Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in November 2021 from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
TENSION : RUPTURE by Cutter Streeby
Tupelo Press | November 1, 2021
According to Eduardo Corral, “the conversation between Michael Haight and Cutter Streeby is enthralling, bright with human excess and intimacies.”
Inventory of Doubts by Landon Godfrey
Tupelo Press | November 1, 2021
According to Dana Levin, this Dorset Prize–winning poetry collection “is a book where a human is just another kind of animal, and a drinking glass is a deeply feeling creature.”
West of the Backstory by Tim Hawkins
Fernwood Press | November 1, 2021
The poems in this collection “range widely in geography, tone, and style in search of the extraordinary in the things we take for granted, guided always by the desire to be both in the moment and apart from it at the same time.”
The Wayland Rudd Collection by Yevgeniy Fiks
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2021
The Wayland Rudd Collection “presents artist Yevgeniy Fiks’s archive of Soviet media images of Africans and African Americans—from propaganda posters to postage stamps—mainly related to African liberation movements and civil rights struggles.”
The Sadness of Whirlwinds by Jim Peterson
Red Hen Press | November 2, 2021
The short stories in this collection “lead readers through inscrutable realms of both the known and the unknown, provoking them to challenge their own notions of love, death, truth, and reality.”
The Night by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon
Seven Stories Press | November 2, 2021
Switching between crime fiction and metafiction, this novel translated by Daniel Hahn and Noel Hernandez Gonzalez is “a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010.”
Uncertain Acrobats by Rebecca Hart Olander
CavanKerry Press | November 2, 2021
This poetry collection “reaches beyond personal grief and speaks to all who have been upended by terminal illness and the enormity of loss one faces when a beloved leaves one’s life.”
Banana [ ]/we pilot the blood by Paul Hlava Ceballos and Quenton Baker
The 3rd Thing | November 2, 2021
This book includes “two accounts of empire by two different poets, between them a critical/contemplative interval conducted by writer and scholar Christina Sharpe in conversation with artist Torkwase Dyson’s ‘hypershapes.'”
I am writing you from afar by Moyna Pam Dick
Black Sun Lit | November 2, 2021
The second title in Dick’s Evasions Trilogy “explores ardent yearning via minimalist abstraction, dense speculation, and minxy, vulnerable saints.”
In the Meadow of Fantasies by Hadi Mohammadi
Elsewhere Editions | November 2, 2021
Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili and illustrated by Nooshin Safakhoo, this “story about dreaming and about caring for others… will stir reveries in young readers and conjure new fantasies of friendly creatures in far off lands.”
The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig
Two Lines Press | November 2, 2021
Translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole, this novel “interrogates with bitter wit and singular brilliance the detritus of twentieth-century life: addiction, consumerism, God, pay-per-view pornography, selfishness, statelessness, and above all else, the writer’s place in a ‘century of lies.’”
Eternal Night at the Nature Museum by Tyler Barton
Sarabande Books | November 2, 2021
The twenty stories in this collection are set “in a contemporary America blemished with loneliness and late-capitalism.”
Tomaž by Joshua Beckman and Tomaž Šalamun
Wave Books | November 2, 2021
Tomaž is “an extended poem assembled by Joshua Beckman from his recorded conversations with one of the foundational figures of the Eastern European avant-garde, Tomaž Šalamun.”
Graywolf Press | November 2, 2021
In his eighth poetry collection, Moore “looks into unrelenting darkness where moments of tenderness and awe illuminate, at times suddenly like lightning in the night, at others, more quietly, as the steady glow of streetlights in a snowstorm.”
Graywolf Press | November 2, 2021
Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott, Almada’s second novel “is an unforgettable portrayal of characters who initially seem to stand in opposition, but are ultimately revealed to be bound by their similarities.”
The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies
Graywolf Press | November 2, 2021
In this book, Davies addresses “the invisibility of revision—even though it’s an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery.”
The Clearing by JJJJJerome Ellis
Wendy’s Subway | November 5, 2021
According to Claudia Rankine, this hybrid work is “a lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech; a restless interrogation of linear time; an intimate portrait of the author’s real-time experience of his stutter; a baptism in syllable and sound; and a manuscript illuminated by The Stutter.”
The Book of Timothy: The Devil, My Brother, and Me by Joan Wilson
Boreal Books/Red Hen Press | November 9, 2021
This memoir “recounts in lyric movements a sister’s journey, partly through trickery, but eventually through truth, to gain a long-absent admission from the priest who abused her brother.”
