We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of memoirs, essay collections, and other works of nonfiction published in 2025 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups of fiction, poetry, children’s books, and art and drama as well.
Memoir
Lost Found Kept: A Memoir by Deborah Derrickson Kossmann
Trio House Press | January 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949487-33-6
In this memoir about her mother’s hoarding, Kossmann “comes to understand what’s been lost, what’s been found and what’s been kept in both her own and her mother’s life.”
The Gloomy Girl Variety Show by Freda Epum
Feminist Press | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-55861-310-2
In this memoir, Epum “explores the opposing forces of her ‘no-place, no-where’ identity as a Nigerian American daughter, diasporically displaced, who spent years in and out of institutions seeking treatment for life-threatening mental illness.”
Encounters with Men by Bob Ostertag
Black Lawrence Press | January 21, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-089-5
This memoir contains a “lifetime of intimacies and distances, moments with fathers and teachers, friends and lovers, soldiers, cops, and criminals—even one of the great mass murderers of the late twentieth century.”
Apprentice to the Wild by Kurt Hoelting
Empty Bowl Press | January 22, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-99174-002-9
In this memoir, Hoelting “charts the evolution of his path from his early encounters with wildness and risk on commercial fishing vessels in Alaska to his embrace of Zen practice as a gateway to the wild within.”
Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn by Jeff Copeland
Feral House | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-159-5
This memoir follows a “young, aspiring writer desperate for a break … and the legendary Andy Warhol superstar who gave him the story of a lifetime.”
Unsolicited Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-956692-91-4
According to TaraShea Nesbit, Gaddis “creates a tender, bittersweet story, keeping the light on for all that we have lost,” writing “through the lens of motherhood, marriage, and infertility.”
WTAW Press | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9877197-1-8
In “dream-like vignettes,” this memoir “captures Liz Green’s desire for belonging, grasped only in fleeting instances at restaurant tables.”
The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World by Ted Levin
Green Writers Press | March 20, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9891784-2-1
According to Tom Junod, this memoir “does not just invent a beautifully refurbished language for the close observation of nature; it turns the close observation of nature into an act of moral witness in a threatened world.”
Second Set Chances by Rachael Wesley
Vine Leaves Press | April 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-141-1
This memoir “challenges us to consider what happens when the life we’re living clashes with the one we secretly dream of.”
Chomp Press Pull by Elaina Battista-Parsons
Vine Leaves Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-143-5
According to Jocelyn Mackenzie, this memoir “hits right to the core, conjuring smells of grandma’s kitchen and summoning the feeling of scratchy shag carpet on a hot summer’s day.”
Diptych Before Dying by Thomas McGonigle
Tough Poets Press | April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9798218628567
McGonigle’s memoir, “which the author terms a ‘memory novel,’ is his reflection on his relationship with his father and the inevitably shifting bonds between parent and child.”
Journeys to the Nearby: A Gardener Discovers the Gentle Art of Untravelling by Elspeth Bradbury
Ronsdale Press | May 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781553807247
“Inspired by adventures of world travellers but unwilling to rack up her fossil fuel consumption,” in this book Bradbury “sets out with a deep curiosity to explore the world that exists in her own garden.”
The Boat Not Taken by Joanna Choi Kalbus
WTAW Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9877197-9-4
This “lyrical, often humorous” memoir is “a love letter to an extraordinary woman: an independent widow fiercely devoted yet destructively deceptive to her child.”
Body: My Life in Parts by Nina B. Lichtenstein
Vine Leaves Press | May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-151-0
In the stand-alone but interconnected chapters of this memoir, “body parts serve as portals toward remembrances grounded in the physical body while linking to other forms of experience.”
To Hell with Poverty!: A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four by Jon King
Akashic Books | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-234-0
This memoir “documents King’s story from a south London slum and working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in the legendary post-punk/funk band Gang of Four.”
On the Invisible Palm of God by Joseph Hurka
Vine Leaves Press | June 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-153-4
This memoir is about “an enduring friendship, and the hidden resilience of the human spirit that resides within all of us.”
