Because of the Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day holiday, this is the last issue of Shelf Awareness until Tuesday, October 13. See you then!

The Heartland Fall Forum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, began in earnest Thursday with a day of author events, education, and the trade show floor.

Midwest Independent Booksellers Association executive director Grace Hagen reported record-breaking participation in all attendee categories. Of the 688 attendees, 350 are booksellers and represent 163 indie bookstores. And this year there are "more exhibitors than ever," said Hagen, with at least 225 exhibitors from 130 companies, and 98 authors.

The Heartland Fall Festival Marquee Author Breakfast featured five children's and young adult authors, hosted by author Ari Tison, talking about the origins of their work and what inspires them. (l.-r.) Margaret Rogerson, (Knight Eternal, Margaret K. McElderry Books), Matthew Cordell (Starman: The Cosmic Voyage of David Bowie, Neal Porter Books), Ari Tison (Together We See, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers), Christopher Paul Curtis (Bud Not Buddy, Random House Graphic), and Eve L. Ewing (The Best Poem: And Other Poems, Too, Kokila).

At the "Bookselling Year Zero" session, prospective booksellers and those with recently opened stores met for two hours with experienced bookselling and publishing professionals. Among the attendees: Emily Zhao, Whispering Shelf, Indianapolis, Ind.; Kristin Burkart, The Reading Nest, Cedarburg, Wis.; and Fiona Mundy, Content, Northfield, Minn.

The team from Open Book at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport having a huddle between events: Kassidy Wellnitz, Ashton Anderson, Izzy Behl, Kay King, and Erik Zimmerman.

During a session called "Books Through and Beyond Bars" attendees learned about the work of the 15-year-old Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and its recently established nonprofit publisher, Lost Kite Editions, run by writers and editors inside and out of the carceral system. Pictured: (from l.) Jennifer Bowen, founding artistic director, Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop; David Jansich, editor, Lost Kite Editions; and Maria Carlos, managing editor, Lost Kite Editions.

At "Beyond Four Walls: Rethinking the Independent Bookstore," led by Barbara Cerda, co-owner, La Revo Books, Milwaukee, Wis., booksellers shared ideas for partnerships; pop-up stores and mobile stores as bookselling business models; and outreach beyond, and without, a traditional bricks-and-mortar location. (l.-r.) Panelists Harriett Logan, owner, Loganberry Books, Cleveland, Ohio; Valeria Cerda, co-owner, La Revo Books, Milwaukee, Wis; Rachel Cleveland, owner, Little Charity Book Truck, Twin Cities, Minn.; and Barbara Cerda.

After meeting at the "Beyond Four Walls" session, three booksellers continued the conversation: (l.-r.) Meghan Trimble and Danae Mosknes, Whimsy Quill Coffee & Bookshop, Coon Rapids, Minn.; and Evelyn Burnett, ThirdSpace Reading Room, Cleveland, Ohio.  

The very busy Heartland Fall Forum show floor.

"As a publishing community we talk a lot about through lines," said Christie Henry, director of Princeton University Press, at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday afternoon. "Climate change is a through line of our contemporary society and any future society that we can create."

(l.-r.) Özden Terli, Darya Sotoodeh, Melissa Fleming, and Christie Henry.

Henry was part of a panel entitled "Still Burning: The Climate Crisis We Stopped Talking About." Arranged in partnership with the United Nations, the discussion featured UN Under-Secretary General for Communications Melissa Fleming as moderator and speakers Özden Terli, meteorologist for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, a German public television broadcaster, and Darya Sotoodeh, spokesperson for the climate activism group Fridays for Future. 

The group discussed how climate change has slipped from media coverage and political agendas around the world even as extreme weather events occur with increasing frequency, and what the publishing industry can do to help fight disinformation and create positive change.

Fleming reported that the past 11 years were the warmest 11 years ever recorded, yet since 2021, global media coverage has fallen almost 40%. Newsrooms "all over the world" have cut their climate desks while fossil fuel companies and their allies are "flooding the information space with falsehoods." And those who tell the truth about climate change in the media and elsewhere face online harassment.

Terli recalled that as he made forecasts earlier this summer before and during Europe's record heatwave, there were people claiming that this level of heat was not unusual and that summers used to always get that hot. Climate change disinformation, much of it funded and supported by fossil fuel companies, remains an "ongoing thing" that is "destabilizing society." People are being told "it's not so bad," Terli said, when the situation is "exactly the opposite." 

