Our Books
The Fulbright Triptych is widely considered a masterpiece of contemporary art: a striking family tableau that has quietly inspired, exhorted, and challenged its viewers for years. This collection of essays directly reflects the painting’...
As a young man, Neil Fox made a healthy living on heads-I-win-tails-you-lose venture capital deals. Now, years later, that cunning has calcified into a principled isolation, which Neil hopes to preserve even as a new neighbor builds his home in...
Ariel, Nicki, and M have been inseparable friends since they were kids, but now M’s mom has decided to move away. So the friends concoct a plan that will keep M in the Bay Area—she’ll move in with Ariel and her family. But everything M does gets...
In these exquisitely crafted prose poems, image collides with image to produce a singular ecological and poetic vision. Touching on mortality, temporality, and eternity, this collection asks the reader: how do we tie ourselves to the world when...
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...
Taken from his ancestral home, Dshurukuwaa reunites with his siblings at a boarding school, where his brother also serves as the principal. But soon he comes to understand that the main purpose of the school—and for that matter, of the state—is...
After a moment of kindness turns tragic, Tommy Jack McMorsey is forced to revisit his past: the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend. Exploring the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions of identity intersect...
Engaging in a deep and richly entertaining study of “campus ecology,” this fascinating, highly original book explores one day in the life of the average student. Along the way, it repurposes the great and timeless opportunity presented by college...
Scorned and feared by their neighbors, Reuben Sledge’s family persists on the outskirts of Des Moines, near the edge of the City—a surreal place, from which no one who enters has ever returned. But when the woman Reuben loves ventures into the...
The world is always in motion—both toward and away from us—and it is also full of risk: from sharks unexpectedly lurking beneath estuarial rivers to the dangers of New York City. In such a world, how should one proceed? These poems suggest that...
It is 1942. Korinna is an active member of the local Nazi youth group. When she discovers that her parents—who are secretly members of an underground resistance group—are sheltering a family of Jewish refugees behind her bedroom wall, she is...
As the young daughter of an affluent Parsee family in Lahore, Lenny is keenly observant of the city’s astonishing diversity—Muslims and Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, coexisting together. But as Lahore descends into sectarian violence, Lenny’s...
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...
Born and raised in the idyll of Sharon Center, Iowa—a life of four-leaf clovers, dogs, and fishing—July Montgomery is rocked by the tragic death of his parents, a blow that precipitates his bitter exile from Eden. After an escape to Philadelphia...
A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, the author’s travels have taken him all over the world. Here he repairs to Brimnes, his fisherman’s cottage on the shore of a fjord in northern Iceland. Looking west from this place of seemingly endless and...
Founded nearly four decades ago by a group of young writers, the Loft has become our nation’s largest independent literary center. This anthology gathers the collected wisdom of that community, from practical tips and suggestions to ruminations...
Welcome to the off-kilter world of Finley, an investigator of indiscernible origins and prowess. Her assignment: the mysterious Professor Uppal and his puppets. The objective: impossible to say. Captivating and whimsical, idiosyncratic and deeply...
Seamlessly bridging the material and spiritual worlds, these poems take the reader into the mind of a true visionary: Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion in colonial America. This remarkable collection captures the ineffable...
Born into an artistic and eccentric family, Lyza laments that her only talent is carving letters into wood. At least, that is, until the devastating loss of her mother during the pandemic of 1918. When her unconventional father begins to prepare...
Since her father remarried, Nissa feels like a stranger in her own home. Hoping to restore the life she knew, Nissa accepts an invitation from her mother and moves to Chicago—but life in the big city is overwhelming. How can Nissa fit in when...
California wildfires, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism—these poems take on American media culture, the obscene foil for personal legacies of violence and violation. This collection...
At once ancient and contemporary, personal and political, grounded and yet uniquely dazzling, this extraordinary collection blends Asian and Western sensibilities in a pioneering way. With wit and energy, these poems define the author’s existence...
Musician. Curmudgeon. Trailblazer. Prairie populist. Teacher. World traveler. Cultural critic. Humanitarian. Scholar. Skeptic. Insightful humorist. Charismatic speaker. Firebrand. Seer. This collection of new and selected poems paints a portrait...
Manz is sure of one thing: he lives on the wrong side of the tracks in dusty Rockhill, Texas. Life is tough for everyone, but especially for Manz, the mixed-race son of migrant apple pickers. When the summer heat sets in, Manz takes a job outside...
Charting one cycle of seasons, this book reveals countless cycles of thought: the innumerable sounds of winter snow; the fecundity of spring; the tenacity of prairie roots in a summer drought; and the mortality of fall. The result is equal parts...
Brothers C and Sam left home after their father’s violent death. But upon their return to the Easter house—looming over the residents of Ontarion, Iowa—they create a lucrative business: The Associate, a group of men who perform services for a fee...
Lusty and literate, these tales feature characters flirting with disaster. An alienated young man discovers the meaning of love in the pages of a biology textbook. A mother and son witness a father’s backyard fling with a disturbed neighbor. And...
This fascinating account of life on North America’s last frontier chronicles the transformation of the Arctic as the mainstream moves relentlessly north. Essays and photographs offer an ode to respect—that oft-forsaken, unromantic quality—for the...
As a small child, a storm at sea claimed Kyna’s family, and nearly took her own life. Now, when her adoptive parents announce that they’ve rented a summer house on “magical” Lake Champlain, Kyna begs to be left home for the summer. No such luck....
A tightrope walker who travels on telephone wires; angels, scarecrows, friends, and lovers—the speakers in these poems often desire to hold time still, even as they acknowledge that to do so would actually mean the death of love, of experience....
Drawing inspiration from Novalis, a poet who believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, this collection divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions—indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism,...