Focal Point  by Jenny Qi

10/13/2021

Winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award, Focal Point is a scientist's unofficial dissertation, a daughter's faithful correspondence, and a coming-of-age story. Written while Jenny Qi was a young Ph.D. student conducting cancer research after her beloved mother's death, the collection turns to "all the rituals of all the faiths," invoking Western and Eastern mythology and history, metaphors from cell biology, and even Jimi Hendrix.

When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and other Baseball Stories  by E. Ethelbert Miller

09/07/2021

Much-honored Washington, D.C. poet activist E. Ethelbert Miller delights and surprises us with his deft imaginings and portraits. Ethelbert’s poems play out in baseball rhythm and express the joy of living, despite the bitter challenges in today’s world. These poems define our time and allow us to see ourselves as human through the lens of baseball, family and music.

Venice Beach: A Novel  by William Mark Habeeb

08/17/2021

It's 1968. A thirteen-year-old loner flees his abusive father and alcoholic mother for the lure of California. He struggles alone on the streets of Los Angeles, conversing with the ghost of his beloved dog and trying to avoid the police, until a fateful encounter leads him to the bohemian community of Venice Beach, known at the time as the "Slum by the Sea." Venice Beach is a moving tale of the resilience of youth and the quest for our life’s story.

A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form  by Brenda Miller

07/13/2021

An accessible and personable guide to writing creative nonfiction

The Soul of Rock & Roll: Poems Acoustic, Electric & Remixed, 1980-2020  by John Repp

07/01/2021

With 10-gauge steel strings, Repp solos electric in images that shred until we are heart-deep in the bodies of real people. He’s an intellectual, and he’s salt-of-the-earth—an endangered species. Repp’s voice—underrated and never overstated—bottleneck-slides the heart of night and makes us believe in the spirit of living again—it’s that good. —Jan Beatty

Mona at Sea  by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

06/30/2021

A darkly funny coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of the Great Recession that takes the audience on a wild journey through a strange, uncertain modern America.

Faraway Places  by Teow Lim Goh

06/15/2021

Faraway Places resides in the spaces between the wild and the tamed, from orchid gardens and immense seas to caged birds and high alpine landscapes. It may be a private dictionary: “Those / who know the lore can use them / to find their way / in the world.” Haunted and searching, these poems navigate the distances between light and shadow, secrets and silence.

Old Stones, New Roads  by Suzanne S. Rancourt

06/02/2021

A poetic journey that crosses landscapes and histories, as both human and animal. Rancourt’s strong and lyric voice does not back down when challenged by memory or history. Old Stones, New Roads, a poetic journey of capture and release that is weaved with the poet’s own perfect gossamer thread.

Inheritance Revealed  by Cheryl A. Hunter

05/20/2021

When Arianna Sabini is viciously attacked, she awakens and discovers she is a vampire hunter, her boyfriend is a vampire, and the mythology she teaches is not entirely fiction.

The Stars We Share  by Rafe Posey

05/18/2021

Set against the backdrop of WWII, a sweeping, atmospheric novel of sacrifice, ambition, and commitment, and the secrets we keep from the ones we love.

The Rock Eaters  by Brenda Peynado

05/11/2021

What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? Threaded with magic and portals into other worlds, these stories cross borders and break down walls. The Rock Eaters features ghosts, angels perched on rooftops, aliens falling from the sky, Latin American superheroes, and girlhood.

How Not to Drown  by Jaimee Wriston

05/11/2021

“Wriston is utterly entrancing in her fourth novel, imaginatively exploring regrets, grief, obsessions, and love with fluent empathy and mordant humor. Improvising on her haunting signature themes—family conflicts, resilient young women, brokenness, the sea, and mystical beings—Wriston offers a complexly evocative, bittersweet, and richly involving tale.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

The Diamond Cutter's Daughter: a Poet's Memoir  by Elaine Terranova

05/07/2021

In short lyrical essays, Terranova recounts the wonder and difficulty of growing up in a working-class Orthodox Jewish home in the Philadelphia of the 1940s and 1950s. "This lovely book functions as an elegy for a father who was late to appreciate his daughter’s gift. 'A diamond, they say, lasts forever, but so too, I’d wanted to tell him, does some writing.'” —Natasha Sajé

I Used to Be Korean  by Jiwon Choi

04/26/2021

"These sharp-tongued poems, often levitating on their own buoyant wit, are full of Jiwon Choi's delightful 'wickedness and dirty humor.' Her work is propelled by New York immigrant energy, which of course makes it quintessentially American."—Terence Winch

Generous Peril  by Alan Elyshevitz

04/16/2021

The range in this new collection is impressive. Elyshevitz ends his poetry book with the poem “Theory of Everything.” That says it all. Imagine how you think a book of poetry should be written and you will find “Generous Peril.” This is superior poetry.

Put Off My Sackcloth: Essays  by Annie Dawid

04/07/2021

Put Off My Sackcloth is a mosaic of essays about one writer’s journey through a life fraught with crippling interior darkness in an uncertain world to the salve she finds in her “shored-up ruins” and new maternal life beneath the lambent glow of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in South-Central Colorado.

To Zenzi  by Robert L. Shuster

04/04/2021

“... a tragic story brilliantly and seamlessly told, full of love, humor and hope.” — BONNIE JO CAMPBELL “Set against the historic fall of Berlin, this debut novel vibrates with emotion...a sweeping portrait of survival...” —KIRKUS REVIEWS “Heart-wrenching and vibrant...” —FOREWORD REVIEWS

WING  by Denise Low

04/01/2021

Imagined and real worlds intersect as lyric poet Denise Low dances between mortals and the dead, humans and animals, her European and Indigenous heritages. Real pandemics and wildfires set the stage as she illumines connections between the rational and intuitive. From former Poet Laureate of Kansas.

Touching This Leviathan  by Peter Wayne Moe

04/01/2021

Touching This Leviathan asks how we might come to know the unknowable—in this case, whales, animals so large yet so elusive, revealing just a sliver of back, a glimpse of a fluke, or a split-second breach before diving away.

The Smallest Universe  by Wm. Anthony Connolly

04/01/2021

A question of madness or memory is at the heart of this journey of self-discovery.

Feral Ornamentals: Poems  by Charlie Green

03/26/2021

In Feral Ornamentals, Charlie Green takes the particles and atoms that are our lives, reads them inside out, and gives us beauty that says we are here and that every breath is art, whether we are grieving, loving, at war, or simply watching the snow fall and boiling eggs. “You can’t live in the past, but still you can die there” —Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Easy Does It  by Jennifer Moore

03/21/2021

In Easy Does It, Jennifer Moore’s second full-length collection, the speaker brings the reader on an exploration of multiple worlds: the social, the domestic, and the pastoral, considering the difficult questions and problems of the self—of memory, history, grief, and desire.

Stable Weight: A Memoir of Hunger, Horses, and Hope  by Lisa Whalen

03/02/2021

A story of resilience, empowerment, and the transformative power of human-animal bonds, Stable Weight illustrates that what matters isn’t whether we fall, but that we rise. Free with purchase: book club guide, educator’s guide, lesson plans, and assignments appropriate for high school and up.