Given the "huge amount of carbon dioxide" already emitted, societies will be dealing with rising temperatures for the next decades; on that timescale, climate change is "not stoppable." The atmosphere that exists today, he continued, is not what it was in pre-industrial times or even 40 years ago. "It's a different atmosphere and it's generating different weather," with "catastrophes," like this summer's European heatwaves, "already locked in."

Henry brought up the "aggressive defunding of climate-based research," which is becoming an alarming trend. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development, which was an independent research organization with projects all over the globe, was shut down and dismantled in 2025. The National Science Foundation is "down $310 million in research from fiscal year '25 to fiscal year '26," and it has terminated grants for more than 100 climate-related projects. The stance of the Trump administration is that any active research must align with the administration's priorities. Henry also pointed out that this is not contained to the U.S.--the Guardian reported this spring that the U.K.'s Biodiverse Landscape Fund is down some £100 million in funding.

Sotoodeh said she and her colleagues have noticed a clear "shift in the discourse," with interview requests and panel invitations becoming less frequent. Attention has shifted to such issues as war, inflation, migration, and the rise of the far right, but all of those crises will worsen as the climate changes. As food scarcity and natural disasters destabilize things and lead to further migration, "people will even more vote for extreme parties," Sotoodeh asserted.

It has become increasingly important to show that climate activism is linked to both the fight for social equality and the "fight against fascism," Sotoodeh said. She remarked that the way the climate crisis is currently framed, most people imagine it as a looming "apocalypse" where once it happens, "everything will be gone," while efforts to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change are seen as restrictive and punishing. She identified both of these as harmful misconceptions, emphasizing that the crisis is not looming, it's "happening right now," and adapting to climate change affords people a "huge chance" to "change the way we live" and "become better."

Henry said the publishing industry has "great opportunities here and significant responsibilities." Publishers have to use their platforms to tell these stories "in fiction and nonfiction form," while making them interesting and important. The industry also has to make sure the "balance of evidence-based publishing" matches or even outstrips "the pace of disinformation being put into the world."

"A lot of solutions" are already available, Terli said, pointing to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, advances in batteries, and electric vehicles. The technology is getting cheaper, and there will be a point when it is "too expensive" to buy things like fuel-burning cars or generators. He acknowledged that humanity has reaped huge benefits from burning fossil fuels, but "we have no time anymore" to wait.

He stressed that people shouldn't sit at home thinking they're the only ones who care; when he gives talks about climate change, plenty of people attend, and the most commonly asked question is why more action is not being taken. 

"It cannot be our future that when we are old, we die because it is too hot," Terli said. "So we have to change something. We have to work together, and we have to show the people the chances we have for a better future." --Alex Mutter

Cultura Books is currently open on limited hours at 606 Haddon Ave. in Collingswood, N.J., as owners Michael Maffei and Ashley Staropoli "continue to stock books, organize the space, and work toward a grand opening they tentatively expect in early November," the Retrospect reported. 

The store's inventory include bestsellers, anticipated releases, and children's books, with an emphasis on authors and marginalized perspectives often overlooked by and within mainstream publishing. "We really believe that books are a powerful tool in terms of helping people to learn and to expose a reader to not only creativity and imagination but also to experiences that are different than one's own," Staropoli said.

Opening a bookstore had long been one of the couple's shared ambitions. Maffei previously worked in real estate finance in New York. Staropoli, who has a legal background, said they began looking for a location about 15 months ago. "Why does it have to be just a kind of fantasy? We can do it, why not us? When are we going to do it? Another lifetime?" Maffei said.

A back room in the location currently is being used for inventory and supplies. Plans call for adding hallway shelving and reorganizing storage so the room can eventually become a place for events and programs. "The physical transformation is part of a larger vision for Cultura: a bookstore that functions as a gathering place as much as a retail space," the Retrospect wrote.

"I view it as a real opportunity to expose the community and highlight those in the community who are already here, and help spread their message and raise awareness of differences that we can celebrate within our community," Staropoli said

The owners envision a future calendar of programming that includes story times, author events, workshops, writing groups, and poetry programs. They are also considering children's and adult book clubs, music programming and yoga. They added that their aim is to create a place where someone can buy a new release, pick out a children's book, hear an author, join a workshop, and encounter neighbors through stories and real experiences, the Retrospect noted.

