UNSUNG UNDERREPRESENTED WOMXN BIPOC LBGTQIA2S+ EXCEPTIONAL LITERATURE FRINGE GENRES REBELLIOUS AUTHORS ANTI-CORPORATIONS SMALL PRESS
UNSUNG UNDERREPRESENTED WOMXN BIPOC LBGTQIA2S+ EXCEPTIONAL LITERATURE FRINGE GENRES REBELLIOUS AUTHORS ANTI-CORPORATIONS SMALL PRESS
2026.
New releases, fall events, books that keep you up past bedtime, and good trouble.
WE’RE NOT DONE YET
NEW AND UPCOMING
sky they yearned to call mine is a collaborative poetry collection by Brenda Beardsley and Liza Wolff-Francis, written as an exchange that reshapes grief in real time. Moving between the personal and the political, the poems respond to pandemic isolation, environmental destruction, war, and the threat to bodily autonomy. Together, the poets find endurance in attention, relationship, and the persistence of love amid collapse.
Exploring the relationship between death and decay, life and rebirth, Matter’s Edge examines the spaces in between. Through meditations on political and social unrest, environmental change, personal heartbreak and loss, the collection asks readers to consider physical, spiritual, and existential limits. However, at despair’s edge, the book wonders: can one discover and embrace beauty, hope, and love?
“A cool premise.”
— Andy Weir, The Martian
On a rare night out, painfully nerdy accountant Dave is abducted from a dive bar bathroom by aliens he can’t communicate with. Convinced he’s been chosen for some cosmic purpose, he interprets training, collars, and playtime as signs of heroic destiny, unaware that he’s actually their pet. Dave, the Space Pet is a hilarious, tender inversion of the sci-fi adventure that asks what happens when being “chosen” means being cared for.
MURDERER is a searing poetry collection that confronts personal and American trauma through memory, labor, faith, and loss. Andy Smart examines the “murder of reality” in poems shaped by a father’s suicide, working-class survival, and fractured national mythologies. Fierce, irreverent, and unflinching, the collection sings for those still searching for truth in the wreckage.
Exodus with Red Delicious by Brook Bhagat is a ferocious feminist poetry collection—unyielding, confrontational, and impossible to look away from.
When everything collapses at once, survival becomes an act of love.
After Julie Akins’s husband, Leo, suffers a devastating stroke, she becomes his caregiver, advocate, and lifeline. Then Julie’s own body begins to fail. A specialist raises the possibility of a slow-moving cancer, but no one provides a clear diagnosis or coordinated path forward. As her town burns and her career as mayor of Ashland, Oregon, begins to unravel, Julie finds herself trapped between public responsibility and private catastrophe, fighting for two lives inside a healthcare system defined by delay, fragmentation, and indifference.
At Mayo Clinic, after nearly two years of uncertainty, Julie finally receives an answer: she does not have terminal cancer. She has a treatable mast cell disorder. The news offers relief, but it also exposes a devastating question: Why should attentive, coordinated care feel like a miracle?
Drawing on her experience as a journalist, public official, patient, caregiver, and Zen practitioner, Julie connects her family’s struggle to the wider forces of medical debt, homelessness, aging, and institutional collapse. Yet Bone Deep is more than an indictment of American healthcare. It is an intimate account of a partnership transformed by illness and a woman discovering that even when certainty, security, and identity fall away, something essential can remain.
Raw, searching, and ultimately luminous, Bone Deep: Love and Survival in a Broken Healthcare System is for anyone who has feared that one terrible moment could become a lifelong struggle—and anyone who has learned that sometimes love is not merely what helps us survive. It is what survival is for.
Pushcart-nominated Mick Bennett’s characters deal with unexpected conflicts: a senior citizen tap dances his way into a hot date and a mugging, estranged young lovers unexpectedly reunite at a mental correctional facility, and a father nearly comes to blows with his nineteen-year-old son the night before the wedding. Stories appear in chronological sections—Maturing, Adulting, and Aging. In this eighteen-piece collection, Messes We Made captures both quiet victories and silent defeats.
The White Field is a fast-paced journey of a man Tom, fresh out of prison and trying desperately to rebuild his life. But he is caught by mysterious, unseen forces beyond his knowledge or control.
