Mostly Dead Things – Kristen Arnett
What Arnett’s debut aspires to is the act of holding, tightly and gently all at once, to the mostly dead things, and not letting go.
Exquisite Mariposa – Fiona Alison Duncan
Its first bites taste like mainstream contemporary fiction; they go down easy, like candy, or like a Sally Rooney novel. But as you continue to chew — because this novel is chewy — you encounter something quite different.
Autobiography of Horse – Jenifer Sang Eun Park
Maybe the horse is fucking with her.
When the ranks of climate refugees grow steadily, new ways of structuring our lives will have to be tested.
Crosslight for Youngbird – Asiya Wadud
Wadud’s poems of witness are far less remote than one might expect of an often commemorative tradition, underwritten by a deep physical sympathy.
I’m Open to Anything – William E. Jones
The book, both in its physicality and content, poses a challenge not to conservative forces who would immediately shut it down, but rather to progressive and “open-minded” people who support queer writing — but only if it’s “literary” and respectable.
In every trip to get punk t-shirts on Melrose or listen to Pink Floyd at Griffith Observatory she is not merely coming of age; she is coming of culture, of heritage, of community.
The Naked Woman – Armonía Somers
THE NAKED WOMAN continues to speak to us nowadays as fiercely and urgently as seventy years ago: more than ever, women’s bodies are the place of political battles that seek to change the way we understand desire, consent, and autonomy.
Recording for Maleney is the fold in time that bends toward the unrecoverable past.
Terra Nullius – Claire G. Coleman
It should come as no surprise that Coleman, an Australian Aboriginal author of the South Coast Noongar people, is particularly poised to enliven the tropes of the science fiction contact genre.