Burned By Books

In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone...Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me."Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before.Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center’s Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually.Maria’s fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize.Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a seismic event leaves the world shattered, an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career struggles to regain the ability to walk on ground that is in constant motion. When her alluring younger housemate, Tala, disappears, what had begun as an obsession grows into an impulse to kill, forcing the narrator to confront the meaning of the ruptures that have suddenly upended her life. The drive to find and eliminate Tala becomes an existential pursuit, leading back in time and out into a desolate, dust-covered city, where the narrator is targeted by charismatic “healing” ideologues with uncertain motives. Torn between a gnawing desire to reckon with the forces that have made her and an immediate need to find the stability to survive, she is forced to question familiar figurations of light, shadow, authenticity, resistance, and the limits of personal transformation in an alienated, alienating world.Darkly comic, deeply resonant, and hallucinatory in tone, An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth (Soft Skull, 2024) will appeal to readers of Annie Ernaux, Dionne Brand, and Sheila Heti.Anna’s most recent book is Participation. A poet and a translator, Anna has won the James Laughlin Award for her poetry and shared the 2021 International Booker Prize with David Diop for his novel At Night All Blood is Black. A student of plants and herbalism, she is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse and a cofound of Bushel Collective.Recommended Books: Poupeh Missaghi, Sound Museum Renee Gladman, My Lesbian Novel Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lisa Swayze has been the General Manager at Buffalo Street Books for 7 years and will transition to becoming the Executive Director of the bookstore’s new literary nonprofit in 2025. Lisa is on the board of directors of the American Booksellers Association and the Downtown Ithaca Alliance.Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo is the owner and co-founder of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, where she also currently serves as the Events & Marketing Manager (because she loves hosting parties). She has worked in independent bookstores in New York City since 2000, has served on the board of NAIBA and various other book industry boards and committees, and is currently on the board of the American Booksellers Association (along with lovely colleagues Lisa and Jake). She lives with her husband and daughter (both avid readers, thankfully) in Brooklyn.Lisa's Favorites:  James - Percival Everett The Sapling Cage - Margaret Killjoy Not for the Faint of Heart - Lex Croucher (YA) Swift River - Essie Chambers American Daughters - Maurice Carlos Ruffin God of the Woods - Liz Moore Where They Last Saw Her - Marcie Rendon Anita de Monte Laughs Last - Xochitil Gonzalez Blue Light Hours - Bruna Dantas Lobato Catalina - Karla Cornejo Villavicencio The Pairing - Casey Mcquiston Shred Sisters - Betsy Lerner A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy - Nathan Thrall Jessica's favorites: The Book of Love by Kelly Link — Best Literary Novel Featuring Complex Magic Systems, Diverse Love Stories, Unexpected Beauty, and Karaoke Hum by Helen Phillips — Best Near-Future Dystopia that is Also About Parenting Help Wanted to Adelle Waldman — Best Novel About Capitalism The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger — Best Science Writing / Best Book About Plant Intelligence and Scientist Drama The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman — Best Doorstop Literary/Historical Fantasy (With Philosophical Caveats) In Universes by Emet North — Best Queer Multiverse Novel Playground by Richard Powers — Best Nature Writing as Fiction Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin — Best Socially Aware Superhero Graphic Novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey — Best Sentences About Earth non-frontlist / rereads: Space Crone by Ursula LeGuin — Best Essays by Best Essayist The Privilege of a Happy Ending by Kij Johnson — Best Quest Narrative Berlin: City of Stones, City of Smoke, City of Light — Best Epic of Quotidian Life Before the Abyss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author Christine Coulson spent twenty-five years writing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her final project was to write wall labels for the museum's new British Galleries. During that time, she dreamt of using The Met's strict label format to describe people as intricate works of art. The result is this "jewel box of a novel" (Kirkus Reviews) that imagines a privileged 20th-century woman as an artifact--an object prized, collected, and critiqued. One Woman Show (Avid Reader Press, 2023) revolves around the life of Kitty Whitaker as she is defined by her potential for display and moved from collection to collection through multiple marriages. Coulson precisely distills each stage of this sprawling life, every brief snapshot in time a wry reflection on womanhood, ownership, value, and power."A moving story of privilege, womanhood, and the sweep of the 20th century told through a single American life" (Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind), Kitty is an eccentric heroine who disrupts her porcelain life with both major force and minor transgressions. Described with poignancy and humor, Coulson's playful reversal on our interaction with art ultimately questions who really gets to tell our stories.Christine Coulson spent 25 years writing