Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books released by CLMP members in November 2026.
The Things They Forgot to Tell Us When They Left by Christopher Bowen
Červená Barva Press | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9965734-3-1
This collection of flash fiction features “an overarching story, progression and theme of rural and post-industrial Midwestern America as pastoral backdrop.”
Ant Days by Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas
Translated from the Spanish by Camila Valle
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-61-3
“Through the figures of the ants, the mother, the grandmother, and the mysterious muchacha,” this poetry chapbook “keeps alive that obsession, memory, and eternal ritual of being young and searching.”
The Possibility of an Island by Rosemary Carroll
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
“By turns hallucinogenic and sterile,” this poetry chapbook “renders the horror and antsy hilarity of the present through a spiky desert mirage of decentralized composition.”
Philo(zoo)phical notes by Oscar Cruz
Translated from the Spanish by Miguel Coronado
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-48-4
This poetry chapbook is a “witty and biting poetic animalscape of Cuban life” that “explores how poets, like all of us, are animals, and how animals can teach us things about joy, desire, insolence, cruelty, suffering, and failure.”
I Was Trying to Keep to Myself by Sara Duff
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-55-2
The short stories in this collection “follow characters on the edge, from a woman who can’t make a decision without flipping a coin to the animal who lives inside the head of a man.”
Wanderlust: The Complete Files by Norman Finkelstein
Black Square Editions | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798996167029
This collection compiles Finkelstein’s “poems from four previous volumes, now transformed into an uncanny, elliptical quest-romance, a dark, gnostic vision, a prophetic work of pathos, humor, and magic.”
John Montague: A Poet’s Life by Adrian Frazier
Wake Forest University Press | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-943667-21-5
“Based on Montague’s archive of private papers, and informed by the counsel of the poet’s lifelong friends, partners, and fellow poets,” this biography “reveals the sources of poetry in Montague’s life.”
Negative Body followed by History of a Good Lord by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine
Translated from the French by Jake Syersak and Zachary Anderson
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-51-4
According to Danielle Pafunda, this hybrid collection first published in 1968 is an “extraordinary opportunity to witness Khaïr-Eddine‘s particular grief and hope in the wake of colonization and natural disaster, in the wake of history itself.”
Compositions, 1946-71 by Balraj Manra
Translated from the Urdu by Haider Shahbaz
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-54-5
The hybrid works in this collection are “composed of commentary on communist and Third World politics, dream imagery, song lyrics, notes on modernity, and overheard conversations.”
Tupelo Press | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781961209701
In this poetry collection, “the gendered, racialized, and colonial histories inscribed on the body are continually exposed, resisted, and re-stitched through memory, touch, and language itself.”
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781946604798
Powell’s collection “gathers fragments into a sequence of concrete poems that works through mud as both material and condition, where black vernacular, scripture, and everyday life converge.”
Dancing with Poets by Reed Turchi
The Center for Literary Publishing | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-966618-02-7
This poetry collection “remembers those the author has loved and lost, but avoids nostalgia, asking instead what futures may be built from grief and how love may grow on the other side of devastation.”
Bring Daybreak by Steve Wiegenstein
Blank Slate Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781966103080
In this novel set in the 1920s, “Petey has to draw deep on her resilient rural heritage to overcome the many challenges that face her as her community moves from the horse-and-buggy era to the modern age.”
The Keeper by Joshua Wilkerson
Ugly Duckling Presse | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-946604-49-1
This book-length prose poem “centers on a dissolved identity, a life-altering accident, and the itinerant preceding years” and “maps infrastructures of disintegration onto questions of selfhood, friendship, and home.”
Pageant of the Masters by Steven Belletto
Vine Leaves Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-3-98832-275-3
“Living on the fraying edges of reality—much like the culture around them,” the characters in this collection of short stories “are anxious, manic, deluded, and unmistakably human.”
