BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Everything has been disrupted this year, and the book world is no exception. While it can feel hard to have a new release come out during a time of global crisis, let’s remember that in some ways, there is no better time. We need books and art more than ever right now, to guide us, to support us, to show us a way forward - and to ground us in the present.
Check out these 2020 releases below (and don’t forget to check these prior 2020 roundups, here, here, and here):
We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, forthcoming, October 27, 2020) - Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel (editors)
This is an incredible and necessary collection of work that celebrates queerness and queer identity. The editors put it succinctly, stating in the introduction, “The title of this volume is therefore entirely literal. What we want is nothing other than a world in which everything belongs to everyone.”
Work by CAConrad, Charles Theonia, Faye Chevalier, Kamden Hilliard, and Cam Awkward-Rich are a few of the authors included whose work is truly magnificent.
Check out this piece below by Andrea Abi-Karam:
Wolf (Nightboat Books, June 2, 2020) - Douglas A. Martin
Wolf utterly blew me away. It’s a novel told in poetic, yet conversational vignettes, that focuses on gender, masculinity, boyhood, and home. What is a home and how do we create safe homes for ourselves? And more so, how do we become our true selves, and not the selves society wants us to be - and falsely constructs? These are the questions the novel asks, as it tells the story of a family (specifically of a father and two brothers) and a murder - and how we live in a world of violence.
An excerpt:
Helena (Clash Books, forthcoming, October 2020) - Claire L. Smith
If you’re searching for a novel set in 1855 in London about a mortician who lives near a cemetery, you are in luck. This novel is a fun ghost story that explores the unknown, the secrets we hide from ourselves and others, and the horrors around us. The main character, Helena, finds herself in a puzzle she has to unlock involving a serial killer and a family secret. What better time to escape in a thriller than now?
Excerpt below:
The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2020) - Jillian Christmas
Christmas’ debut poetry collection is incredible, powerful, and spellbinding. The poems center around the thread of what makes us human: our bodies, our spirits, our ghosts, our ability to love, our ability to fight for ourselves. The poems, which are like spells, hymns, and incantations, speak of family, queerness, identity, and protest. The first poem’s refrain, “what is a body,” captures the essence of the book.
One of my favorite poems from the book:
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor: A Photo Series (forthcoming), and A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.