Another month, another busy release schedule for our authors—and just in time for holiday wish lists! Here are eight new books from an accomplished assortment of New England Review poets, essayists, and short story writers.
The New Rivers Press publishes NER author Rosaleen Bertolino’s debut book, The Paper Demon and Other Stories. A collection of twelve stories, The Paper Demon counts among its subjects “runaways, witches, violent children, and shape-changing cats” as the book explores the interior insights, and mysteries, of love, death, family dynamics, and “meanness conscientiously displayed.” The manuscript won the 2019 Many Voices Project Prose competition. Bertolino’s fiction appeared in NER 40.3 and NER 38.3, and has been read at our NER Out Loud event.
Bestiary Dark (Copper Canyon Press) is the eleventh poetry collection from NER author and poet Marianne Boruch. Written following Boruch’s Fulbright sejour in Australia, the collection thematically engages the poetic ecology of human and environment to explore Pliny the Elder’s perennial question: Is the world finite? Boruch’s poems and short essays have made multiple appearances in the pages of NER, most recently in NER 42.1 and NER 39.1.
Inventory of Doubts (Tupelo Press) is the latest collection from NER poet and artist Landon Godfrey. The winning manuscript of the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, Inventory of Doubts juxtaposes anthropomorphic subjects in all arrangements with the book’s alphabetized structure. The influences of surrealism are not lost in this book, described as “thrilling” and full of “whimsy,” as Godfrey explores animal and object sentience. Godfrey’s poetry appeared in NER 38.3.
NER founding editor, author, and poet Sydney Lea releases Seen from All Sides: Lyric and Everyday Life with Green Writers Press. In this compendium of newspaper columns authored by Lea during his 2011-2015 tenure as Vermont Poet Laureate, Lea explores “how the making of a poet’s art resembles the making of any reader’s life.” Lea’s appearances in NER are numerous; his poetry was most recently included in NER 41.3.
Author, Best American Poetry editor, and NER poet David Lehman adds another poetry collection to his list of publications with this fall’s release of The Morning Line (University of Pittsburgh Press). Meditating “on life, love, aging, disease, friendship, chance, and the possibility of redemption in a godless age,” The Morning Line engages subjects with intelligence, intimacy, and inclusivity. Lehman’s poem “The Red Death” appeared in NER 27.4.
From Askold Melnyczuk comes The Man Who Would Not Bow and Other Stories (Grand Iota), a collection of eight stories spanning the New World and the Old. Melnyczuk’s fifth book, The Man Who Would Not Bow builds upon a subtly linked cast of characters, all grappling with their “angels and demons.” The title story appeared in NER 42.1.
NER author Julia Ridley Smith’s memoir, The Sum of Trifles, is out from the University of Georgia Press this November. Composed through a series of essays, the memoir pulls apart the layers of meaning to the objects her parents left behind. A remembrance and a dive into the material symbols of identity and purpose, The Sum of Trifles explores grief and things in both past and present. Smith’s essay “A Miniature for My Mother” appeared in NER 38.4.
Translator, author, and NER poet Carolyne Wright releases her sixth poetry collection, Masquerade, with Lost Horse Press. Rooted in places—Seattle and pre-Katrina New Orleans—and identities, Masquerade is “a jazz-inflected, lyric-narrative sequence of poems” that reflects on finding place in aspiration, passion, and ideals despite the ever-present backdrop of American racism. Wright’s poem “A Reply to Storms in New Orleans” appeared in NER 21.4.
Visit our page on Bookshop.org for cumulative seasonal lists of NER author releases.