CavanKerry Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-960327-22-2
“From colorism to the uneasy desire of interracial love,” this poetry collection “traces the inner life of a light-skinned Black woman reckoning with the inheritances of race, gender, history, and family.”
Charred Sugar in My Bones by Juanita Kirton
Pink Trees Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-970691-07-8
According to Peter E. Murphy, Kirton’s poetic memoir traces “a life shaped by Bajan-Brooklyn roots, childhood trauma, military service, motorcycles, and the long road toward self-reclamation.”
Wonderland: Memoir Of A Black Market Adoption by Patricia Knight Meyer
Unsolicited Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-969421-96-9
This memoir “exposes what happens when adoption’s house of cards finally falls—when missing documents and dark family secrets can no longer withstand the weight of one woman’s relentless search for truth.”
Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
Graywolf Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-64445-423-7
“Alternating between the story of Ada and Ada’s stories,” Solà’s debut novel is an “ode to life in community, impossible and enduring love, and the wellspring of the imagination that fills everything it touches with magic.”
Translated from the Arabic by Sara Elkamel
Graywolf Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-64445-425-1
In this poetry collection, Taha “captures her proximity to the Gaza genocide—the losses unspeakable and the destruction near total,” and “poetry emerges as an answer to the violences of war.”
The Wicked Road To Yam Junction by Larry D. Thacker
Unsolicited Press | November 3, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-969421-45-7
This short story collection centered on a small town “captures the tension between the safety of home and the pull of the horizon, proving that even the most ‘wicked’ roads often lead us right back to the people we love.”
Prolific Pulse Press | November 4, 2026
ISBN: 979-8952428119
This anthology edited by Edward Ahern compiles poems written by poets who gather “every month at Black Rock Books, an independent bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Black Rock neighborhood, to share original work with their community.”
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-68003-487-5
“Having relocated to Madrid, Lucia’s identity splinters, creating multi-faceted truths and realities she must face” in this lyric novella following its protagonist’s “secret struggle with addiction.”
Suspirium by Elizabeth Genovise
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 5, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-68003-479-0
In this novel “narrated by Kairos, the depth dimension of Time,” a man is brought to “a kind of purgatory where he has one last chance to complete the individuation he shied away from in waking life.”
Dead Peasant by Lisa Baldissera
Book*hug Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781771669986
The short stories in this collection “reveal the fraught circumstances and neglected emotions of an underclass who toil below the glossy economies of the international high-art world, including artists and art workers.”
Almost Animal: A Memoir of Motherhood, Wildness, and the American West by Amy Irvine
Spiegel and Grau | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781966302384
According to Deborah Jackson Taffa, Irvine “explores and connects her Mormon lineage to her motherly struggles raising a sick daughter in the American West” in this memoir.
Music the World Makes by John P. Loonam
Frayed Edge Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781642510751
“A story of longing, courage, and the cost of authenticity,” this novel set in 1950s New York follows “one woman’s fight to claim her true self in a society not ready to accept her.”
Shut Up, I Love You, I’ll Call You Tomorrow by Sloane Murphy
LittlePuss Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-9643221-4-8
In this collection of short stories, Murphy “shows a beautiful and wrecked scene of young Chicago trans women” and creates a “conduit of bleary electricity inside a stubborn, still-beating heart.”
Places on the Way: A Poetry Road Trip
June Road Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9941675-0-2
The poems in this anthology edited by Sara June Arnold “remind us where we’ve been and where we’re going, how the places we inhabit shape us, what we’ve left behind and what we’re bringing, all of us travelers.”
Possible Because It’s Not Eternal by Lee Jangwook
Translated from the Korean by Eun-Gwi Chung
Black Ocean | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781965154250
In this poetry collection, Jangwook “suggests that certain existences become possible only because they are not eternal, and certain moments hold meaning because they are finite.”
Unsolicited Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-969421-15-0
In his debut collection, Smart “examines the ‘murder of reality’ in poems shaped by a father’s suicide, working-class survival, and fractured national mythologies.”
