Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in December 2023 from CLMP members.
Therapon by Dan Beachy-Quick and Bruce Bond
Tupelo Press | December 1, 2023
According to Gillian Conoley, “Therapon is an exquisitely composed collaboration between Dan Beachy-Quick and Bruce Bond, a continuous thread of 12-13 line poems that defy any attempt at knowing who wrote what.”
Made of Dream by Stephanie Borges
Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Stephanie Borges and Livia Azevedo Lima
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2023
In this collection of poems about dreams, Borges “observes how images and language can create experiences of freedom for Black women.”
Translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2023
This poetry collection is “a mind-bending foray into the twisted underlying logic of material reality and a rip-roaring romp through Philippine urban legends, psychogeography, and the uncomfortable, often seedy aspects of music, cinema, and art.”
MyLifeandMyLife by Melinda Mátyus
Translated from the Hungarian by Jozefina Komporaly
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2023
In this experimental novel, Mátyus “zooms in on the loneliness of socially ostracized women, and is preoccupied with the psychological makeup of those experiencing confinement and forced captivity.”
Our West Berlin: Storybook from the Island
Translated from the German by Cindy Opitz and Carolyn Steinberg
Berlinica Publishing | December 1, 2023
This anthology devoted to West Berlin features writing by Gretchen Dutschke, Harald Jähner, Harald Martenstein, Ingo Lamberty, Kerstin Schilling, and more.
dear parent or guardian by Isadoro Saturno
Translated from the Spanish by E. R. Pulgar
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2023
Saturno “proposes a rupture with the agreement of gendered language through the transcription of memory, revealing the injustice of the norm,” in this poetry collection.
When My Mother is Most Beautiful by Rebecca Suzuki
Hanging Loose Press | December 1, 2023
Suzuki’s poetry collection “is at once a powerful love letter to a mother and to language itself, delving into complex questions of family, communication, culture, and connection.”
Mountain Amnesia by Gale Marie Thompson
The Center for Literary Publishing/Colorado Review | December 1, 2023
The poems in this collection influenced by the rural Appalachian landscape “rebuild a new world—and self—in the wake of destruction and loss.”
The Fabulist | December 3, 2023
This fiction chapbook is a “strange parable of ritualized injustice in a prosperous fantasy city.”
Passager Books | December 5, 2023
In his latest collection, Bergman “offers up poems about aging parents, love, chronic illness, and friendship.”
Girl in Tulips by Julianne DiNenna
Fernwood Press | December 5, 2023
DiNenna’s debut poetry collection “is part lyric, part incantation and prayer, part memoir of love and longing.”
Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield
Split/Lip Press | December 5, 2023
This essay collection “wrestles with the physical, mental, and emotional burdens that American society places on educators, students, and all relatively conscious minorities in this country.”
The Infinite Loop / El lazo infinito by Oneyda González
Translated from the Spanish by Eduardo Aparicio
Akashic Books | December 5, 2023
This bilingual poetry collection “explores the interconnection between pain, love, and hope.”
The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo
Translated from the Portuguese by Sophie Lewis
Restless Books | December 5, 2023
Melo’s novel “conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.”
Tender Headed by Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books | December 5, 2023
According to Camille Rankine, Osinaike “interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world.”
Regal House Publishing | December 5, 2023
Ott’s novel follows “a man looking to flee the past, barely old enough to drink and looking to rediscover himself after several tours in Afghanistan as a POW prison guard.”
The Crocodile Bride by Ashleigh Bell Pedersen
Hub City Press | December 5, 2023
Newly released in paperback, this debut novel is “a heartbreakingly tender coming-of-age tale and a lyrical, haunting reflection on generational trauma.”
In Elvis’s Room by Sebastijan Pregelj
Translated from the Slovenian by Rawley Grau
Sandorf Passage | December 5, 2023
Pregelj’s novel “tells the turbulent story of Slovenian independence from the perspective of Jan, an only child growing up in Ljubljana.”
Masculinity Parable by Myles Taylor
Game Over Books | December 5, 2023
This debut poetry collection “explores the concept of a non-toxic masculinity: if it’s possible, if it exists, and if not, how we can build it ourselves.”
Footnote to Doggerel by Tom Driscoll
Rocket Science Press | December 11, 2023
Driscoll’s latest short fiction collection “will take the reader back and forth in time and geography, from WWII to the rain forest of the Congo, the Pisgah Mountains of North Carolina to the looping dreamscapes of organ failure.”
Sundry Abductions by Maria Dylan Himmelman
Hanging Loose Press | December 11, 2023
According to Lynn Melnick, “These poems are funny, sophisticated, exacting while sometimes surreal, and an astonishing joy to read.”
Kinderszenen by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz
Translated from the Polish by Charles S. Kraszewski
Slant Books | December 12, 2023
In this memoir, Marek “recounts what it was like to grow up in Warsaw during the German occupation of World War II.”
Emergency INDEX, An Annual Document of Performance Practice: Volume 10
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 15, 2023
In this annual anthology “open to all who work with performance,” contributors “document works made in the previous year.”
What You Refuse to Remember by MT Vallarta
Small Harbor Publishing | December 21, 2023
According to Stephen Hong Song, the poems in this chapbook explore “racial, gendered, queer, and postcolonial subjections; personal and structural traumas; the many metamorphoses of our kinship filiations; and the crucial need for aesthetic rejuvenations.”
One Thousand & One by Kari Hukkila
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
Contra Mundum Press | December 31, 2023
One Thousand & One is “a philosophical, essayistic novel about catastrophes, both natural and man-made, about humans’ ability to respond to catastrophes by thinking or, at the very least, simply managing to survive.”
