogy with this poignant, inspiring, and deeply personal elegy to America.”
Journey to Mexico: Revolutionary Messages & the Tarahumara by Antonin Artaud
Translated from the French by Rainer J. Hanshe
Contra Mundum Press | March 4, 2024
Edited by Stuart Kendall, this book chronicles Artaud’s “journey to Mexico that would take him from the streets, cafés, and lecture halls of Mexico City to the remote mountains of the Sierra Tarahumara.”
Wrong Is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art by Erica N. Cardwell
Feminist Press | March 12, 2024
Cardwell’s book is a “hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art.”
Vine Leaves Press | March 19, 2024
This memoir “honors the grace of a face that stands out in a crowd, defying societal beauty norms.”
Wave Books | April 2, 2024
The third book in Choi’s KOR-US trilogy “is a sorrowful reflection on the ways in which a place can hold a ‘magnetic field of memory,’ proving that history doesn’t merely repeat itself; history is ever present, chiming the hours in a chorus against empire.”
Akashic Books | April 2, 2024
In this memoir, “a guided group tour to concentration camps in Poland and Germany allows Stahl to confront personal and historical demons with both deep despair and savage humor.”
The Art of Running: Learning to Run Like a Greek by Andrea Marcolongo
Translated from the Italian by Will Schutt
Europa Editions | April 2, 2024
Marcolongo’s book is “the inspiring story of how one of Europe’s most original and compelling classicists learned to run—and live—like a Greek.”
Vine Leaves Press | April 9, 2024
This memoir “chronicles the dysfunction and lore of a Black Russian Jewish interracial family on the far south side of Chicago, and the resulting trajectory of its prodigal child.”
Teeth: An Oral History by John Patrick Higgins
Sagging Meniscus Press | April 15, 2024
In this book, Higgins “recounts his journey from a mouthful of moist gravel to a pristine, pacific smile, with the Pole-star wattage of a Hollywood A-lister.”
My Vietnam, Your Vietnam by Christina Vo and Nghia M. Vo
Three Rooms Press | April 16, 2024
In this dual memoir, Vo and her father “delve into themes of their identity, heritage, and the tragic multi-generational ordeals of war, with intertwined stories that present a multifaceted portrayal of Vietnam and its profound influence on shaping both familial bonds and individual identities across time.”
Angora Panties: The Afterthoughts of Loss by Tracy Robert
Choeofpleirn Press | May 1, 2024
Robert’s memoir examines “moments in her life when being female restricted her freedoms, when trying to live up to exacting standards meant severing ties, and, ultimately, losing her sister.”
Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres by Charles Jensen
Santa Fe Writers Project | May 1, 2024
This memoir follows Jensen “from his upbringing and struggles with sexual awareness in rural Wisconsin to his sexual liberation in college and, finally, to the complex relationships and bizarre coincidences of adulthood.”
Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara by Aleida March
Translated from the Spanish by Pilar Aguilar
Seven Stories Press | May 7, 2024
March recounts the story of her romance with Che Guevara—”their fitful courtship against the backdrop of the Cuban revolutionary war, their marriage at the war’s end and the birth of their four children, up through Che’s tragic assassination in Bolivia less than ten years later.”
Evocación: Mi vida al lado del Che by Aleida March
Seven Stories Press | May 7, 2024
In this Spanish-language edition, Che Guevara’s widow “remembers a great revolutionary romance tragically cut short by Che’s assassination in Bolivia.”
The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion by Jennifer Kabat
Milkweed Editions | May 7, 2024
According to Chris Kraus, “The Eighth Moon uses a very light touch to probe the most essential, unresolvable questions of belief, kinship, fidelity, history, and identity.”
Deep Vellum | May 14, 2024
The chapters in this memoir “move associatively, commenting on each other indirectly and drawing out questions of assimilation, race, class, gender, nature and the general problem of being and knowing.”
Her Voice: Hänen Ääensä by Faith Adiele
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | May 15, 2024
Adiele’s hybrid memoir “weaves together diary entries, home movies, ichthyology, Nordic and Pacific Northwest mythologies, and YouTube language lessons to examine the legacies of trauma, class, politics, and silence on women’s creative lives.”
Voice/Over: A Memoir Breakout in 7 Movies by Faith Adiele
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | May 15, 2024
This memoir “opens in the rural American west, following Faith Adiele’s whimsical coming of age as the only multiracial girl in a Nordic immigrant family obsessed with movies and voting.”
Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home by Jessica E. Johnson
Acre Books | May 15, 2024
This book is “a memoir of Johnson’s unusual upbringing during the 1970s and ’80s, interwoven with the story of her transition to parenthood in post-recession Portland, Oregon.”
Trail Magic: A Physician’s Journey Through the Appalachian Mountains by JoDean Nicolette
Choeofpleirn Press | May 24, 2024
Nicolette’s book “takes readers on a decade-long journey north along the Appalachian Trail, beginning just after she completed her residency as a physician.”
Breaking the Curse: A Memoir about Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft by Alex DiFrancesco
Seven Stories Press | June 4, 2024
This memoir is “a tour de force of narrative nonfiction, a reimagining of the self-help genre, and a brave memoir about mystical forces, trauma, trans life, and how we must heal ourselves to survive.”
WTAW Press | June 4, 2024
This memoir in flash form recounts Giles’ many trips across the Golden Gate Bridge “since the first sunny day in 1945 when she rode from San Francisco to Sausalito in a moving van with her father.”
Close to the Surface: A Family Journey at Sea by Bethany Lee
Fernwood Press | June 4, 2024
In this memoir, Lee recounts her family’s story of traveling the Pacific Ocean by sailboat, as well as “her own uncertain pilgrimage, and the ingenuity and courage it takes to sail over the horizon and find your way home.”
Hell Gate Bridge by Barrie Miskin
Woodhall Press | June 4, 2024
Miskin’s memoir “brings rare mental illnesses into the light, seeks to heal the fractures in our broken maternal and mental healthcare system, and shows how we can overcome the impossible when we fight to save the ones we love.”
What Makes Him Tic?: A Memoir of Parenting a Child with Tourette Syndrome by Michele Turk
Woodhall Press | June 4, 2024
What Makes Him Tic? is “a moving portrait of a family, a marriage, and a mother coping with day-to-day life amidst the stresses of caring for a boy with a stigmatizing condition.”
Vine Leaves Press | June 11, 2024
According to Joel Stein, this memoir is “a sweaty, funny examination into suburban marriage, motherhood, social status and all the other reasons I left New Jersey.”
Gather the Olives: On Food and Hope and the Holy Land by Bret Lott
Slant Books | June 18, 2024
In this memoir, Lott “considers how food and the people with whom we share it can bring together hearts and souls in a lasting, meaningful, and peaceful way.”
1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left by Robyn Hitchcock
Akashic Books | July 2, 2024
In this memoir exploring the year 1967, Hitchcock “adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester, threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid.”
I Can Give You Anything But Love by Gary Indiana
Seven Stories Press | July 9, 2024
In this memoir, Indiana “has composed a literary, unabashedly wicked, and revealing montage of excursions into his life and work.”
Loveland: A Memoir of Romance and Fiction by Susan Ostrov
Blackwater Press | July 15, 2024
Ostrov’s memoir “is about the unfolding of unmet expectations, of shattered childhood dreams, of tenderness found unexpectedly.”
First Matter Press | August 10, 2024
According to Bruce Beasley, in this genre-bending memoir Hall narrates “a West Virginia childhood of divorce and anti-capitalism and poverty where a fallen satellite dish becomes the family swimming pool and a child makes a generator from lawn mower parts to provide power.”
Mia Zapata & The Gits: A Story of Art, Rock, and Revolution by Steve Moriarty
Feral House | August 13, 2024
In this memoir, “Zapata’s friend and bandmate, Steve Moriarty, tells her story—and the story of their band, The Gits—from their first meeting in 1985 to their last goodbye.”
A Public Space Books | August 27, 2024
This memoir “asks what it means to write with full honesty about one’s life—to explore who we were, and how our choices shape and allow who we become.”
Alias Caracalla by Daniel Cordier
Translated from the French by Rupert Swyer
Swan Isle Press | August 28, 2024
Cordier’s memoir is “a major contribution to our understanding of the fraught and historic relations between General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French and the fractious resistance movements under the Occupation during World War II.”
Five-Dog Epiphany: How a Quintet of Badass Bichons Retrieved Our Joy by Marianne Leone
Akashic Books | September 3, 2024
This memoir is “a moving and sometimes surprisingly funny exploration of grief and the mutual healing that can occur between rescue dogs and people who have experienced a soul-crushing loss.”
Brooklyn Family Album by Margaret Montet
Read Furiously | September 17, 2024
In this memoir, Montet “walks in the footsteps (and roller coaster tracks) of her family to learn more about their connection to the earliest days of New York City and to her.”
