forthcoming
twelve exceptional books for 2017.
see the full list here.
available now: new fiction + non-fiction
This Is: Essays on Jazz
by Aaron Gilbreath
"Imagine a completely different version of one of jazz’s most revered compositions sitting on a shelf in a Los Angeles office building for three decades without anyone knowing it."
Golden State 2017
Best New Writing from California
edited by Lisa Locascio
"California has the curious distinction of occupying the cultural imagination at a chronological remove."
One Million Maniacs
Beanie Babies, Killer Cars and The Power of Collecting by David LeGault
"By the time you’re deep into this wonderfully obsessed book you too will wonder what anything is worth, really, and why we pursue, peruse, and keep it, how our stuff defiles and defies and defines us." - Ander Monson
Family Genus Species
by Kevin Allardice
"Allardice’s deft novel is actually deceptively complex, layered not simply with satire, but with emotional revelations about family, community, sexuality, parenthood, race, and class..." - Nina Renata Aron at Full Stop.
Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction
introduction by Bill McKibben
Explore our messy, beautiful, symbiotic relationship with trees. Contributors include Karen Hugg, Lia Purpura, Wendy Call, Matthew Gavin Frank, M. J. Gette, Jacklyn Janeksela, Renée E. D’Aoust, Angela Pelster, Brian Doyle, Andrea Scarpino, T. Hugh Crawford, Thomas Mira y Lopez, Steven Church, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Fred Bahnson, Jacqueline Doyle, Stefan Olson, Diane Payne, Zoë Ruiz, Amaris Feland Ketcham, Kayann Short, Diana Hume George, Annie Bellerose, Paul Lisicky, Toti O’Brien, Lori Brack, Mackenzie Myers, Courtney Amber Kilian, John Roscoe and Theresa Kishkan.
The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas
by Harriet Scott Chessman
"Harriet Scott Chessman has once again invented an utterly beguiling story inspired by art. This time, in her novel inspired by a Degas sketchbook that may have once existed, she has given us a richly evocative and emotionally true portrait of Edgar Degas during his 1872 visit among his Creole cousins in New Orleans. With the clarity and simplicity of a piano sonata, THE LOST SKETCHBOOK OF EDGAR DEGAS is a novel about perception, enduring love, and the complex family legacy of a great artist." – Katharine Weber
Forty-four American Boys: Short Histories of Presidential Childhoods
by William Walsh
From Washington to Trump, these are the stories of each president’s childhood—told through fragments and quotes appropriated from more than 300 children’s books, pop history books and scholarly biographies. "Fabulously original" – Kenneth Goldsmith
Massive Cleansing Fire
by Dave Housley
"It's time to admit what everyone knows: there's no bolder, no wittier critic of our modern, polarizing American culture than Dave Housley, who points out the absurdities in our relationships while reminding us why we must hold on to each other." – Susan Muaddi Darraj
Witness
by Robert Rient
"Witness is a rare thing: auto-reportage. Robert Rient has written a book that needs many readers, a book about the transformation from one life into another. How to give up one’s family, one’s own environment, the values instilled in childhood and not go crazy? The protagonist/author knows how, but he has paid a high price for his decision. It’s possible to change your life! And that’s why I read Witness ravenously." – Mariusz Szczygieł
Following Disasters
by Nancy McCabe
“A masterfully told story of betrayal and dislocation vibrantly narrated through the voices of an odd-ball aunt and her eccentric niece, Following Disasters is at once a mystery, a love story, and a narrative of healing. Nancy McCabe’s most recent novel explores that deepest human yearning: our need to belong. I couldn’t put it down.” — Elaine Neil Orr
Children of the Country
by Abigail R. Shaffer
"a literary novel that reads like a thriller. In luminous prose, Shaffer tells a riveting, terrifying story of human violence, cruelty, and undying love, and she never puts a foot wrong. A marvelous debut." — Pinckney Benedict
"Abigail Shaffer plumbs the depths of the Rough South as too few female voices do. She chronicles generations of youth spent on splintered porches and sweaty backseats, lost to the specters of sex, drugs, and short horizons. . . This is a writer to listen to, for years to come.” — Ashley Warlick
The Adventures of Joe Harper
by Phong Nguyen
"Phong Nguyen takes on American history and literature in this captivating novel. Writing about a marginal character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he illuminates the marginal characters of American culture in the 19th century. The imaginative return of an adult Tom Sawyer is alone worth the price of this book." — Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize
What Becomes Us
by Micah Perks
“Micah Perks is one of the most radiantly original writers around." — Elizabeth McKenzie
"There is real magic here. . . Completely original, completely delightful." — Karen Joy Fowler
"This is a warm, wild, hilarious, eccentric and moving book." — Lauren Groff
On Heights & Hunger
by Josh MacIvor-Andersen
"Written with a passion that burns onto the page. . . one of the finest memoirs I’ve read in quite a while." — Andre Dubus III
"Josh MacIvor-Andersen uncovers everything dangerous and divine in the Tennessee treetops." — Jeremy B. Jones
Invisible Men
by Eric Freeze
"These stories turn themselves inside out, unhinge and pivot, a collection of epiphianic epiphanies" — Michael Martone
"Eric Freeze investigates with not a little humor and plenty of sorrow, the chasms and chaos several men (and a few women) leave behind when they disappear." — Pam Houston
The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage
by Lawrence Lenhart
“At the least unhinged and quite possibly a little insane, Lawrence Lenhart’s essays are perverse in the best way" – Ander Monson
"a special kind of genius. . . Intense awareness combined with his intense concern make for a big heart and a big brain and a big, as in important, book" – Nicole Walker
IRL
by Timmy Reed
"Timmy Reed is one of the most original prose stylists to come down the pike in the last couple of decades, but there's more to his work than just style, and that 'more' includes a remarkable emotional honesty" – Madison Smartt Bell
"IRL. . . is probably the best book I've ever read about someone who's addicted to the Internet" – Jamie Iredell
Madeleine E.