Ostraca by Isabell Serafin Krause
Vine Leaves Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-155-8
In this book “blending her own life experiences and memoir with short fiction,” Serafin Krause writes about “remembering not just the past, but the complexities of the human heart.”
All the Lands We Inherit by Darby Price
Black Lawrence Press | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-160-1
In this memoir, Price “investigates the ways that matrilineal legacy have shaped her mother, and how that shaping comes to bear on the author herself.”
Organic Matter by E. N. Couturier
Autofocus Books | June 24, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957392-38-7
This memoir “documents Couturier’s experience in the fields and hoop houses over the course of one growing season as she labors alongside an eccentric cast of characters.”
Reading Secrets: A Queer Inheritance of Life and Scripture by Malcolm Himschoot
Catalyst Press | June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511147
In this memoir, Himschoot “travels alongside the ghost of his father, exploring their inherited homophobia and the American culture that shaped their triumphs and tragedies.”
Bobbito’s Book of B-Ball Bong Bong! A Memoir of Sports, Style, and Soul by Bobbito García
Akashic Books | July 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-230-2
In this basketball-themed memoir, García “chronicles his unlikely experiences in and around the game as a Latino raised on hip hop.”
A Long Way From Anywhere: Living Off-Grid In The American West by Norah Esty
Unsolicited Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963115-48-2
In this memoir, Esty “takes readers on her surprising journey from math prodigy and tenured professor to a homesteader in the rugged landscapes of Eastern Oregon.”
Oh, Give Me A Home by Jane Kurtz
Catalyst Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960803-20-7
This memoir in verse “relates the story of a girl’s inside-out view of America as she journeys from Ethiopia, searches for friends and belonging.”
Walking the Tideline: Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast Trail by Caroline Kurtz
Catalyst Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960803-17-7
In this memoir, Kurtz “travels the coast of Oregon on foot in her late sixties, tracing the boundary of sand and salt water, rock and forests, carrying her shelter and food as she navigates the edges of solace and resolution after the death of her husband.”
Ripples in the River by Soorya Townley
Vine Leaves Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-159-6
This true crime memoir is a “modern-day David and Goliath battle, a mother’s journey through unthinkable grief, and a spiritual testament to the power of love.”
Memories That Smell Like Gasoline by David Wojnarowicz
Nightboat Books | July 29, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64362-271-2
In this hybrid memoir, Wojnarowicz, “one of the most provocative artists of his generation, explores memory, violence, and the erotism of public space—all under the specter of AIDS.”
Akashic Books | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-236-4
In this memoir, Brownlee tells her story “of self-empowerment, of healing generational trauma, and of turning pain into hope for herself and her community.”
Trying: A Memoir by Chloé Caldwell
Graywolf Press | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-347-6
According to Kristen Millares Young, Caldwell’s memoir “becomes more about surrendering to the truth of her marriage’s implosion while embracing her own infinite potential outside of timeworn heterosexual norms.”
How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir by Camille U. Adams
Restless Books | August 19, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63206-395-3
“Mapping the fault lines between mother and child,” Adams’s memoir “weaves the Caribbean island’s history of colonial violence with her own family’s legacy of abandonment.”
In the Evening, We’ll Dance–A Memoir in Essays on Love & Dementia by Anne-Marie Erickson
Holy Cow! Press | August 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-66640-695-5
In this memoir, Erickson “lays bare the onset and eventual passing of her husband from dementia.”
Pierian Springs Press | September 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781965784204
Starr’s memoir asks, “What do you do after a phone call, telling you that your sibling is dying? So begins this impossible goodbye, one that brings a brother and sister together in a joyful weaving of their lifetimes.”
Lights in Cold Rooms: A Psychologist Reflects on Family, Aging, Love & Loss by Joan Cusack Handler
CavanKerry Press | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960327-15-4
This book chronicles Handler’s “confrontation with 80 years of complex family dynamics and often difficult love, and explores the path she took to work through depression and ultimately return to wellness.”
Book*hug Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-950-4
Jong’s memoir “documents the slow unravelling of her connection to her faith and the tragic history of her fractured family, shining a light into the dark corners of memory that have haunted her well into adulthood.”
