Book coverage cuts: letters worth reading

Readers of the Boston Globe responded with alarm when the paper dramatically reduced its coverage of books. For those of us in Massachusetts who live and work among writers, publishers, and independent booksellers, such cuts strike at the cultural identity of our region. Below are two powerful letters to the editor that ran in the Globe last week, from voices who remind us that Boston’s literary community deserves attention and respect from its newspaper of record.

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Our city gets its vibrancy from its culture of books and authors

By Chloe Garcia Roberts, Milton

I opened the Globe’s revamped Arts section last Sunday and was stunned to find that the Books section had been cut drastically. As a longtime print subscriber, I cannot stay silent. I think I speak for many when I say that I do not turn to the Globe for coverage of national events or the paper’s takes on the culture at large. I turn to it as an authority on Boston and New England, an interpreter of our own strange and wonderful culture, which is like nowhere else.

If you throw a pebble in a crowd here, you are likely to hit a practicing, lauded, or aspiring writer. A number of the area’s treasured bookstores survived, albeit shakily, the onslaught of the chains and Amazon. It is part of our culture here that many of us go out of our way, trudging through the wintry mix if necessary, to attend author events and buy books at these independent stores. When they go, they won’t be replaced.

Our city’s vibrancy derives from its large concentration of readers and writers. If the decision to slash books coverage comes down to numbers and clicks, I’d like to think, at the very least, that there are more of us than people who can afford a nearly $8 million home (per the two-page spread in the Address section of the same edition).

Please, Globe, remember who you are and where you are from. Writers and readers have always contributed to the culture of this place, and we deserve better from our newspaper. 

How could paper dispense with the indispensable New England Literary News?

By Lloyd Schwartz, Somerville

It’s ironic that just months after Nina MacLaughlin won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction, the Globe decided to drop her indispensable weekly column, New England Literary News. It’s been one of the few places, in this most literary of states, where one could depend on serious and eloquent reporting on literary issues, even poetry! I can’t believe MacLaughlin doesn’t have a loyal and passionate following.

The newspaper with the largest circulation in the state should be the last place to cut back on arts coverage. I hope this terrible decision is not irreversible. I’ve been a Globe subscriber for many years. Maybe it’s time for me to consider the bottom line, too. 

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The concern voiced in these letters goes beyond one newspaper. Book criticism is one of the ways a culture reflects on itself, preserves its memory, and challenges its assumptions. When we lose professional space for reviews, essays, and conversations about literature, we lose an essential form of civic dialogue.

For a deeper exploration of why book criticism matters, see this group essay making the case for criticism in The New Yorker or Parul Sehgal's 2021 review of 125 years of reviewery in The New York Times Book Review. 

As a small independent press here in Massachusetts, we add our voice to those calling for robust, sustained coverage of books in our regional newspapers. Readers, writers, and publishers all depend on it.

Supporting the Edward Said Library in Gaza

 A few days ago, just before the end of the year, a message arrived in our inbox from Mosab Abu Toha — author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights, April 2022), and founder of the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza. I share that message here, because I hold the view that the Public Library in Gaza deserves wider recognition, and widespread support. 

The email was prefaced by a pair of epigraphs that speak to the vision of the Library, and perhaps of libraries everywhere. The first is from Edward Said: "I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result." The second comes from Noam Chomsky: "The project merits strong support from everyone concerned with justice & basic human rights." Hear, hear.  If you're moved to support this library project, you can donate here.

Here now is Mosab's message: 

Dear friends and supporters,

I hope my letter finds you and your families very well that you are having a good holiday.

I never imagined that The Norton Anthology of American Literature that I found under the rubble of my university in 2014 would bring hundreds of books into my small house in North Gaza. In 2017, I launched a fundraising campaign, and within a few months I opened a public library named after Edward Said in north Gaza, with the Middle East Children's Alliance, aka MECA, as its partner and sponsor.