by Gabriel Blackwell
"Madeleine E. is an impossibly entertaining book - indeed, a philosophical page turner" — Amber Sparks
"Gabriel Blackwell's writing proves that a genre-defying literature is not only possible, it's necessary" — Evan Lavender-Smith
"Interspersed among the collages of philosophical insight are hypnotic narratives about a man named Gabriel Blackwell, whose many possible lives reveal the dizzying potentials of our own. This is a wondrous book." — Eric G. Wilson
Patrick Fitzmike and Mike Fitzpatrick
by Larry Smith
"Patrick Fitzmike and Mike Fitzpatrick is a vigorous tumble through the power plays of sex, politics, and 20th-century Catholicism... Redemption, if it's possible, emerges from the mud" — Dennis Mahoney
Welcome to Christiania
by Fred Leebron
"Fred Leebron is one of the best writers working today. If you haven't read him yet, this beautifully written novel is the one to get first" - Jenny Offill
The Marble Army
by Gisele Firmino
"a fierce lyrical tribute to the families that lived through the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état" - Ada Limon
"an exquisite, intimate epic about family, injustice and resistance" - Hector Tobar
Devotion
by Michelle Herman
"Michelle Herman's beautifully written and wise novel probes the crucial and enduring questions of how we choose our paths in life" - Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Kama
by Terese Brasen
"Terese Brasen resurrects and reimagines a kind of Viking ballad from the fierce perspective of its women" - Ashley Warlick
"a timeless tale of enslavement and empowerment" - Jake Lamar
Adherence: A Romance
by Ben Nickol
"Ben Nickol is that rare thing, a real writer" - Donald Hays
California Prose Directory 2016
edited by Sarah LaBrie
Short fiction + non-fiction in our third annual anthology about life in the Golden State
a few recent wonderful books. . .
Valletta78 by Erin Fitzgerald
Tyler's Last by David Winner
Becoming Westerly by Jamie Brisick
A Book of Uncommon Prayer edited by Matthew Vollmer
Like A Song: Essays by Michelle Herman
5 Months 10 Years 2 Hours by Lisa Reisman
+ amazing reviews
Los Angeles Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Times Literary Supplement, The Brooklyn Rail, CNN, The Oregonian, The Advocate and many, many others.
+ generous praise
with advance praise from Ann Beattie, William Finnegan, Zachary Lazar, Paul Theroux, Andrew Solomon, Charles Bock, Elizabeth McKenzie, John Casey, Myfanwy Collins, Honor Moore, Joan Leegant and many others.
More fiction + non-fiction.
The artful argument.
The story you don't want to stop.
Indolence
by Alison Wellford
"Gorgeously wrought prose and a moral ambiguity so perfectly deployed. . ."- Lauren Groff
California Prose Directory 2014:
New Writing from The Golden State
edited by J. Ryan Stradal
Short fiction and non-fiction by 30 award-winning and emerging authors.
The Wes Letters
by Feliz Lucia Molina, Ben Segal and Brett Zehner
"Writing into the sand hole that is 'Wes Anderson,' three friends write their way almost to the limit of their engagingly ambivalent and indisputably brilliant personalities, thereby calling into question the certainty of anything. Follow their quest to the Fin/n/ish line! A gripping read."- Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
A Moody Fellow Finds Love and Then Dies
by Douglas Watson
"A wise, funny and strangely sad fable of love, art and life. Moody Fellow is a hero for anyone who's young and lost and yearning to be found."- Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Commercial Fiction
by Dave Housley
"With Commercial Fiction, Dave Housley once again stakes his claim as the poet laureate of pop culture. No one else could take the cynical manipulations of commercials and extract from them so much humor and empathy and heart."- Matt Bell, In the House Upon The Dirt Between The Lake And The Woods
Understudies
by Ravi Mangla
"Funny, moving, perceptive, artful -- these are the first words that came to mind when I tried to describe UNDERSTUDIES to a friend. And then, to better capture its spirit, I began reading it aloud and marveled all over again at Ravi Mangla's ability to tell us, with precision and wit, what deserves to be known."- Joanna Scott
Dark March
by Colin Fleming
"Colin Fleming is one of the truly exciting and significant writers of his generation."- Richard Burgin, editor of Boulevard
Something Pretty, Something Beautiful
by Eric Barnes
"This is a world where the pull of friendship is far stronger than the pull of family, where cars are freedom, stories are everything, and home is thick with ghosts." - Emily St. Jean Mandel
California Prose Directory:
New Writing from the Golden State
Charles McLeod, editor
A new annual anthology of fiction and non-fiction devoted to life in California.
