Ian Hall’s debut, Creekwater Mansions, documents the intimacy of duress. These are love poems—unsparing and spun of daily life in Eastern Kentucky. Ron Rash, author of Serena, said, “I doubt a better debut book of poetry will be published this year.”

Third in a series, this anthology edited by Deesha Philyaw features short fiction written by contemporary writers of color. From farms to trading posts, basketball courts to kitchens, houses to cafes, these stories—whose themes include complicated relationships, personified places, death, immigration, love, and loneliness—highlight the experiences of those living in the rural parts of the U.S.

Knocked down by a bicycle one block from Central Park, Joe Marzino remembers nothing, not even his own name. He awakens into the world with only the clothes on his back, a throbbing pain in his ankle, and more questions than answers. A Stranger Comes to Town is a masterful novel of self-discovery, revealing the multitude of histories and lives we each inhabit, as well as the many ways we seek to reinvent ourselves and reshape our pasts.

Through precise prose, deep affection, wry humor, and a measure of snark, the characters in these 25 co-authored stories deceive and manipulate, they scrutinize and admonish, but they also earnestly seek to draw meaning from the flotsam of their lives.

Longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, Linda Michel-Cassidy’s When We Were Hardcore is born of the mountain areas in the American Southwest and depicts the lesser-known lives of characters who discover, reckon with, and often seek to escape the mostly rural landscapes that made them.

From the author of the National Book Award finalist The Suicide Index – hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “an extraordinary magical mystery tour of a book” – comes a startlingly original exploration of the unpredictability of fate and the mystery of our own mortality.

In the tradition of confessional and lyrical poets like Cynthia Cruz, Linda Gregg, Sylvia Plath, and Franz Wright, Hannah Bonner’s Another Woman explores female sexuality, anguish, and abjection within the decline of a romantic relationship as well as through biblical, mythical, or pop cultural figures such as Delilah, Aphrodite, or Karen Carpenter.

In this collection of fascinating and curious essays, celebrated Southern author George Singleton shares his thoughts “on Dogs, Food, Restaurants, Bars, Hangovers, Jobs, Music, Family Trees, Robbery, Relationships, Being Brought Up Questionably, Et Cetera.”

Until All You See Is Sky is a report from the front lines of a first-generation American life: growing up as the outsider, parenting without a clue, and persevering in plague times.

“The radiant poems in Darius Stewart’s Intimacies in Borrowed Light invite readers into the full and evolving vision of a brilliant young poet as he explores the nuances of his own identity and experiences as a Black and gay artist in urban Appalachia and beyond.”