Stolen: Love and Loss in the Time of Covid-19 by Elizabeth Jaeger
Unsolicited Press | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963115-49-9
This memoir is a “raw and gripping diary account of the battle Jaeger’s dad endured with COVID-19 in New York City.”
SOAP Notes by Frannie O’Callaghan
Vine Leaves Press | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-169-5
“With years of experience as a Registered Veterinary Technician,” O’Callaghan “offers an unapologetic window into the daily encounters of the humans who take care of pets” in this memoir.
The Dead Dad Diaries by Erin Slaughter
Autofocus Books | September 23, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957392-40-0
“Part true-crime story, part poetic meditation on seeking to know a parent posthumously,” this memoir “confronts the impact of domestic violence and hereditary addiction on a family lineage, and questions the extent to which we can trust the stories we tell ourselves.”
Motion Dazzle by Jocelyn Jane Cox
Vine Leaves Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-171-8
Cox’s memoir explores how she uses “performance and distraction as coping strategies while demonstrating a capability we all have: to find moments of celebration alongside pain.”
Soundtrack: A Lyric Memoir by Michael V. Smith
Book*hug Press | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-949-8
In this poetic memoir “guided by the music of the era,” Smith “catalogues social prejudices, court rulings, and medical breakthroughs, alongside personal devastations, triumphs, and the search for community.”
A Revisionist History of Loving Men by Lena Ziegler
Autofocus Books | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957392-41-7
This memoir is a “personal and critical exploration of the sexual scripts that exist between women and men, and the normalization of sexual violence as a routine part of heterosexual relationships in the landscape of American rape culture.”
Wayfinding: A Memoir by Renee Gilmore
Trio House Press | October 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781949487626
“Told through a series of car trips and postcards from the road,” Gilmore’s memoir “maps a route toward healing, acceptance, and hope, with stops at Waffle House and the Monaco Grand Prix along the way.”
“You’ve Got Michael” by Dan Beck
Trouser Press Books | October 15, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9990487-0-7
This memoir tells “the story of the high-stakes battle to save Michael Jackson’s career and market his 1995 greatest hits album, as told by the record company executive who was the closest to him.”
Wilderness Mother: A Memoir of 13 Years Off the Grid by Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski
Ronsdale Press | October 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781553807308
The thirtieth-anniversary edition of Barnhardt Kawatski’s 1995 memoir includes new chapters “that expand on her relationship with Jay, his mental health challenges and the break-up of their marriage.”
Last Radiance by Karen Malpede
Vine Leaves Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-176-3
This memoir “invites readers into the underworld of grief and dying, offering lessons in presence, remembrance, and the urgent need to confront a failing medical system with courage and care.”
Akashic Books | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-269-2
In this memoir, a “founder of the iconic band Faith No More shares his coming-of-age and out-of-the-closet story in pre-tech boom San Francisco.”
Mamaleh: A Legacy of Loss and Love by Elaine Culbertson
Tursulowe Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957057-22-4
In Culbertson’s memoir, readers will be immersed in a story “told in the words of a mother and daughter who came from two different worlds but who forged a relationship based on love and respect.”
They Never Left Me: A Holocaust Memoir of Maternal Courage and Triumph by Evelyn Kahn with Hodie Kahn
Ronsdale Press | November 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-55380-732-2
This memoir tells the story of “nine-year-old Evelyn’s survival through the determination and bravery of her mother and grandmother as they hid in the dense forests of Belarus.”
Marsh Hawk Press, Inc. | December 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798987617786
In this anthology edited by Susan Terris and Sandy McIntosh, poets “recall how they found their beginnings” in memoirs that contain “essential information about the development of the craft.”
Slant Books | December 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63982-208-9
Schaap’s memoir details his father’s journey “from Minnesota’s Young Farmer of the Year to financial failure in the farm crisis to a bed in the neurology wing of Mayo Clinic.”
