Giving voice to people living on the periphery in post-communist Bulgaria, Four Minutes centers around Leah, an orphan who suffered daily horrors growing up, and now struggles to integrate into society as a gay woman. She confronts her trauma by trying to volunteer at the orphanage, and to adopt a young girl—a choice that is frustrated over and over by bureaucracy and the pervasive stigma against gay women.In addition to Leah’s narrative, the novel contains nine other stan...

A work of literary fiction exploring domestic abuse, interlaced with folk tales, for readers of Carmen Maria Machado and Meera KandasamyArrivalis an exploration of the ripple effects of domestic abuse. The story follows a young woman fleeing her home country and trying to rebuild her life, after she has suffered violence at the hands of an alcoholic father.The novel bends form to accommodate the narrator's scattered mind and her attempt to assemble ...

An Instant #1 New York Times BestsellerA Goop Book Club Pick"If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."—Joanna Goddard, Cup of JoA stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend."When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed." So ends Kate Baer’s remarka...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERGrammy Award–nominated, platinum-selling musician Halsey is heralded as one of the most compelling voices of their generation. In I Would Leave Me If I Could, they reveal never-before-seen poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.In this debut collection, Halsey bares their soul. Bringing the same artistry found in their lyrics, Halsey’s poems delve into the highs and lows of do...

A love story set in two countries in two radically different moments in time, bringing together a young man, his mother, a boa constrictor, and one capricious cat.In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a man she hardly knows, but what was meant to be a happy match goes quickly wrong. Soon thereafter her country is torn apart by war and she and her family flee. Years later, her son, Bekim, grows up a social outcast in present-day Finland, not jus...

Survival Songs is a collection of poetry by author Meggie C. Royer. The poems and prose in Survival Songs are clear and concise. Grounded through experiences, Royer's evocative poems cast a knowing eye on the wider world, telling us what it’s like to be displaced and replaced, used and abused. Her poems are suffused with a graceful, mysterious pathos and longing. Survival Songs is a remarkable debut.

Racing Hummingbirds examines critiques and at times delights in one woman's navigation through the many worlds of manic depression and her struggle to maintain humanity in the process. Jeanann Verlee's award-winning debut collection is a series of narratives prayers and conjurings which address gender sex race poverty heartbreak and survival with such stark intimacy you will find yourself living inside. These poems cannot possibly be about you yet they are. They cross boundaries and reclai...

City of Victoria Butler Book Prize: M.A.C. Farrant, The World Afloat (Winner)In The World Afloat, a series of seventy-five “miniatures” that melds narrative with elements of prose poem and farce, master of the absurd and expert observer M.A.C. Farrant peers into the complexities of human experience – through the rear window.Inside the linoleum-lined kitchens and lace-trimmed living rooms that drift through these stories, Farrant interrupts the daily routine...

A POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATIONI could not be held responsiblefor desirehe could not be held at allTracking the joys and pains of the path through addiction, and wrestling with desire, inheritance and faith, Calling a Wolf a Wolf is the darkly sumptuous debut from award-winning poet Kaveh Akbar. These are powerful, intimate poems of thirst: for alcohol, for other bodies, for knowledge and for life.'The st...

At once an ironic portrayal of contemporary Korea and an intimate exploration of heartache, alienation, and nostalgia, this collection of seven short stories has earned the author widespread critical acclaim. With empathy and an overarching melancholy that is at times tinged with sarcasm but always deeply meaningful, Jung explores the ambition and chaos of urban life, the lives of the lost and damaged souls it creates, and the subtle shades of love found between them.

Ten years ago the narrator unlocked the door of a wrecked apartment, empty of any trace of his wife. As stunning as her disappearance is his response. He freezes on the facts of her, haunting his recollections. This is the story of a man unable to free himself enough from the idea of a woman to try to find her.Jac Jemc's work has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Caketrain, Handsome, and Sleepingfish, among others. She is the aut...

**“Playful and poetic . . . A foxy, original writer. Memory fuses with wonder, and wonder with worship." —The Wall Street Journal“Marvelously vivid, perfectly tuned. . . Tolstaya is well known in Russia as a brilliant and caustic political critic, but her memories of her Soviet childhood have a tender, personal quality.” —The New York Times Book Review“Grimly hilarious ... Everything in this generous writer’s hands is vivid and alive …Tolstaya is divinely ...