Los Cedros: a Tejana Memoir by Dorotea Reyna
FlowerSong Press | September 17, 2024
In her memoir, Reyna “attempts to recover the wholeness she felt as a child from the violence and demagoguery of today’s political discourse.”
Village Voices: A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookshop, Paris, 1982–2012 by Odile Hellier
Seven Stories Press | September 24, 2024
This memoir is “a celebration of the legacy of the Village Voice bookshop in Paris, founded by Odile Hellier in 1982.”
Come by Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast by Neesha Powell-Ingabire
Hub City Press | September 24, 2024
In her debut memoir, Powell-Ingabire “chips away at coastal Georgia’s facade of beaches and golden marshes to recover undertold Black history alongside personal and family stories.”
From Immigrant to Ambassador: My American Journey by Eduardo Aguirre
Arte Público Press | September 30, 2024
Aguirre’s memoir “recalls his carefree, happy childhood in Cuba, the onset of the revolution and his parents’ painful decision to send him alone to the United States after his involvement in a counterrevolutionary youth movement jeopardized his safety.”
Book*hug Press | October 1, 2024
This hybrid work of lyrical essays, prose poetry, photographs, and more “captures the wrenching feeling of loss of control in the face of an overwhelming medical diagnosis and the small, endless moments in life that underscore it.”
Ronsdale Press | October 4, 2024
Grundy’s memoir tells the story of “a caregiver’s lifelong struggle to break through the barrier of her sibling’s mental illness in search of sisterhood.”
Solace by Cornelia Maude Spelman
JackLeg Press | October 15, 2024
Spelman’s memoir “unfurls in a series of vignettes drawn from diaries and personal stories about her relationship to others as daughter, mother, friend, wife, therapist, and grandmother.”
The Mary Years by Julie Marie Wade
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2024
Winner of the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, “this nonfiction novella follows our protagonist from her pre-teen years in Seattle through tenure at an academic institution in Miami.”
Essay Collections
Wandering Aengus Press | January 1, 2024
According to Jill Christman, this essay collection “is like a walk through the woods with your smartest, funniest, most observant friend—in the excellent company of at least two dogs.”
Isn’t She Great: Writers on Women-Led Comedies from 9 to 5 to Booksmart
Read Furiously | January 16, 2024
Edited by Elizabeth Teets, this anthology is “a collection of the most beloved female-centric comedies and the audiences who adore them.”
Studio of the Voice by Marcia Aldrich
Wandering Aengus Press | February 1, 2024
In these essays, Aldrich “invites readers along for a personal exploration of women’s lives, the complicated love of mothers for daughters and of daughters for mothers, slinky blue dresses and sultry red lipstick, Hollywood beauties and the stories we tell about them.”
The Weird Sister Collection: Writing at the Intersections of Feminism, Literature, and Pop Culture
Feminist Press | February 13, 2024
Edited by Marisa Crawford, this collection features essays that “link contemporary feminism to literature and pop culture.”
Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Graywolf Press | February 20, 2024
Sloan’s book is “an electric essay collection about Blackness, art, and dreaming of new possibilities in a time of constriction.”
Rosa Luxemburg: The Incendiary Spark by Michael Löwy
Haymarket Books | March 5, 2024
In these essays, “Löwy follows Luxemburg in blending diverse intellectual disciplines—philosophy, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and economics—to make sense of global realities in her time and our own.”
Your Story Starts Here: Years on the Brink with Generation Z by Jim Zervanos
Vine Leaves Press | March 12, 2024
In this high-school teacher’s journal, “we witness ‘his kids’ grappling with pressing issues like identity politics, gun violence, and political uncertainty.”
Sensitive Creatures by Kirsten Reneau
Belle Point Press | March 19, 2024
These essays are “at once clinical and lyrical reflections on the ways that desire can permeate our lives for better or worse, as well as how it can be channeled into a lifegiving force for women in a world often hostile to their basic needs.”
Small Altars by Justin Gardiner
Tupelo Press | April 1, 2024
In these essays, Gardiner “delves into the world of comic books and superheroes as a means for coming to terms with the many struggles of his brother’s life, as well as his untimely death.”
Like Love: Essays and Conversations by Maggie Nelson
Graywolf Press | April 2, 2024
Like Love is “a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work.”
Haymarket Books | April 2, 2024
This essay collection is “the story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles.”
Manifesto: Three Classic Essays on How to Change the World
Seven Stories Press | April 9, 2024
This book includes “classic revolutionary writings by four famous rebels, including The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg; and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Man in Cuba.”
In Between My Bodies by Emily Capers
Long Day Press | April 16, 2024
With screenplays, short answer questions, blog posts, and more, this book “interactively invites readers to examine the depth that just a few careless words, a symbol, or an expectation can hold.”
Witness: An Insider’s Narrative of the Carceral State by Lyle C. May
Haymarket Books | April 16, 2024
These essays “explore capital punishment, life imprisonment, prison education, prison journalism, as well as what activism from inside looks like on the road toward abolishing the carceral state.”
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood by Adrienne Gruber
Book*hug Press | May 1, 2024
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is “a revelatory hybrid collection that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight.”
Lines of Flight by Madhu H. Kaza
Ugly Duckling Presse | May 1, 2024
This book-length essay “follows echoes and associative logics across cultures and eras, from Ancient Greece to thirteenth-century Japan to sixteenth-century Mexico to our own time, in an attempt to unfix translation and dwell in the ongoingness of language.”
Wave Books | May 7, 2024
In the seventh book in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, Jarnot “examines what it means to be a woman in a male-centered experimental tradition, to have white privilege, and to write poetry.”
An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value by Jennifer Quartararo
Fonograf Editions | May 14, 2024
An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value is “a fragmented book-length essay in which we see the city of Detroit through two distinct seasons.”
Before the Storm Takes It Away by Gaylord Brewer
Red Hen Press | May 14, 2024
According to Kevin Wilson, “Before the Storm Takes it Away is a testament to Gaylord Brewer’s ability to perfectly balance sincerity and humor, to find the strangest moments of personal history that somehow feel universal.”
Exit the Body by Heather Bartel
Split/Lip Press | May 14, 2024
This essay collection “is a meditation on the mind and its place within the body: what escapes, what ruptures, what is created, what echoes, and where we find ourselves on the other side.”
Out of Darkness: Essays on Corporate Power and Civic Resistance, 2012–2022 by Ralph Nader
Seven Stories Press | May 14, 2024
The essays and columns in this collection “reveal Ralph Nader at his outspoken and prescient best, fighting the good fight against corporate corruption, unbalanced political power, consumer dangers, big pharma, and climate deniers.”
Coach House Books | May 16, 2024
Micallef’s book “meanders around some of the city’s unique neighborhoods and considers what makes a city walkable.”
It Didn’t Start Out That Way by Judy Bridges
Hidden Timber Books | June 4, 2024
In this collection of personal essays, Bridges “sees her life and her characters from all sides, up and down, and brings them to life.”
Dances of Time and Tenderness by Julian Carter
Nightboat Books | June 4, 2024
This collection of essays is “a cycle of stories linking queer memory, activism, death, and art in a transpoetic history of desire and touch.”
Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix by Katherine Cross
LittlePuss Press | June 4, 2024
In this book, Cross “excavates a fallen world of social media’s political promises, from Twitter epidemiology, to handwringing over TikTok, to the ersatz hopes of new platforms like Bluesky. ”
Red Hen Press | June 4, 2024
This essay collection “sees mythical ravens murmur alongside the actual bone and viscera of crows, starlings, and pigeons in disarming explorations of desire and destruction, the body and creation.”
Global Justice: Three Essays on Liberation and Socialism by Ernesto Che Guevara
Seven Stories Press | June 18, 2024
In this collection of three speeches, Che Guevara “offers a revolutionary view of a world in which human solidarity and understanding replace imperialist aggression and exploitation.”
Justicia Global: Tres ensayos sobre liberación y socialismo by Ernesto Che Guevara
Seven Stories Press | June 18, 2024
In the speeches in this Spanish-language edition, Che Guevara “offers a revolutionary view of a world in which human solidarity and understanding replace imperialist aggression and exploitation.”
Another North by Jennifer Brice
Red Hen Press | June 25, 2024
According to Dana Spiotta, these essays are a “precise and intimate depiction of what one can see from the complicated vantage of middle age.”
The River of Goodness by David Marquis
Deep Vellum | July 16, 2024
A follow-up to The River Always Wins, this essay collection is “a lyrical, global exploration of the ways we can create a more just and sustainable world for all.”
The Place of All Possibility by Adina Allen
Ayin Press | July 30, 2024
This essay collection is “paradigm-shifting work that reframes the whole of Torah as a contemporary guidebook for creativity.”
The Age of Loneliness by Laura Marris
Graywolf Press | August 6, 2024
In this debut essay collection, Marris “reframes environmental degradation by setting aside the conventional, catastrophic framework of the Anthropocene in favor of that of the Eremocene, the age of loneliness.”