"For people who are maybe not the same degree of book lovers, we'd like to dangle enough things that kind of pique their interest, so that they enjoy their experience in the bookstore and want to come back here or to another bookstore," Maffei said.

Staropoli added: "We want people to be able to come in and feel that they could find something that speaks to them and also come in feeling that they're welcome, that this is a place where they feel accepted." 

Since its debut this spring, Forrest and Fawn Bookstore has moved to a new, larger location and fostered community in Riverton, Wyo., County 10 reported. 

Kirbie Despain at Forrest and Fawn

The all-ages, general-interest bookstore carries new and used titles and now resides at 309 E. Main St. There is a prominent children's section featuring a play area built out of what were once changing rooms. Along with books, owner Kirbie Despain carries apparel, toys, puzzles, games, mugs, and gifts, many sourced locally. The store's event offerings include Saturday morning storytime sessions, craft nights, book release parties, author signings, and three book clubs. 

Prior to opening Forrest and Fawn, Despain was a librarian for seven years, and currently works as a preschool teacher in the mornings before heading to the bookstore later in the day. To help make books more accessible to the entire community, Despain also has a free book table in-store. "Books have always been something I loved," she told County 10. 

When Forrest and Fawn opened in March, it was located in a 128-square-foot space. Very quickly the store outgrew that space, and when the storefront at 309 E. Main became available, Despain decided to move locations only a few months after opening. The bookstore reopened in its current home at the end of May, and business has been strong since. 

"More than simply selling books, Despain hopes the store's clubs, activities, locally made products, and family-friendly spaces give people another place to connect with their community," County 10 wrote.

Bookshop.org recently marked a striking milestone: since it launched in early 2020 primarily as an online book-buying alternative to Amazon, it has given more than $50 million to independent bookstores in the U.S. (The money comes from of a pool consisting of 10% of sales that Bookshop makes directly to readers, not through a bookstore, or through non-bookstore affiliates such as newspapers or other organizations, with the money distributed even to indie ABA-member bookstores that don't use Bookshop.)

The pool is just one of the many ways Bookshop supports indies. Beyond offering an easy way for stores to sell printed books online, it's added e-books and audiobooks, expanded abroad, improved its site, and has plans to "make life easier for booksellers," including creating an e-reader and adding more online content to make Bookshop "the best place on the internet to buy books."

One early way Bookshop helped indies was unforeseeable: when the pandemic hit right after Bookshop's launch, Bookshop was a life saver for the many indies that didn't have e-commerce capabilities or even websites, offering an easy way to sell online when most in-store transactions ended.

Andy Hunter

In conversation with Shelf Awareness, Bookshop founder and CEO Andy Hunter readily acknowledges that the company's launch was well-timed. But, he emphasizes, the timing had more to do with Bookshop's original goal: to be an alternative to Amazon for online purchases of books. "I felt Amazon was growing too fast," he explains. "Customer habits were getting fixed, and we couldn't let it go on."

Hunter was considering launching later because he hadn't raised the full amount he thought he needed. (Bookshop owners include Hunter, the American Booksellers Association, Morgan Entrekin, Bookshop staff, and others.) Still, Bookshop launched at the 2020 Winter Institute in Baltimore, in what Hunter calls "a kind of a miracle. If I didn't feel the urgency and we waited three months, we wouldn't have been ready."

Some 1,200 indie bookstores signed up in six weeks. Bookshop's growth continued at a pace beyond the company's forecasts, with Bookshop "twice as big as we ever expected." Bookshop now has 3,000 stores, more than 90% of the ABA's membership. Last year Bookshop sales grew 55%, and are up in "double digits" this year so far. For most stores, "We're between must have and nice to have," Hunter says, though for many small, rural stores, "We're essential."

If a bookstore has a link to Bookshop, it gets the full profit of 30% of the cover price, regardless of whether Bookshop discounts the title. (Bookshop's discounts are generally not more than 10%.) The money that goes to the indie bookstore pool represents 10% of the sale of books that Bookshop sells directly to consumers or for non-bookstore affiliates. That money is paid out twice a year and is divided in a way so that stores with multiple locations get a bit more than stores with a single location.

