It’s the end of the month again and that means we’ve got another list of small press releases for you. This is our nineteenth installment and we’re still going strong. If you are a small press and would like to have your upcoming books represented here, please send an email to jenny@entropymag.org. Summer on, read on!
Black Lawrence Press
The Big Book of Sounds and Other Stories by Joe Steinhagen
225 pages – Black Lawrence Press/SPD
Children and Lunatics by Megan McNamer
175 pages – Black Lawrence Press/SPD
“Megan McNamer’s Children and Lunatics reminds us that madness is created by life’s tragedies and that comfort is found in the most ordinary of places: every third house on a block, a chair, a thrift store purse, a cafe table. We are taken on a skillful journey full of mystery and sadness while being reminded that it is our connection to one another that keeps us from total despair. McNamer’s two central characters are nameless, which means they might be anyone, they are our invisible neighbors, and our potential friends and saviors. There are acts of kindness and acts of violence in this book and I cared so much for the characters that I couldn’t stop reading, and I couldn’t stop hoping for their salvation.”
—Mary Jane Nealon, author of Beautiful Unbroken
Black Radish Books
After the projects the resound by Kimberly Alidio
92 pages – Black Radish Books
Brooklyn Arts Press
Chelate by Jay Besemer
128 pages – Brooklyn Arts Press/SPD
City Lights Publishers
Old Angel Midnight by Jack Kerouac
94 pages – City Light Publishers/Amazon
Coffee House Press
Problems by Jade Sharma
208 pages – Coffee House Press/Amazon
Dark, raw, and very funny, Problems introduces us to Maya, a young woman with a smart mouth, time to kill, and a heroin hobby that isn’t much fun anymore. Maya’s been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some choices. Maya’s struggle to be alone, to be a woman, and to be thoughtful and imperfect and alive in a world that doesn’t really care what happens to her is rendered with dead-eyed clarity and unnerving charm. This book takes every tired trope about addiction and recovery, “likeable” characters, and redemption narratives, and blows them to pieces. –from the Coffee House Press website
Curbside Splendor
Mickey by Chelsea Martin
200 pages – Curbside Splendor/Amazon
Dalkey Archive
Don’t Leave Me by Stig Saeterbakken, translated by Sean Kinsella
222 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Border Towns by C. S. Giscombe
232 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
The Poor by Raul Brandao, translated by Karen Sotelino
177 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
The Antibody by Julio Jose Ordovas, translated by Christian Martin-Roffey
112 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Cold Shoulder by Markus Werner, translated by Michael Hofmann
98 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Johanne, Johanna… by Lars Sidenius, translated by Paul Larkin
172 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Invisible Hands by Stig Sæterbakken, translated by Seán Kinsella
160 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Fragile Travelers by Jovanka Zivanovic, translated by Jovanka Kalaba
106 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Petar, a devoted family man, leaves his apartment to buy some coffee and goes missing. While his wife is desper- ately looking for him, he finds himself trapped in another woman’s dreams. As one dream encounter follows the other, Petar and the dreamer, Emilija, become aware of the spiritual and emotional emptiness that exists within them. Will they allow their connection to transcend the metaphysical domain to attain the real and corporeal? Fragile Travelers is a compelling story of an improbable intimacy between two people, introduced and closed by an omniscient narrator but told almost entirely in the alternating voices of Emilija and Petar. With its subtle lyricism and well-paced humor, Fragile Travelers takes the reader on a journey that explores the emotional empti- ness of modern life, but gives its protagonists a chance to search for a meaningful existence—if nowhere else—at least in dreams. –from the Dalkey Archive website
Dzanc Books
The Soul Standard by Nik Korpon, Caleb J. Ross, Axel Taiari, and Richard Thomas
232 pages – Dzanc Books/Amazon
Flood Editions
The Art of Language: Selected Essays by Kenneth Cox, edited by Jenny Penberthy
328 pages – SPD
Gauss PDF
a river babbles also by Michael Anzuoni
GPDF
Hi, You’re Beautiful by Caleb Beckwith
GPDF
Gold Line Press/Ricochet Editions
Locally Made Panties by Arielle Greenberg
98 pages – Gold Line Press/Ricochet Editions/SPD
Graywolf Press
The Art of History: Unlocking the Past in Fiction and Nonfiction by Christopher Bram
176 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
Look by Solmaz Sharif
112 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
H_NGM_N
psalterium/blepharism by Christopher Janke
H_NGM_N
Horse Less Press
Two Teenagers by John Colasacco
114 pages – Horse Less Press/SPD
Kenning Editions
Part 3 or 4 of “Unfinished Poem in Five Parts” by Steven Zultanski
Chapbook – Kenning Editions
Magic Helicopter Press
Avant Gauze by Christine Friedlander
94 pages – Magic Helicopter Press/SPD
Does the body want to be a story? Does it always ask for “narrative repair?” What happens when people tell you about your family’s suffering before your suffering tells you about itself? In this groundrepairing debut book, Christine Friedlander asks, “What if a long pause is all I know?” A stitch-up of poetry, visual collage, bandages, memoir, and anti-advice, Avant Gauze does not fill in. It fills around. Friedlander rejects the luridity of catharsis to discover gauze: a new form to weave around trauma and gazes and history, a radical redefinition of healing. –from the Magic Helicopter Press website
