Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books forthcoming in October 2022 from CLMP members.
bull-jean & dem/dey back by Sharon Bridgforth
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
bull-jean & dem/dey back “collects two performance/novels centering Sharon Bridgforth’s southern-Black-butch-sheroe, bull-jean.”
Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland by Katy Didden
Tupelo Press | October 1, 2022
In this poetry collection, “lava speaks ‘with the focus of a burning glass,’ lighting lyric core samples through geo-historical and cultural texts about Iceland.”
uncollected trash collection by Kate Kremer
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
uncollected trash collection “draws on a 3-month record Kremer kept of everything she threw away, along with the refuse of earlier writing projects.”
Architects of the Imaginary / Los arquitectos del imaginario by Marta López-Luaces
Translated from the Spanish by G. J. Racz
Gival Press | October 1, 2022
According to Peter Gizzi, in this bilingual poetry collection “the world and its phenomena are respected, named, and given their proper occupation.”
Disputed Site by Kate Monaghan
Gival Press | October 1, 2022
According to Henri Cole, the poems in this collection “yearn for a planet without hateful border stations, floating-trash islands, and elaborate human grief.”
I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group
53rd State Press | October 1, 2022
This book is a “performance piece, a multi-disciplinary, dance-based work that explores the impulse to report on calamity, the shimmer of attention to realms unseen, and the evidence of the body as possessing a will to let go of living.”
In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
Translated from the Chinese by Wong May
The Song Cave | October 1, 2022
This collection features “70 sections that span the millennia,” in which Wong May “traverses continents and civilizations to retrieve the text of Tang Poetry for our century.”
Speaking Out: Families of LGBTQ+ Advance the Dialogue by Esther Schwartz-McKinzie
Gival Press | October 1, 2022
Speaking Out: Families of LGBTQ+ Advance the Dialogue is “an interview project inspired by the author’s daughter in the spirit of pushing back against current hateful anti-LGBTQ+ politics and trends.”
John Ashbery Live at Sanders Theatre, 1976 by John Ashbery
Fonograf Editions | October 4, 2022
This archival LP includes “forty-seven minutes of poetry from Houseboat Days, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and The Double Dream of Spring” as well as liner notes with original essays by Douglas Crase, Dara Barrois/Dixon, and John Yau.
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
In My Secret Life “follows the adventures of Amelia, a freelance art and fashion model who also does adult content.”
We Are Mermaids by Stephanie Burt
Graywolf Press | October 4, 2022
Burt’s poems “revel in their multiplicity, their interconnectedness, their secret powers to become much more than they at first seem.”
Seed Celestial by Sara R. Burnett
Autumn House Press | October 4, 2022
This poetry collection “weaves together themes of motherhood, immigration, social transformation, and interrogation.”
The Story of the Hundred Promises by Neil Cochrane
Forest Avenue Press | October 4, 2022
Cochrane’s novel is “a loose retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ that centers queer and trans characters.”
The Language of Bodies by Suzanne Dewitt Hall
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Dewitt Hall’s novel “probes the seduction of vengeance using vivid, sensual imagery to explore how love transcends the particulars of body parts, and how revenge blurs the line between victim and perpetrator, hero and villain.”
Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year by Arwen Donahue
Hub City Press | October 4, 2022
In these 130 ink-and-watercolor drawings, “the story of one year on a family farm in Kentucky unfolds in captured moments of daily life.”
Black Ocean | October 4, 2022
This collection features “lyrical poems that engage with grief and loss and the toll of overdose and addiction with an activist bent.”
Book*hug Press | October 4, 2022
This novel “explores the nature of relationships faunal and human, and reminds us of the challenges of finding one’s place in society.”
When the Bough Breaks by Nancy Ferraro
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
When the Bough Breaks, True Stories of Hope and Encouragement of Mothers Who Have Had to Reinvent Their Relationships with Their Children “seeks to shed light on that moment when Mom has to reach into the well of courage and ask for outside help.”
Feminist Press | October 4, 2022
In this anthology edited by Joe Vallese, queer and trans writers consider the horror movies “that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences.”
Life Is Everywhere by Lucy Ives
Graywolf Press | October 4, 2022
Ives’s novel “captures emotional events that hover fitfully at the borders of visibility and intelligibility, showing how the past lives on, often secretly and at the expense of the present.”
Black Ocean | October 4, 2022
In this poetry collection, Jones “conjures the longue durée of the Middle Sea and the Middle Passage, by excavating history through its vanishing figures and the always already erasure of voice.”