Translated from the Croatian by Ena Selimović
Sandorf Passage | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 9789533516011
“Dwelling in the student bars of Prague and the off-season coastline of Cádiz, Spain,” this novel “makes clear that intentions and passion are all too often entangled in dark energy and ego.”
Butterfly Blade by McKenzie Teter
Charlotte Lit Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-960558-20-6
This poetry collection is a “coming-of-age story that follows three childhood friends as they navigate changing bodies, violent lives, and the poverty that plagues their small town.”
Light Chemical Sea by Jenny Wong
Bull City Press | November 10, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-949344-71-4
In this short fiction chapbook, Wong “peeks into the lives of characters caught in lighthouses, subways, shorelines, Walmart aisles, and airports” and “reports back from the transpacific diaspora.”
Acorn: 300 Poems on Nature, Grief, and Grace by Zaneta V. Johns
Prolific Pulse Press | November 14, 2026
ISBN: 979-8952428027
In this collection of haikus, “themes of grief and healing unfold alongside reflections on compassion, social justice, and our responsibility to one another and the natural world.”
The Lighthouse Tattoo by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Acre Books | November 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781968209087
This poetry collection “features plainspoken pieces that reveal the Latinx experience through the lens of a socially conscious contrarian in work that melds the quotidian and the profound.”
Bainbridge Island Press | November 15, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-961451-21-6
This poetry collection “moves in nine stages, each one a different way of loving something: a childhood, a body of knowledge, a piece of ground, a person, a fear, the dead, the senses, a joke.”
Anvil Press | November 16, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-77214-255-6
This novel, “set in the underbelly of Vancouver’s east side,” follows its protagonist’s “present life of crime and her turbulent past, painting a portrait of urban decay, addiction, betrayal, and survival.”
Stanley Park Manor: A Collective History by Kevin Spenst
Anvil Press | November 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781772142617
This hybrid collection of essays, interviews, and photographs “brings together dozens of voices and hundreds of lives lived in one of the West End’s most iconic buildings.”
The Bullet Inside Me by Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya
Translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger
Schaffner Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781639640904
“Set in Argentina during the 1978 World Cup,” this novel is “a frightening journey through a hellish landscape of ruthless oppression, bloodthirsty security forces, and marauding bands of corpse-looting hooligans.”
The Beauties of Belladonna by Gilbert Allen
Slant Books | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781639822423
“Blending biting satire, rueful affection, and unblinkered curiosity about the strangeness of the human heart,” the short stories in this collection “reveal truths about our upscale neighbors—and ourselves.”
A Day in the Life by Ralph Angel
Black Ocean | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781965154212
“Drawn from his reflections on being a distinguished translator of Federico García Lorca,” Angel’s essay collection explores “his upbringing, his relationship to language, and the poetry and art that have been his greatest influences.”
Black Ocean | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781965154199
This final posthumous collection of Angel’s poetry “offers spare lyrics set in an urban landscape that seems timeless, universal, and historical.”
I Am Going to Kill Somebody by Firat Ceweri
Translated from the Kurdish by Jeannette Okur
Henar Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781968327019
In this literary thriller, when a man “wakes up one morning to a voice telling him he’s going to kill somebody, he slips a kitchen knife into his pocket and wanders through the unnamed capital of Kurdistan.”
Fonograf Editions | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-964499-75-8
This short fiction collection “investigates the longing for self, the longing for another, and the longing for connection between the self and another when the other is inherently unknowable.”
Turn It & Turn It: Post-Secular Essays & Poems by Alicia Ostriker
Ayin Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781961814424
This collection of essays and poems “wrestles with patriarchy without discarding its canons: reimagining biblical women as activists and tricksters, rethinking the face of the biblical Other, and helping to restore the divine feminine to Jewish consciousness.”
