"The new flash fiction collection by Sherrie Flick, coeditor of Flash Fiction America and author of Thank Your Lucky Stars and Whiskey, Etc., a Foreword INDIES bronze prize for best story collection. I Have Not Considered Consequences delves into the complexities of grief, desire, and a peculiar intersection between humans and bears. Flick's evocative and thought-provoking stories follow characters like Bobby, a local home inspector who zips into a bear suit on his daily rounds, and a Gen-X couple, Matty and Trudy, navigating the ups and downs of their adult lives, from a dead fish named Patti Smith to dashed dreams of indie rock stardom. Women wander through small-town streets as they ponder love, allegiance, and Edith Wharton. In Flick's world, bears don't just roam the wild-they play basketball, dance, and even work as midlevel business professionals. Through this memorable cast of characters, Flick reveals intriguing secrets about humanity and yearning with her signature blend of stark honesty and humor"--
A playful debut short story collection imagining women's lives in a world free of social limitations. Amid heightened restrictions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, Lynn Schmeidler's debut short story collection, Half-Lives, is a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women's bodies and psyches. Playful and experimental, these sixteen stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where structures of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply. The protagonists grapple with the roles they choose and with those that are thrust upon them as they navigate their ever-evolving emotional lives. A woman lists her vagina on Airbnb, Sleeping Beauty is a yoga teacher who lies in state on the dais of her mother's studio, and a museum intern writes a confession of her affair in the form of a hijacked museum audio guide. Half-Lives is the 2023 Rising Writer Prize winner, selected by Matt Bell.
"The second book by NAACP Image Award finalist Cameron Barnett, Murmur considers the question of how we become who we are. The answers Barnett offers in these poems are neither safe nor easy, as he 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. Barnett synthesizes unexpected connections and contradictions, exploring the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the death of Terence Crutcher in 2016 and searching both the stars of Andromeda and a plantation in South Carolina. A diagnosis from the poet's infancy haunts the poet as he wonders, "like too many Black men," if "a heart is not enough to keep me alive.""--
"Erica Reid's debut collection, Ghost Man on Second, traces a daughter's search for her place in the world after estrangement from her parents. Reid writes, "It's hard to feel at home unless I'm aching." Growing from this sense of isolation, Reid's stories create new homes in nature, in mythology, and in poetic forms-including sestinas, sonnets, and golden shovels-containers that create and hold new realizations and vantage points. Reid stands up to members of her family, asking for healing amid dissolving bonds. These poems move through emotional registers, embodying nostalgia, hurt, and hope. Throughout Ghost Man on Second, the poems portray Reid's active grappling with home and confrontation with the ghosts she finds there"--
St. Germain and Whitford's collaborative anthology expertly portrays the contemporary essay's vast possibilities in the range of lyric to narrative, giving any writer a firm grounding in both the craft and form of contemporary essays.
Dilworth's first anthology is an exemplary compilation of short fiction by American writers of great promise that present an astounding variety of content and voice.
"In Ishmael Mask, Charles Kell reminds us that identity is precarious. Kell's collection is a collage of the journeys and interior lives of various wanderers-from Ishmael, the son of Hagar, to Melville's Ishmael, and from Pierre of The Ambiguities to Pierre Guyotat. Each poem strips back the mask and beckons us to witness humanity in its barest forms. Captain Ahab's leg, Ishmael's arm, and Pierre's severed head serve as invitations to consider hunger and hope. The inspirations behind these poems-the Bible, Heraclitus, Melville, Guyotat, Tomaéz éSalamun-are transformed by Kell, conjuring dreamscapes both dazzling and haunting. Ishmael Mask masterfully allows a glimpse into the human experience of feeling lost-even when right at home, even in our own bodies"--
"Liza Katz Duncan's debut collection is a poignant exploration of the unpredictable shifts that shape our lives. Given considers the notions of home and family and how to survive the changes and losses associated with both. Duncan conjures her home, the New Jersey Shore, in clear and unsentimental lines: "Call of the grackle, / whine of the turkey vulture. Blighted clams, // raw and red in their half-shells." Duncan's poems also explore the devastation brought to this place and its community by Superstorm Sandy and the continued impacts of climate change. Interwoven into this thread is the narrator's miscarriage; the parallels between the desecrated landscape and the personal catastrophe further contribute to the layers of tenderness in this collection, as Duncan urges us to remember and to witness. Despite tragedy and loss, Given is imbued with persistent, dogged hope, showing how survival persists amongst the wreckage, and from this debris is a path towards healing our grief"--