Wandering Aengus Press | August 26, 2024
The personal essays in this collection “explore, respectively, the illusions and disillusions of childhood, the search for right livelihood, and the reflections and discoveries of age.”
Unexplained Presence by Tisa Bryant
Wave Books | September 3, 2024
In this reprint of Bryant’s 2007 essay collection, “readers are spectators of mise-en-scènes in which black subjectivity has been distorted and denied within various visual narratives.”
We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat
Graywolf Press | September 3, 2024
Danticat’s latest essay collection “asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.”
What Is It Like to Be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer by Chris Arthur
EastOver Press | September 10, 2024
These fourteen essays are “an exercise in seeing beyond the obvious, and finding hidden depth in the places and things we might otherwise take for granted.”
The Sanctuary: Essays on Eco-Mythology by Sofia Batalha
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | September 15, 2024
In this collection of “revived Portuguese eco-mythologies” translated by the author, “storied landscapes alive and pulsing with meaning invite participatory ways of living in and with the world that are as ancient as we are.”
The Unsignificant: Three Talks on Poetry and Pictures by Srikanth Reddy
Wave Books | September 17, 2024
This collection—a selection of Reddy’s lectures from the 2015 Bagley Wright Lecture Series—is “concerned with what it’s not about—not significance, or insignificance, but ‘unsignificance.'”
Dark Days: Fugitive Essays by Roger Reeves
Graywolf Press | September 17, 2024
This debut work of memoir, theory, and criticism builds “a profound vision for how to see and experience the world in our present moment, and how to strive toward an alternative existence in intentional community underground.”
Keeping Quiet: Sixteen Essays on Silence by Adriana Páramo
Red Hen Press | September 24, 2024
These essays cover “a wide range of angles and experiences, from an exploration of IBM’s anechoic chamber—the world’s quietest place—to stories of incest, marriage, sexual harassment, social justice, and first-person accounts of life in the emirate of Qatar.”
I want to start by saying by Samuel Ace
Cleveland State University Poetry Center | October 1, 2024
This collection of essay, memoir, and collage is “a constellation of memory, personal and place-based histories, dailiness, repetition, art-making, and desire.”
Middle Creek Publishing & Audio | October 15, 2024
Law’s essays capture “the essence of the American wilderness with a voice that merges the precision of a journalist and the soul of a poet.”
Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia by Laura Jackson
Autumn House Press | October 18, 2024
In her debut essay collection, Jackson describes “life in West Virginia while dismantling stereotypes portrayed in popular media with humor and tenderness.”
Dreaming in the Fault Zone: A Poetics of Healing by Eleni Stecopoulos
Nightboat Books | October 22, 2024
This book of essays is “a virtuosic inquiry into the forms and uses of healing, from ancient and modern medicine to contemporary literature, ecology, and protest.”
Low: Notes on Art & Trash by Jaydra Johnson
Fonograf Editions | November 5, 2024
Winner of Fonograf Editions’ inaugural essay collection contest, Johnson’s memoir is an “indispensable meditation on poverty and art, and a compelling corrective to conventional memoirs about overcoming disadvantage.”
Eyes Moving Through the Dark by William Woolfitt
Orison Books | November 5, 2024
According to Alejandra Oliva, this essay collection is “a sprawling Appalachian palimpsest, writing and rewriting the lives and histories of this singular American region.”
Leaves of Healing: A Year in the Garden by Matt Miller 
Belle Point Press | November 19, 2024
This debut essay collection “journeys through the garden year and the church year together to uncover how life in both realms can help us rediscover our bodies and our sense of time, thereby helping us reach toward the sense of wholeness we all seek.”
Other Nonfiction
Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place by Justin McHenry
Feral House | January 9, 2024
In this book McHenry “provides a thoughtful exploration of how pseudo-science hijacked the gentle Victorian-era concept of Lemuria and, in following decades, twisted it into an all-encompassing home for alternative ideas about race, spirituality, science, politics, and the paranormal.”
Finding Duende by Federico García Lorca
Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Maurer
Swan Isle Press | January 15, 2024
This new translation of Lorca’s lecture on duende “provides a path into Lorca’s poetics and the arts of Spain.”
Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning by Kate Black
Coach House Books | February 13, 2024
According to Ziya Tong, Big Mall is “a smart, sentimental, and perspective-shifting look at the outsized role that big malls play in modern life.”
Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant by Fernanda Eberstadt
Europa Editions | March 5, 2024
This book is “at once a subversive autobiography of a mercurial woman and a mesmerizing history of the body as a site of resistance to power.”