A Century in the Making: A Hundred-Year Journey from Refugee to American by Peter Lindenfeld
Catalyst Press | December 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963511-32-1
Lindenfeld’s memoir “unfolds the story of immigration, assimilation, destruction and rebirth of home and relationships in post war North America.”
Essay Collections
Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope by Catherine Coleman Flowers
Spiegel & Grau | January 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-95411-868-3
This collection of personal and political essays “equips us with clarity, lights a way forward, and rouses us to action–for ourselves and for each other, for our communities, and, ultimately, for our planet.”
Orison Books | March 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949039-54-2
This book-length essay is an “account of the author’s thirtieth birthday aboard a sailboat as it makes its way from Nantucket Harbor to Menemsha Harbor.”
Graywolf Press | March 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-328-5
According to Literary Hub, this essay collection “about listening to music while running” is a “meditation on the ways in which we can deepen our connection to even the things we imagine we understand the best.”
Worthy of the Event: An Essay by Vivian Blaxell
LittlePuss Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964324-99-5
“Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s,” this essay “takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai’i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind.”
Like Love: Essays and Conversations by Maggie Nelson
Graywolf Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-336-0
This essay collection is a “portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.”
Eating Turtle by Alexis Stratton
Harbor Editions | April 10, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957248-47-9
According to Jackson Culpepper, “these five essays travel not only through India and Korea, Taiwan and Australia, but also through grief and the shadow of death, through shifting gender identity, relationships that last and those that fade.”
Tiny Little Landslides by Grace Evanoff
Wet Cement Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9918692-0-1
According to Sylke Rene Meyer, Evanoff “delivers a collection that defines a generation caught between irony and inadequacy” with these essays.
Depth Control by Lauren W. Westerfield
Unsolicited Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-956692-94-5
This book is an “experimental exploration by an essayist, aiming to make sense of and reflect on personal identity, belonging, and the choices that shape us.”
Crevice: A Life Between Worlds by Anna Redsand
Choeofpleirn Press | May 2, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9911790-8-9
In these thirteen essays, Redsand writes “that wherever she is in the world, she will always be living on the edge of Dinétah, in a place she calls ‘Home Not Home.'”
World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After by Martha Park
Hub City Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798885740487
This book of illustrated essays “circles the connections between climate change and faith in the fear and fascination of the end of the world.”
Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Harbor Editions | May 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957248-50-9
In this “small collection of small essays,” Montgomery “examines how the injustice and violence of girlhood leads women to accept—and even claim—small spaces and stories.”
It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays by Tom McAllister
Rose Metal Press | May 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941628-35-5
In this collection, McAllister “challenges himself to write a short essay for every year he’s been alive.”
Soul Friend and Other Love Notes to the Natural World by Sheila McEntee
Blackwater Press | May 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963614-09-1
McEntee explores “the flora and fauna in Appalachian forests, on the shores of the Potomac River, and, especially, in her own backyard” in these twelve personal essays spanning twenty years.
Feral House | May 20, 2025
ISBN: 978-1627311571
Featuring archival film posters, set photos, and other images, Rhodes’s essay collection “examines dozens of movies and tv series, sold to the unsuspecting public as documentaries.”
Dyke Delusions: Essays & Observations by Samantha Mann
Read Furiously | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960869-16-6
This collection is “a mix of body politics, motherhood, and feminine sexuality that showcases some of Samantha Mann’s published work and brand new essays.”
Secret Agent Man by Margot Singer
Barrow Street | June 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-962131-07-0
In this essay collection, Singer “probes the nature of time and history, obscurity and clarity, nostalgia and loss.”
Out There in the Dark by Katharine Coldiron
Autofocus Books | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957392-37-0
This collection of essays “blends film criticism with memoir and fiction, as well as lists, visual diagrams, and Wikipedia collaging.”
American Candy and Other Essays by Alexander Theroux
Tough Poets Press | July 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798218632632
In this essay collection, Theroux “reflects on his father, his time among Trappist monks, the eccentric souls of MIT, the treacheries of hate mail, and the sweet excesses of American candy.”
Split/Lip Press | July 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952897-45-0
“Contaminated by literature and compelled by the impossibility of translating one another, two young lovers fall in love against their better judgment” in this book-length essay.