"In this poetry collection, J.D. Debris focuses on characters who live on society's outskirts and demand greater visibility in the face of marginalization. At the book's heart are extended narrative elegies for two musicians. First, the poet follows Mexican singer and songwriter Chalino Sâanchez as he avenges his sister's sexual assault, and then he turns to Gato Barbieri, an influential Argentine tenor saxophonist who is haunted by a shadowy 'man in dusk-colored glasses.' As these musicians question their purpose, we as readers are invited to reflect on our lives, our legacies, and ourselves. The Scorpion's Question Mark is personal and mythological, representational and abstract. These formally inventive and metrically attuned poems compose a range of contrasts-boxers Manny Pacquiao and Marvelous Marvin Hagler appear alongside Tupac and Herman Melville, and apparitions of the Virgin Mary manifest in both human and mirage-like forms on public beachfronts. Looking to the scorpion's tail that forms the shape of a question mark, Debris seeks to occupy uncertain space within the poems, bending forms to find both expansiveness and tension"--
Winner of the 2013 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize, selected by Phillip Lopate.
Diane Goodman's third story collection explores class, community, and culture through the lens of a party.
Hoerr's first novel but fourth book paints a vivid portrait of labor relations in industrial McKeesport.
Robert Isenberg’s travelogue explores an intimate view of the Balkans through the eyes of a young American adventurer.
"Wendy Wimmer's debut short story collection, Entry Level, contains a range of characters who are trying to find, assert, or salvage their identities. These fifteen stories center around the experience of being underemployed--whether by circumstance, class, gender, race, or other prevailing factors--and the toll this takes on an individual. Wimmer pushes the boundaries of reality, creating stories that are funny, fantastic, and at times terrifying. Her characters undergo feats of endurance, heartbreak, and loneliness, all while trying to succeed in a world that so often undervalues them. From a young marine biologist suffering from imposter syndrome and a haunting to a bingo caller facing another brutal snowstorm and a creature that may or not be an angel, Wimmer's characters are all confronting an oppressive universe that seemingly operates against them or is, at best, indifferent to them. These stories reflect on the difficulties of modern-day survival and remind us that piecing together a life demands both hope and resilience."--
"This anthology amplifies and centers LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives in a collection of contemporary nature poetry. Showcasing over two hundred queer writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Queer Nature offers a new context for and expands upon the canon of nature poetry while also offering new lenses through which to view queerness and the natural world."--Publisher description.
"Poems considering self, masculinity, and culture through the spectacle of professional wrestling. In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs. Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like Andrâe the Giant, Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us. The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press's Rising Writer Prize in Poetry."--
Poems that imagine a world beyond the prevailing public speculation on Black death. Shayla Lawz's debut collection, speculation, n., brings together poetry, sound, and performance to challenge our spectatorship and the reproduction of the Black body. It revolves around a central question: what does it mean?in the digital age, amidst an inundation of media?to be a witness? Calling attention to the images we see in the news and beyond, these poems explore what it means to be alive and Black when the world regularly speculates on your death. The speaker, a queer Black woman, considers how often her body is coupled with images of death and violence, resulting in difficultly moving toward life. Lawz becomes the speculator by imagining what might exist beyond these harmful structures, seeking ways to reclaim the Black psyche through music, typography, and other pronunciations of the body, where expressions of sexuality and the freedom to actively reimagine is made possible. speculation, n. contends with the real?a refracted past and present?through grief, love, and loss, and it speculates on what could be real if we open ourselves to expanded possibilities. speculation, n. won the 2020 Autumn House Poetry Prize, selected by Ilya Kaminsky.
Cho A.'s poetry wonders at small everyday delights. Sean Cho A.'s debut poetry chapbook directs a keen eye on everyday occurrences and how these small events shape us as individuals. This collection is filled with longing for love, understanding, and simplicity. But these poems also express great pleasure in continued desire. With exuberant energy that flows through the collection, the speaker announces: "I won't apologize for the smallness of my delights." Filled with questions and wonder, these poems revel in the unknowing and liminal spaces, and we as readers are invited to join in this revelry. Cho A.'s poetry reminds and allows us to pause, to wonder, and enjoy our many pleasures. American Home was selected by Danusha Laméris for the 2020 Autumn House Chapbook Prize.
