Support small presses and indie bookstores by picking a read from the list below, which features dozens of new books forthcoming in November from CLMP members. (Take a look at last month’s releases as well.)
Tupelo Press; November 1, 2020
The lyric essays in Thomas Gardner’s latest collection “focus on moments in our ordinary lives when something within us breaks and we are cast out to wander and sing.”
Tupelo Press; November 1, 2020
According to Kaveh Akhbar, the poems in Tahat’s debut collection are “written in a compelling new form of the poet’s own invention that participate, fully — they praise, weep, spit, beg, laugh, choke, sing.”
The Marathon Poet by Åke Hodell
Ugly Duckling Presse; November 1, 2020
Translated by Fia Backström, this poetry collection from the “poet-artist of the Swedish post-war avant-garde” is an “absurd, satirical, tour-de-force” first published in 1981.
Ugly Duckling Presse; November 1, 2020
Translated by Joan Brooks, the poems in this collection “employ history as a discursive tool to understand the present—stories of revolution, movement in time and space, life, and livelihood emerge.”
Ugly Duckling Presse; November 1, 2020
First published in 1972, this translated poetry collection is, according to Lucy R. Lippard, “an example of how Ulises Carrión and his peers defined what we used to call the avant-garde.”
Particulate Matter by Felicia Luna Lemus
Akashic Books; November 3, 2020
Set in Los Angeles, this memoir is Lemus’s “collection of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits of a challenging year that threatened all she loved most.”
Black Lotus 2: The Vow by K’wan
Akashic Books; November 3, 2020
According to Publishers Weekly, ““K’wan delivers a lean, tightly plotted tale that balances noir aesthetics with comic book flair.”
the she said dialogues: flesh memory by Akilah Oliver
Nightboat Books; November 3, 2020
First published in 1999, this poetry collection “investigates the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal iden- tity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.”
Goodbye, Apostrophe by Peter Schmitt
Regal House Publishing; November 3, 2020
According to Denise Levertov, in his latest collection Schmitt “gives his attention generously to what he observes, to detail as to mass. A real poet.”
At the Lucky Hand, aka the Sixty-Nine Drawers by Goran Petrović
Deep Vellum; November 3, 2020
Translated by Peter Agnone, this award-winning Serbian novel “explores what it means to read and be a reader—ultimately acting as a love letter to the power of literature.”
Deep Vellum; November 3, 2020
Translated by Thomas Bunstead, this short story collection—the first literary translation from Sierra Zapotec—”meshes magical realism with the everyday reality of indigenous life in Mexico.”
Fonograf Editions; November 5, 2020
Dao Strom’s Instrument is “an experiment in multimodal poetics—inhabiting a synergistic blend of poetry, music, and visual art: the artist’s three forms of ‘voice.'”
Nightboat Books; November 10, 2020
The poems in Hunt’s latest collection sit “at the intersection of poetry and emancipatory politics—racial and gender justice, feminist ethics, and participatory democracy.”
One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney
Coffee House Press; November 10, 2020
In this novel set over the course of one night, “a young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-ready dog who may or may not be a ghost.”
The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West
Feminist Press; November 10, 2020
West’s first novel, originally published in the 1940s, is “a classic of American literature by a groundbreaking African American woman writer whose work deserves widespread and enduring recognition.”
Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic
Tupelo Press; November 15, 2020
The poets featured in this anthology—edited by Kristina Marie Darling and Jeffrey Levine—”bear powerful witness to the COVID-19 pandemic in writing that reels from collective grief and uncertainty.”
Center for Literary Publishing/Colorado Review; November 15, 2020
Phan’s debut collection of prose poems “offers a fine-grained meditation on grief—personal, familial, ecological, and political.”
Night Burial by Kate Bolton Bonnic
Center for Literary Publishing/Colorado Review; November 15, 2020
Winner of the 2020 Colorado Prize for Poetry, this debut collection is, according to Harryette Mullen, a consideration of “what it means for the living to attend to the dying.”
Milk and Cake Press; November 15, 2020
This new chapbook “mines horror films, witchcraft, the mother/daughter relationship, and the death of the mother.”
Miami Noir: The Classics by Les Standiford
Akashic Books; November 17, 2020
The latest noir anthology from Akashic Books “highlights an outstanding tradition of legendary writers exploring the dark side of paradise.”
A Million Aunties by Alecia McKenzie
Akashic Books; November 17, 2020
In McKenzie’s novel, “American-born artist Chris travels to his mother’s homeland in the Caribbean hoping to find some peace and tranquility.”
The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic
Open Letter; November 17, 2020
Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, this collection of essays “takes on the dreams, hopes, and fears of modern life.”
The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction
Rose Metal Press; November 17, 2020
Edited by Zoë Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore, this anthology features selections from twenty years of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.
Altar for Broken Things by Deborah A. Miranda
BkMk Press; November 17, 2020
According to Heid E. Erdrich, each poem in this collection is “a ripeness offered—to unknown gods—in fruit, flower, feathers, even flesh ended in rampage.”
Dark Braid by Dara Yen Elerath
BkMk Press; November 17, 2020
Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, this debut collection “bridges the universal and the personal by focusing on the body, problematic relationships, illness (both mental and physical) and feelings of being an outsider.”
Fault Lines by Meena Alexander
Feminist Press; November 17, 2020
Featuring a preface by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and published in a new edition on the two-year anniversary of Alexander’s passing in 2018, this memoir “follows one woman’s evolution as a writer at home—and in exile—across continents and cultures.”
Photostats by Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Siglio Press; November 20, 2020
Featuring writing by Mónica de la Torre and Ann Lauterbach, Photostats is “a series of fixed works with white serif text on black fields framed behind glass to create a reflective surface.”
Frog Pond Splash by Ray Johnson & William S. Wilson
Siglio Press; November 20, 2020
This juxtaposition of work by Ray Johnson and William S. Wilson “intends to suspend and magnify their relationship as well as provide an intimate portrait of the fractured, disappearing Johnson that only Wilson could render, through an also diffuse lens.”
Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann by Erin Courtney
53rd State Press; November 20, 2020
Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann “is a deeply reflective, reflecting, refracting play about trauma, God, patterns, and the way they live in our bodies, our minds, and acts of love.”
There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife by JinJin Xu
Radix Media; November 20, 2020
The winner of the Own Voices Chapbook Prize, this poetry chapbook is “an elegiac illumination of personal and political histories misremembered and censored.”
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics
Nightboat Books; November 24, 2020
Edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, this anthology is “a collection of formally inventive writing by trans poets against capital and empire.”
Two Half Faces by Mustafa Stitou
Deep Vellum; November 24, 2020
Translated by David Colmer, Stitou’s English-language debut “spans the career of an adventurous, exalted poet, a master of the Dutch language and a prophet of his time.”
Shackled Freedom by Dasan Ahanu
Aquarius Press/Willow Books; November 24, 2020
This new poetry collection by Dasan Ahanu explores “black living in the modern American South.”
Ballroom Harry: Volume II by Harry Goaz
Deep Vellum; November 24, 2020
This new photography collection “picks up the trail of actor-artist Harry Goaz as he’s reprised his infamous role on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.”
SorrowLand Oracle by Ayodele Nzinga
Nomadic Press; November 27, 2020
This poetry collection is “a compendium of spells, incantations, prayers, and their translations into the event of being Black in modernity.”