In September 2019, a second branch of the Edward Said Library opened in Gaza City. Hundreds and hundreds of children and adults come to the library every week to read, sing, draw, learn, and meet with others.

All of this and more could not happen if it wasn’t for donations from supporters like. Gaza needs us all now more than any time before. The two libraries are becoming central to the life and growth of many people in Gaza every single day.

Just last year, a third branch of the Edward Said Library was announced, this time in East Jerusalem. The three libraries do their best to address the increasing numbers of beneficiaries and their needs.

In our small way, the Edward Said libraries care as much as possible for the children and their own library space in it. As part of our evolving counseling and recovering program, we play games with them in the library, while other children draw and play with colors.

Nowadays, the three Edward Said libraries, in addition to their mission of providing books, have expanded their program. They not only work with librarians, but with young writers, musicians, and artists, providing a place for everyone to study and grow, practice their talents, and share them with those who would like to come and visit.

Therefore, I’m inviting you and your families and friends to continue to give the Edward Said libraries a gleaming light in the darkened Gaza.

Of the project, Mariam Said, wife of the late Dr. Edward Said, has written: "I want to express my deep gratitude to all those who contribute to the libraries. I know my husband would be honored that this wonderful project bears his name."

The Edwards Said Public Libraries are sponsored by the Middle East Children's Alliance, to which you can make a secure, 501(c)(3)-compliant, tax-deductible donation online.

Online course in Folklore Studies

Our colleague Md Intaj Ali (Assistant Professor of English at Netaji Subhas Open University and manager of the folkculturearchive.in project) requested that we share the following information about an enticing online program he is coordinating. - ZWB

Inviting registration for an online course: Folklore Studies in the Digital Age (2nd Cycle)

The Centre for Language, Translation and Cultural Studies (CLTCS), School of Humanities, Netaji Subhas Open University, is offering an online 8-week short-term program on Folklore Studies in the Digital Age (2nd Cycle).

About the course: "Folklore studies look at new ways of defining folk and lore in the 21st century, addressing both a paradigm shift and a theoretical point of view. This study not only corresponds to the mere collection of materials and documenting them, but it also applies interdisciplinary tools and theoretical models for a better framework, explicating new areas of knowledge. The basic premise of this course provides a deeper understanding and appreciation of the corresponding developments in the study of folklore. As in the Digital Age, Folklore shows how folklore digitally transcends the boundaries of traditional space and has a genuine effect on our indigenous culture. This course seeks to lay the foundation for students' understanding of theories and techniques of understanding folklore in the digital context."

The course runs for eight weeks from December to January; the registration fee is 750 Indian rupees, or about $10. Click here to view the admission notice on the NSOU website, or here to view the course brochure.

To register, visit this Google Form. Prof. Ali is available to answer questions by email. Please note the last day to register is November 30th.

A letter from Kharkiv

This letter was shared to Twitter today by Steven Seegel, a historian at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The letter was unattributed, but for the urging that we "read this letter from an academic from Kharkiv." We're sharing it here to the Press blog in case the letter vanishes from social media.

The Russian army cleans Ukrainian cities off the face of the earth. Destroying key infrastructure so that there is no water, light, heat. Rescuers can't dismantle the debris under the shelling. The Russian army is squeezing the civilians out of the cities so that they can then fight the rest as if they are terrorists. Yesterday, many of my Kharkiv residents became refugees. This is what happens in life: just yesterday you were finishing an article and making plans for your vacation, and today you are standing with a bag at the station in Poltava (a good city, I've been trying to see a long time ago), with your scared children and a cat in a carrier. I didn't have time to drive in to pick up my mother (no gasoline, traffic jams and debris everywhere, burned cars and again shelling). And there is a chance to start your life with a clean leaf, but you are somehow not very happy about it.

What's on my mind today? What is more terrifying than the destruction of my country by the request of a nuclear-button maniac will be a new world in which such crimes remain unpunished. The defeat of Hitler's Germany and the trial of Nazi criminals have created confidence in several generations of Europeans that there is a global moral order in which evil is punishable. But for justice to prevail, a military defeat of the criminal regime is necessary, and there are problems with that in the nuclear era. So as soon as the maniac has a remission period, Western politicians will sit with him again at a very long table. 