for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and left the museum as Senior Writer in 2019. She started at The Met in 1991 as a summer intern in the European Paintings Department and returned in 1994 to start her first job at the museum after graduate school. During her tenure, she rose through the ranks of the museum, working in the Development Office, the Director’s Office, and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.In 2017, The Met gave Coulson a yearlong sabbatical to write Metropolitan Stories, her bestselling 2019 novel about the museum.Recommended Books: Katheryn Scanlan, Kick the Latch J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country Myra Coleman, Women Holding Things Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of Yr Dead (McSweeney's Books, 2024), longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristopher grew up in Lincroft, New Jersey. He received his B.A. in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels, OUR NARROW HIDING PLACES (Ecco/2024) WHY WE CAME TO THE CITY (Viking/2016) and THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS, (Viking/2013). His book of essays on the creative process is REVISIONARIES: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE LOST, UNFINISHED, AND JUST PLAIN BAD WORK OF GREAT WRITERS. And Kristopher is the director of the creative program and SUNY New Paltz.Recommended Books: E. Lily Yu Break Blow Burn and Make Kate Hamilton, Mad Wife Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse.The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent. She edited a young John Updike, to whom she sent seventeen rejections before a single acceptance, as well as Vladimir Nabokov, with whom she fought incessantly, urging that he drop needlessly obscure, confusing words.White's biggest contribution, however, was her cultivation of women writers whose careers were made at The New Yorker--Janet Flanner, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Taylor, Emily Hahn, Kay Boyle, and more. She cleared their mental and financial obstacles, introduced them to each other, and helped them create now classic stories and essays. She propelled these women to great literary heights and, in the process, reinvented the role of the editor, transforming the relationship to be not just a way to improve a writer's work but also their life.Based on years of scrupulous research, acclaimed author Amy Reading creates a rare and deeply intimate portrait of a prolific editor--through both her incredible tenure at The New Yorker, and her famous marriage to E.B. White--and reveals how she transformed our understanding of literary culture and community.Amy Reading is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the New York Public Library. She is the author of The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, A Cunning Revenge, and A Small History of the Big Con. She lives in upstate New York, where she has served on the executive board of Buffalo Street Books, an indie cooperative bookstore, since 2018.Recommended Books: Catherine Lacey, Biography of X Clara Bingham, The Movement Maggie Dougherty, The Equivalents Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, among many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Like Happiness has been listed as a best books of the year so far by Elle, Bookshop.org, Libby.Recommended Books: Raquel Gutierrez, Brown Neon Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa Catherine Lacey, Pew Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father's death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man's will: he will only inherit his half of his father's considerable estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn't seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel's inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel with the boy to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever.S.J. Naudé's masterful Fathers and Fugitives (Europa, 2024) is many things at once: a literary page-turner full of vivid, unexpected characters and surprising twists; a loving and at times shockingly raw portrayal of its protagonist's complex psyche; and a devastatingly subtle look into South Africa's fraught recent history.S.J. Naudé is the author of two collections of short stories and two novels. He is the winner of the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize, and the kykNet-Rapport prize, and is the only writer to win the Hertzog Prize twice consecutively in its 100-year history. His first novel, The Third Reel, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times prize. His work has been published in Granta and other journals in the US, UK, the Netherlands, and Italy. He spent half his life as a corporate lawyer in London and now is a full-time writer in South Africa.Book Recommendations: John Ransom, The Whale Tattoo Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals JM Coetzee, The Pole Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creation Lake (Scribner, 2024) is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France."Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by "cold bump"--making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts"--shadowy figures in business and government--instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner's rendition of "noir" is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner's finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.Rachel Kushner is the author of the novels CREATION LAKE, THE MARS ROOM, THE FLAMETHROWERS, and TELEX FROM CUBA, a book of short stories, THE STRANGE CASE OF RACHEL K, and THE HARD CROWD: ESSAYS 2000-2020. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and is now three times a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Recommended Books: Cormac McCarthy, Child of God Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices