Hot News This Week
June 12, 2025
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| “Elias,” an excerpt from Jon Fosse’s novel Vaim, translated by Damion Searls, appears in a new issue of the New Yorker. Transit Books is publishing Vaim in October, and it’s Fosse’s first novel since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. For more, read the New Yorker’s interview with Fosse on “Elias” and his writing.
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| Listen to Aja Monet on NPR
Surrealist blues poet and musician aja monet appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition on Tuesday to discuss her new book, Florida Water (Haymarket Books), which is an “ode to the ways a poem can rinse, unravel and reveal hard truths,” according to NPR. “I think if our leaders reflected the love that we know we need and deserve,” monet tells producer Julie Depenbrock, “we would have a very different way of organizing systems in society. So I look forward to a people that demands love from their leaders.” For more, read a recent profile in Mother Jones on monet’s work.
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| Sci-fi/Fantasy Selections
Kirkus Reviews editor Laurie Muchnick recommended Pip Adam’s Audition (Coffee House Press) among four wild SFF novels guaranteed to blow your mind.
Booklist named A Fix of Light by Kel Menton (Little Island Books) as one of this year’s top ten SFF titles for youth.
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| Bank Street and Children's Book Council Picks
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| | Mothersalt
by Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Alice James Books • May 2025 • 9781949944723
“[These are] not poems merely about motherhood, but motherhood as a framework to understand language and vice-versa. These poems are dazzling, the visual scales of images swelling and dilating as if we are watching language being birthed in real time.” — Matthew Buxton, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
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| | Juvenilia
by Hera Lindsay Bird, illus. Gino Dal Cin
Deep Vellum Publishing • June 2025 • 9781646053773
“I LOVE Hera Lindsay Bird and am so excited for this North American release!! Her sense of humor tangled with her prose are wonderful and keeps me engaged throughout the collection.” — Olivia Stacey, E. Shaver, Bookseller (Savannah, GA)
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★ “Sterling collection of short stories by South Indian writer Mushtaq. . . . A memorable introduction to a gifted writer from whom we should hope to hear more.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | The Lodgers
by Holly Pester
Assembly Press • September 2024 • 9781738009862
“The Lodgers brings poetry’s touch to bear on narrative form. If this book is about precarious housing, then it’s also a work that lets its reader in on the possibility that, to paraphrase Hölderlin, poetically we dwell.” — Chicago Review
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“Published two months into Trump’s first term, it weighs heavier now than ever, as civil protections continue to erode and the rule of law is failing to hold. . . . Luiselli paints a grotesque picture of the American immigration system, and forces the reader to replace names and numbers with faces and full lives.” — New Yorker, “4 Books to Read During Trump 2.0”
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| | Motherlover
by Lindsay Ishihiro
Iron Circus Comics • May 2025 • 9781638991465
“A philandering husband, sibling rivalry and past experiences complicate the lives of the women, and the relatable situations, measured pace and true-to-the-ear dialogue will have readers cheering for them.” — New York Times, “8 Comics to Read This Pride Month”
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“A novel of epic scope that resonates powerfully while wars of tragic loss continue to be fought on multiple fronts, including in Europe. Daanje exhibits brilliant powers of reconstitution in her descriptions of the war’s aftermath and the blighted landscapes that it left behind.” — Financial Times
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| | A Man With No Title
by Xavier Le Clerc, trans. William Rodarmor
Saqi Books • April 2025 • 9780863569821
“The book’s achievement at the level of form, where subject matter shades over into style, distinguishes it from others of its kind. . . . Le Clerc makes literature his own and adds his signature to the list of French prose stylists.” — Brooklyn Rail
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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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Two titles from Consortium publishers were mentioned in the New York Times Book Review’s recs for every type of dad: Sergio Olguin’s The Best Enemy (Bitter Lemon Press, trans. Miranda France), for the dad who loves a mystery; and Rosalyn Drexler’s To Smithereens (Hagfish), for the dad who’s a sports fan.
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Critic Jennifer Wilson mentioned Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, translated by Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, and Khalid al-Hilli (City Lights Publishers), in her New Yorker summer reading recommendation.
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ABA, SCIBA, SIBA, NAIBA, MPIBA, NEIBA, GLIBA, PNBA, and NCIBA Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
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