Debut Books

None But the Righteous – Chantal James

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While these canyons lead to Louisiana and through Hurricane Katrina’s pummeling, the overarching project of None But the Righteous is to situate this region and its most recent catastrophic event, within a wider and longer history of canyons and of pummeling.

Philosophy of the Sky – Evan Isoline

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For the readers who are keenly aware of their experiences of love, hatred and pain for, and fear of, the self, Isoline’s poetry will offer useful approximations of the vocabulary needed to meet them peacefully and poetically.

Bewildered by All This Broken Sky – Anna Scotti

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These poems make evident that this kind of boundless love — love we take care of, love we’re sure to name as such — is the key, the only real salvation available.

How to Build a Home for the End of the World – Keely Shinners

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When we are all sick, all the time (as we are now), and it is not seen as abnormal (as it is now), we can take care of each other. This is what capitalism desperately wants us to not do.

How We Are Translated – Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

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In her debut novel, Johannesson brings forth discussions that have long existed (the experience of being between languages) as well as new ones (contemporary tensions over displaced people), joining the two under one specific idea: translation.

The History of America in My Lifetime – Brooks Sterritt

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A satire of our data-driven societies, of modern surveillance systems, and of the irrationality of the Western world, it is a novel about capitalist America and our struggle to understand it.

The Four Humors – Mina Seçkin

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Seçkin adds an interesting nuance by depicting how feelings of appropriation can play out at a more intimate, family level.

Dinner Party: A Tragedy – Sarah Gilmartin

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Even if Sarah Gilmartin’s debut novel elicits inevitable associations with Irish intellectual and artistic heavyweights, this portrait of mourning and redemption stands on its own.    

Happy Hour – Marlowe Granados

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Suffering doesn’t actually have to be a prerequisite for having the right to be creating something, nor does anyone actually have a god-given directive to whittle their suffering into something to be offered up to a market.

Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies – Heba Hayek

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What Hayek accomplishes with her debut collection is to transcribe the crisis of categorization that defines the Palestinian experience.