After his release from prison, he is dropped back into the world in the wastelands of the city. In the menial work afforded the underclass, he begins his new life among characters at the edges of society - dwellers of the netherworld - such as Raphael, a former cop from Mexicali-singing Spanish areas in the mists of the industrial night among drug addicts and crooked cops; Tony, a stoner scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of history based solely on the intricate study of rock and roll; and Larry, the bloated, abusive manager trapped as much as his workers in a world of tedium and repetition and machines
Think, The Three Stooges on acid.
Unable to reconnect with what’s left of his family, Tom embarks on a criminal path more harrowing than the one that led him to prison in the first place. Lured in by the nefarious Thane, he slips into a plan that will leave him with no way back. And with no place left in this world to go but prison, he makes one last run for freedom. Will he escape?
Catalog of Labors, a meditation on the complexities of day-to-day work, is the third published collection by poet Christy Prahl. With subjects ranging from bank teller to barista, train engineer to university professor, these twenty portraits give voice to the complexities of the human spirit engaged in day-to-day production. In the end, the collection serves as a love letter to American labor and the imaginative muscle that keeps it ticking.
KIRKUS totes THE GEOGRAPHY OF SAYING GOODBYE as "A fleet-footed romp of a book with some sneakily perceptive insights into larger human questions."
On her deathbed, Paul Canton’s mother declares she’s bound for the Alboran Sea. The nurses dismiss it as nonsense, but the next morning she vanishes, along with her son’s credit card. Paul, who finds leaving his comfort zone “more terrifying than the Third Battle of Nanking,” sets off across continents in a quixotic pursuit, desperate for one last chance to say goodbye. Only, the farther he travels, the less he understands the woman who raised him, and the more he realizes how little he’s actually lived.
Wry and tender in equal measure, THE GEOGRAPHY OF SAYING GOODBYE blends humor with lyrical observation in a story about family and mortality, yes, but also about learning how to live.
My Monstrous Family Cookbook is a hybrid memoir that uses the structure of a cookbook to explore family trauma, memory, and survival. Each recipe functions as an essay, transforming food into a language for what cannot be spoken. Darkly funny and emotionally incisive, the book interrogates masculinity, inheritance, and the costs of silence.
A Slice of Orange: loving and leaving the Osho/Rajneesh cult is a tale of spiritual discovery that goes horribly wrong. In search of bliss and belonging, Nicola Ranson travels from her Canadian convent school to India, and then to the cult headquarters in Oregon where she was on security duty when the FBI uncovered the source of the largest domestic bioterrorism attack in modern U.S. history. Forty years later, she shares her deeply personal experiences of the free-love utopia that devolved into conspiracy, poisonings, and attempted murder.
See Us in the Real World
October 8 | Elisa Carlsen, Frances Badalamenti, Amy Baskin, & Summer Stewart at Up Up Books
October 8 | Aileen Keown Vaux + Laura Read at Annie Bloom's Books
October 17 | Amy Shimshon-Santo at No Fest Poetry Marathon
October 18 | Marianne Villanueva at the Filipino American International Book Festival
October 24 | John J. Trause at the BEST of BREVITAS Festival
October 26 | Julie Akins at Bloomsbury Books
PACIFIC NORTHWEST BABES
Eve is a 27-year-old sex worker living in Portland, Oregon. She dabbles in escorting, prostitution, stripping, and any avenue she can think of for exploiting men. She has an eating disorder and daily existential crises, but is otherwise an altogether well-adjusted adult, thanks to her rather aloof mindset about her vocation and the fact that she regularly finds herself beneath strangers’ bodies. She’s moderately content with her compartmentalized, albeit unorthodox, life as she has her two good friends and regular coffee shop haunts and tiny studio apartment and is convinced she’ll be perpetually single.
But then she goes and falls in love with the new handyman at her apartment complex. Joseph is considerably younger and poorer than her usual client. But he isn’t a client, and that’s precisely why he’s so dangerous, especially considering Eve has sworn off love forever. When her feelings go unrequited, she proceeds to get stuck in a cycle of self-destructive behaviors and eventually winds up in a sadomasochistic arrangement with a controlling rich man named Lance. With the help of her friends and being forced to confront her own inner demons, Eve finally claws her way out of the mire she’s made for herself and perhaps even learns a thing or two. Or perhaps not.