A Map to Mercy by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Orison Books | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949039-66-5
According to Paul Swanson, Andrew’s “effortless prose carries the reader into the beating heart of contemplative practice, honoring the wisdom of religious traditions that call to her in the hubbub of daily life” in this book-length essay.
Akashic Books | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-255-5
“Celebrating ten years of their dedication to publishing chapbooks by emerging African poets,” this collection “offers a glimpse into Abani and Dawes’s editorial labor and conceptualization of an inclusive African poetic.”
Positively Uncivilized by Rena Priest
Raven Chronicles Press | September 5, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9914032-3-8
The essays in this collection “emphasize the necessity of community to overcome the damage done by human socioeconomic and political systems designed to isolate and shame those vulnerable to those unfair systems.”
Sagging Meniscus | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963846-45-4
The essays in this collection “search for principle in an age of imposture and, rejecting easy formulas, ask what it might mean to live a considered life when body and body politic both are in a state of perpetual emergency.”
Aunonomic Reasoning by Will Alexander
Black Sun Lit | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9863664-6-3
According to Brenda Iijima, this book of essays is “of paramount importance for the spells it casts, for the decolonial guide it is,” and “for the sheer life force it extends to all comrades in fortified kinship.”
Jump Cuts: Essays on Surrealism, Film, Music, Culture, and Other Utopian Topics by Mark Polizzotti
The Song Cave | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9912988-3-4
This collection of essays explores a broad range of subjects “to map the creative act as it strains to fulfill our eternal, unrequited yearning for transcendence.”
Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss and a Home in Time by Samina Najmi
Trio House Press | October 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781949487480
In this essay collection, Najmi “navigates the process of forging her identity as a professor and mother” while “her extended family inspires, haunts, and stirs her to action.”
Bigger: Essays by Ren Cedar Fuller
Autumn House Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781637681084
This collection of essays “invites us to imagine a more generous way of being in the world, drawing on Fuller’s experiences as a daughter, sister, mother, teacher, and patient.”
Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America by Aubrey Hirsch
Split/Lip Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952897-46-7
“From the impossible standards of beauty to the very real dangers of living in a legislated body,” this collection of graphic essays “channels frustration into fearless humor and incisive critique.”
A Different Cloth: Reimagining Faith & Feminism by Dania Suleman
Translated from the French by Nouha Gorani-Homad
Ronsdale Press | October 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781553807346
This book-length essay “offers a fresh perspective that acknowledges the empowering role religion can play in a woman’s life, while exploring meaningful ways to reconcile gender equality with freedom of religion.”
Unexploded Ordnance by Catharina Coenen
Restless Books | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781632064059
“In imaginative prose that interrogates the past with a poet’s curiosity and a scientist’s pen,” this book of essays “seeks to answer how we are shaped by the stories we inherit.”
Open House: Conversations with Writers About Community
Tupelo Press | November 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961209-37-4
Edited by Kristina Marie Darling, this anthology of essays featuring Traci Brimhall, Chris Campanioni, Wendy Chen, Ming Lauren Holden, and more “offers a practical guide to building community, fostering collaboration, and inspiring generosity through the creative arts.”
An Eye For Joy: Noticing the Good World Everywhere by Peg Guilfoyle
Sea Crow Press | November 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961864-39-9
According to Victoria Safford, “this book is a bracing, bright reminder that to pay attention is a life-saving spiritual practice, and anyone can do it.”
Ghosts of Distant Trees by Erica Watson
Porphyry Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7367558-5-3
In this essay collection, Watson “traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska—its vast and shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and the subtle politics of inhabitation.”
Emergent Dharma: Asian American Buddhist Feminists on Practice, Identity, and Resistance
North Atlantic Books | December 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798889842330
The essays in this anthology edited by Sharon A. Suh “reclaim a vibrant feminist Dharma against whitewashing, patriarchy, and model-minority stereotypes.”
Other Nonfiction
Cold Glitter: The Untold History of Canadian Glam by Robert Dayton
Feral House | January 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-154-0
This book about the history of Canadian glam rock is “filled with stories from musicians about what they did to build a career and fight against the old guard controlling the airwaves and stages.”