American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley
Etruscan Press | March 5, 2024
In this book, McCann “channels Diane Foley’s voice as she tells her story, as the mother of American journalist Jim Foley—in search of answers, beyond justice, found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry.”
Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer by Joyce Carol Oates
Akashic Books | March 5, 2024
According to Elaine Showalter, “in a stream of intimate correspondence with another writer, we witness the workings of Joyce Carol Oates’s vast mind and great heart.”
The Architecture of Modern Empire: Conversations with David Barsamian by Arundhati Roy
Haymarket Books | March 12, 2024
This newly reissued and expanded edition, featuring interviews from 2001 to 2022 and a foreword by Naomi Klein, “explores Roy’s evolving political thought and commitments across the tumultuous twenty-first entry.”
Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India by Siddhartha Deb
Haymarket Books | April 2, 2024
Twilight Prisoners is “an incisive, lyrical, and deeply reported account of India’s descent into authoritarianism.”
Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Transit Books | April 2, 2024
Traces of Enayat is “a brilliant work of creative nonfiction retracing the mysterious life and erasure of Egyptian literature’s tragic heroine.”
Haymarket Books | April 9, 2024
How to Abolish Prisons is “an incisive guide to abolitionist strategy, and a love letter to the movement that made this moment possible.”
Unite and Win: The Workplace Organizer’s Handbook
Haymarket Books | April 9, 2024
This guide from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, “based on the collective experience of organizers and workers in non-unionized workplaces, is a critical tool to help you and your coworkers organize for justice at work.”
Seven Stories Press | April 16, 2024
Napoleoni examines “how the Space Barons and Techtitans—heads of companies like Uber, Amazon, Tesla—have hijacked technology, preventing it from being used on behalf of the common good and profiting from the politics of fear and consumerism.”
Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground by Jim Higgins
Trouser Press Books | April 19, 2024
Higgins delves into each of Lou Reed’s albums “with descriptions, details, analysis and appraisals that will amplify and expand fans’ understanding and appreciation of them.”
Seven Stories Press | April 23, 2024
In this Spanish-language book, the founder of the Cuban intelligence services “provides a sprawling account of the various creative, often cartoonish, yet obviously disturbing attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.”
Nietzsche NOW!: The Great Immoralist on the Vital Issues of Our Time by Glenn Wallis
Warbler Press | May 3, 2024
In this book, Wallis “unpacks Nietzsche’s complex philosophy with a deft, empathetic, and brilliantly subtle analysis of the views of the Great Immoralist on democracy, identity, civilization, consciousness, religion, and other momentous topics.”
Living with our Dead: On Loss and Consolation by Delphine Horvilleur
Translated from the French by Lisa Appignanesi
Europa Editions | May 7, 2024
This book is “a timely, powerful reflection on our relationship to death and an invitation to accept loss and vulnerability as essential and enriching parts of life.”
Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition by Silky Shah
Haymarket Books | May 7, 2024
This book “offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition.”
A Silent Language: The Nobel Lecture by Jon Fosse
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Transit Books | May 14, 2024
A Silent Language is “the essential lecture delivered by the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Literature, published for the first time in a collectible edition.”
Haymarket Books | May 14, 2024
In this book, two leaders and former staff members of Jewish Voices for Peace “focus on the important role of anti-Zionist Jewish organizing within the broader Palestine solidarity movement.”
Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias by Marguerite Young
Dalkey Archive Press May | May 21, 2024
In this book, Young chronicles “two attempts to establish utopian communities in nineteenth-century America.”
Defund: Conversations Toward Abolition by Calvin John Smiley
Haymarket Books | May 21, 2024
This book is “a collection of illuminating interviews with leading abolitionist organizers and thinkers, reflecting on the uprisings of summer 2020, the rise of #defund, and the work ahead of bridging the divide between reform and abolition.”
What Every Radical Should Know about State Repression: A Guide for Activists by Victor Serge
Seven Stories Press | May 28, 2024
Serge’s book “offers fascinating anecdotes about the tactics of police provocateurs and an analysis of the documents of the Tsarist secret police in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.”
Akashic Books | June 4, 2024
This book, told in three parts, “is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.”
Haymarket Books | June 11, 2024
In this book, Friedman, Lin, Liu, and Smith share “snapshots of China’s growing social movements—from its labor struggles to feminist campaigns, and more,” providing “some of the building blocks we’ll need to construct a movement that centers international solidarity across borders.”