The Autobiography of Daniel J. Isengart
by Filip Noterdaeme
Using Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as a template, Filip Noterdaeme tells the story of two eccentric expatriates who find love in New York City and carve out a delirious, dadaesque life on the margins of the contemporary art world."A lovely romp with the absurd. . . It's hard to imagine anything more charming." - Andrew Solomon
Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey
by Daniel Mueller
A new collection by the author of the critically-acclaimed How Animals Mate."These stories are outrageous and big-hearted, disturbing and beautiful, wretched and redeemed. Half of them made me want to sleep with the lights on, and all of them reaffirmed that Dan Mueller is some kind of mad artistic genius." - Paul Harding, Tinkers
A City on a Hill
by Stanley Jenkins
"Stanley Jenkins' unforgettable characters roam America's heartland in search of its soul. If there is grace to be found amid nihilism, the stories in this disturbingly beautiful collection find it. Jenkins finds shards of humanity inside hardened criminals, and the petty larceny lurking in all our hearts. A City On A Hill is a stunning debut." - Dick Scanlon
metamemoirs
by Perry Glasser
"A literary version of a great rock album. . . the story of our generation, and how we got to where we are by doing the best we could with what we knew at the time. . . No irritable reaching after fact and reason. Just. . . truth. And it deserves to go platinum" - David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident
Self-Helpless:
A Misfit's Guide to
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
by TJ Beitelman
Thirteen thumbnail sketches in a semi-causally related sequence that more or less maps out what it was like to be the author from, say, 1996 to 2011, with a judicious feint or two toward the back story where appropriate.
American Weather
by Charles McLeod
"The type of courage we should expect from American writers but rarely find" - Matthew Duffus, The Critical Flame
National Treasures
stories
by Charles McLeod
"These stories are a portrait of America in all its breadth, across regions, classes, races, religions. Charles McLeod knows the whole country through its ill-fitting parts and people. All through this book, there are moments of wild candor and insight that crack the surface of daily life." - Salvatore Scibona, The End
inscriptions for headstones
by Matthew Vollmer
Thirty short essays, crafted as epitaphs, each one unfolding in a single sentence.
"A courageous, honest, and decidedly non-angelic dissection of the instants, both mundane and macrocosmic, that shape a man, and the malaise that tears him to the core." - The Colagist
Danielle Déronde
by Burton Raffel
"What sort of God would allow not only the black, bleak existence of Hitler and all his minions, all the things that had happened and were still happening, and not only to Jews, but blindly, indifferently tolerate the revolting fact of this disgusting, immoral, impossible pregnancy?"
Trip
by Mindy Hung
"No more gazing longingly into the glowing windows of family homes. . ."A mordant comedy about sex tourism in South East Asia.
A Lolita for the global economy.
Loud Memories of A Quiet Life
by Tom Molanphy
"As far back as I can remember,
people told me I was too quiet..."
High Street
by Tetman Callis "the devil is right behind me, tapping me on the shoulder to get me to come back, reminding me of how good it feels to be high in the summertime, day and night; telling me, Hey, big fella, you haven't fallen far enough; I keep shooting at you, big fella, but all you get is grazed and I want a square shot"
The You-City:
Technology, Experience & Life on the Ground
by Jeff Ferzoco
"A tour through a digitally-enhanced city of the future if Siri had a soul, a sense of humor, a questioning nature and the ability to make friends" - Tony Hiss
HISTORAMA
by Diza Sauers "This book is so strange and so good, a discovery, a treasure found, in more ways than one. It's a book of awesome links and leaps, peopled by characters mythic in their divine and formless quests. Feral children, runaway moms, ruthless reckless men and fabulous stories in every rock, seed and desperate room. A most disquieting and satisfying read." - Joy Williams
Love in the Time of Foreclosure
by Stephanie Alison Walker A first-person account from someone who's made it to the other side. Walker details the daily struggle. And after hearing from others facing the same trouble, she's committed to fighting the stigma of financial hardship.
"Stephanie Walker has the wit to transform the shame and anxiety of foreclosure into a genuine human adventure" - Dick Gordon, APR's "The Story"
I'll Be A Stranger To You
by Cara Diaconoff
A young software pro returns to Moscow - with carnal memories of his old missionary companion. His wife stays in Boston, waiting for him to return, to build a family and a Mormon way of life. But it's the end of the 1990's, the end of Russia's gold-rush era, and the end of ideals stretched beyond good use.
"An excellent novel of conscience" - Kevin McIlvoy
Adios, Mexico
Two Gay Refugees "Father Alfonso said that if what the other children said about me was true, then I must take cold baths. That, he told me, would rid me of the devil..."
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