To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorized Unauthorized History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler
Akashic Books | January 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-213-5
According to Miki Berenyi, Kessler “has elegantly, wittily documented Billy Childish’s maverick life, achievements, and persona with insight and skill, never allowing himself to be slavishly captivated—or repelled—by Billy’s ‘dangerous charisma.’”
Haymarket Books | January 14, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64259-465-2
According to the New York Times, this revised edition of Ridgeway’s 1990 book is a “guidebook through the nether regions of the racist universe.”
Monument Eternal by Alice Coltrane
Akashic Books | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63614-225-8
This book, originally published in 1977, “offers deep insight into Coltrane’s tremendous musical output, and shines a light on her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church organist and bebopper, to sage thought leader Swami Turiyasangitananda.”
The Real Story of Dinosaurs & Dragons: Science Sets the Fossil Record Straight by Philip J. Senter
Feral House | February 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-153-3
In this book, Senter “examines a plethora of bizarre claims about dinosaurs and uses knowledge from modern scholarship to set the record straight.”
Translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer
New Vessel Press | February 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954404-28-1
According to Booklist, this mixed-genre book is an “intense reading experience presenting the human body as a foreign specimen under the surveillance of judging, watchful eyes.”
Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis
Haymarket Books | February 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798888902493
Lewis’s book is “at once a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, and a sex-radical retort to femmephobia in all its guises.”
Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation’s River by Charlotte Taylor Fryar
Bellevue Literary Press | March 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1954276345
According to Library Journal, this book is “for readers looking for a different lens through which to view the U.S. capital and to see both the ugly impacts of racism and the beauty of nature.”
London Calling New York New York by Peter Silverton
Trouser Press Books | March 12, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9898283-5-7
According to Don Letts, this book “unpacks how Sinatra and the Clash shaped their cities—and how those cities in turn shaped their iconic songs, recorded at the same time but worlds apart.”
Crosshatch: Martha Schofield, the Forgotten Feminist (1839–1916) by Christina Larocco
Blackwater Press | March 18, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963614-08-4
In this biography “the feminist Martha Schofield emerges as a complex character, and also a complicated one—a perfect foil for our deeply complicated times and a brilliant companion for Larocco’s own most elegant mind,” according to Beth Kephart.
Yuck: The Birth & Death of the Weird & Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia by Barret Baumgart
Wandering Aengus Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 979-8218515751
According to Erik Davis, this “ode to the Joshua tree—part poetry, part cultural history, part confrontation with a Mojave mystery—deftly honors one of the Southwest’s most compelling and symbolically rich inhabitants.”
Omer Calendar of Biblical Women by Jill Hammer
Ayin Press | March 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961814-20-2
This illustrated guidebook is an “exploratory, mystical, and feminist companion for the traditional Jewish practice of counting the Omer.”
A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled by Alex Green
Bellevue Literary Press | April 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1954276420
This book recounts “the rise, fall, and redemption of the doctor behind America’s first public school for mentally disabled people.”
Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition by Paul B. Preciado
Graywolf Press | April 15, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-332-2
This book is a “mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry, and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility.”
The Chicano Documentary by Jesús Salvador Treviño
Arte Público Press | April 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89375-010-2
In this book, Treviño “examines the history of non-fiction cinema made by Mexican Americans from 1969 to the present.”
The re in refuge by Adrianne Kalfopoulou
Red Hen Press | May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781636282763
The linked essays in this collection “investigate ideas of refuge, broadly defined, from the intimacies of romance to the promises of the nation-state.”
Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig
Coach House Books | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781552455043
Helwig’s prose “confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused and demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.”
Motherhood and Its Ghosts by Iman Mersal
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Transit Books | May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9798893380170
According to Clancey D’Isa, Mersal’s work suggests “an altogether different dissonance between represented motherhood—in photographs, literature, and cultural memory—and the lived experience of maternal ambivalence, love, and loss.”
