Sarah Kendzior ’00
The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America
Politics / Flatiron Books (Macmillan), 2018
Originally published as an e-book in 2015, this New York Times bestselling collection of essays now in print includes an updated introduction and epilogue that draw a closer association between Kendzior’s critiques of a post-employment economy and Donald Trump’s election. She was named by Foreign Policy as one of the “100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events.”
Abby Norman ’13
Ask Me About My Uterus
Memoir / Nation Books (Hachette Book Group), 2018
Despite dramatic symptoms, Norman struggled to convince doctors that she was suffering from more than a urinary tract infection. Alongside her own story, she explains how women have historically suffered from misdiagnoses and dismissal of their pain. Selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top 10 Lifestyle title for spring 2018.
Kristin (Kit) Frick ’04
See All the Stars
Young Adult Fiction / Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2018
Ellory returns to high school for her senior year after a two-month suspension and a summer away. She’s lost her friends and her love, and cannot escape the guilt she feels over what caused it all. Frick’s debut novel was a Publisher’s Marketplace Spring/Summer 2018 Young Adult Buzz Book.
Erin Hoover ’01
Barnburner
Poetry / Elixir Press, 2018
Winner of the 2017 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award, Hoover’s collection was described by contest judge Kathryn Nuernberger as filled with “mean-spirited, ruthless characters. … In a kind of reverse Bechdel test, Hoover wipes away their inner lives and never lets them talk to each other about anything except those they have hurt.”
Porochista Khakpour ’00
Sick: A Memoir
Memoir / Harper Perennial (HarperCollins) 2018
Redefining the illness narrative, Khakpour recounts a journey of health problems, mental issues, and drug addiction that neither begins nor ends with her Lyme disease diagnosis. One of The Boston Globe’s “25 books we can’t wait to read in 2018.”
Leah Umansky MFA ’68
The Barbarous Century
Poetry / Eyewear Publishing, 2018
Umansky explores what it means to be a woman in a dystopic 21st century in this triptych of poetry that draws on wordplay, myth, and voices across pop culture.The manuscript was shortlisted for Eyewear Publishing’s 2016 Sexton Prize.
Seth Michelson MFA ’02 (editor)
Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention
Poetry / Settlement House, 2017
This bilingual collection of poems was crafted by the undocumented teenagers in maximum-security detention who participated in Michelson’s weekly writing workshops. Proceeds from the book’s sales will go toward the teens’ legal representation.
Linda Kay Klein ’02
Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free
Memoir / Touchstone (Simon & Schuster), 2018
An industry of purity sprung up in 1990s America: purity rings, purity pledges, purity balls. Klein, founder of Break Free Together, an organization that “helps people break free from sexual shame,” shares how the purity movement shaped her life and the lives of women across the country.
Christian Kracht ’89
The Dead
Fiction / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Macmillan), 2018
In the early 1930s, Emil Nägeli is sent to Japan to direct a Nazi propaganda film, but conspires with Jewish film critics to create something entirely different. In a further twist, the Japanese film minister has machinations of his own. Kracht’s novels have been translated into 27 languages.
Susan Wood ’53
Women: Portraits 1960-2000
Photography / Pointed Leaf Press, 2017
A compilation of Wood’s portraits taken over four decades features female luminaries including Diane von Furstenberg, Martha Stewart, Nora Ephron, Alice Waters, Jayne Mansfield, and Gloria Vanderbilt. One of artnet’s “15 most beautiful art coffee table books published this year."
Celia Bland ’85
Cherokee Road Kill
Poetry / Dr. Cicero Books, 2017
A lyrical collection of poems set in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Kyoko Miyabe. The book’s eponymous poem was awarded Jewish Currents’ Raynes Poetry Prize in 2015.
Derek B. Miller ’92
American by Day
Fiction / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018
Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård of Miller’s debut novel Norwegian by Night returns for a case that takes her to the United States, where a prominent African American academic has died under mysterious circumstances.