CORMORANT is a work of contrition. The poems are political and personal. A response to the federal government’s plan to kill thousands of cormorants in the name of salmon recovery and a tribute to the person who died from heartbreak because of it.
To support wildlife, we are donating the profits of this book to The Wildlife Center of the North Coast.
The bright red fish are gone from a sports fishing destination lake in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, and the Nez Perce Tribe and the government want to know why. Biologist Jess MacKinnon tears into the mountains on her motorcycle to solve the mystery. She takes the place of a government scientist, Ben Fletcher, who drowned in that very same lake. Jess knew Ben, and not just professionally—but that’s a secret.
There are a lot of secrets in the tiny mountain town of Still Lake, including one that puts Jess in danger: Ben’s death was no accident. With help from a quirky private investigator who describes herself as “not neurotypical,” Jess solves the mystery of Ben’s death and the mystery of the fish. She comes to terms with her own past, too, including her connection to Ben Fletcher, his privileged parents, and the biases of social class that destroyed their relationship.
Based on a real-world environmental disaster, THIRSTY CREEK is a murder mystery and ecological mystery combined, a story about human arrogance, greed, and unintended consequences.
Fifty percent of proceeds from THIRSTY CREEK support the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, a place-based nonprofit in Wallowa, Oregon.
SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR is a four-part poetry collection rooted in the Pacific Northwest that resists regional mythmaking in favor of lived experience. With wry humor and earned wisdom, SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR aims to deconstruct queer alienation and our ever-changing relationship with the natural world. Determined to be more celebration than elegy, the book suggests “if you thought that life would end when the world did / then you don’t know anything about life.” Drawing on county fairs, 90’s true crime TV, and the COVID-19 pandemic, SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR locates meaning in memory in unexpected places, while situating itself in the tradition of Northwest writers who treat the land not as backdrop, but as an active force–and in doing so, offers a portrait of the Pacific Northwest as it is: fractured, funny, enduring, and alive.
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Debutiful Named MOUTH One of the Best Debut Short Story Collections of 2025
In MOUTH, Kerry Donoghue’s provocative debut, the ways we consume—from the drinks we can't put down to the lovers we can’t resist—reveal deeper hungers we often keep hidden. A competitive eater, a rodeo clown, a pearl diver, and a mermaid-in-training are just a few of the outsiders in this collection, each grappling with their own consuming desires. Whether through alcohol, infidelity, or chasing perfection, these characters are forced to confront what they’re truly starving for—and who they become when they can't fill that void. MOUTH asks: when our appetites define us, how do we survive the hunger?
BETWEEN HERE AND HOME stitches together a narrative in soliloquies of a rural town struggling to hold onto community despite tragedy.
Laurie Kutchins, author of The Night Path & Slope of the Child Everlasting, BOA Editions Ltd., said, "It’s a delight to see, hear and sense all the genres come together so seamlessly in Matt Daly’s first book of poems. BETWEEN HERE AND HOME has the fascinating plot and pacing of a novel, the compressed narrative energy of flash fiction, the essayistic themes of nonfiction, and the lyric, nuanced integrity of poetry. Daly has built a world here, and in doing so creates home and homage to a real but unnamed western place with its highway, river, KOA, homesteads, bar stools, its local characters and animals that both inhabit and haunt this place. It’s a compelling read whether from front to back as in fiction, or opening to any page as in poetry."
JOY is the new full-length collection of poetry by Francis Daulerio, author of If & When We Wake, Please Plant This Book, and With a Difference. Beginning with one pregnancy and ending with another, JOY examines the ways in which we keep ourselves alive, centering around the birth of Daulerio’s first child while coping with the loss of friend and collaborator, Scott Hutchison. With a foreword by acclaimed author Maggie Smith (Good Bones, Keep Moving), and cover art by UK artist Helen Ahpornsiri, this life-affirming collection highlights what Bon Iver’s Sean Carey describes as “Daulerio’s relentless hope and love,” encouraging readers to push through hardships to find their own sense of meaning.