Maudlin House
Portrait of the Artist as a Viable Alternative to Death by Ross McCleary
110 pages – Maudlin House
Melville House
Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right-and How We Can, Too by George Lakey
320 pages – Melville House/Amazon
New Directions
Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws and Other One-Act Plays by Tennessee Williams, edited by Thomas Keith
208 pages – New Directions/Amazon
Moise and the World of Reason by Tennessee Williams
224 pages – New Directions/Amazon
An erotic, sensual, and comic novel that was a generation ahead of its time, Moise and the World of Reason has at its center the need of three people for each other: Lance, the beautiful black figure skater full of love and lust for young men as well as a craving for drugs; the nameless gay young narrator, a runaway writer from Alabama who lives near the piers of New York City’s West Village, c. 1975, frantically filling notebooks with his observations; and Moise—“Say mo, and then say ease, with the accent placed (ironically) on the ease”—a young woman who speaks in riddles and can never finish her paintings or consummate her affairs. The long unavailable Moise and the World of Reason represents a kind of uncensored Williams, radically frank, fully articulated, and deeply tender: a true gem. –from the New Directions website
Open Letter Books
One of Us Is Sleeping by Josefine Klougart
228 pages – Open Letter Books/Amazon
OR Books
Folding the Red into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century by Walter Mosley
128 pages – OR Books
Platypus Press
Prelude to Light by Venetta Octavia
80 pages – Platypus Press
Queen’s Ferry Press
Bad Faith by Theodore Wheeler
192 pages – Queen’s Ferry Press/Amazon
Restless Books
The Year 200 by Augustín de Rojas, translated by Nick Caistor and Hebe Powell
544 pages – Restless Books/Amazon
Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women. –from the Restless Books website
Sarabande Books
Antiquity by Michael Homolka
64 pages – Sarabande Books/Amazon
Schaffner Press
Never Say No To a Rock Star: In the Studio with Dylan, Sinatra, Jagger, and More… by Glenn Berger
320 pages – Schaffner Press/Amazon
Soho Press
Into the Valley by Ruth Galm
272 pages – Soho Press/Amazon
The Song Cave
The Hermit by Lucy Ives
The Song Cave
Sundress Publications
Letters to Colin Firth by Katherine Riegel
Chapbook – Sundress Publications
Tin House Books
Before the Feast by Sasa Stanisic, translated by Anthea Bell
326 pages – Tin House Books/Amazon
Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams
220 pages – Tin House Books/Amazon
This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass―a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists. –from the Tin House website
Two Dollar Radio
The Incantations of Daniel Johnston by Ricardo Cavolo and Scott McClanahan
123 pages – Two Dollar Radio/Amazon
The Incantations of Daniel Johnston is a spirited, eye-popping collaborationg between New York Times-bestselling Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo and award-winning author Scott McClanahan. Long a fan of Daniel Johnston, the man and his music, Cavolo illustrates Johnston’s colorful life, from his humble beginnings as a carnival employee to folk musician in Austin, to his rise to MTV popularity and persistent struggle with personal demons. In addition to being visually very striking, with astoundingly economical prose McClanahan manages to deal with powerful and complex issues, such as how we as a society mythologize troubled artists, while continuing his ongoing exploration of human relationships, and the pliable interaction between reader and writer. –from the Two Dollar Radio website
Tyrant Books
Supremacist: A Novel by David Shapiro
200 pages – Tyrant Books/Amazon
Unnamed Press
Neon Green by Margaret Wappler
246 pages – Unnamed Press/Amazon
When a flying saucer lands in the Allens’ backyard, family patriarch and environmental activist Ernest is up in arms. According to the company facilitating the visits, the spaceship is 100 percent non-toxic, and the green sludge it occasionally dumps in their backyard is totally biodegradable. As Ernest’s panic increases, so do his questions: What are the effects of longterm exposure to the saucer? Why is it really here, flashing and beeping uselessly in the backyard? And why, above all else, is Ernest the only one worrying about it? At Ernest’s suggestion, the family starts logging the spaceship’s daily fits and starts. But the daily log doesn’t get them any closer to figuring out the spaceship’s comically erratic behavior; instead it becomes the family’s preferred and often pithy communications platform, a humorous foreshadowing of the electronic messaging revolution to come. In fact, Ernest’s wife Cynthia and their children, Alison and Gabe, are less concerned with the saucer, and more worried about their father’s growing paranoia (not to mention their mundane, suburban existences). In unexpected ways, the Allens are forced to confront the truth about their relationship to the larger world, and what it means to be a part of it. Set before the arrival of the internet, Neon Green will stun, unnerve, and charm readers with its loving depiction of a suburban family living on the cusp of the future. –from the Unnamed Press website
Wakefield Press
The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems, translated by Edward Gauvin
112 page – Wakefield Press/Amazon
