Hot News This Week
April 3, 2025
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Special shoutout to Copper Canyon for publishing five books out of the “25 most consequential collections from the past 25 years”!
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| Torrey House Author Is a “5 Under 35” Honoree
Denetsosie’s story collection “vividly depicts the lives of Diné people,” says the National Book Foundation, “addressing the complexities of intergenerational trauma and the legacies of family bonds, cultural traditions, and hope.”
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| You Must Take Part in Revolution on MSNBC
On March 30, journalist Melissa Chan and dissident artist Badiucao were interviewed about their graphic novel, You Must Take Part in Revolution, on MSNBC’s Velshi Banned Book Club. In the segment, host Ali Velshi calls their book a “welcome addition to the increasingly popular dystopian literary canon in America.”
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| The Scaling Era Is an “Over-all Picture of AI’s Trajectory”
“A twenty-four-year-old wunderkind interviewer, Patel has attracted a large podcast audience by asking AI researchers detailed questions that no one else even knows to ask, or how to pose.”
This week, Dwarkesh Patel’s The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 was discussed at length in a New Yorker article on whether we’re taking AI seriously enough. In the piece, editor Joshua Rothman says the book is “a wide-ranging and informative compendium of excerpts from interviews with AI insiders,” writes editor Joshua Rothman in the piece, and he praises how Patel “weaves together many interviews to create an over-all picture of AI’s trajectory.” The Scaling Era is out in July from Stripe Press.
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| | Rodeo
by Sunni Brown Wilkinson
Autumn House Press • April 2025 • 9781637681022
“For fans of Mary Oliver, Rodeo is filled with the soft, keening aftermath of tragedy while still in awe of life’s brutal beauty.” — Wroxanna Work, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
“The expansiveness of the American West and the close inner turmoil of grief tug against each other in Wilkinson’s lyrical, gently rhythmic poems.” — Grace Harper, Mac’s Backs (Cleveland Heights, OH)
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“How would you live knowing that any moment is just as likely to be your (and your spouse’s and children’s) last, simply because of where you were born? What would you write if you knew someday, any day truly, all you would have left to show the world how you lived and loved and fought for life were some words on a paper? This is that story.” — Victoria, Changing Hands Bookstore (Tempe, AZ)
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| | Book of Potions
by Lauren K. Watel
Sarabande Books • February 2025 • 9781956046359
“An excellent collection. . . . Watel’s poems are full of anger, love, and unflinching vision, and her voice is laser focused, like a knife.” — Emma Aprile, Carmichael’s Bookstore (Louisville, KY)
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| | Red Water
by Jurica Pavicic, trans. Matt Robinson
Bitter Lemon Press • June 2025 • 9781916725157
★ “The mysterious disappearance of a young woman shadows several people in her life for decades. . . . A brilliant cocktail of mystery and recently history, compellingly told.” — Kirkus Reviews
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| | Delicious Hunger
by Hai Fan, trans. Jeremy Tiang
Tilted Axis Press • June 2025 • 9781917126021
★ “Readers will find much to savor in these impassioned and unique tales. . . . The Malaysian Communist Party’s insurgency is rendered in vivid detail by Fan, a member of the party’s guerrilla forces from 1976 to 1989, in this remarkable collection, his English-language debut.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | The Delicate Beast
by Roger Celestin
Bellevue Literary Press • February 2025 • 9781954276369
“‘The bliss and the brutality’ of a childhood in early-1960s Haiti are portrayed with dreamlike, then nightmarish, eloquence in Celestin’s autobiographical first novel, The Delicate Beast. There’s a mythic feel to [it].” — New York Times Book Review
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| | Ultramarine
by Mariette Navarro, trans. Eve Hill-Agnus
Deep Vellum Publishing • March 2025 • 9781646053575
“Far more than a simple thriller. The novel offers a strange, compelling exploration of how loneliness shapes a person—and might drive them to pursue the comfort of isolation. . . . This is a haunting, unpredictable novel that’s hard to shake after reading.” — Vulture, “The Best Books of 2025 (So Far)”
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“I Didn’t Come Here to Lie gives readers insight into what influenced Lewis’s decisions and strategies during one of the most pivotal moments in education policy in the twenty-first century so far. . . . Lewis’s wit, wisdom, and passion for the future of Chicago students and teachers leap off the page.” — The Progressive
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“[I] couldn’t put it down. . . . It’s a deceptively simple but wholly propulsive story that explores the interplay between memory, patriarchy and solidarity.” — Laila Lalami, via The Guardian
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| | Immemorial
by Lauren Markham
Transit Books • February 2025 • 9798893389036
“A vital, moving portrait of how to live in a world we may never get back.” — Vulture, “The Best Books of 2025 (So Far)”
“Immemorial takes a loving last look at the dying world.” — The Believer
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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ABA, GLIBA, NAIBA, NEIBA, and MPIBA Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
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