Jen & Gary’s Infinite (Quantum) Entanglements is a multiversal romantic comedy that’s as zany as it is heartfelt, as vulgar as it is sexy, as violent as it is sweet, and as funny as it is sad. It’s a story that takes “love comes in many forms” both literally and figuratively, showcasing it in the most unique and bizarre ways possible. Beneath the chaos, the book pulses with heart (and maybe even a little insight) that makes the wild premise worth the ride.
BESTSELLERS
Romance, deception, and murder erupt when the use of modern-day practices pits one farmer who has faith in the ancient wisdom of husbandry against another who uses chemicals, mistreats his animals, and exploits farm workers, while the son of the first and the daughter of the last try to rise above the war that engulfs them.
MOTHER! by Summer Stewart is a genre-defying collection of poetry and essays that interrogates what it means to be made—and remade—as a woman. Moving through girlhood, the body, labor, relationships, and motherhood, the book dismantles the idea that identity is self-determined, revealing instead how it is shaped through expectation, silence, and survival.
Blending intimate narrative with sharp cultural analysis, Stewart explores pregnancy, loss, sexuality, and care as lived realities rather than abstract concepts. Her work exposes the invisible systems women sustain—within families, partnerships, and institutions—while examining the psychological and physical costs of carrying what is never fully named.
At once deeply personal and structurally aware, MOTHER! reframes motherhood not as a role, but as a condition that illuminates broader truths about autonomy, power, and inheritance. In doing so, Stewart offers not resolution, but recognition and a path toward self-definition that does not rely on disappearance.
Dive into the bittersweet, beautifully peculiar world of Patricia Q. Bidar's Pardon Me for Moonwalking, a collection of short stories that illuminate the offbeat, the tender, and the painfully human. Each story offers a glimpse into the extraordinary moments of seemingly ordinary lives, from fleeting encounters with strangers to lifelong battles with identity and connection.
Bidar's characters grapple with isolation, unspoken longing, and the complex tangle of relationships in settings that range from suburban living rooms to shadowy city streets. With sharp prose, wry humor, and poignant insights, this collection explores themes of love, regret, and the elusive search for meaning in a chaotic world.
Pardon Me for Moonwalking is a literary kaleidoscope of modern life, showcasing the subtle beauty of human resilience and the power of small, unexpected connections.
Kirkus Reviews calls DIQUE DOMINICAN, “A brutally raw, poignant, and literary coming-of-age memoir.”
Dique Dominican is the powerful debut memoir from Ayendy Bonifacio, born "near a mango-steepled, river-scented town" in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn after migrating as a child. With lyrical precision and emotional honesty, Bonifacio reflects on the immigrant experience, identity, language, and belonging.
BOOKS BY WOMXN
KIRKUS REVIEWS, calls A BROKEN WINDOW, "A contemporary poetic novel for audiences who love strong female characters."
In A BROKEN WINDOW, Anne Leigh Parrish gives us Sam Clark, a poet haunted by the shadows of her past. Sam channels her emotions into verse, hoping to find peace and strength, but when she falls into a new relationship with Steven—a professor, seemingly wise, and full of promises—she’s unsure if happiness is something she truly deserves. As the couple moves to Boston for Steven’s academic sabbatical, Sam is ready for a fresh start. However, the city and her relationship soon reveal complexities she hadn't anticipated. Amid her personal struggles, Sam connects with the son of the publisher Steven is researching, an older man who helps navigate her memories. With poetry as her anchor, Sam begins to distinguish who will stay beside her as she confronts the pain of her childhood—and who will fade away.
Piecework is a lively collection of intergenerational essays on how people create possibility and place through the arts, culture, and heritage. Women and children play central roles in these ethnographies and autoethnographies. Their stories and struggles, ideas and breakthroughs, affirm the exponential power of families, schools, and communities to shape their own destinies through creative action. We learn that change is a collective endeavor, shaped on the ground, with the people we know and the communities we cherish.
