February is Black History Month! To help bookstores and libraries celebrate, we’ve put together this roundup of 18 books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to spotlight all month and year-round. (We publish longer reading lists each month as well—check out our most recent reading list for Black History Month for more books to feature!)
Fiction
Fat Time and Other Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen
Graywolf Press | June 20, 2023
Distributor: Farrar, Straus and Giroux via Macmillan
ISBN: 9781644452394
This short story collection “about Black lives in the past, present, and future” combines “speculative history and tender, painful depictions of Black life in urban America.”
Call and Response: Stories of the Fantastic by Christopher Caldwell
Neon Hemlock | October 14, 2025
Distributor: Itasca Books
ISBN: 978-1-966503-14-9
According to Publishers Weekly, “Caldwell brings his all-Black, mostly queer protagonists to vivid life while exploring the collision of the natural and the supernatural” in this short story collection.
My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman
Dorothy, a publishing project | 2024
Distributor: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 978-1-948980-23-4
Gladman’s work is “a beautifully orchestrated dialogue between reflection and desire, or clarity and confusion, between the pleasures of formula and the pleasures of freedom in the unspooling of sentences over time.”
Good Women by Halle Hill
Hub City Press | 2023
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 979-8-885740-17-3
Hill’s debut short fiction collection “delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South.”
I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López
Feminist Press | April 9, 2024
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781558613126
The stories in I’ll Give You a Reason “explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey.”
Nonfiction & Hybrid
The Return of Black Nationalism and the Death of White Supremacy by Vincent Adejumo
Feral House | June 17, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 978-1-62731-162-5
In this book, Adejumo “takes readers on a fascinating journey through time, unraveling the rich history of Black Nationalism and its role as a steadfast defense against white supremacy.”
Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings by Anita Cornwell
Sinister Wisdom | June 3, 2025
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 978-1-944981-89-1
This new reprint of Cornwell’s 1983 essay collection includes previously unpublished poetry and an introduction by Briona Simone Jones, as well as an interview between Cornwell and Audre Lorde.
The Five Blessings of Ifá by Gabrielle Felder
North Atlantic Books | October 28, 2025
Distributor: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9798889841043
Felder’s book “explores how Black communities across the diaspora draw strength from ancestral wisdom, family, community care, and mutual aid, using the principles of Ifá—a West African spiritual tradition—as a guiding framework.”
Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars by Jonathan González
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2025
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 978-1-946604-38-5
“Moving between archival fragments, rehearsal notes, and speculative memory,” this hybrid book “traces the embodied frequencies and assembled states of Black life.”
Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels: Myths, Legends, and Other Lies You’ve Been Told about Black Women
Black Lawrence Press | 2024
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 978-1-625570-91-8
Edited by Jan Boulware, Rondrea Mathis, Clarissa West-White, and Kideste Mariam Yusef, this anthology “revisits notions of Black womanhood to include the ways in which Black women’s perceived strength can function as a dangerous denial of Black women’s humanity.”
Poetry
Second Nature by Chaun Ballard
Boa Editions | April 1, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781960145529
This debut poetry collection “weaves childhood experiences, historical events, and family stories into a living tapestry of memory that celebrates the landscape of Black America, both rural and urban.”
Red Wilderness by Aaron Coleman
Four Way Books | March 15, 2025
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
ISBN: 978-1-961897-24-3
Coleman’s poetry collection “interpolates American history with his own family’s legacy, reflecting on national identity, Blackness, taboo, faith, and remembrance while enacting a multigenerational chorus of poems that stretches back to the Civil War.”
What God in the Kingdom of Bastards by Brian Gyamfi
University of Pittsburgh Press | September 9, 2025
Distributor: Longleaf Services
ISBN: 978-0-8229-6757-6
This collection is a “poetic exploration of grief, memory, Blackness, and the haunting legacy of familial trauma by way of colonialism, told through the lens of two brothers: Lot, the elder, who is flesh and alive, and Frank, the younger, a ghost navigating his post-suicide existence.”
Dreams For Earth by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Deep Vellum | September 23, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 978-1-64605-399-5
In her debut poetry collection, Hirsi “chronicles experiences from quarantining in Dallas, to being the sole Black person in an Oregon ecovillage, to building relationships with land and water on Vancouver Island.”
Lullaby for the Grieving by Ashley M. Jones
Hub City Press | September 16, 2025
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 979-8-88574-058-6
In this poetry collection, Jones “studies the multifaceted nature of grief: the personal grief of losing her father, and the political grief tied to Black Southern identity.”
The Grace of Black Mothers by Martheaus Perkins
Trio House Press | July 1, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 978-1-949487-42-8
The poems in this collection are “drenched in complexity and nuance: homemade heroes and villains, justice and fabrication, wit and risk, resurrection and erasure.”
All the Possible Bodies by Iain Haley Pollock
Alice James Books | September 1, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 978-1-949944-90-7
According to Afaa M. Weaver, this poetry collection “shimmers with a brilliance that allows the light of honesty and courage to penetrate the dense mass existent in the swirling of race and caste in America.”
Interlocutor Goddess by Jasmine Reid
Autumn House Press | September 30, 2025
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
ISBN: 978-1-63768-111-4
This debut poetry collection “challenges societal norms, particularly the family as a political construct, while reflecting on the trans experiences of a queer Black woman.”
