This is the twenty-second installment of Entropy’s small press new releases feature. If you are a small press and would like to see your upcoming titles listed here in the future, please email jenny@entropymag.org with the information you see included for the titles below. Happy Halloween, y’all!
Action Books
Overpour by Jane Wong
99 pages – Action Books/SPD
Bellevue Literary Press
Bob Stevenson by Richard Wiley
224 pages – Bellevue Literary Press/Amazon
Black Lawrence Press
The Muddy Season by Matthew Raymond
34 pages – Black Lawrence Press/SPD
Black Radish Books
Amnesia: Somebody’s Memoir by Eileen R. Tabois
80 pages – Black Radish Books/SPD
Bottlecap Press
All in the Family by Courtney LeBlanc
Chapbook – Bottlecap Press
Killer by Kimmy Walters
89 pages – Bottlecap Press
I Am Trying to Fall in Love With Myself But Instead I Keep Falling in Love With Unemployed Noise Musicians Who Do Coke and Believe in the Power of Crystals by Emma Shepard
Chapbook – Bottlecap Press
Civil Coping Mechanisms
The Book of Endless Sleepovers by Henry Hoke
156 pages – Civil Coping Mechanisms/Amazon
Lady Be Good by Lauren Hilger
108 pages – Civil Coping Mechanisms/Amazon
Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz
242 pages – Civil Coping Mechanisms/Amazon
Dreamoir–a narrative derived from the most malleable and revelatory details of one’s dreams, catalogued in bold detail. A literary adventure through the boundaries of memoir, where the self is viewed from a position anchored into the deepest recesses of the mind. –from the Civil Coping Mechanisms website
Coach House Books
The Hidden Keys by Andre Alexis
232 pages – Coach House Books/Amazon
3 Summers by Lisa Robertson
96 pages – Coach House Books/Amazon
Night and Ox by Jordan Scott
88 pages – Coach House Books/Amazon
Coffee House Press
I’ll Tell You In Person by Chloe Caldwell
184 pages – Coffee House Press/Amazon
Unbearable Splendor by Sun Yung Shin
136 pages – Coffee House Press/Amazon
Curbside Splendor
Scratch by Steve Himmer
200 pages – Curbside Splendor/Amazon
Dalkey Archive
Teethmarks on My Tongue by Eileen Battersby
420 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Best European Fiction 2017 edited by Nathaniel Davis
320 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Margarito and the Snowman by REYoung
320 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
The Lady of Solitude by Paula Parisot, translated by Elizabeth Lowe and Clifford E. Landers
120 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Saga of Brutes by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Alexandra Joy Forman
300 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Dog Horn Press
Rarity From the Hollow by Robert Eggleton
284 pages – Dog Horn Press
Dorothy, a publishing project
Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon
128 pages – Dorothy/SPD
The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George
168 pages – Dorothy/SPD
Five stories—several as long as novellas—introduce the world to Jen George, a writer whose furiously imaginative new voice calls to mind Donald Barthelme and Leonora Carrington no less than Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus. In “Guidance/The Party,” an ethereal alcoholic “Guide” in robes and flowing hair appears to help a thirty-three-year-old woman prepare a party for her belated adulthood; “Take Care of Me Forever” tragically lambasts the medical profession as a ship of fools afloat in loneliness and narcissism; “Instruction” chronicles a season in an unconventional art school called The Warehouse, where students divide their time between orgies, art critiques, and burying dead racehorses. Combining slapstick, surrealism, erotica, and social criticism, Jen George’s sprawling creative energy belies the secret precision and unexpected tenderness of everything she writes. –from the Dorothy, A Publishing Project website
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer
672 pages – Fitzcarraldo Editions
Gauss PDF
MaussPDF by emamouse
GPDF
JJ’S KIDS by Joey Yearous-Algozin
GPDF
Your Arkansas: A Strategy Guide by James Ardis
GPDF
Graywolf Press
There Now by Eamon Grennan
80 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
All That Man Is by David Szalay
368 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
Borders by Roy Jacobsen, translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw
288 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
Thrill Me by Benjamin Percy
184 pages – Graywolf Press/Amazon