In the beginning, some bookstores were concerned that Bookshop would cannibalize sales, but as Hunter points out, "The vast majority of our customers are coming from having shopped on Amazon." He pointed to "a shift in the cultural conversation" whereby "support for indie stores is a socially conscious decision. People see indie bookstores as central to local communities, as advocates for literacy, raising a new generation of readers, and creating a healthy culture around readers."

In addition, "the more we slip into oligarchy and see [Amazon founder Jeff] Bezos at the inauguration and contributing to the ballroom," Hunter continues, "we see what indies mean for free speech, the open marketplace of ideas" as well as a solution to the problem of "massive consolidation making it hard for new authors to break out."

Booksellers have a highly favorable opinion of Bookshop, with a survey showing 98% with a positive view and 94% ready to recommend Bookshop to a new bookseller.

Since 2020, Bookshop has expanded in various ways. It has launched in the U.K., and offers e-books there and in the U.S. In both countries, e-books represent about 5% of sales. For audiobooks in the U.S., Bookshop has a partnership with Libro.fm.

Among its plans, Bookshop wants to expand the platform so that "any bookstore anywhere in the world will be able to sell e-books on our app," Hunter says. Booksellers associations in Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Greece have expressed interest in working with Bookshop, he says.

Bookshop would like to release a reading device, "a Kindle killer." Because the expansion of AI has boosted the price of memory devices, Bookshop can't build one on its own at the moment but is "looking for other ways to bring an e-reader to market through partnerships." Hunter notes that while some people read e-books on their phones, most read e-books on devices--and those readers read 10 times as much as those who read on phones.

Hunter stresses, too, that a Bookshop e-reader would be sold in a way that offers bookstores "decent profit margins" on the device. Also, unlike previous e-reader partnerships, stores would get the full profit from e-book sales.

Bookshop wants to be "the best place on the internet to buy books," a goal that Hunter says involves "a million small things." This would include, for example, adding reviews and books discussions, author interviews, videos, and more. "In the age of AI we want to do more for human curation, to lean into human recommendations and human booksellers."

Bookshop wants to make bookselling easier for booksellers in a variety of ways. For example, Bookshop would like to give customers the option of picking up an ordered book in-store. The company also wants to do more digital marketing, e-mail marketing, and social media marketing.

Bookshop would also like to improve reporting and help solve book world tech problems so that, Hunter says, "if a person wants to start a bookstore and has an iPad, they should be able to sign up with Bookshop and sell online, and all hardware and software would be streamlined. By removing all the barriers to starting a store, it makes more stores sustainable, and more stores will open. This is our ultimate mission, beyond just taking all Amazon customers and converting them to Bookshop customers." --John Mutter

Barnes & Noble opened its new bookstore in Oracle Wetmore Shopping Center at 4380 N. Oracle Rd., Suite 150, Tucson, Ariz., on Wednesday, October 7. The approximately 16,000-square-foot location includes a B&N Café. The opening festivities featured local author Kathleen Glasgow cutting the ribbon and signing copies of her YA novel The Glass Girl. 

"Tucson has long been a wonderful home for Barnes & Noble, and we are delighted to be complementing our presence in the city with this beautiful new bookstore," B&N said. "We have an excellent bookselling team, and I know they look forward to creating an exceptional bookstore."

Also on October 7, B&N opened a new bookstore in Grand Plaza at 177 S. Las Posas Rd. in San Marcos, Calif., home to Cal State San Marcos and Palomar College. Local author Kaylie Smith cut the ribbon and signed copies of her dark fantasy romance Phantasma. The San Marcos bookstore, at more than 20,000 square feet, is the fifth new B&N to open in California this year.  

"Bringing vibrant, curated bookstores back to Southern California is an immense privilege. We look forward to becoming an essential part of San Marcos' cultural fabric for many years to come," B&N said. "We are very proud to anchor a community with a brilliant bookstore, run by local booksellers."

Last week, Shelf Awareness sent our monthly pre-order e-blast to more than 920,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 920,699 customers of 288 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features 11 upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and a sponsored title. Customers can buy these books via "pre-order" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on each sending store's website. A key feature is that bookstore partners can easily change title selections to best reflect the tastes of their customers and can customize the mailing with links, images, and promotional copy of their own.

The pre-order e-blasts are sent the last Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, October 28. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

For a sample of the September pre-order e-blast, see this one from Ren's Coffeehouse & Books, Blackwood, N.J.

The titles highlighted in the pre-order e-blast were:

A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury)
On the Calculation of Volume (Book V) by Solvej Balle (New Directions)
Whale Harbor by Mary Beth Keane (Scribner)
Take My Word For It by Levar Burton (Random House)
And If I Die Before I Wake by George M. Johnson (FSG)
Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun (Hogarth)
Tiger's Mouth by Lucy Tan (Ballantine)
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench (St. Martin's)
Monsters of Ohio by John Scalzi (Tor)

At Books on the Square in Providence, R.I., Cristina Iannarino (r.), winner of the 2026 BPRNE Handseller of the Year Award, interviewed author/illustrator JooHee Yoon (l.) about her picture book Seven Curious Ants (Chronicle Books).

In the days before the Nobel Prize in Literature was set to be awarded, Claire Foster, manager of independent bookstore TYPE Books in Toronto, was hoping this would be Anne Carson's year, the Canadian Press reported. When Foster, a longtime enthusiastic fan of the Canadian poet, learned yesterday that Carson had won, she was delighted.

"My first reaction was absolutely as a reader and I was just so excited and so happy. It's the happiest I could have been for the announcement today, I think," said Foster, adding that Carson "has been a mainstay of our poetry shelves" for years. Foster quickly built a shrine to the Toronto-born writer in the bookstore, displaying a number of her titles in front of the cash register. "We want them to be easily findable and recognizable."

At Toronto's Ben McNally Books, store operator Rupert McNally arrived early to order as many of Carson's works as he could, knowing customers would be clamoring for her books. He added that a Canadian winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is a "huge boon" for the business: "We see a huge jump in sales of her books and books that she's worked on. Even books onto which she's done introductions of other people's works, we'll see a jump in sale on those as well."

Foster said she is excited that the Nobel Prize honor might prompt readers to dig into Carson's catalogue: "She has such a vast backlist and the Nobel is such a great occasion to think backwards, too, in terms of the work that she has been doing for decades. To be able bring in older titles and obviously for us to be able to celebrate the second Canadian ever to win a Nobel is huge.... It's huge for Canadian reading and appreciation, and we feel lucky to hopefully be a beacon that people can come to find her."

"What if reclaiming your time could be a little rebellious, and not loud?" asked Books & Books in Coral Gables, Fla. "Once a month, The Reading Party gathers us around a simple proposition: come as you are, bring a book (or don't, we have plenty to choose from), and read together in companiable silence for 45 minutes. Then we break the silence.

"Handwritten prompts open the floor. Wine and light bites flow. Conversations wander. Strangers become friends. Book clubs are born. Someone inevitably says, 'How have we never done this before?'

"Hosted by our very own Alyssa Expósito as part of the Books & Books Literary Foundation, The Reading Party is our small act of resistance against the feeling that our screens are priority. For 45 minutes, we turn to one of the oldest technologies, the book. We read. We breathe. We pay attention. And then we stay awhile and talk about it.... Come for the reading. Stay for the people."

The Purple Couch Bookshop in North Andover, Mass., shared a pic of its Banned Books Week sales floor display, noting: "Join us in the fight against censorship. While MA has just passed legislation to forbid book bans in the Commonwealth, challenges to books in schools and libraries elsewhere are growing exponentially. There are three national censorship bills active in Congress. Organizations like @penamerica @abfefreeexpression and @americanbooksellers are working to fight them. Visit our banned books display and add a few to your TBR, and round up your purchase to benefit PenAmerica's advocacy work."

"Bon appétit," Henry's Books in Spearfish, S.Dak., wished its patrons while offering a little advice on the shop's sidewalk chalkboard: "You're TBR is a menu, not a to do list."

Short films featuring stars reading from the titles shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize have been released, Deadline reported. The readers include Lewis Gribben (Douglas Stuart's John of John), Kathryn Hunter (M. John Harrison's The End of Everything), Paterson Joseph (Marlon James's The Disappearers), Himesh Patel (Luke Kennard's Black Bag), Maxine Peake (Elizabeth Strout's The Things We Never Say), and Savannah Steyn (Rebecca Perry's May We Feed the King). 