California Silence by Stella Santamaría
Fence Books | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781944380304
“An intricate tapestry of urban, natural, elemental, and linguistic worlds,” this poetry collection “maps a future beyond the fraught border of language politics between English and Spanish.”
Uncertain Girls in Uncertain Times: Advice & Poetry to Set the World on Fire
Red Hen Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781636284873
This anthology of poems and essays, edited by Donna Wolf and Joyce Chen, “encourages young women launching into adulthood to imagine deeply, create bravely, and find the confidence to build a meaningful life.”
The Lost Stations by Cara Waterfall
Ink & Ribbon Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9946216-0-8
In this poetry collection, “private mourning opens outward into fossil records, migratory routes, damaged habitats, and domestic thresholds—the fragile infrastructures we rely on to carry life forward.”
Feminist Press | November 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781558613751
“A moving examination of the nature of political vision, memory, and truth,” this new edition of the post-apartheid 1991 novel features a new foreword by Rabih Alameddine.
Dave The Space Pet by Rory AB Forrest
Unsolicited Press | November 18, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-969421-01-3
In this debut science fiction novel, “painfully nerdy accountant Dave is abducted from a dive bar bathroom by aliens he can’t communicate with.”
Love Letters to a Future Ice Age by Jonathan Wlodarski
Sundress Publications | November 18, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-951979-98-0
“Combining fabulism and climate fiction,” the short stories in this collection “survey strange, broken versions of the world that shatter our understanding of grief, labor, and solitude.”
Antigone at the Rot Party by Bex Frankeberger
Cantine Press | November 20, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9908152-2-3
This hybrid book, part novel and part play, “filters Antigone through queer theory and contemporary philosophy, bringing us uncannily close to the perennial nature of power and hubris.”
Through The Lens of Time by Shannon Frost Greenstein
Thirty West Publishing House | November 20, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9987727-5-7
This collection is “composed of stories based upon historical proceedings and factual events,” examining “the reality of life in our society today and the quantum possibilities with which we may someday be faced.”
My Monstrous Family Cookbook by JI Daniels
Unsolicited Press | November 24, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-969421-11-2
This memoir “uses the structure of a cookbook to explore family trauma, memory, and survival” as “each recipe functions as an essay, transforming food into a language for what cannot be spoken.”
Fonograf Editions | November 24, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-964499-83-3
In this memoir, Pedrosa “embarks on a road trip, visiting destinations important to the Germs and 1970s L.A. punk scene, piecing together her aunt’s life, seeking comprehension and often finding herself going in circles.”
Figure Eight by Zoe Imani Sharpe
Wendy’s Subway | November 24, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9947789-1-3
“Departing from the demolition of the public housing complex in downtown Toronto that was her childhood home,” Sharpe’s poetry collection “asks how desire is structured and, inversely, how it restructures around the point of loss.”
Mud Songs: Elsehere Book I by Patricio Ferrari
Fence Books | November 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781944380298
This poetry collection is a “lyrical and archival journey through languages, inheritances, and crossings” that “reveals a multilingual poetics of arrival, attentive to histories of migration, loss, and renewal.”
Vine Leaves Press | November 24, 2026
ISBN: 978-3-98832-061-2
Each story in this microfiction anthology edited by John McCaffrey is “an exercise in precision, inviting readers to slow down, imagine more, and discover the extraordinary hidden inside the ordinary.”
Translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell
Arte Público Press | November 30, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-89375-046-1
This memoir following four generations of women is a “narrative archaeology of the self that binds the spectral and the material, with a voice that moves between memory and inquiry, grief and humor.”
Double Feature by Gwen Welliver
53rd State Press | November 30, 2026
ISBN: 979-8992283983
This book of photography by a choreographer explores “research and influence, the layered structure of memory and grief, and the myriad ways abstraction’s architectures can hold the personal, the particular, the idiosyncrasies of the body itself.”
