This collection of vignettes about life as a refugee is by turns hilarious, beautiful, and heartbreaking, and strikingly holds up despite being a century old —Publishers Weekly
A warm congratulations to NER contributors Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, whose translation of Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea (NYRB Classics), marks the first time Teffi’s memoir has been published in English. It tells the story of the Russian writer’s 1918 journey through Ukraine as she fled the Bolsheviks.
The Chandlers’ other translations include Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter (Vintage Classics, 2012), and works by Vasily Grossman (NYRB Classics). Robert Chandler has edited and served as primary translator for Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, and co-edited The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. The Chandlers’ translation of Teffi’s “Lifeless Beast” appeared in NER 34.3-4.
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is available from New York Review Books and other booksellers.
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[Teffi] can write in more registers than you might think, and is capable of being heart-breaking as well as very funny . . . I can’t recommend her strongly enough —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
Another Teffi translation by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi, is also now available from New York Review Books and other booksellers.
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Magruder’s language is so precise, so beautifully crafted and bitingly funny, that I laughed throughout and then nearly cried when Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall ended —Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade
In James Magruder’s newest novel, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, the ghost of Helen Hadley chronicles the experiences of the residents of her dormitory for Yale graduate students and their entanglements with love, betrayal, and attachment.
Magruder’s debut novel, Sugarless (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He has also published the short story collection Let Me See It (Northwestern University Press, 2014). Magruder also writes and translates for the stage. His short story “Matthew Aiken’s Vie Bohème” appeared in NER 32.3.
Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall is available from Queen’s Ferry Press and independent booksellers.
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A Perfect Life probes how we live in the face of uncertainty and the ways risk can both disable and empower us. In her latest novel, Eileen Pollack has crafted a tender exploration of family love that is as smart and thought-provoking as it is moving—Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You
Congratulations to Eileen Pollack on the publication of her third novel, A Perfect Life. The novel follows Jane Weiss, a researcher at MIT trying to solve a genetic mystery that may threaten her life.
From Publishers Weekly: When [Jane is] surprised by love—and certain discoveries in the lab—she must grapple with what it means to live and love fully in the face of risk and loss.
Pollack’s previously published novels are Paradise, New York (Temple University Press, 2000) and Breaking and Entering (Four Way, 2012). She has also published two collections of short stories—In the Mouth (Four Way, 2008), and The Rabbi in the Attic (Delphinium Books, 2012)—as well as several nonfiction works. Her writing has appeared in NER 14.1, 16.4, 31.2, and 32.4.
A Perfect Life is available from Ecco and independent booksellers.
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One of the best writers of today in any language —Ricardo Piglia author of The Absent City
An English translation of Juan José Saer’s novel The Clouds is now available.
Juan José Saer was a leading Argentinian author of stories and novels, and received Spain’s prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for his novel The Event. Saer’s novel excerpt “Thursdays at La Giralda” appeared in NER 35.1.
The Clouds is available from Open Letter Books and other independent booksellers.
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Shaughnessy’s particular genius . . . is utterly poetic, but essayistic in scope.—The New Yorker
Congratulations to NER poet Brenda Shaughnessy on her fourth book of poetry, So Much Synth. This collection addresses adolescent girlhood, and is what Publishers Weekly calls “simmering in the obsessive nature of regrets and paths not taken.”
Shaughnessy’s poem, “A Mix Tape: The Hit Singularities,” appeared in NER 36.4. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, Paris Review, and more, and she was recognized as a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2013.
So Much Synth is available from her publisher, Copper Canyon Press and from independent booksellers.
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The poet’s wide-aloud love song to New York’s most boisterous borough is a deftly-crafted tour-de-force, a sleek melding of lyric and unflinching light. —Patricia Smith, author of Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah and four-time National Slam Champion
A love song indeed, Patrick Rosal’s fourth book Brooklyn Antediluvian serves as a both an ode to music and dance and also an examination of race in America. Rosal’s poetry appeared in NER 35.4 and his poems and essays have been featured in many other journals and anthologies.
This collection, which Publishers Weekly calls “an earth-shattering performance,” is not to be missed. Brooklyn Antediluvian can be purchased at Indiebound.org.
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Life this deeply observed—and felt—will always astound. —Mary Ruefle, author of Trances of the Blast
We are excited to congratulate NER contributor Ted Gilley on his first book of poetry, Come to Me. His short story “Bliss” appeared in NER 29.3 and his poems and fiction have appeared in many journals and publications.
Author Stephen Sandy says that this new collection, “delivers poems that resonate with the fears and joys of growing up. They are poems of recognition and acceptance, of love soberly considered and expressed.” This collection is available on Amazon and is not to be missed.
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Calling out from the rural horse pastures and the blackness of the mind’s night, The Body Double is, at once, a tribute to the world’s roughness and bowing down to its mysterious power.—Award-winning poet Ada Limon
Warmest congratulations to Lisa Lewis on her newest poetry collection The Body Double. Lewis’s poem “Dry Hollows” appeared in the recent NER 36.4 and can be read online here. Her work as also appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Guernica, Sugar House Review, American Literary Review, and elsewhere.
Lewis’s fifth book features poems which Ada Limon calls both “unflinching and precise . . . both piercing and generous.” This stunning new work can be purchased on Amazon.
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One of those writers whose style insinuates itself into your consciousness . . . you find your thoughts echoing its rhythms.—Philadelphia Enquirer
Congratulations to Gerald Stern on the publication of Divine Nothingness, a new collection of poems. Stern won the National Book Award for This Time (W.W. Norton, 1999), and in this collection he sets out to explore the nature of existence in the face of mortality.
Stern’s work has appeared in NER 9.1, 15.1, 15.2, and 30.3.
Divine Nothingness is available in paperback from W.W. Norton and other booksellers.
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Rachel Hadas makes isolated moments huge with meaning–scintillating or sad . . . She is endlessly observant, and often wry, about the loves and losses that hold up what she calls “a world in progress.”—J.D. McClatchy, author of Pulitzer Prize-nominated Hazmat
NER is excited to announce the publication of Rachel Hadas’s collection of poems, Questions in the Vestibule. Her work, both poetry and nonfiction, has appeared in too many volumes of NER to list, most recently in 36.1.
Questions in the Vestibule is available from Northwestern University Press and independent booksellers.
