Hot News This Week
June 19, 2025
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| “The strategic manipulation of waiting time by enslavers exposed the harsh reality that even awareness did not guarantee liberation.”
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| Influential Queer Literature
With “operatic wit and pathos,” Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (Theatre Communications Group) “not only gave universal themes of hope, loss, progress and redemption an explicitly queer context, it put queerness itself at the center of the American story.”
The “sweeping scope” in Jericho Brown’s The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press) “encompasses themes of racism, sexual violence, HIV and police brutality,” and Brown “draws on mythology and history to dissect a world that often devalues the voices of Black gay men.”
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| New Imprint Alert: OR Books x The Nation
As reported in Publishers Weekly, OR Books is joining forces with The Nation on a new imprint, Nation Books, with the aim to widen the impact of the voices in The Nation’s flagship magazine, which has published progressive journalism since 1865. Read the announcement for more on their new publishing partnership, and browse forthcoming Nation Books titles on Edelweiss.
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“In between roller skating, comic books, science fiction novels, and trying to meet girls, [Sean] begins to unravel the secrets of his parents’ past lives when they worked for a Black Power group in the 1960s. . . . This genre bending novel sweeps the reader into the mystery while truly bringing home what it was (and yes, still is) like to be Black in America. It’s a short, sweet winner.” — William Carl, An Unlikely Story (Plainville, MA)
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“I was hooked from the beginning. An anthology of short fiction, written by a Black man in the early 20th century about Black experiences and the African American dispora throughout varying subgenres of fiction and essays; afrofuturism, satire, and many more.” — Hilton Airall, Carmichael’s Bookstore (Louisville, KY)
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“Mardou Fox was the name Jack Kerouac gave to his erstwhile muse in The Subterraneans, basing her on an actual young, gifted, and Black poet who was also a presence on the Beat scene in the 1950s. Nisi Shawl has been inspired by the same real-life artist, Alene Lee, placing her not on the periphery but at the center of bohemian New York, before the Civil Rights Act, before Stonewall.” — James Crossley, Leviathan Bookstore (St. Louis, MO)
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“A perfect debut novel, explicit in its excellence! . . . It handles topics of universal interest—identity formation, alienation, power, loneliness—with daunting originality. Unlike a lot of so-called psychological thrillers, it is psychologically thrilling.” — Molly Young, Read Like the Wind (New York Times)
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“In these poems, Kuipers gives her own wonderfully fresh take on sex, marriage, parenthood and, yes, even rodents.” — Ron Charles, Book Club (Washington Post)
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“[A] memorable portrait of the mad hunger of corporate toil . . . superbly committed to its own beliefs—truthful, dryly funny and often subtly moving.” — New York Times Book Review
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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| We’re Hiring
Love working with small presses, indie books, and sales reps? Come work with us! Consortium is hiring a full-time Sales Specialist to join our Minneapolis team.
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Esther Lin, author of Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books), wrote an op-ed for TIME about being undocumented for two decades—and why she shares her story.
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The Lineup featured Lindsay Merbaum’s Vampires at Sea (Creature Publishing) in a roundup of queer horror, noting “it’s sure to be one of the most talked about genre books of the year.”
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Frieze editors’ summer reading recs include Lucía Lijtmaer’s Cautery, translated by Maureen Shaughnessy (Charco Press), and Diversity of Aesthetics, edited by Andreas Petroissants and Jose Rosales (Common Notions).
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ABA, PNBA, SCIBA, GLIBA, MPIBA, and MIBA Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
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