When I Was the Wind by Hannah Lee Jones
June Road Press | October 4, 2022
This debut poetry collection is “a richly textured map of love and loss, a tapestry of hard-won truths both personal and universal.”
Translated from the Portuguese
Nightboat Books | October 4, 2022
Porneia “features a selection of works by Eduardo Kac realized in the context of the Porn Art Movement, a vanguard that emerged in 1980 under a military dictatorship in Brazil.”
Late Summer Ode by Olena Kalytiak Davis
Copper Canyon Press | October 4, 2022
In these poems, Davis writes from “a heightened state of ambivalence, perched between past and present tensions.”
Angel of Ambition by Glenn Kaplan
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
In this thriller spanning “London to New York to super-yachts in the Caribbean, Angela plays a ruthless game of deception, betrayal and murder to try to win the ultimate prize.”
I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend by Ron Koertge
Red Hen Press | October 4, 2022
In these poems, “a mannequin joins the Me Too movement, a summer job turns into a lesson in class distinctions, and Jane Austen makes a surprise appearance at a mall.”
Good Person Trouble by Noëlle Kröger
Translated from the German by Natalye Childress
Fieldmouse Press | October 4, 2022
In this debut graphic novel, “Sebastian, the tobacconist, stands trial for the disappearance of his cousin Teresa, but all is not what it seems.”
The Devil Hound by Franklin E. Lamca
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Set in mid-eighteenth century Europe and the Americas, this novel follows two Romani brothers searching for their mother.
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Landa’s memoir is “a tale of hiding and revealing, of secrets and salvation, of how what we believe sets us apart actually unites us.”
The New Empire by Alison McBain
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Set in “a much different America than we’ve read about in the history books,” this novel “paints a vibrant picture that draws strongly on a non-Eurocentric worldview.”
Dialect of Distant Harbors by Dipika Mukherjee
CavanKerry Press | October 4, 2022
Mukherjee’s poetry collection “summons a shared humanity to examine issues of illness and family.”
The Solar System by Gregory L. Norris
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Norris’s science fiction novel explores “some of the wonders and adventures to be experienced from Sol to Pluto within The Solar System.”
The Strangers of Braamfontein by Onyeka Nwelue
Sandorf Passage | October 4, 2022
In this novel set in Johannesburg, South Africa, “two strangers, both of them from other countries, struggle to fulfill the dreams that urged them to leave home.”
Find Me in the Time Before by Robin Stevens Payes
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
In this novel about time travel, “no spacetime is out of bounds, history is nothing like what you learn in school, and the future is yours to imagine into being.”
Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker
Restless Books | October 4, 2022
Ponce’s English-language debut “centers the female body in a radical exploration of desire, choice, and consequences.”
Where’s My Wine Glass?! by Linda Presto
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
Where’s My Wine Glass?! Getting Your Kid to College Without Losing Your Mind is a collection of “humorous essays for parents of children who are prepping for, leaving for, or attending college.”
Nextdoor in Colonialtown by Ryan Rivas
Autofocus Books | October 4, 2022
In this book, Rivas pairs photos of Orlando’s Colonialtown North neighborhood “with conversations assembled from the area’s Nextdoor.com posts.”
Now and Other Dreams by Daryl Seitchik
Fieldmouse Press | October 4, 2022
The comics in this collection, made between 2012 and 2022, “guide the reader down into the depths of the unconscious, and through the mundane, mystical absurdities of being alive.”
New Rivers Press | October 4, 2022
Edited by Nayt Rundquist, this essay anthology features 21 writers “on the concept of home and its polyvalent meanings.”
Catastrophe Theory by Rebecca Lowry Warchut
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
In this novel, “due to a rare brain tumor, Vera Garcia’s soccer career is suddenly sidelined at the start of her senior year.”
Some Months in 1968 by Baron Wormser
Woodhall Press | October 4, 2022
This novel follows “the Brownsons, a family of five living in suburban Baltimore, who experience one of the most tumultuous moments in American history.”
A Deadly Mermaid Fetish by Pamela Mones
Woodhall Press | October 5, 2022
In this novel “a dead girl, dressed in a tattered, mermaid costume and a harpoon jutting from her chest, washes ashore on a world-renowned beach in Florida.”
The Running Body by Emily Pifer
Autumn House Press | October 7, 2022
Pifer’s debut memoir “wrestles and reckons with power and agency, language and story, body dysphoria and beauty standards, desire and addiction, loss and healing.”
fifth wheel press | October 7, 2022
COMRADE is a poetry chapbook “tracing a queer personal history and interrogating a relationship between a father and his son as immigrants in a new country.”