A.M. Homes ’85
Days of Awe
Short Stories / Viking (Penguin Random House), 2018
TIME praises the “dark humor and sharp dialogue” of Homes’ 12th book, a collection of short stories that exposes the heart of an uneasy America.
Kirsten Amann ’01 (co-author)
Drinking Like Ladies: 75 Modern Cocktails from the World’s Leading Female Bartenders
Cookbook / Quarry Books, 2018
One part history to two parts mixology, these cocktail recipes are shaken and stirred with stories of inspiring women, from Jovita Idár to Bessie Coleman.
Soledad Fox Maura ’90
Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy: Jorge Semprún
Biography / Arcade Publishing (Skyhorse Publishing), 2018
Maura spent several years researching this biography (originally published in Spanish) of the multifaceted Semprún: Spanish exile, French Resistance fighter, political leader, novelist, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter.
Matthew Chase-Daniel ’88 & Julie Chase-Daniel ’86
The Blue Fold: Explorations at Loggerhead Key Dry Tortugas National Park
Art & Poetry / Axle Contemporary Press, 2018
This compilation of artwork and poetry derives from the Chase-Daniels’ month-long artist residency on Loggerhead Key, which was interrupted by Hurricane Irma. Off the southwest coast of Florida, the island is part of a large coral barrier reef system and hosts the remnants of shipwrecks.
Katherine (Kate) Pride Brown ’03
Saving the Sacred Sea: The Power of Civil Society in an Age of Authoritarianism and Globalization
Social Science / Oxford University Press, 2018
Siberia’s ecologically unique Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake on earth. Pleas for its conservation sparked the first national protest in the USSR in the late 1950s and an environmentalist movement that has survived to the present day. Brown uses the lake’s story to reconsider the relationships between civil society, globalization, and authoritarianism.
Also Recently Published
Patricia Bosworth ’55 (editor)
Dreamer with a Thousand Thrills: The Rediscovered Photographs of Tom Palumbo
Photography / powerHouse Books, 2018
Interviewed on CBS This Morning about her newest book, Bosworth—author, journalist, actress, and Palumbo’s widow—presents forgotten photos by the influential fashion photographer taken in the 1950s and ’60s.
Lee Briccetti ’76
Blue Guide
Poetry / Four Way Books, 2018
The longtime executive director of Poets House in New York City, Briccetti plumbs the depths of narratives both personal and historical in poems that travel between past and present.
Margaret Broucek MFA ’88
The Futility Experts
Fiction / Schaffner Press, 2018
A middle-aged man reinvents himself as a 21-year-old sniper named Rusty, and a professor of zoology longs for tenure and a Sasquatch sighting—not necessarily in that order. Winner of the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature.
Walton Burns ’99 (series editor)
Her Own Worst Enemy
Education / Alphabet Publishing, 2018
This educational text teaches ESL students English language skills as they produce an original one-act play about Aida, a bright high school senior who must choose her college major amid a flurry of opinions from her friends, relatives, and teachers.
Abigail Carroll ’99
Habitation of Wonder
Poetry / Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock Publishers), 2018
Beginning with a reimagining of the creation story, these poems explore language, faith, nature, and spirit.
Lucy Andrews Cummin ’76
The Hounds of Spring
Fiction / Leapfolio (Tupelo Press), 2018
Poppy Starkweather is a former doctoral candidate in literature and current dog walker. Though one April day in her Philadelphia home begins ordinarily enough, it soon falls apart in ways that have her questioning everything.
Molly Fuller MFA ’07
For Girls Forged by Lightning: Prose & Other Poems
Poetry / All Nations Press, 2017
In poems and pieces of microfiction, Fuller’s collection addresses aspects of the female experience while encouraging readers to question their assumptions about traditional literary forms.
Rachel Stolzman Gullo MFA ’96
Practice Dying
Fiction / Bedazzled Ink Publishing, 2018
When twins Jamila and David reunite in New York City, Jamila is suicidal over a failed love affair, while David has been derailed from his path to a Buddhist monastery by an obsession with a self-immolation survivor. Gullo’s second book was shortlisted by the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Literary Competition.