The book is structured into three themes: classrooms, communities, and migrations. The essays on schooling include hard-to-find ethnographies from artivist classrooms serving children and teens. We first meet the author as a somatic child, then witness her as a mother collaborating with children and adults through innovative arts education projects. Classrooms become spaces for critical thinking and joyful contestation using design, dance, music, or poetry. Public schools mobilize faculty and leverage local resources to bring theater, costume, design, and painting within reach. Multiple settings and scenarios reveal how the arts can be integrated into studying almost anything, while inviting young people to be seen and heard while thinking imaginatively and empathetically. The essays about community focus on youth activists, adult leaders, and path breaking women ancestors. Teens alchemize pain into power as storytellers and advocates. Curators and artists rewrite history to honor a musical matriarch. Community arts leaders gather across neighborhoods to share strategies for spatial justice in the context of gentrification. The essays on migration take a historical turn as the author digs into ancestral archives for clues about her family’s activism, migration stories, and refugee experiences. She unearth’s stories of community organizing, art making, and resilience. The book includes provocative interviews about writing, freedom, and women’s authorship with cultural promoters in Nigeria and Brazil. Piecework concludes with a pep talk for future culture makers.
DAD STORIES is a flash memoir collection about the small violences that girls face at the hands of fathers who don't know how to raise them, who are taught they don’t need to know how to raise girls. This collection is about the visceral absence of semi-present fathers; the way that, even when not there, they dictated the ways their families move. Through chronological vignettes, Fontenot asks over and over again how a daughter is supposed to feel about such a father, about such a childhood, knowing that nothing is simply black and white.
In GHOST MATINEE, Cathryn Shea’s second full-length poetry collection, she delves into the haunting influence of memories that shape both the present and the future. Her poems weave together the personal, political, and global, revealing the hidden and overlooked amid the ordinary. With a keen eye on the fleeting beauty of our world, Shea offers a profound meditation on time—where "the past is a frontier" of uncharted memories, and "the future is a sanctuary" of hope and refuge. Rather than yearning for "the good old days," these poems look forward, even as the ghosts of the past cast shadows over the matinees of our lives. GHOST MATINEE presents a deeply reflective exploration of how we carry the past while seeking solace and possibility in what lies ahead.
POPULAR FICTION
The men in ANIMAL HUSBANDRY, Taylor García’s new short story collection, are in the midst of their own personal apocalypses as the real and artificial world decays around them. Struggling to find the future versions of themselves, the husbands, fathers, bachelors, lovers, influencers, and healers in these stories learn to stop fighting and start transforming. As Mario's job is eliminated due to AI, he begins mixing with his polyamorous neighbors, while his wife falls for a chat bot, sending their marriage to the breaking point in the title story, Animal Husbandry. In “Journey to the Edge of the Earth,” TikTok-famous flat earther, Carl "Flat Manly" Bonifacio, realizes his theories are bogus and that he must shut down his platform, plus, cancel a fraught cruise to the so-called edge of the earth. Circus strong man and ladies man Dominic sustains a career-ending shoulder injury that forces him to rethink his life choices in this circus melodrama, "Circle of Death.” Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid's Tale, what happens when men's bodies are legislated? “Medicine Box” is told in retrospect by an ayahuasca shaman's son far into the future.
Kirkus Reviews stated that ACROSS THE ENDLESS NIGHT is '“a lyrical family saga steeped in anxiety that explores the risks and rewards of building a life around the ones you love.”
In this moving sequel to Letting the House Go, Robert Crooke returns to Richard Morris at the far end of his life. It is 2021, six years after the death of his ex-wife Irene, whose final counsel still guides him. Aging and increasingly fragile, Richard has devoted himself to the tangled, multi-generational family they created together. Surrounded by the unguarded love of his children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, he is astonished by their generosity of spirit and by the future they imagine for themselves—one that feels both fragile and radiant amid a nation divided. As his health wanes and the world grows more uncertain, Richard reckons with memory, loss, and the limits of time. Familiar readers will recognize his once fierce self-absorption, now softened by hard-won humility. While revisiting the vivid Long Island setting and beloved cast of its predecessor, Across the Endless Night stands fully on its own as a resonant meditation on family, identity, and what we dare to hope will endure.
What if the body—your own body, or someone else’s—became the most unreliable narrator you’ve ever met?
From post–World War I New York to pandemic-era Savannah, from the quiet kitchens of Maine to the heat-soaked streets of Malaysia, THE LEG IN QUESTION unravels the strange, haunting, and often darkly funny ways our flesh betrays us. A young woman insists her healthy leg must be removed. A physician faces ghosts of the living and the dead. A mountain cabin turns feral. A debutante circuit shields a gay man on the cusp of a terrifying new epidemic.