An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing by Wendy Elisheva Somerson
North Atlantic Books | 2025
ISBN: 9798889841876
In this book, Somerson “shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies—and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging.”
The Final Spire: ‘Mystery Mountain’ Mania in the 1930s by Trevor Marc Hughes
Ronsdale Press | May 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781553807223
This book tells the story of four mountaineers in 1934 who “piled into their Plymouth and pointed its headlights west to Tatlayoko Lake in British Columbia.”
Charlottesville: An American Story by Deborah Baker
Graywolf Press | June 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-341-4
In this book, Baker “shows how a city more associated with Thomas Jefferson than civil unrest became a flashpoint in a continuing struggle over our nation’s founding myths.”
The Return of Black Nationalism and the Death of White Supremacy by Vincent Adejumo
Feral House | June 17, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-162-5
In this book, Adejumo “takes readers on a fascinating journey through time, unraveling the rich history of Black Nationalism and its role as a steadfast defense against white supremacy.”
Putafeminista by Monique Prada
Translated from the Portuguese by Amanda De Lisio
Feminist Press | July 8, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-55861-339-3
Prada’s manifesto “argues for the validity of sex work as feminist labor and tracks the innovations introduced by Brazilian sex workers to feminist internet discourse, street actions, and governmental advocacy.”
Blood of Gods: Metal. Mayhem. Wine. by Stacy Buchanan
Feral House | July 29, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62731-160-1
This multi-genre collection originally published as a magazine is a “full-bodied tribute to the power, precision, and passion that both headbangers and winemakers pour into their craft.”
Animal Mycophiles by Eva Gordon
Green Writers Press | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9923988-4-7
“From worms feasting on fungi to elephants seeking medicinal mushrooms,” Gordon’s book “reveals the captivating ways in which creatures interact with the fungal kingdom.”
Open Reality: Meeting the Polycrisis Together With All Beings by Shodo Spring
Sea Crow Press | September 2, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961864-30-6
This environmental book “opens practical possibilities for creating a shared, flexible culture that knows the natural world both as family and as a working partner.”
Writing as a Way of Life: A Book About Art, Craft, and Devotion by Brian Morton
Black Lawrence Press | September 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-177-9
“Drawing on a rich and varied career as a writer and teacher,” Morton “provides writers with a guidebook for finding the psychic equipment they’ll need to remain committed to their craft over the long haul.”
Guest Privileges by Gaar Adams
Dzanc Books | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-30-3
“Weaving memoir with unprecedented reportage,” this book is a “decade-long journey of discovery through the clandestine queer communities of the Gulf States, and into the very nature of home and belonging.”
Marginalia: An Autobiography by Naomi Washer
Autofocus Books | September 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957392-39-4
“Comprised of a decade’s worth of notes made in the margins of other writers’ books,” Washer’s writing “accumulates into an essay that interrogates both its own form and its author’s sense of self.”
North Atlantic Books| September 30, 2025
ISBN: 979-8889842811
In this book, “certified personal trainer Damien Joyner not only explodes the myth that growing older means growing weaker—he offers expert guidance and safe, simple, effective exercises to empower you to regain and maintain your strength and autonomy.”
The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam by Lana Lin
Dorothy, a publishing project | September 30, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-948980-29-6
“Situated between memoir, social criticism, and conceptual art,” this book is an “incisive response to a modernist classic and an affecting exploration of the poetics and politics of our times.”
Book*hug Press | October 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781771669603
“Combining scientific investigation with empathy, humour, and artistic curiosity,” this book is a “groundbreaking addition to an urgent dialogue about mental health.”
North Atlantic Books | October 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798889842774
In this book, Rao “illuminates the essential—but often unseen—relationships between caste and gender in yoga.”
The Future Is Collective by Niloufar Khonsari
North Atlantic Books | October 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798889841975
Khonsari’s book is a “practical guide to transforming work culture for nonprofits and social-justice organizations, using principles of collective governance and participatory democracy.”