Grid Books | October 11, 2022
In this poetry collection, Platt “makes a study of life’s inevitable transitions, from love’s astonishing evolutions, to aging and its attendant losses.”
Frayed Edge Press | October 11, 2022
Moreira’s cross-genre collection “explores themes of physical and emotional violence, human relationships, and the weight of politics, history, and culture on individuality and identity.”
Pantalla Parade by Laura Swart
Sea Crow Press | October 11, 2022
In Pantalla Parade, the Canadian journalist “records stories of ethnicity and diversity, belonging and isolation, faith, failure, life and philosophy, and what it all means.”
Fonograf Editions | October 11, 2022
This essay collection explores “writing and labor, art and activism, attention as a transformative practice, difference and collaboration, adjuncting and the margins of the academy, whiteness and its weapons, professionalization and its discontents, the radical importance of surprise, friendship at work, the self and its public and private modes.”
The End of Michelangelo by Dan Gerber
Copper Canyon Press | October 11, 2022
This poetry collection reminds readers “that the very fact of being alive—experiencing our fleeting, fragile existence—is our only source of joy, our only avenue of consolation.”
The Visible Unseen by Andrea Chapela
Translated from the Spanish by Kelsi Vanada
Restless Books | October 11, 2022
The Visible Unseen is a “collection of experimental essays exploring the properties and poetics of glass, mirrors, and light as a means of understanding the self.”
The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore by Jasmine Sawers
Rose Metal Press | October 11, 2022
This flash fiction collection is “equal parts love letter to the old tales and indictment of their shortcomings, offering a new mythology to reflect the many faces and voices of the twenty-first century.”
Delphic Oracle, U.S.A. by Steven Mayfield
Regal House Publishing | October 11, 2022
According to Alice Kaltman, this novel is “a multi-generational romp that rolls along with the fevered pitch of a screwball comedy.”
Coach House Books | October 11, 2022
According to Deborah Willis, in this novel “Taggart illuminates the dark corners of delusion (or is it delusion?) and a mental-health system that consigns people to endless limbo.”
If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home by Pete Hsu
Red Hen Press | October 11, 2022
In this debut story collection, “children and young people navigate a world where the presence of violence and death rear themselves in everyday places.”
A Tinderbox in Three Acts by Cynthia Dewi Oka
BOA Editions | October 11, 2022
In her fourth poetry collection, Oka “performs a lyric accounting of the anti-Communist genocide of 1965, which, led by the Indonesian military and with American assistance, erased and devastated millions of lives in Indonesia.”
Bittering the Wound by Jacqui Germain
Autumn House Press | October 12, 2022
This debut poetry collection is “a firsthand account of the 2014 Ferguson uprising that challenges how we document and report on political unrest.”
Book*hug Press | October 13, 2022
Hargreaves’ latest collection “explores feelings of being distanced from loved ones, physically and emotionally; striving to be better (at chores, at intimacy); and tending to the things that fracture.”
Nomadic Press | October 15, 2022
The stories in The New Low “move around each other, creating everchanging insights between its characters. Each of whom struggle with identity, addictions, judgments, and life’s contradictions.”
Hidden Cargoes by Chris Arthur
EastOver Press | October 15, 2022
This essay collection “ranges over subjects as various as a girl’s ear, a vulture’s egg, the letters in a Scrabble game, a sprig of witch-hazel, and the chasms of complexity contained in an ordinary moment.”
Acre Books | October 15, 2022
In this poetry collection, “sonnets, ghazals, pantoums, villanelles, and a ‘failed georgic’ weave in contemporary subject matter, including social-media comment threads, Pap smears, eclipse glasses, and gun violence.”
Barzakh: The Land In-Between by Moussa Ould Ebnou
Translated from the French by Marybeth Timmermann
Iskanchi Press | October 17, 2022
In this novel set in the distant future, “members of the Institute for the Archeology of Human Thought unearth the bones of Gara, a young man, whose Myelin will unravel the secrets of his ancient consciousness.”
Book*hug Press | October 18, 2022
Dream Rooms is “a book about personal revolution, about unravelling a worldview to make space for different selves and realities.”
Translated from the Danish by Marina Allemano
Book*hug Press | October 18, 2022
Hunger Heart is “a sensual, profound work of autofiction about love, relationships, mental illness, and recovery by one of Denmark’s most celebrated literary writers.”