Chris Hansen-Nelson MFA ’06
The Book of Clay
Poetry / Wicked Rufous Press, 2018
Oklahoma farmhand Clay lives through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The compulsion he feels to respond to the suffering he sees shapes his life’s journey.
Jessica Johnson ’93
Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire
Social Science / Duke University Press, 2018
Johnson explores how Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church grew into five states and served 13,000 congregants between 1996 and 2014. She also delves into its scandalous closure, replete with accusations of spiritual, emotional, and financial abuse.
Nicholas Kaufmann ’91 (co-author)
100 Fathoms Below
Fiction / Blackstone Publishing, 2018
Part Cold War spy thriller, part supernatural suspense: the crew of the USS Roanoke is in Soviet waters searching for enemy submarines—but they aren’t alone.
Rachel Marie Kerschhofer ’08
Everybody Loves Bernie: A Book of Bedtime Stories from a Legendary Grandpa
Children’s Fiction / Bedbug Books, 2018
Bedtime stories that feature sneaky siblings, Grandma’s helpers, and dreams of growing up.
Julie Michelle Klinger ’06
Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes
Science / Cornell University Press, 2018
Rare earth elements are a crucial ingredient in modern technologies—and not as uncommon as their name implies. In her book, Klinger documents how the mining of rare earths has expanded, with various ramifications, to the Amazon rainforest, Greenland, Afghanistan, and even the Moon.
Joanna H. Kraus ’59
Bravo, Benny
Children’s Fiction / Mirror Publishing, 2018
For readers ages 4–8, this tale follows rescue dog Benny’s effort to win back Granny Lil’s heart after he gets on her bad side at a family picnic.
Annie Lanzillotto MFA ’90
Hard Candy / Pitch Roll Yaw
Poetry / Guernica World Editions, 2018
A flip book of two collections, Hard Candy focuses on caregiving and mourning, and Pitch Roll Yaw is organized into 14 sections that each begin with “See, Saw” poems.
Michael Leong MFA ’03
Words on Edge
Poetry / Black Square Editions, 2018
Leong’s fourth volume of poetry draws attention to language and its power to manipulate experience.
Heather Malin ’96
Teaching for Purpose: Preparing Students for Lives of Meaning
Education / Harvard Education Press, 2018
While not a subject in and of itself, purpose—or “a future-directed goal that is personally meaningful and aimed at contributing to something larger than the self”—can be developed by educators individually and by schools institutionally.
Laurie Nadel ’69
The Five Gifts: Discovering Hope, Healing, and Strength When Disaster Strikes
Self-Help / HCI, 2018
Though it is impossible to be fully prepared for a terrorist attack or natural disaster, this “go-kit for the mind” provides the tools to build emotional stamina and coping skills in case of a traumatic event. Journalist Dan Rather provided the foreword.
Amy Nawrocki ’96
The Comet’s Tail: A Memoir of No Memory
Memoir / Little Bound Books (Homebound Publications), 2018
Following her first year in college, Nawrocki remembers returning home, a night of disorientation, and then nothing for six months. From there began the painful process of returning to consciousness and recovering her identity, as well as her memories.
Virginia Pye MFA ’87
Shelf Life of Happiness
Short Stories / Press 53, 2018
The characters in Pye’s bittersweet collection of stories strive to become better people as they search for happiness, whether in love, in family, or in their work.
Faith Shearin MFA ’93
Darwin’s Daughter
Poetry / Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2018
In her sixth book of poetry, Shearin puts the advancement of science and observations of the human condition under the microscope.
Victoria Smolkin ’02
A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism
History / Princeton University Press, 2018
For many of the years between the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Communism was synonymous with atheism. Smolkin examines the complicated task Soviet leaders faced in removing and replacing religion in the lives of the proletariat.
Kristen Witucki MFA ’08
Outside Myself
Fiction / Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2018
Tallie, a blind middle school student, befriends Benjamin, a middle-aged librarian who has lost his vision. Benjamin shows Tallie how to accept her limitations—and her potential.