Holly Blakey, who directs the six two-minute films, said: "This year we wanted to push the visual language somewhere new, shooting much of it outside and finding something looser, more textural and alive in the process. It was less about narrativizing the books for me, more about searching for the feelings they leave you with--fear, humor, the great voids between us, or something altogether more existential."

Booker Prize Foundation CEO Gaby Wood added: "Every year, the short films we make of extracts from the Booker Prizes shortlists draw more and more readers to the books. It's also a fantastic opportunity for us to work with a range of creative people in an art form adjacent to literature, and this latest set of films is our most ambitious yet." 

Australian journalist, writer, and author Lisa Wilkinson is collaborating with the new production company The Set Up--from Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky, and Alison Hurbert-Burns--for a TV adaptation of her bestselling nonfiction book The Titanic Story of Evelyn, which tells the true story of Evelyn Marsden, the only Australian-born survivor of the Titanic, Deadline reported.

"I'm absolutely thrilled to be teaming up with two such masterful tellers of women's stories as Bruna and Alison," Wilkinson said. "From Big Little Lies to Colin From Accounts, I'm a huge fan of their award-winning work, and I know that Bruna and Alison will be the very best team to bring Evelyn's truly titanic story of adventure, heroism, tragedy and love-in-another-time, to the screen."

In a joint statement, The Set Up principals said: "The power of Lisa Wilkinson as a storyteller and a trusted voice for Australians throughout her long and celebrated career is unmatched. She has done an incredible job of bringing Evelyn's remarkable, previously untold story to life. It's the Titanic as we've never seen it, told through Evelyn's eyes and those of the many extraordinary women on that ship, with a beautiful love story at its heart. We're excited to bring it to the screen."

The shortlist has been selected for the £10,000 (about $13,210) Goldsmiths Prize, which celebrates "creative daring" by rewarding "fiction that breaks the mold or extends the possibilities of the novel form." It is sponsored by Goldsmiths University and the New Statesman. The winner will be named November 4. This year's shortlisted titles are:

What Am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton 
The Rouse by China Miéville 
Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa 
Dooneen by Keith Ridgway  
Attention Seeking Behaviour by Aea Varfis-Van Warmelo 
The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams 

Avia Tadmor photo: Beowulf Sheehan

Avia Tadmor's poetry debut is Song in Tammuz (Tupelo Press, October 1, 2026), a collection that draws from an range of literary forms, and winner of the International Berkshire Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, the New Republic, and elsewhere. She has received support from Yaddo, Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and Poets & Writers. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University and is a clinical associate professor at New York University. Born in Jerusalem, she lives in New York. 

Handsell readers your book:

Song in Tammuz is a contemporary exploration of displacement, desire, and longing. In conversation with the biblical book of Ruth, these poems span centuries and continents while traversing linguistic forms. Footnotes, dictionary definitions, the lyrical, the elegiac, and the ekphrastic bring old and new together as their speakers seek new definitions of self and of home.

On your nightstand now:

Other Paths for Shahrazad: An Arabic/English Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women, edited by Jennifer Jean, a fellow Tupelo Press author, because of the gorgeous polyphony of women, collaborating across cultures and conflicts. This anthology voices such tenderness, brave survival, and hope. 

Favorite book when you were a child:

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. As a child, I was beyond mesmerized by Dahl's quirky, wondrous, and amusing world--the wingspan of its imagination, its coming to life. So much so that my best friend and I built a humongous papier-mâché Empire State Building with a peach on its spire. For fun. Also, especially for any readers living in New York: how amazing it is that what is first mistaken for a bomb (the peach) ends up feeding the children of New York City and housing the protagonists (James and his insect friends eventually make a home of the pit, free of rent, in Central Park)!

Your top five authors:

It feels nearly blasphemous to choose so I'll name my top Marys, all poets, instead: Mary Oliver, Mary Szybist, Marie Howe, and Wisława Szymborska, whose full name was Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska. Each of these brilliant poets uses words to carve starlike holes in our miniscule, daily existence, inviting readers to peer into the vastness through astonishing clarity and courage. 

Book you've faked reading:

James Joyce's Ulysses. It was late at night, my senior year, and I just needed to graduate at that point!

