In My Anaana’s Amautik
Nadia Sammurtok, illus. Lenny Lishchenko | Inhabit Media | 9781772272529 | April 2020
“Each spread appeals to a different sense, creating a deliciously cozy and nurturing microenvironment for this lucky tot. The repetition of ‘In my anaana’s amautik’ at the beginning of each short paragraph is both lulling and reinforcing of the relationship between child and mother.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics
Edit. Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel | Nightboat Books | 9781643620336 | October 2020
“Gave me everything I wanted and more, the perfect supplement as I started my hormone transition journey. The Zoom reading was one of the best virtual events I attended in quarantine—a riotous joy fest with a veritable who’s who of the genderqueer literati.”—Poetry Foundation
Forgotten Work
Jason Guriel | Biblioasis | 9781771963824 | October 2020
“A wondrous novel.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post‘s Book Club Newsletter
How to Carry Water
Lucille Clifton, edit. Aracelis Girmay | BOA Editions | 9781950774142 | September 2020
“Clifton brings a complexity to something we imagined we understood—and a relentless honesty.”—The New York Times Magazine
Slash and Burn
Claudia Hernández, trans. Julia Sanches | And Other Stories | 9781911508823 | January 2021
“With each of its story lines weaving artfully into the next, Slash and Burn is an astonishing literary novel whose style is daring and whose tales are tragic.”—Foreword Reviews
“Slash and Burn is an ember of a novel . . . this restrained narrative about a mother’s sacrifice surges with hot undercurrents of danger and memory.”—Bookpage
Princess Arabella at the Museum
Mylo Freeman | Cassava Republic Press | 9781913175061 | January 2021
“Art Easter eggs, as with Arabella’s Mondrian-inspired dress, will entertain artists of all ages.”—Foreword Reviews
Spin a Scarf of Sunshine
Dawn Casey, illus. Stila Lim | Floris Books | 9781782506584 | May 2021
“A lively and entertaining picture book celebration of sustainability, recycling, green living, nature and crafting.”—Midwest Book Review
This Poop is Mine!
Gusti, illus. Gusti | NubeOcho | 9788417673888 | October 2020
“An unusual, unique, and memorable picture book about sharing.”—Midwest Book Review
Yi Sang: Selected Works
edit. Don Mee Choi, trans Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi and Joyelle McSweeney | Wave Books | 9781950268085 | September 2020
“A work of highwire avant-garde experimentation, written through a modernist poetic during Korea’s colonial period, Yi Sang’s poems manage to be political acts that do not succumb to mere political statement, but involvement and explosion, in a book that—for a poet who died young in 1938—complicates the very notions of death, haunting, and revival.”—Chicago Review of Books
The Morgan Trust
Richard Bridgeman, illus. Seth | Biblioasis | 9781771963725 | October 2020
The Open Door
Margaret Oliphant , illus. Seth | Biblioasis | 9781771963688 | October 2020
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
M.R. James, illus. Seth | Biblioasis | 9781771963701 | October 2020
“Seth has once again added sparse, but unnerving illustrations to each volume, using shades of gray and shadow-play to cement you in these creepy tales . . . these stories are perfect to read aloud or curl up on the couch with for an evening of spooky entertainment.”—Prairie Fire
The Drive
Yair Assulin, trans. Jessica Cohen | New Vessel Press | 9781939931825 | April 2020
“The sort of soul-level struggling that makes great fiction possible. The translator, Jessica Cohen, is responsible for translations of Israeli literary giants with fans in America like David Grossman, Amos Oz and Etgar Keret, and one can only hope that her name on Assulin’s work means that we’ll be seeing more from him on our shelves soon.”—The Jewish Exponent
Hotel Almighty
Sarah J. Sloat | Sarabande Books | 9781946448644 | September 2020
“Hotel Almighty will make your brain spin until the last page, weaving colorful paper cut-outs, vibrant dots, and gold threads with word-jewels excavated from Misery, bewildering you with a new sense of what poetry is capable of.”—Rhino Poetry
“Sloat’s work here belongs within the offbeat orthodoxy of found poetry; the popular label ‘blackout poetry’ certainly applies to her method of scratching out, painting over or otherwise obscuring printed text, thereby bringing novel messages to the surface. And yet these terms, which live in negative language, don’t fully capture Sloat’s sublime, unsettling outcomes. She coaxes Technicolor poetry from preexisting pages; new verse isn’t merely found—as in stumbled upon—but unearthed.”—The Curator
Pet Sounds
Stephanie Young | Nightboat Books | 9781937658946 | April 2019
“Not only is Pet Sounds an astonishing book of poetry, it’s a surprising new mode of music criticism. In translating the album from a musical form into a written space, Young troubles the distinction between artist and critic – and, in doing so, hears voices that have previously gone unheard behind the cacophony of white male privilege.”—Lana Turner Journal
Vibratory Milieu
Carrie Hunter | Nightboats Books | 9781643620312 | January 2021
“Vibratory Milieu is a high-speed polyphonic lyric suite that somehow feels simultaneously an extension of her prior work, and yet, leagues ahead in terms of structure.”—rob mclennan’s blog
The Adventures of a Narrative Gardener
Ronald Lee Fleming | GILES | 9781911282747 | December 2020
“A unique, delightful, large-format book about one man’s desire to create a natural place to hold human memory.”—The VVA Veteran
Skyland
Andrew Durbin | Nightboat Books | 9781643620275 | July 2020
“Skyland is a nice example of fiction tinged by the terror of our contemporary age without being subsumed by it… So even if Durbin’s ‘biography-through-the-periphery’ about Guibert remains largely unfinished, he has written something even harder to define, an airy-yet-ominous diary of a wine-fogged week on a biblical island, one that—like ‘the missing portrait of Guibert’—hovers right there in front of us, nudging us along, floating ‘just out of reach.’”—Hudson Review
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Gerda Muller | Floris Books | 9781782506614 | September 2020
“Muller’s art is just a wonder.”—SLJ Blog
The Piano Student
Lea Singer, trans. Elisabeth Lauffer | New Vessel Press | 9781939931863 | October 2020
“Gripping in its newness and historical import. . . . The Piano Student contains a lovely air of mystery and a clear-eyed view of the difference between pianistic workmanship and pianistic greatness.”—Washington Indepdent Review of Books