Translated from the French by Sarah Robertson
Schaffner Press | July 2, 2024
This book is an account of the author’s reporting and involvement with those working “to exhume and identify the victims found in mass graves throughout the war-torn regions of the world, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry by Stacey D’Erasmo
Graywolf Press | July 9, 2024
In this collection of conversations, D’Erasmo “asks eight legendary artists: What has sustained you in the long run?”
Haymarket Books | July 9, 2024
This book is “an eye-opening account of the Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, showing how the strike—and the violent backlash that ensued–reveal the genesis of modern policing.”
Red Hen Press | July 9, 2024
This book “provides a much-needed resource for teams to explore often-overlooked opportunities, common mistakes, the most effective tools, proven solutions, and innovative new techniques for guaranteeing success and advancing their organizations’ missions.”
A Thousand Thoughts in Flight: Diaries, 1974–1996 by Maria Gabriela Llansol
Translated from the Portuguese by Audrey Young
Deep Vellum | July 16, 2024
This book features “a remarkable collection of diary entries from cross-genre Portuguese author Maria Gabriela Llansol, which span dozens of diaries and 33 years.”
Ronsdale Press | July 30, 2024
According to Richard Mackie, “Anderson has mined obscure archives and collections of correspondence, official and private, to provide a fresh and authoritative account of the men and logistics of this remarkable enterprise.”
Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta by Bill “Blade” Howell, with Hélène Lee
Akashic Books | August 6, 2024
Pinnacle: The Lost Paradise of Rasta “provides a crucial and highly informed new perspective on the Rastafari subculture that Bob Marley would later help to spread across the globe.”
Anima: A Wild Pastoral by Kapka Kassabova
Graywolf Press | August 20, 2024
In Anima, Kassabova “introduces us to the ‘pastiri’ people—the shepherds struggling to hold on to an ancient way of life in which humans and animals exist in profound interdependence.”
Haymarket Books | August 20, 2024
Economist Rob Larson “combines wit, righteous anger, and clear-eyed analysis as he dissects the lifestyle, moral bankruptcy, and stupidly large sums of money hoarded by the disgustingly wealthy.”
Frayed Edge Press | August 27, 2024
Collected here for the first time, Pentecost’s “politically and socially radical addresses” concern “poverty, income inequality, the death penalty, education, child labor, women’s rights, and more.”
Pancho Villa: A Revolutionary Life by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Translated from the Spanish by Todd Chretien
Seven Stories Press | August 27, 2024
This biography is “a wild ride and revealing portrait of the controversial Pancho Villa, one of Mexico’s most beloved (or loathed) heroes.”
Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works—and Why by Kim Wehle
Woodhall Press | September 2, 2024
This book “explores the historical context and contemporary challenges surrounding the presidential pardon.”
Treaties, Lies & Promises: How the Métis and First Nations Shaped Canada by Tom Brodbeck
Ronsdale Press | September 27, 2024
This nonfiction account “of the links between the Red River Resistance and the numbered treaties explores a largely unknown part of Canadian history.”
Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair by Hilary Giovale
Green Writers Press | October 1, 2024
This book “weaves the author’s personal story of transformation with historical research, spiritual teachings, and an appendix of practical skills, resources, and rituals.”
This Ain’t No Disco: The Story of CBGB by Roman Kozak
Trouser Press Books | October 15, 2024
The new edition of this 1988 work of music history features “a new foreword by Chris Frantz of Talking Heads, 12 pages of photographs by Ebet Roberts and historical reporting about the club’s closing in 2006.”
Marquee: The Story of the World’s Greatest Music Venue by Robert Sellers and Nick Pendleton
Trouser Press Books | October 15, 2024
Cowritten by the son of the founders, this illustrated book tells the club’s 30-year history through “dates, memories, wild stories, musical milestones and behind-the-scenes drama.”
Hub City Press | October 22, 2024
This 250-page history book includes over 150 historic photographs and maps, telling the story of this district through “oral interviews, newspaper accounts, archival records, photographs, and personal collections.”
Nonfiction Anthologies
Europa Editions | March 12, 2024
This fully illustrated volume “collects the best new writing, photography, art, and reportage from around the world” and “dives deep into the complex issues and contradictions facing the Mediterranean.”
Abolition and Social Work: Possibilities, Paradoxes, and the Practice of Community Care
Haymarket Books | April 16, 2024
Edited by Mimi E. Kim, Cameron Rasmussen, and Durrell M. Washington, this critical anthology explores “the debates, conundrums, and promising practices around abolition and social work in academia and within impacted communities.”