Across sixteen stories, doctors and patients collide in moments where the body’s mysteries—its failures, obsessions, hungers, and grief—expose the fragile seams between sanity and longing. These are tales of medicine and mortality, yes, but also of the tender, reckless, astonishing human spirit trying to make sense of it all.
Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? When it means you may lose everything regardless of the outcome? PACIFIC by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son's life...even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run.
On a remote Puget Sound island, police chief Bell navigates his job and marriage in the wake of his son's near-death brain surgery. When his wife no longer wants to tempt the fates of experimental medicine he takes matters into his own hands. With the help of his spaced-out fisherman friend, Bell kidnaps his boy and sets sail for Guatemala in search of the mysterious Dr. Haas. On the way, they'll brave the seventh biggest storm, befriend two behemoth fly-fishing Nords, and try to outrun the ex-Navy captain hired by his wife to find them.
A 2022 Indie Book Awards Finalist, 2022 First Horizon Book Award Finalist, 2022 The Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Short List, and 2022 Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award in Fiction, PACIFIC is a powerful narrative that takes readers for an emotional ride.
MEMOIRS THAT PUSH LIMITS
DREAM POP ORIGAMI: A PERMUTATIONAL MEMOIR ABOUT HAPA IDENTITY is a beautiful, ambitious, interactive, and engrossing lyrical memoir about mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis. This experimental work of creative nonfiction examines, celebrates, and complicates what it means to be Asian & white, Nisei & hapa, Midwestern & Californian, Buddhist & American at the same time. In this stunning collection of choose-your-own-essays and autobiographical lists, multiracial identity is a counterpoint of memory, language, reflection, and imagination intersecting and interweaving into a coherent tapestry of text, emotion, and voice.
IndieReader Award Winner, True Crime
Recited to her like a fairy tale, Patricia’s “adoptive” mother loved to tell the story about the snowy January day in 1970 that she and her husband pulled up along a Houston, Texas hospital curb and drove away with their brand new baby. Yet Patricia would grow up celebrating a made-up birthday, haunted by nightmares of "The Dark Man." At 12, when her parents confess they never received her birth certificate, questions mount about alleged extortion and the impossible choice they say they faced: go to the police and report the shady attorney that acquired the infant or stay silent and meet his demands. Did they really dole out $30K to keep their paperless child? Such revelations compel young Patricia to wonder how she came into this family—no judge, no paperwork, no questions asked—and lead her on a quest to discover "Who In the World Am I?"
Navigating her bipolar mother's alcoholism and caring for her disabled 600-pound father, Patricia spends her teen years trying to save her saviors—unaware of the lifelong threat haunting them: at any moment, someone could come back for their child.
At eighteen, pregnant and standing in her birth mother's shoes, Patricia discovers a shattering secret that launches a lifetime search for answers. But it takes decades—and her adoptive mother's death—before Patricia realizes those holding the truth won't live forever. Guided by her mother's ghost, she races to unlock a labyrinth of lies designed to erase her true identity.
A tumble down the rabbit hole of America's baby trade, part detective story, part searing family portrait, Wonderland exposes what happens when adoption's house of cards finally falls—when missing documents and dark family secrets can no longer withstand the weight of one woman's relentless search for truth. A haunting reckoning with Baby Scoop Era exploitation that asks: are we ready for Baby Scoop 2.0?
Also a finalist for the 2026 Eric Hoffer Award, the 2026 Indies Today Award and the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Award.
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that tore across the Indian Ocean. In a matter of hours, entire coastlines were transformed and more than 230,000 lives were lost across fourteen countries, from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to India, Thailand, the Maldives, and East Africa. Those who survived carry vivid memories of where they were when the water came. Countless others were never able to tell their stories. Tsunami is one woman’s account of that day and the long, uneven aftermath that followed.
MEANINGFULL: 23 LIFE-CHANGING STORIES OF CONQUERING DIETING, WEIGHT, & BODY IMAGE ISSUES is a blend of motivational self-help, memoir, psychology, and health and wellness. Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an expert in eating and body image issues, and a woman on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food and body.
