Reading Lists

30 Lists
  • Poetry
    Yalie Saweda Kamara

    Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo is an elegantly wrought love song to home—as place, as people, as body, and as language. Yalie Saweda Kamara writes for a new America, where praise is plentiful and Black lives flourish.

  • Poetry
    JJJJJerome Ellis

    A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse, JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their

  • Poetry
    Ama Codjoe

    Ama Codjoe’s highly anticipated debut collection brings generous light to the inner dialogues of women as they bathe, create art, make and lose love. Each poem rises with the urgency of a fully awakened sensual life.

  • Poetry
    Michael Kleber-Diggs

    Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.

  • Nonfiction
    J. Drew Lanham

    This memoir is a riveting exploration of the contradictions of Black identity in the rural South, asking what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.”

  • Nonfiction
    Antonio Michael Downing

    Tracing the author’s journey from the tropical forests of Trinidad to the stark landscape of rural Canada—as well as that of his personal, musical metamorphosis—this is a poignant memoir of overcoming and belonging.

  • Poetry
    Sean Hill

    From the Bahamas, London, and Cairo, to Minnesota and Georgia—and from the intimate messages of the heart to the global immigration of African Americans—these poems explore with urgency the relationships among travel, alienation, and home. Part…

  • Nonfiction
    Alison Hawthorne Deming and Lauret Savoy

    For centuries, the richness of our world’s diverse stories has been widely overlooked by readers of environmental literature. This collection works against this blind spot, exploring the relationship between culture and place, emphasizing the lasting…

  • Poetry
    Parneshia Jones

    Affectionate, dynamic, and uncommonly observant, this collection mines the richness of history to create a map of identity and influence. In the South, “lard sizzles a sermon from the stove”; in Chicago, we feast on an “opera of peppers and pimento”…

  • Nonfiction
    Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor

    A multicultural anthology about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.

  • Nonfiction
    Alexandra Manglis and Kristen Case

    21|19 offers a re-reading of the “American Renaissance” and new possibilities for imaginative critical practice today.

  • Poetry
    Ada Limón

    An NPR “Book We Love”
    An Indie Next Selection for May 2022
    A TIME Magazine “Must Read Book of 2022”

    An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

  • Poetry
    Ada Limón

    From U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things examines the dangerous thrill of living in a world you must leave one day and the search to find something that is “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”

  • Poetry
    Analicia Sotelo

    This Jake Adam York Prize winner is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman. At every step, these poems seduce with history, folklore, and sensory detail.

  • Nonfiction
    Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor

    A multicultural anthology about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.

  • Fiction
    Jon Pineda

    When Tom Serafino’s twin sister, Teagan, suffers a debilitating brain injury, a police investigation implicates his playmate’s uncle, Shoe. Innocent of the crime but burdened by his own childhood tragedy, Shoe takes the blame—inviting the question of…

  • Nonfiction
    Alexandra Manglis and Kristen Case

    21|19 offers a re-reading of the “American Renaissance” and new possibilities for imaginative critical practice today.

  • Nonfiction
    Alison Hawthorne Deming and Lauret Savoy

    For centuries, the richness of our world’s diverse stories has been widely overlooked by readers of environmental literature. This collection works against this blind spot, exploring the relationship between culture and place, emphasizing the lasting…

  • Nonfiction
    Barry Lopez

    This timely collection—featuring essays from Wendell Berry, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Bill McKibben, and Rebecca Solnit, among others—challenges the division of human society from the natural world that has often characterized traditional…

  • Nonfiction
    Kazim Ali

    In building relationships with his former neighbors, Ali explores questions of land and power―and in remembering a lost connection to this place, finally finds a home he might belong to.

  • Poetry
    Jennifer Huang

    Selected by Jos Charles as the winner of the 2021 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, Return Flight is a lush reckoning: with inheritance, with body, with trauma, with desire—and with the many tendons in between.

  • Poetry
    Su Hwang

    This collection offers a singular perspective on our nation of immigrants and the tensions pulsing in the margins where they live and work.

  • Poetry
    Rick Barot

    In The Galleons, Rick Barot widens his scope, contextualizing the immigrant journey of his Filipino-American family in the larger history and aftermath of colonialism.

  • Poetry
    Chris Santiago

    Tula: a ruined Toltec capital; a Russian city known for its accordions; Tagalog for “poem.” Inspired by the experiences of the second-generation immigrant who does not fully acquire the language of his parents, the winner of the 2016 Lindquist &…

  • Poetry
    Lee Ann Roripaugh

    Heian-period Japanese women writers, science fiction, and the author’s own experience as a second-generation immigrant: these are some of the sources these poems use to explore the connection between identity and language. Wonderfully lyrical and…

  • Poetry
    Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

    From the intersection of Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures, this collection arrives brimming with personal and political histories.

  • Poetry
    Yi Lu

    The sea is an impossible force in this collection: it is both a majestic presence that predates man, and something to carry with us wherever we go. These brilliantly translated poems, presented in both Chinese and English, introduce an important…

  • Fiction
    Jon Pineda

    When Tom Serafino’s twin sister, Teagan, suffers a debilitating brain injury, a police investigation implicates his playmate’s uncle, Shoe. Innocent of the crime but burdened by his own childhood tragedy, Shoe takes the blame—inviting the question of…

  • Poetry
    Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover

    This groundbreaking anthology presents a revelatory portrait of contemporary Vietnamese poetry. What emerges from this conversation of outsiders and insiders, Vietnamese and American voices, is a worldly sensibility descended from the geographical…

  • Fiction
    Debra Magpie Earling

    Bold, passionate, and more urgent than ever, Debra Magpie Earling’s powerful classic novel is reborn in this new edition.

  • Fiction
    Makenna Goodman

    A fable both blistering and surreal, this is a propulsive, funny, and thought-provoking novel about a woman in isolation, whose mind—fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art—attempts to betray her.

  • Fiction
    Deirdre McNamer

    From Deirdre McNamer, a masterful exploration of the rich and hidden facets of human character, as illuminated by the mysterious connections among the residents of a senior residence in Montana.

  • Fiction
    Richard Wagamese

    Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul Indian Horse is surrounded by violence and cruelty, but finds a tentative salvation in hockey.

  • Fiction
    Deni Ellis Béchard

    When a car explodes in Kabul ten years after 9/11, a journalist discovers that its passengers—three fellow ex-pats—had formed an unlikely love triangle. As the journalist learns more, the narratives of their lives become inseparable from the story of…

  • Fiction
    Seth Kantner

    Born and raised in the Arctic, Cutuk Hawcley has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. But when he leaves for the city as a young man, incompatible realities collide, forcing Cutuk to choose between two worlds—both…

  • Fiction
    Larry Watson

    In this modern classic, the charges of a young Sioux woman force David Hayden’s father, the sheriff of their small town, to confront his older brother, a charming war hero and respected doctor. This novel is an astonishing tale of love and courage…