The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Vol. IV: Red Union, Red Paper, Red Train, 1905-1910
Haymarket Books | April 23, 2024
Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters, this book “gathers for the first time approximately 180 articles, speeches, letters, and interviews from the prime years of American socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs.”
Hello We Were Talking About Hudson by Steve Lafreniere
Soberscove Press | April 30, 2024
This book “commemorating the unconventional gallerist” features interviews with collaborators and friends such as Dennis Cooper, Charles Ray, Kay Rosen, Tony Tasset ,and David Sedaris.
Their Borders, Our World: Building New Solidarities with Palestine
Haymarket Books | June 4, 2024
Edited by Mahdi Sabbagh, this anthology of essays “connects Palestinian resistance with global freedom struggles against settler colonialism and calls on us to think more concretely about the practice of solidarity.”
Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia
Haymarket Books | June 11, 2024
Edited by Katrina M. Powell, this anthology about Appalachia “brings together twelve narratives of refugees, migrants, and generations-long residents that explore complex journeys of resettlement.”
The Awakening of Latin America by Ernesto Che Guevara
Seven Stories Press | July 23, 2024
This classic anthology on Latin America “shows the Argentine-born revolutionary’s cultural depth, rigorous intellect, and intense emotional engagement with a continent and its people.”
Seven Stories Press | September 17, 2024
This anthology contains more than 30 speeches spanning five decades and “sheds light not just on Castro’s mighty role in Latin America’s past, but also on his legacy for the future.”
The Majuscule Reader: The Best of the First Five Years
Majuscule | October 1, 2024
This collection brings together 18 essays from the first 5 years of Majuscule’s existence on subjects “as varied as animation, corsetry, bulimia, Janet Malcolm, experimental storytelling, and reborn internet dolls.”
Storytellers’ True Stories about Family
Chicago Story Press | October 1, 2024
This anthology of stories explores the many dimensions of family life, “whether it’s the joy of reconnecting with long-lost relatives, the strength found in supporting a loved one through illness, or the lessons learned from family conflicts and reconciliation.”
Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy
Feminist Press | October 8, 2024
Edited by Jiz Lee and originally published in 2015, the second edition of this anthology “includes new essays that explore issues transforming the modern porn field” and “a panoramic view of the world of sex work that has been described in recent years by Melissa Febos, Margo Steines, Charlotte Shane, and Michelle Tea.”
The Great Game by Amit Majmudar
Acre Books | November 15, 2024
In this book of critical essays, Majmudar “practices literary criticism as a global art, one with the intensity of verse, the depth of philosophy, and the scope of history—and does so with the infectious curiosity of a passionate reader.”
The 53rd State Occasional No. 3
53rd State Press | November 15, 2024
In this collection of essays edited by Lucas Baisch and Emma Horwitz, artists, thinkers, and members of the 53rd State Press community answer the questions, “What are you obsessed with? And how are you holding it?”
Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home
Book*hug Press | November 19, 2024
The personal essays in this collection, edited by Taslim Jaffer and Omar Mouallem, “weave socio-political commentary with writers’ reflections on who they are, where they belong, and what ‘home’ means to them.”
Fucked and Jolly: Ten Years of the Exponential Festival
53rd State Press | November 26, 2024
This anthology edited by Nic Adams “is a reflective compendium of artist-to-artist interviews commemorating a boffo decade of The Exponential Festival.”
I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like by Rebecca Carroll
Haymarket Books | December 3, 2024
Thirty years after its original publication, this newly imagined edition brings “the work and musings of fifteen Black literary luminaries in conversation with a new generation of writers and readers.”
Graphic Nonfiction
Milkweed Editions | April 16, 2024
Nezhukumatathil’s celebrated work of nonfiction now includes additional essays and illustrations.
Seven Stories Press | April 30, 2024
This graphic novel features “uplifting stories of combatting—and beating—calls for their eviction in Detroit, showing how everyday people are fighting to stay in their homes, organizing with their communities, and winning.”
RAPilates: Body and Mind Conditioning in the Digital Age by Chuck D and Kathy Lopez
Akashic Books | July 2, 2024
In this volume, Chuck D and his Pilates guru, Kathy Lopez, “present the ‘RAPilates’ program of more than thirty mat-based exercises for people of all ages and experiences.”
Burrow Press | July 16, 2024
A literary-architectural hybrid project, 36 Dwellings “sketches fault lines within a Filipinx family, linking intimate harm to the forces of colonialism and labor migration.”