The Absence of Zero by R. Kolewe
Book*hug Press | November 9, 2021
“Consisting of 256 16-line quartets, and 34 free-form interruptions,” this long poem “is a beautiful example of thinking in language, a meditation that explores time and memory in both content and form.”
Etruscan Press | November 9, 2021
According to Pages Matam, Palmer “unabashedly transmutes shame, guilt, and all the little imperfections of her world (and the ones life has thrown her) into a raucous work of art.”
The Math of Saint Felix by Diane Exavier
The 3rd Thing | November 9, 2021
This book-length lyric is “an attempt to do the math of a woman, of a family, of a country, of a diaspora. The sum of one life reveals the permutations of many: daughters, sisters, lovers.”
book of the other: small in comparison by Truong Tran
Kaya Press | November 9, 2021
This collection of poetry, prose, and essays is “a piercing, furious examination of the devastation wrought on a life by institutional platitudes put in the service of unexamined privilege.”
Slug and Other Stories by Megan Milks
Feminist Press | November 9, 2021
This book of short fiction is “a deranged, otherworldly collection that disrupts conventional ideas about gender, genre, and queer identity.”
Bamboo Dart Press | November 10, 2021
According to Stephanie Barbé Hammer, this debut poetry collection “careens the reader through a dizzying multiverse of male transgenerational trauma, bullying, and redemptive possibilities that hover tantalizingly on the margins of these 64 powerful poems.”
The Feral Boy Who Lives in Griffith Park
Pelekinesis | November 13, 2021
Edited by Tim Kirk, the expanded second edition of this collection of stories that “span the decades of life in Los Angeles” features new short fiction from Annette Zilinskas, Matt Oswalt, and Hadley Meares.
Old Snow, White Sun by Caroline Goodwin
JackLeg Press | November 15, 2021
According to Aileen Cassinetto, this poety collection “brilliantly gathers mothlight, herbal lore, psychedelia, heavy metal, and old charm to capture a world that is bountiful, magnificent, and impermanent.”
Study of the Raft by Leonora Simonovis
Center for Literary Publishing | November 15, 2021
According to Jim Daniels, “Simonovis’s powerful, confident voice runs through each and every one of these poems like a lifeline in defiance of injustice and oppression.”
New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims
Red Hen Press | November 16, 2021
According to editor Kazim Ali, “The goal with this anthology is to represent that full range of contemporary expressions of Islam, as well as a full range of genres—poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, political writing, cultural writing, and of course plenty of texts which mix and match and blur all of these modes.”
Joy Has a Sound: Black Sonic Visions
The 3rd Thing | November 16, 2021
Edited by Rachel Kessler and Elisheba Johnson, this anthology from Seattle’s Wa Na Wari “is a poly-vocal, visually stunning answer to the question, What are the sounds of community and how they are handed down?”
Texas Review Press | November 16, 2021
In this short fiction collection—winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize—Shank “reveals moments of grace and connection between people of her hometown, Denver.”
A Guardian Angel Recalls by Willem Frederik Hermans
Archipelago Books | November 16, 2021
Translated from Dutch by David Colmer, this novel explores “a nightmare in which even expressions of empathy and humanity are edged out by cynicism and cruelty.”
There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt
Haymarket Books | November 16, 2021
This poetry collection is “a testament to the healing power of community and the beauty of trans people, history, and culture.”
Et Alia Press | November 16, 2021
This memoir follows the marriage of two couples therapists, beginning “with a husband’s dramatic diagnosis and weaves marital flashbacks and counseling sessions into the progression of his disease.”
Mud Sweeter than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania by Margo Rejmer
Restless Books | November 16, 2021
Translated from the Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and Antonia Lloyd-Jones, this books is a “revelatory oral history of the people who suffered, rebelled, and survived under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha in communist Albania.”
Buffalo Dope by Joseph Sigurdson
Thirty West Publishing House | November 26, 2021
Sigurdson’s debut “is a dark comedy novel about Bobby Washburn, a weed dealer who lives with his mom.”
Autumn Rounds by Jacques Poulin
Archipelago Books | November 30, 2021
Translated from French by Sheila Fischman, this novel is “a tender travelogue punctuated by picnics, sandy coves, and the voices of Billie Holiday, Gabrielle Roy, and Anne Hébert.”
In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali
Feminist Press | November 30, 2021
In this Iranian novel translated by Mariam Rahmani, “a spoiled and foul-mouthed young woman looks to get high while her family and city fall to pieces.”
