Like every year, there’s much to dread about 2018, and to fight against, but, fortunately there’s much to look forward to, including powerful works of art from small presses. Below you’ll find the small press books I’m most excited to see published this year. Following this, you’ll find lists from stellar writers Kate Angus, Kurt Baumeister, Alex Behr, Jeff Bursey, Lisa Chen, Tobias Carroll, Brian Evenson, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Meghan Lamb, Janice Lee, Christina Milletti, Michael Noll, David Leo Rice, Kevin Sampsell, Jason Teal, Dan Wickett, James Yeh, and Leni Zumas. Thanks to them, and thanks, too, to stellar writers Lynn Crawford, Robert Dean, Annie DeWitt, Joe Pan, Dawn Raffel, Jacob Singer, Joanna C. Valente, and Marjorie Welish for giving me the heads-up on other books.

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I read two hundred books this year. Crazy, I know. “Suffering” from segmented sleep certainly “helps,” as does “suffering” from the seemingly un-ebbing anxiety of not having read everything I need/want to read. In any case, throughout the year, I intermittently came out of book criticism retirement to write capsule reviews of some of the books I’d read: Below you’ll find my thoughts about forty-eight books, all save two of them published by small presses, books by Nick Francis Potter, John Reed, Daniel Borzutzky, Robert Lopez, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Carole Maso, Jessie Janeshek, Lynn Crawford, Lidia Yuknavitch, Patricia Smith, Vanessa Roveto, Melissa Range, Bret Easton Ellis, Jeff Bursey, Johannes Göransson, Robert Vaughan, John Keene, Michael J. Wilson, William Walsh, Jennifer Firestone, Christopher DeWan, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Jorge Armenteros, Eleni Sikelianos, Karen An-hwei Lee, Andrew Joron, Donald Breckenridge, Airea D. Matthews, Tomás Q. Morín, Margo Berdeshevsky, Alejandra Pizarnik, Albert Mobilio, Constance Squires, Eugene Lim, Stephanie J. Urdang, Mai Der Vang, Craig Morgan Teicher, Gabino Iglesias, James Reich, Jeremy M. Davies, John Haskell, Roberta Allen, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Chen Chen, Joe Pan, Joanna C. Valente, Layli Long Soldier, and Kaveh Akbar. Continue reading →

Happy birthday, Diamanda Galás! American avant-garde soprano, composer, pianist, organist, performance artist, and painter. 62, today! Continue reading →