Book you're an evangelist for:

My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips. I've been returning to Phillips's craft book religiously at the end of every teaching semester for the past few years, as I summon the writing spirits in hope of a prolific winter or summer break. Just as genius in his prose as he is in poetry, Phillips helpfully demystifies essential aspects of the writing life (such as "fame") while honoring the sense of mystery that writing, when it feels worthwhile, necessitates.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Most books I've bought for my daughters (2.5 and six months) on our weekly visits to the Strand Bookstore--most recently, A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni (the edition celebrating 50 years of this classic has a spinning color wheel built into the cover!). Also, so many books from the perennially iridescent world of Eric Carle. 

Book you hid from your parents:

I'm fortunate to say that none, ever!

Book that changed your life: 

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. If only giving, throughout our lives, was as naïve and yet profound as everything about this wonder of a book.

Favorite line from a book:

"It's like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away," by Louise Glück, from her essay "Education of the Poet" in Proofs & Theories. Glück attaches this line to the writing process and to poetry, though it reflects every one of life's most meaningful longings: for language to mean and not only signify, for love to bring unity of bodies or minds, for peace to arrive, and stay. 

Books you'll never part with:

I just held my author copies of my poetry debut, Song in Tammuz, for the first time and am thinking about books as beautiful, palpable objects--ones that can be held and also gifted to others. The books I'll never part with are ones that were gifted to me with a personal dedication. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, which my father gifted me with a written dedication after I returned from my first writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center. The second is Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan. I had the honor and joy of spending a day with Beowulf and his team when he was taking my author photo. The day was full of radiance, attention, and care. It felt like permission to start truly seeing myself as an author. And I can't help but read Beowulf's dedication in my copy of his book as a small, gorgeous poem in itself. 

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. I was completely transported by this series one very difficult summer, several years ago, already as an adult. Ferrante pulls readers into a world still informed by some naïveté, though not uncomplicated and not ignorant of precarity or pain. It brought me back to my girlhood and those early friendships that for a time, we think of as lasting and timeless. Reading these novels, I was both carried back and carried away, a rare and beautiful gift. 

Leonardo San Pietro's Party with Cassowary follows a group of college students at a gathering through a series of strange and sinister events, in a weird, mind-bending novel about how humans relate to one another.

Chapters alternate characters of focus, always in close third person. The novel begins with Vincenzo, en route to a party thrown by a classmate he does not know well. He is nervous. Before Vincenzo's ride to the function arrives to pick him up, he experiences a random encounter: a mussed stranger with "hospital-patient breath" rushes him, demanding money, threatening--and then hugs him, staggers back, claims it was all a joke, and vanishes into the night. This unsettling interaction, part peril and part prank, sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

The celebration takes place at a lavish estate in northern Italy, the home of Isa M., a literature student who enjoys wealth and privilege but is not happy. Isa M. and her close circle of friends offer some of the novel's perspectives, but not all. There are also the outsider Vincenzo, an otherwise unnamed Gatecrasher Y, a drug dealer, and a social pariah. Events rotate around an absent character, the popular, charismatic Ezio, who never shows up at the party. Instead, an ominous note declares, "Unless someone touches the cassowary before one a.m., Ezio dies," referring to Isa M.'s neighbor's flightless bird from Australia, arguably a more dangerous cousin to the ostrich. And so begins an increasingly bizarre rite of passage or evil gag, prompting questions: Who wrote the note? Do they really have Ezio? Is this a joke, or are lives really at stake? How unsafe is the cassowary really?

In this translation from the Italian by Todd Portnowitz, San Pietro's narration is disjointed, in the spirit of college students imbibing and reveling and struggling to parse what is real. They love Ezio; they are jealous of him and of one another; they want to appear courageous; they just want this night to be over with. They indulge in philosophy and grand statements. But is this party, and the challenge of the cassowary, just another wacky episode in the unsober college experience? Or is it where true selves are forged? One partygoer "crossed the fence to get a glimpse, at least a glimpse, behind the curtain of life, where real life rests." San Pietro challenges readers with a surreal narrative that is either far weirder than--or a truer distillation of--real life. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: A small group of college students grapples with an extraordinary and dangerous demand with potentially life-or-death consequences in this phantasmagorical novel about the instability of youth.