A $702 billion global diet/nutrition and weight loss industry shows that people worldwide are devoted to achieving maximum health and their desired bodies. Yet mainstream approaches are failing these individuals, and sadly, science proves this. Intent on gaining the “health” and “happiness” that diets promise, consumers keep trying. They become sad and frustrated, believing they’re failing when they’re not. They simply need a legitimate, alternative path, which MeaningFULL offers. Through the contributors’ diverse, real-life mini-memoirs followed by Spotts-De Lazzer’s commentaries, readers will learn about themselves and discover their unique, unconventional formulas for conquering their issues. Along the way, MeaningFULL will also guide them toward more self-appreciation, wellness, and fulfillment.
MASTERFUL POETRY
BLACK WOOL CAPE by Alison Carb Sussman begins in Israel but quickly finds itself coursing through childhood, madness, adulthood, and finds a liminal path between the cruel and the innocent. The poetry collection delivers a variety of verse in myriad forms that sing songs of joy, lament, and sorrow.
Marrying poetry and memoir, AND FOR TOO LONG AFTER tells the story of a woman making peace with her past. The narrative begins with two sisters in a diner, the eldest discovering her first gray hair. The gray hair spurs a series of poems and stories by the narrator, a woman who never expected to see her adult years due to a lifelong battle with mental illness.
Through White's words, we witness trauma resulting from a father's addiction, a mother's explosive temper, and her own sexual trauma. As the threads of the narrative come together, we are left asking, "Can one move beyond a haunted past to embrace a fruitful future?"
EXQUISITE CORPSE, the sixth poetry collection by renowned Chilean poet Malú Urriola (1967–2023), translated by Elena Barcia, showcases Urriola's intensely personal and innovative voice. Oscillating between deep self-reflection and playful Dadaist influences, these poems dive into the emotional intensity of memory—whether through vivid sexual encounters or profound personal grief—often morphing into surreal, imaginative leaps. Her work brims with allusions to music, literature, and the natural world, deeply exploring what it means to live and think as a poet in the modern world. As Urriola writes, her aim is "to navigate the instant, to delay its departure a while, fine-tuning the ear of the eye in that brief journey of presence.”
Inspired by Dadaism’s embrace of unpredictability, Exquisite Corpse breaks from traditional poetic form, blending graphics, shape poems, aphorisms, philosophical reflections, and free-form meditations on poetry itself. Her thoughts spiral and loop like jazz riffs, crafting a richly layered reading experience. Wry, intelligent, and moving, the collection delves into themes of urban life, academic arrogance, female sexuality, existentialism, and the beauty and solace found in nature, music, and poetry.
In Terry Tierney’s second poetry collection, WHY TREES STAY OUTSIDE, voices emerge from our social, political, and natural environment, including perspectives we thought were inanimate or at least insentient, some human, some spiritual. Through provocative imagery, they ask how we can save ourselves, find love, and find meaning given our current relationships with one another and the earth. The chorus of questions radiates with occasional remorse, but the poems also flash with redemption and humor. By exposing features of our physical and personal environments, their wealth of perspectives, and our innate desire to create and destroy, these accessible poems dare us to reconsider our assumptions and find a way forward.
Love books and a little bit of mystery? Dive into a literary adventure with our Book Boxes, Subscriptions, and Surprises! Each box is a treasure chest packed with handpicked reads from Unsolicited Press, exclusive merch, and a sprinkle of bookish delight. Perfect for the curious reader who thrives on discovery or as a gift for the bibliophile in your life. Whether you choose a one-time treat or an ongoing subscription, every delivery is a celebration of indie literature. Because who doesn’t love surprises, especially when they’re wrapped in stories?
BUNDLES, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND SURPRISES.
If you’re new to Unsolicited Press, this is the place to begin.
This bundle brings together three books that reflect the range, intelligence, and emotional clarity of our catalog.
These are books that listen closely to the world and respond honestly.
Because what’s life without a little literary chaos?
For $15, you get:
📖 1 surprise book from our weird, wonderful backlist
✋ Hand-packed by our publisher herself (a real human!)
🎁 A bonus item: sticker, bookmark, or some strange relic from the Unsolicited vault
👉 No special requests. No refunds. Just good vibes and bookish trust falls.
