Mid-Atlantic: A Regional Spotlight

Learn more about the landscape of independent publishing in the Mid-Atlantic region, including presses and magazines based in the area, local book fairs and festivals, and regional awards, as well as books set in or about the area.

In keeping with the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Alliance, CLMP defines the Mid-Atlantic as including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Books Set in the Mid-Atlantic

Poetry

Language Arts by Justin Allen (Wendy’s Subway | September 10, 2024)
In this collection of prose and poetry, Allen “moves between the fictional island nation Hatnaha and the geographies of his own artistic formation, from the underground punk scene of Washington, DC, and Baltimore to New York’s Black art world.”
(Distributed by Asterism Books. ISBN: 9798986337593)

Murmur by Cameron Barnett (Autumn House Press | February 27, 2024)
In his second collection—many poems in which engage with Pittsburgh and the surrounding area—Barnett “traces a Black man’s lineage through time and space in contemporary America, navigating personal experiences, political hypocrisies, pop culture, social history, astronomy, and language.”
(Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. ISBN: 9781637680872)

Landguage/Mirror Me by Marina Blitshteyn (BUNNY/ Fonograf Editions | November 18, 2025)
These formally distinct chapbooks, featuring a speaker who lives in New York City, “share the trappings of gendered and classed experiences where freedom isn’t free.”
(Distributed by NYU Press. ISBN: 9781964499604)

new york ironweed by Amanda Deutch (Fence Books | March 31, 2026)
The poems in this collection “emerge from our shared context of climate and insect crisis, paying care and attention to the plants wildly growing from cracks in concrete.”
(Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. ISBN: 9798989978526)

CHARM(ed) by Ashley Elizabeth (fifth wheel press | November 11, 2024)
In this poetry collection, Elizabeth “chronicles Baltimore life and grapples with the idea of home and belonging,” celebrating “a city with deep roots, history, and culture—particularly the food.”
(Distributed by Asterism Books. ISBN: 9798991523622)

Songs for the Land-Bound by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza (June Road Press | September 24, 2024)
Set in the Pittsburgh area, this debut poetry collection explores “the constraints and anxieties of midlife in the midst of climate breakdown, of motherhood in a period of personal and planetary vulnerability.”
(Distributed by Asterism Books. ISBN: 9798987432822)

Alias Irene by Elisabeth Murawski (Fernwood Press | January 6, 2026)
In this poetry collection, which includes poems set in Virginia, Murawski “turns a blazing, unflinching eye toward the moments that shape us—those fragments of childhood, faith, family, and loss that echo long after they pass.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781594981920)

Nonfiction

It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays by Tom McAllister (Rose Metal Press | May 14, 2025)
In this collection by a lifelong resident of Philadelphia and neighboring New Jersey, McAllister “challenges himself to write a short essay for every year he’s been alive.”
(Distributed by Itasca Books. ISBN: 9781941628355)

Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation’s River by Charlotte Taylor Fryar (Bellevue Literary Press | March 11, 2025)
According to Library Journal, this book is “for readers looking for a different lens through which to view the US capital and to see both the ugly impacts of racism and the beauty of nature.”
(Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. ISBN: 9781954276345)

Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia by Laura Jackson (Autumn House Press | October 18, 2024)
In her debut essay collection, Jackson describes “life in West Virginia while dismantling stereotypes portrayed in popular media with humor and tenderness.”
(Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. ISBN: 9781637680988)

The Bookstore Book by Ron Kolm (Pink Trees Press | May 12, 2023)
Kolm’s memoir “celebrates his half-century as a Manhattan bookseller and is filled with street dramas starring desperate characters, hyped-up celebrity customers, and hipster scenes of the past.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781666402063)

Watching the River Run: A Photographic Journey down the Youghiogheny River by Tim Palmer (University of Pittsburgh Press | March 4, 2025)
This photo essay “takes us down one of America’s most magnificent rivers,” the Youghiogheny River, which runs through Pennsylvania and Maryland.
(Distributed by Longleaf. ISBN: 9780822948414)

