Winner of the 2025 IPPY Award for literary fiction. Longlisted for the National Book Award. Named a top debut novel of 2024 by Kirkus, and a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist.In between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies the world of this book flashes before their eyes. Everyone Ezra's ever loved, every place they've felt queer and at home, or queer and out of place, reveals itself in an instant. Unfoldin...

sam sax's bury it, winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, begins with poems written in response to the spate of highly publicized young gay suicides in the summer of 2010. What follows are raw and expertly crafted meditations on death, rituals of passage, translation, desire, diaspora, and personhood. What's at stake is survival itself and the archiving of a lived and lyric history. Laughlin Award judge Tyehimba Jess says "bury it is l...

An “astounding” (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems – Winner of the National Poetry Series CompetitionIn this powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients a...

"Forgive my bluntness, but...Goddamn, Sam Sax can write some poems. Devastating, comic, inventive, weird, dangerous, smart as hell. I could talk about the diction sometimes glass and sometimes bouquet. Or the syntax jagged here, balletic there. Or the metaphors, good lord. But the bottom line is that when reading the poems in A GUIDE TO UNDRESSING YOUR MONSTERS, one after the next, I kept saying to myself, probably twisting my face a little bit or squirming in my seat, "Goddamn, Sam Sax ca...

Winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American PoetsSam Sax's bury it, winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, begins with poems written in response to the spate of highly publicized young gay suicides in the summer of 2010. What follows are raw and expertly crafted meditations on death, rituals of passage, translation, desire, diaspora, and personhood. What's at stake is survival itself and the arc...

From the brilliantly talented National Poetry Series and James Laughlin Award winner comes a third collection of poems that uses the humble pig as a lens to explore the body, faith, desire, and power.This imaginative and singular poetry collection interrogates the broadest ideas surrounding the humble pig—farm animal, men/masculinity, police and state violence, desire, queerness, global food systems, religion/Judaism and law—to reimagine various chaotic histories o...

The Winter 2016-17 issue of Ploughshares. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year's three issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles; the Winter issue is staff-edited.This staff edited issue of Ploughshares features a vibrant collection of essays, poems, and short stories. Whether it’s through poetry like Daniel Lawless’s poem “The Old Masters,” or short stories like Kat...

“Hoagland’s verse is consistently, and crucially, bloodied by a sense of menace and by straight talk.” —The New York TimesMy heroes are the ones who don’t say much.They don’t hug people they just met.They don’t play louder when confused.They use plain language even when they listen.Wisdom doesn’t come to every Californian.Chances are I toowill die with difficulty in the dark.If you want to see a lost civil...

Lambda Literary Award-winning editor Richard Canning brings together all new work by Edmund White, Dale Peck, James McCourt, Andrew Holleran, and others.

Sleepwalk is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary, from beloved and acclaimed award-winning novelist Dan Chaon.“[Chaon] does madcap well and likes his characters, even the killers—especially the killers.”—The New York Times Book ReviewA New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceAn NPR “Book of the Day”

For thirty years now the Phoenix Poets series has been publishing the best poets working in English, from young poets publishing their first books to renowned masters at the peak of storied careers. This sample presents some of the best poets and poems from those three decades—it’s sure to whet your appetite and get you coming back for more!

2018 Goodreads Choice Awards - Best Poetry Book Finalist Helium is the debut poetry collection by internet phenom Rudy Francisco, whose work has defined poetry for a generation of new readers. Rudy's poems and quotes have been viewed and shared millions of times as he has traveled the country and the world performing for sell-out crowds. Helium is filled with work that is simultaneously personal and political, blending love poems, self-reflection, and biting cultural critique on class, rac...