Hot News This Week
February 3, 2026
| |
| “Our task as social movements is to uproot the system of immigration enforcement, whether it’s ICE or CBP or DHS or the border itself.” Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, was interviewed this week by Mondoweiss.
As reported in Literary Hub, Haymarket Books is offering free ebooks of Border and Rule and two other titles—John Washington’s The Case for Open Borders and Silky Shah’s Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition—in solidarity with “all those standing up for our communities against the brutality of immigrant detention and ICE occupation.”
| |
| PEN America Literary Finalists
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
PEN Translation Prize
- The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated by David McKay (New Vessel Press)
- Río Muerto by Ricardo Silva Romero, translated by Victor Meadowcroft (World Editions)
| |
| Horror News and New Horror
The newly published Persona by Aoife Josie Clements (LittlePuss Press) was mentioned in a recent Dirt piece, which praised LittlePuss for their “recent guerrilla marketing campaign [that] turned its social media channels over to the GoDaddy aesthetic of ‘Chariot Marketing Solutions.’” Elsewhere, the novel was selected as a Publishers Weekly Editor’s Pick by SFF/horror/romance editor Phoebe Cramer: “I was immediately sucked in by the gorgeous prose and surreal central mystery of Clements’s horror debut, about two trans women with an inexplicable connection. Clements uses their strange relationship to probe themes of labor, exploitation, and identity, all while delivering first-rate chills.”
| |
| Speculative Fiction Imagining Radical Futures and New Worlds
“In the early days of the new year, as we traditionally look for inspiration to change amidst new and continued horrors, each of these titles offer examples of radical new ways of being and living in the world.” The Seattle Public Library recently highlighted the Black Dawn series from AK Press, a line of speculative fiction titles that honor anarchist traditions and follow in the footsteps of Octavia E. Butler’s legacy. Browse Black Dawn titles here.
| |
| Kylie Minogue, Mariame Kaba, and More Indie News
“What rhymes with la la la, la la la la la? Kevin Killian, the poet obsessed with Kylie Minogue”: Last month, The Guardian ran a nice piece on Padam Padam: The Collected Poems by Kevin Killian (Nightboat Books). This week, the Poetry Foundation published an extensive essay on “the beloved queer trickster,” which notes that “Killian’s verve has become more potent since his expiration date. He would never let tragedy get the last laugh.”
| |
| | To See Beyond
by Anna Badkhen
Bellevue Literary Press • April 2026 • 9781954276543
★ “A quietly moving tribute to survivors of global upheaval. . . . Journalist Badkhen asks in these soul-stirring essays whether language can capture the enormity of grief and offer hope amid catastrophe.” — Publishers Weekly
| | |
| | Smash & Grab
by Mark Anthony Jarman
Biblioasis • February 2026 • 9781771966948
★ “Quirky, stylish, daring . . . 14 hallucinatory, offbeat stories about refugees and wanderers, exiles physical and/or psychological. Jarman is one of those writers, like Padgett Powell or Joy Williams or Barry Hannah, whose style is the work’s substance, its DNA.” — Kirkus Reviews
| | |
| |
★ “[A] remarkably lucid and fluent chronicle of social change over the last six decades or so. . . . Solnit’s holistic anatomy of the dynamics of change is precise, compelling, and deeply clarifying.” — Booklist
| | |
| | The Fountain
by Lisa Loffredo
Transit Children's Editions • April 2026 • 9798893380897
★ “A visually inviting fable of magic-tinged abundance. . . . Satisfying echoes of the Magic Porridge Pot, Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll, and Tomi Ungerer’s The Hat; and droll text and linework that will fully immerse readers.” — Publishers Weekly
| | |
| | The Muéganos
by Jaque Jours
Transit Children's Editions • May 2026 • 9798893380873
★ “Mexican author/illustrator Jours packs an emotional wallop in this work, a potent meditation on often complicated familial bonds, nascent individuality, and parental love. . . . A marvelous portrait of the thrills and chills of leaving childhood.” — Kirkus Reviews
| | |
| |
“A fascinating glimpse into the world of science for young readers looking to discover their passion in life. An informative and attractive introduction to science careers that would be useful in most libraries serving children.” — School Library Journal
“This fun offering is sure to open up possibilities and spark curiosity.” — Booklist
| | |
| |
“The book’s realistic, colorful graphics in well-designed layouts are creative, attractive, and enlightening. Everything is relative in this numerically fascinating presentation of records of every kind.” — Kirkus Reviews
| | |
|
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz (Transit Books)
Indie Press Top 40 (Fic, #2), ABA, MPIBA, PNBA, MIBA, NAIBA, SIBA, NCIBA, NEIBA, GLIBA, and SCIBA Bestseller
| |
|
| ABA's January Indie Next Pick
| |
Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation in this proletarian space-age fable in which a politician, a spy, and a poet are drawn into one another’s orbits.
| |
In this speculative debut novel of love and revolution in a sci-fi present, a woman’s life is upended when she’s entrusted with a strange gift bearing the prophecy of a liberated future.
| |
A magical girl-gone-bad and a renegade mech pilot must stay on a date forever—even if it means destroying the world—in this riotous, genre-exploding, galaxy-spanning, enemies-to-lovers romantasy.
| |
|