Poems that explore the wilderness in order to find rest and divine providence.
A collection of personal essays examining relationships, whiteness, and masculinity.  Nicholas Wardâ¿s debut essay collection, All Who Belong May Enter, centers on self-exploration and cultural critique. These deeply personal essays examine whiteness, masculinity, and a Midwest upbringing through tales of sporting events, parties, posh (and not-so-posh) restaurant jobs, and the many relationships built and lost along the way. With a storytellerâ¿s spirit, Ward recounts and evaluates the privilege of his upbringing with acumen and vulnerability. Wardâ¿s profound affection for his friends, family, lovers, pets, and particularly for his chosen home, Chicago, shines through. This collection offers readers hope for healing that comes through greater understanding and inquiry into oneâ¿s self, relationships, and culture. Through these essays, Ward acknowledges his position within whiteness and masculinity, and he continuously holds himself and the society around him accountable.  All Who Belong May Enter was selected by Jaquira DÃaz as the winner of the 2020 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize. Â
The poems in Lucky Wreck trace the excitement of plans and the necessary swerving detours we must take when those plans fail. Looking to shipwrecks on the television, road trips ending in traffic accidents, and homes that become sites of infestation, Ada Limón finds threads of hope amid an array of small tragedies and significant setbacks. Open, honest, and grounded, the poems in this collection seek answers to familiar questions and teach us ways to cope with the pain of many losses with earnestness and humor. Through the wrecks, these poems continue to offer assurance. This darkness is not the scary one, it's the one before the sun comes up, the one you can still breathe in. Celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Limón's award-winning debut, this edition includes a new introduction by the poet that reflects on the book and on how her writing practice has developed over time.
Emerging from deep in America's hinterland, Michael Credico's flash fiction portrays an absurdist, exaggerated, and bizarre vision of the Midwest known as the heartland. The stories are clipped views into a land filled with slippery confusion and chaos, mythical creatures, zombies, comic violence, shapeshifters, and startling quantities of fish. The characters of Heartland Calamitous are trying to sort out where, who, and what they are and how to fit into their communities and families. Environmental destruction, aging, ailing parents, apathy, and depression weigh on the residents of the heartland, and they can't help but fall under the delusion that if they could just be somewhere or someone or something else, everything would be better. This is a leftover land, dazed and dizzy, where bodies melt into Ziplock bags and making do becomes a lifestyle. The stories of Heartland Calamitous, often only two or three pages long, reveal a dismal state in which longing slips into passive acceptance, speaking to the particular Midwestern feeling of being stuck. They slip from humor to grief to the grotesque, forming a picture of an all-to-close dystopian quagmire. With this collection, Credico spins a new American fable, a modern-day mythology of the absurd and deformed born of a non-place between destinations.
"Through the poems of Voice Message, Katherine Barrett Swett reflects on her personal tragedy and the fragility of human lives and bodies with a tender care. Her debut collection explores the powers of art and poetry to participate in the processing of catastrophic grief, speaking through both the consolation and devastation these creative works can offer. Swett's formal verse provides a lens through which sadness, destruction, and loss appear as aberrant and inevitable. In tragic lyric, the poet searches poetry, art, mythology, and her own memory for the fleeting image of her lost daughter "in music, painting, or a carved stone name." Frequently looking to visual arts for inspiration, she finds that Vermeer's paintings of distant rooms guide and contextualize pain, offering motivation, comfort, and release. Through villanelles, sonnets, quatrains, and free verse, Swett invokes the voices, narratives, and images, both personal and cultural, that haunt her speakers. Suspended in the aftermath of the unexpected and unspeakable death of her college-age daughter, the poet's language is held together in a somber and necessary restraint. But this restraint does not signal the peace of closure. Rather, these poems quietly and steadily remind readers it is still "the open wound / not the scar," that "all we have are words and flesh," and that we are forever vulnerable. The rhythm of and echoes of sonnets and songs lead us to the sticky intersections of tragedy, recovery, and strange forms of beauty"--
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