Fiction

Tales from Manila Ave. by Patrick Joseph Caoile (Sundress Publications | November 11, 2025)
In Caoile’s debut short fiction collection, much of which takes place in New Jersey, “tenants gather to swap meals and stories, workers strive to prove their worth, sons and daughters revisit their relationships with faith, patriotism, and their own parents.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781951979843)

Disco Fries & Scenic Drives: Life in the Garden State (Read Furiously | October 21, 2025)
Edited by S. Atzeni and Adam Wilson, this anthology features fiction, essays, photography, comics, and poetry “to remind us of the wonderful and weird tales that make up the Garden State.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781960869227)

If You Leave by Margaret Hutton (Regal House Publishing | October 21, 2025)
According to Molly McCloskey, this novel’s “evocation of wartime Washington, DC, captures brilliantly the texture of everyday life, both the limbo of waiting for the war’s end and the pinched quality of women’s lives.”
(Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. ISBN: 9781646036417)

American Gospel by Miah Jeffra (Black Lawrence Press | March 24, 2023)
In this novel set in Baltimore, “three voices braid together a portrait of a neighborhood in flux, the role of community and violence in our time, and the struggles of a very real and oft misunderstood city.”
(Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. ISBN: 9781625570437)

My Therapist Says This Grief Journal Is a Good Idea by Andrew Katz (Lanternfish Press | March 11, 2025)
In this novel set in Southeast Pennsylvania and South New Jersey, “KJ fills his therapist-recommended grief journal with plenty of sarcasm, excerpts from sweary, punny high-school short stories, and fourth-wall-breaking asides.”
(Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. ISBN: 9781941360859)

Silent Cauldron by E. B. Moore (Frayed Edge Press | September 30, 2025)
This historical novel based on true conditions in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary “explores the tensions a girl experiences when she wants wider horizons than what the prevailing society deems appropriate.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781642510645)

A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (EastOver Press | October 28, 2025)
In this novel set in New York City, an amnesiac man’s “search to discover his true identity exposes how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt.”
(Distributed by Ingram. ISBN: 9781958094631)

Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm (Dzanc Books | May 6, 2025)
“Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades,” this novel set mostly in New York City and Upstate New York “combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief.”
(Distributed by Publishers Group West. ISBN: 9781938603280)

Independent Presses Based in the Mid-Atlantic

Delaware
DILIM Press
Violet Winding Stars Press

Maryland
Alan Squire Publishing
BrickHouse Books
CityLit Press
Compass Press
Fallen Tree Press
fifth wheel press
Mason Jar Press
Passager Books
Sligo Creek Publishing Company
Solomon-Berl Media
Washington Writers’ Publishing House
Watertower Press
Whittle Micro-Press
Yellow Arrow Publishing

New Jersey
Arcane Lyre Press
CavanKerry Press
Digging Press
Echo Thread Books
Get Fresh Books Publishing
Read Furiously
Sagging Meniscus Press
Terrapin Books

Pennsylvania
American Poetry Review
Autumn House Press
Books by Hippocampus
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Cosmorama
Etruscan Press
Frayed Edge Press
Hidden River Publishing
June Road Press
Lanternfish Press
Lefty Blondie Press
New Door Books
Oprelle Publications
Radiator Press
Saturnalia Books
Thirty West Publishing House
Tursulowe Press
University of Pittsburgh Press
Wild Lot Press

Virginia
Best New Poets (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
Modern Artist Press
Relegation Books
Gival Press

Washington DC
Daredevil Press
Day Eight
Hamby Stern Publishing
JackLeg Press
Neon Hemlock
Word Works

West Virginia
Blackwater Press
Mountain State Press

Print Literary Magazines Based in New England

Maryland
The Avenue Journal
Baltimore Review
Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal at Washington College
Full Bleed (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
The Hopkins Review
Jarnal
Passager Journal
Potomac Review
Struggle Magazine
Yellow Arrow Journal