The Torah in the Tarot by Stav Appel
Ayin Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781961814301
In this booklet accompanying a tarot deck, Appel “has presented a landmark contribution to the field of Tarot studies—revealing that when we perceive the Tarot through a Jewish lens, we can, at long last, recognize the Torah hidden in the Tarot.”
Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) by Claude Cahun
Translated from the French by Susan de Muth
siglio | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938221-36-1
The revised edition of this out-of-print translation “includes novelist and critic Pierre Mac Orlan’s original 1930 preface along with contemporary essays by scholar Amelia Groom and translator de Muth.”
The Five Blessings of Ifá by Gabrielle Felder
North Atlantic Books | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798889841043
Felder’s book “explores how Black communities across the diaspora draw strength from ancestral wisdom, family, community care, and mutual aid, using the principles of Ifá—a West African spiritual tradition—as a guiding framework.”
Green Writers Press | October 28, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9914134-5-9
This collection of letters envisions “a path for humanity’s reintegration with nature, and a chance to rescue the life force that runs through all of us.”
My Heart Is Good: Treaty Rights and the Rise of a S’Klallam Fishing Community by Ron Charles with Josh Wisniewski
Empty Bowl Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-991740-05-0
Told through the life story of Port Gamble S’Klallam elder Ron Charles, this book “makes an original contribution to the growing body of treaty-rights literature, Salish Sea history, and Native American oral history.”
The Danube Empire: An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement by Robert Shields Mevissen
University of Pittsburgh Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-0-8229-6779-8
“Taking a unique environmental perspective to explore questions of transnational solidarity and identity,” this book “argues that the Danube River served as both a catalyst and a tool for institution building.”
LittlePuss Press | November 4, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964322-08-7
Edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross, this book revealing “the secret history of contemporary transgender culture” features all four issues of the 1990s zine Gendertrash From Hell as well as previously unseen drafts from the unfinished fifth issue and essays by Trish Salah and Leah Tigers.
Translated from the Polish by Mark Ordon
Deep Vellum | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960385-47-5
In this book about the Indian city Auroville, Boni “journeys deep into this unique community, uncovering stories of hope, disillusionment, and resilience.”
Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement by Jessica Hernandez
North Atlantic Books | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798889840978
In this book, Hernandez “offers readers an Indigenous, Global-South lens on the climate crisis, delivering a compelling and urgent exploration of its causes—and its costs.”
Diplomat in the Kitchen by Jeremiah Knight
Catalyst Press | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 979-8218518363
This cookbook is “a culinary journey that transports you across continents, celebrating both the authenticity of beloved dishes and the exciting fusions that give them new life.”
The Last House Before the Sea by Gabi Martínez
Translated from the Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz
Restless Books | November 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63206-403-5
In this “magnificent account of a year lived on Buda, a rural island in northern Spain,” Martínez “contemplates sprawling coastal marshes, flocks of nesting seabirds, and a relentless Atlantic horizon.”
The Cavalier by Nathalie Quintane
Translated from the French by Jonathan Larson
Winter Editions | November 12, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-959708-15-5
According to Ryan Ruby, this book follows the “excavation of the radical political and cultural energies that have been systematically snuffed out during the unending counter-revolution that followed May ’68.”
Sikodiwa by Carl Lorenz Cervantes
North Atlantic Books | December 2, 2025
ISBN: 9798889842637
In his debut book of nonfiction, Cervantes “draws from Filipino folklore, language, and culture to reorient toward an Indigenous worldview: one that rejects being seen as a passive object in history.”
Nothing But Time: Conversations with Peter Mettler on Life and Cinema by José Teodoro
Anvil Press | December 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77214-253-2
According to Atom Egoyan, this book of conversations between Teodoro and filmmaker Peter Mettler is “a unique cinematic/literary achievement, combining the two forms with a fascinatingly harnessed alchemy.”
As I Was Saying by Cecilia Konchar Farr and Janie Sisson
Dalkey Archive Press | December 16, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62897-458-4
This scholarly reading companion to Stein’s novel The Making of Americans is “proof that The Making of Americans is not unreadable as charged, and offers accessible entry to the experimental writing Stein valued and promoted most—the original modernist novel.”