Anyone familiar with the meteoric rise of Benjamin Percy’s career will surely have noticed a certain shift: After writing two short-story collections and a literary novel, he delivered the werewolf thriller Red Moon and the postapocalyptic epic The Dead Lands. Now, in his first book of nonfiction, Benjamin Percy challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are somehow mutually exclusive. The title essay is an ode to the kinds of books that make many first love fiction: science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, horror, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Anne Rice, Ursula K. Le Guin to Stephen King. Percy’s own academic experience banished many of these writers in the name of what is “literary” and what is “genre.” Then he discovered Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and others who employ techniques of genre fiction while remaining literary writers. In fifteen essays on the craft of fiction, Percy looks to disparate sources such as Jaws, Blood Meridian, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to discover how contemporary writers engage issues of plot, suspense, momentum, and the speculative, as well as character, setting, and dialogue. An urgent and entertaining missive on craft, Thrill Me brims with Percy’s distinctive blend of anecdotes, advice, and close reading, all in the service of one dictum: Thrill the reader. –from the Graywolf Press website
H_NGM_N
If My Air is Touching You by Chance Castro
Chapbook – H_NGM_N
Kenning Editions
Double Rainbow by Brandon Brown
Chapbook – Kenning Editions
From Where: A Reverie on Digital Surrogates by Janelle Rebel
Chapbook – Kenning Editions
Les Figues
2×6 by Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova, Carlos León, Aleksandra Małecka, and Piotr Marecki
256 pages – Les Figues
Milkweed Editions
Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the Word’s Most Alluring Fish by Chris Dombrowski
232 pages – Milkweed Editions/Amazon
Monster House Press
Public Figures by Bella Bravo
28 pages – Monster House Press
New Directions
Nineteen Ways of Looking At Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger
64 pages – New Directions/Amazon
The Ghost of Birds by Eliot Weinberger
240 pages – New Directions/Amazon
Story of Love in Solitude by Roger Lewinter, translated by Rachel Careau
64 pages – New Directions/Amazon
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
48 pages – New Directions/Amazon
Envelope Poems by Emily Dickinson, edited by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner
96 pages – New Directions/Amazon
Although a very prolific poet, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) published fewer than a dozen poems. Instead, she created small handmade books. In her later years, she stopped producing these, but she continued to write a great deal, and at her death she left behind many poems, drafts, and letters. It is among the makeshift and fragile manuscripts of Dickinson’s later writings that we find the envelope poems gathered here. These manuscripts on envelopes (recycled by the poet with marked New England thrift) were written with the full powers of her late, most radical period. Intensely alive, these envelope poems are charged with a special poignancy—addressed to no one and everyone at once. Full-color facsimiles are accompanied by Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin’s pioneering transcriptions of Dickinson’s handwriting. Their transcriptions allow us to read the texts, while the facsimiles let us see exactly what Dickinson wrote (the variant words, crossings-out, dashes, directional fields, spaces, columns, and overlapping planes). –from the New Directions website
1913 Press
I, Too, Dislike It by Mia You
1913 Press
Omnidawn
Watchful by Molly Bendall
80 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
Squander by Elena Karina Byrne
80 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
House A by Jennifer S. Cheng
128 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
Güera by Rebecca Gaydos
72 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
Ocular Proff by Martha Ronk
80 pages – Omnidawn/Amzon
Ghost Nets by John Wilkinson
120 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
Our Lives Became Unmanageable by Jackie Craven
48 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
White Decimal by Jean Daive, translated by Norma Cola
144 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
The Field by Robert Andrew Perez
64 pages – Omnidawn/Amazon
Open Letter Books
A Greater Music by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith
128 pages – Open Letter Books/Amazon