Snag Your Surprise Book ➡️
These stories live in the shadows: surreal, speculative, and unsettling in the best ways. They resist neat conclusions and linger long after the last page.
Together, these books offer a snapshot of the press right now: diverse, ambitious, and deeply human.
MERCH
Show off your love for indie books with our Bookish Merchandise! From cozy tees that scream "reader vibes" to mugs perfect for fueling late-night page turns, we’ve got you covered. Add some literary flair to your life with stickers, totes, and more—all designed to celebrate your bookish personality. Whether you’re treating yourself or shopping for the bookworm in your life, these goodies are bound to bring a smile. Wear your love for books proudly (or sip it, or stick it—your choice)!
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• Twill tape on the inside of the back neck
• Twill label
• The fabric of this product is OEKO-TEX Standard 100-certified
• Blank product sourced from El Salvador
Disclaimer: This sweatshirt undergoes garment-dyeing and softening processes, which may cause slight color variations.
This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
• Ceramic
• 11 oz mug dimensions: 3.79″ (9.6 cm) in height, 3.25″ (8.3 cm) in diameter
• 15 oz mug dimensions: 4.69″ (11.9 cm) in height, 3.35″ (8.5 cm) in diameter
• Colored rim, inside, and handle
• Dishwasher and microwave safe
• 100% combed cotton
• Heather colors are 15% viscose and 85% cotton
• Fabric weight: 5.3 oz/yd² (180 g/m²)
• Relaxed fit
• Cropped length
• Ribbed crew neck
• Dropped shoulders
• Side-seamed construction
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Double-needle hems
• Preshrunk
• Blank product sourced from Bangladesh
A tiny manifesto you can slap on your laptop, water bottle, mailbox, or the nearest corporate publishing catalog. “READ SMALL PRESS” is our rallying cry — a reminder that literature survives because readers choose to support the presses doing the real work. Weatherproof, matte, badass.
Product features
- Vibrant, long-lasting color printed with eco-solvent inks
- Matte UV protective laminate for weather and sun resistance
- Premium, water-resistant vinyl rated 5+ years outdoors
- Strong waterproof adhesive with easy-peel backing
- Eco-friendly inks and durable construction for indoor/outdoor use
Care instructions
- Use a soft, clean and dry cloth to gently brush any dust or dirt off from the center of the sticker outwards.
Literary Nights with Unsolicited Press. Hosted by Rosalia Scalia
Literary Nights is Unsolicited Press’s twice-monthly reading series hosted by acclaimed writer Rosalia Scalia. Each event spotlights bold, innovative authors whose work pushes past the limits of mainstream publishing. Intimate, unpretentious, and driven by the belief that literature thrives in community, Literary Nights brings writers and readers together for live readings that celebrate voice, craft, and the unmistakable fire of small-press storytelling.
SMALL PRESS, BIG MOUTH BOOK CLUB
A monthly book club celebrating the unruly brilliance of small-press literature featuring bold titles, intimate author salons, and a community of readers who don’t shut up about the books they love.
Publish Without Burning Out:
A Small Press Launch System for Authors Who Want a Real Career (Not a Meltdown)
A humane, repeatable way to launch books without sacrificing your health, creativity, or life.
Publishing a book shouldn’t feel like a slow-motion collapse. And yet—for authors and small presses alike—it often does. Launch plans spiral. Marketing feels endless. Outreach turns into self-doubt. Everyone is overworked, underpaid, and expected to somehow do more.
Publish Without Burning Out exists because that model is broken.
This system offers a realistic, ethical alternative: a clear, sustainable launch framework designed for people who actually make independent publishing happen.
Available for Small Press Publishing Collective members only. It’s free to join (just below!).
The Small Press Publishing Collective
A membership community redefining what publishing can be. Free. Transparent. Collective.
The Small Press Publishing Collective is a free membership community created by Unsolicited Press to support writers, editors, and independent press-builders who believe that publishing should be transparent, ethical, and accessible.
Our mission is simple: to teach the publishing world as it really is, not as the industry benefits from portraying it.
We are here to dismantle gatekeeping, redistribute knowledge, empower literary workers, and build sustainable, people-centered publishing ecosystems.