New Jersey
Adanna Literary Journal
American Writers Review
Exacting Clam
Lips Poetry Magazine
midnight & indigo
Pinky Thinker Press
Paterson Literary Review
Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
RARITAN
Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Small Orange
StoryQuarterly
The Vagabond’s Verse
By the WAYE

New York
African Voices (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
Artifice
AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
Bellevue Literary Review
Big Score Lit
Blueline Magazine
Book/Mark Quarterly Review
The Brooklyn Review
Circumference
Comstock Review
Cult. Magazine
Curlew New York
DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE
The Drift (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
Epiphany – A Literary Journal
EPOCH
EXCERPT Magazine
Fence
Fiction
Frog Mag
Hanging Loose Magazine
Hudson Review
Italiana
J Journal: New Writing on Justice
Lampblack
LIBER: A Feminist Review
Lilith Magazine
Literaturhaus
LONESOME
Lost Pilots Lit
Manhattan Review
Mars Review of Books
The Metropolitan Review
Mom Egg Review
Mosaic
Mystery Tribune
new words {press}
Night Picnic
No, Dear
Notch Magazine
One Story (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
Paper Brigade (Read our publisher spotlight here.)
Paris Review
A Public Space
Quadrangle
Room: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
Seneca Review
Southampton Review
Vestiges
Washington Square Review
Windmill
The Woven Tale Press

Pennsylvania
American Poetry Review
Dracula Beyond Stoker
Gabby & Min’s Literary Review
Lake Effect
Modern Language Studies
The Fourth River
The Oakland Review
Totem
Voices from the Attic
Women’s Review of Books

Virginia
Artemis Journal
Gargoyle Magazine
Iris Literature and Arts Magazine
phoebe
Quibble Lit
Radon Journal
Virginia Quarterly Review

Washington DC
Sufi: Journal of Mystical Philosophy and Practice
Tendrils
Union Spring Magazine
Prospectus: A Literary Offering

Book Fairs and Festivals in the Mid-Atlantic

Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair
Baltimore, MD
2026: March 4-7

Brooklyn Book Festival
Brooklyn, NY
2026: September 20-28

Bucks County Book Festival
Doylestown, PA
2025: May 3

Collingswood Book Festival
Collingswood, NJ
2026: October 3

Gaithersburg Book Festival
Gaithersburg, MD
2026: May 16

Easton Book Festival
Easton, PA
2025: October 13-22

Harlem Book Fair
Harlem, NY
2026: August 29

Jersey Art Book Fair
Jersey City, NJ
2026: May 1-3

Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair
New York, NY
2025: September 11-14

Rainbow Book Fair
New York, NY
2026: May 9

Schomburg Centennial Festival
New York, NY
2025: June 14

West Virginia Book Festival
Charleston, WV
2025: October 25

US Book Show
New York, NY
2026: June 2-3

Virginia Festival of the Book
Charlottesville, VA
2026: March 20-22

Regional Awards

Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize
The Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize is given annually for the best poetry collection published between July and June by a resident of Upstate New York. There is no entry fee.

Gotham Book Prize
The Gotham Book Prize honors a work of nonfiction or fiction set in or about New York City.

NAIBA Book of the Year Award
The NAIBA Book of the Year Award, given by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, recognizes an author who was born or lived in the Mid-Atlantic region, and/or a book whose story takes place in the region.

New Jersey Authors’ Awards
The New Jersey Authors’ Awards, given by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, “encourage and celebrate books about New Jersey” in five nonfiction categories.

New York City Book Awards
The New York City Book Awards, given by the New York Society Library, “honor books of literary quality or historical importance that, in the opinion of the selection committee, evoke the spirit or enhance appreciation of New York City.”

Virginia Literary Awards
The Virginia Literary Awards, presented by the Library of Virginia, are given to Virginia authors in the categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and to nonfiction authors for works about a Virginia subject.

Books Set in the Mid-Atlantic

Poetry

Nonfiction

Fiction

Independent Presses Based in the Mid-Atlantic

Print Literary Magazines Based in New England

Book Fairs and Festivals in the Mid-Atlantic

Regional Awards

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