Near the beginning of A Greater Music, the narrator, a young Korean writer, falls into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she’s been house-sitting for her on-off boyfriend Joachim. This sets into motion a series of memories that move between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she first lived in Berlin. Throughout, the narrator’s relationship with Joachim, a rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with M, an ultra-refined music-loving German teacher who was once her lover. –from the Open Letter Books website
Other Press
Among the Living by Jonathan Rabb
320 pages – Other Press/Amazon
A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies, and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment by John Preston
368 pages – Other Press/Amazon
Agnes by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann
176 pages – Other Press/Amazon
Press 53
When She Was Bad by Gabrielle Brant Freeman
76 pages – Press 53/Amazon
Jimtown Road by Dennis McFadden
220 pages – Press 53/Amazon
Bones of an Inland Sea by Mary Akers
210 pages – Press 53/Amazon
Restless Books
Land of Love and Ruins by Oddný Eir, translated by Philip Roughton
240 pages – Restless Books/Amazon
Colonel Lágrimas by Carlos Fonseca
224 pages – Restless Books/Amazon
Sarabande Books
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
216 pages – Sarabande Books/Amazon
Soho Press
Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American by Okey Ndibe
224 pages – Soho Press/Amazon
Okey Ndibe’s funny, charming, and penetrating memoir tells of his move from Nigeria to America, where he came to edit the influential—but forever teetering on the verge of insolvency—African Commentary magazine. It recounts stories of Ndibe’s relationships with Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and other literary figures; examines the differences between Nigerian and American etiquette and politics; recalls an incident of racial profiling just 13 days after he arrived in the US, in which he was mistaken for a bank robber; considers American stereotypes about Africa (and vice-versa); and juxtaposes African folk tales with Wall Street trickery. All these stories and more come together in a generous, encompassing book about the making of a writer and a new American. –from the Soho Press website
Sundress Publications
At Whatever Front by Les Kays
Sundress Publications/Amazon
Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Sundress Publications/Amazon
sunnyoutside
Howard by Sarah Boyer
100 pages – sunnyoutside/SPD
Tin House Books
Ghost Songs by Regina McBride
350 pages – Tin House Books/Amazon
Twisted Spoon Press
The Absolute Gravedigger by Vítězslav Nezval, translated by Stephan Delbos and Tereza Novická
214 pages – Twisted Spoon Press/Amazon
Two Lines Press
A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska, translated by Christina Kramer
532 pages – Two Lines Press/Amazon
Ugly Duckling Presse
Pacific Standard Time by Kevin Opstedal
224 pages – Ugly Duckling Presse/SPD
Residual Synonyms for the Name of God by Lewis Freedman
160 pages – Ugly Duckling Presse/SPD
Registration Caspar by J. Gordon Faylor
288 pages – Ugly Duckling Presse/SPD
The Rou of Alch by Pablo Katchadjian, translated by Victoria Cóccaro and Rebekah Smith
40 pages – Ugly Duckling Presse/SPD
Monitored Properties by Florencia Castellano, translated by Alexis Almeida
40 pages – Ugly Duckling Presse/SPD
Claiming the mundane as its starting point — “a father takes his car out of the garage / and sings” — Monitored Properties interrogates the ideological forces that exist in the smallest moments of our lives. With playful irony, wit, and lyrical dynamism, Florencia Castellano takes on the figure of the “cowboy,” the gaucho that has permeated Argentine history and helped define patriarchy for centuries. In its re-imagining, the book questions the ritual of cultural inheritance, suggests that automatic responses can be broken down in language. Here, the literal and the absurd touch, the self and the other dance, “despite not knowing each other.” If no haven is safe from the language of patriarchy, then its reverse could be true: no language, however emblazoned, is beyond the reach of the poet. Monitored Properties is a testament to living, relational histories and the way they expose and resist official, state-sanctioned versions. –from the Ugly Duck Presse website
Unnamed Press
The Annie Year by Stephanie Ash
246 pages – Unnamed Press/Amazon
One Life by David Lida
246 pages – Unnamed Press/Amazon
Wakefield Press
The Stairway to the Sun & Dance of the Comets: Four Fairy Tales of Home and One Astral Pantomime by Paul Scheerbart, translated by W.C. Bamberger
128 pages – Wakefield Press/Amazon
Wave Books
Cities at Dawn by Geoffrey Nutter
120 pages – Wave Books/SPD
YesYes Books
Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths by Elizabeth Acevedo
42 pages – YesYes Books