Your Face My Flag by Julian Gewirtz
Copper Canyon Press | October 18, 2022
In this poetry collection, “Gewirtz explores the place of poetry in a globalized era, shaped by escalating geopolitical tensions between China and ‘the West.'”
Pretend It’s My Body by Luke Dani Blue
Feminist Press | October 18, 2022
This debut story collection “blurs fantasy and reality, excavating new meanings from our varied dysphorias.”
A Knit of Identity by Chris Motto
Regal House Publishing | October 18, 2022
In this novel, “Danny is left struggling to find her identity in a world that doesn’t want her. That is until she stumbles into a hole-in-the-wall bar in a small South Carolina town.”
The Consequences by Manuel Muñoz
Graywolf Press | October 18, 2022
The stories in Muñoz’s new collection “are mostly set in the 1980s in the small towns that surround Fresno.”
What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings
Coach House Books | October 18, 2022
In this anthology edited by John Lorinc, “food writers, journalists, culinary historians, and musicians share histories of their culture’s version of the dumpling, family dumpling lore, interesting encounters with these little delights, and even recipes.”
A Brilliant Loss by Eloise Klein Healy
Red Hen Press | October 18, 2022
This poetry collection, written after the poet’s experience with Wernicke’s aphasia, “is a poetic journey into the loss of language and the reclaiming of it.”
stemmy things by imogen xtian smith
Nightboat Books | October 18, 2022
The poems in this collection “build towards an expansive world celebrating fluidity while casting a critical lens on state power, ecological precarity, and the yearning for queer utopia on stolen land.”
Truth is a Flightless Bird by Akbar Hussain
Iskanchi Press | October 24, 2022
In this novel, “Nice—real name, Theresa” has just arrived at the Nairobi airport, “where she will be picked up by her old friend, Duncan, an American pastor for a small evangelical denomination.”
João by a Thread by Roger Mello
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
elsewhere editions | October 25, 2022
This children’s book is “an intricate and exquisite tale of how bedtime fears can be transformed into wondrous dreams and magical adventures.”
Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene by Alessandra Naccarato
Book*hug Press | October 25, 2022
This essay collection “invites readers to join a contemplation of survival—our own, and that of the elements that surround us.”
Copper Canyon Press | October 25, 2022
Freeman’s latest book of poetry is “a politically urgent yet timeless collection that studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.”
Noor and Bobby by Praline Gay-Para
Translated from the French by Alyson Waters
Restless Books | October 25, 2022
This children’s book is “a compassionate and empathetic introduction to displacement and the realities of war and a heartwarming story of friendship.”
Wave Books | October 25, 2022
This poetry collection “tells a continuum story of a homeland under erasure, in an ethos of erosion, in a multitude of encroaching methane, ice floe, and rising temperatures.”
Slight Return by Rebecca Wolff
Wave Books | October 25, 2022
In this poetry collection, Wolff “voyages in the myopia of American consumer consciousness—erotic regard, spiritual FOMO, gentrification, branding—without destination.”
Daughter of Spies by Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop
Regal House Publishing | October 25, 2022
In this memoir, Alsop “explores who her mother was, why alcohol played such an important role in her mother’s life, and why her mother held herself apart from all her children, especially her only daughter.”
Little Mr. Prose Poem: Selected Poems of Russell Edson by Russell Edson
BOA Editions | October 25, 2022
Edited by Craig Morgan Teicher, this selection of poems spanning Edson’s career presents “a new and contemporary view of a poet of startling imagination and strangeness.”
My Manservant and Me by Hervé Guibert
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Nightboat Books | October 25, 2022
“Written from the uneasy perspective of an aging, incontinent author of extremely successful middlebrow plays,” My Manservant and Me is “a story about the trials and tribulations of having a live-in valet.”
In the Zero of Sky by Tamra Plotnick
Assure Press | October 25, 2022
The poems in this collection “course the dialectic between freedom and containment, banging up against elements and identities along the way.”
You Have Reached Your Destination by Louise Marburg
EastOver Press | October 26, 2022
In this collection of short fiction, Marburg “captures turning points in the lives of twelve disparate women.”
Believers And Hustlers by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
Iskanchi Press | October 28, 2022
This novel is “an exposé into the underbelly of Nigeria’s Pentecostal fervor and the lives of rich celebrity posterity preachers, their motivations, rivalries, pretenses and fears.”
Passager Books | October 30, 2022
In this poetry collection, according to Molly Peacock, Elber “draws us in with wordplay, long Ginsbergian lines, angst, and charm.”