This is and will be the collapse of the world order, the real end of history. The thought of my children and grandchildren having to live in this world of evil conquering makes me physically sick. END

Let us hope that this belief in "a global moral order in which evil is punishable" is not unfounded. No; let us demand that if this moral order is not presently existing, that we can work together, as individuals and institutions and nations, to bring it into being without delay. 

Job Opportunities at Thornwillow Press

Thornwillow Press in the Hudson Valley of NY is expanding rapidly and is listing a number of new positions in all departments, with full-time and part-time posts as well as spots in their Training Program. We share their call for applications with hopes that it will come to the notice of anyone interested in living their best life in the book arts. Feel free to pass it along! For more information, email opportunities@thornwillow.com.  

Thornwillow is a printer and publisher of handmade limited edition books. We do all of the editorial, design, printing and binding at the press in Newburgh, New York. We’ve been at it for more than 35 years and are one of the leading fine press publishers in the world. Over the years, Thornwillow has published the work of John Updike, Toni Morrison, Louise Glück, and President Obama among many others. Thornwillow’s books are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, the Vatican, and the White House. We are committed to teaching and perpetuating the related arts and crafts of the written word. We are looking to hire full time people to join our team at the press. Both experienced and enthusiastic entry level applicants are welcome to apply.  

 

The Bindery. We are looking for full time people to join our bindery. In the bindery we do every aspect of fine bookbinding in house from folding and sewing to making paper, cloth, and gold tooled leather bindings. We also make the clamshell boxes, marble and decorative paste paper in house. Experience is not necessary, as we are committed to training interested people and passing on the craft.  We are looking for people with enthusiasm, the ability to work with their hands, patience and determination, and a love of books. In the bindery we are also able to entertain applicants for part time positions.

 

The Press Room. We are looking to hire full time people to join our press room team. Most of our books are printed on a Heidelberg flatbed cylinder press, but we also have Vandercooks, C+Ps and engraving presses that we run every day. Experience would be nice, but is not necessary. We are prepared and happy to train. First and foremost we are looking for enthusiasm and commitment to learning a craft we love. Being mechanically minded and enjoying working with machines is important.  

 

Graphic Design, Fulfillment, Data Management, Book Keeping, Marketing, & Website Maintenance. We have full and part  time positions available in these areas. For all that we are dedicated to the perpetuation of traditional crafts, we are an ecommerce company. Through the internet, we unite a local and global community of book makers and book readers who together celebrate the written word. With this in mind, we are looking for people who have a love of handmade things and at the same time are excited by technology. We have books to design, a website to keep updated, audio and video to edit, photographs to be taken, spreadsheets to update, inventories to control, orders to process, customers to talk to, shipments to get out the door, invoices to send out, and bills to pay. Like any business, we have a significant flow of work that needs to be done. Having experience in any of these areas is a plus, but we are also willing to train. 

Should I apply for the training program, or for a job? Applying for a job requires a degree of experience. "Experience" usually, but not always, entails actual work in the field, not just educational or student work. Full time positions are salaried and commensurate with skill (usually starting around $35,000 for a candidate with a base level of proficiency). If the applicant does not have experience, candidates should apply for positions through our intern or training program. 

 

About the Training Program. For candidates with moderate or limited experience, but great enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, we have a training program that typically follows this course: The program usually starts with a three-month trial period during which everyone gets to know each other and the work. This trial period is paid a stipend of $500 per week. After the trial period is over and everyone mutually agrees to move forward, the starting salary is $32,500. As skill and proficiency grows, the salary increases. The expectation is that anyone going down this path is at least interested in staying with it for a minimum of two years and ideally more. To learn properly to become a good bookbinder or printer (or baker or taxi driver for that matter) takes many years and at Thornwillow with each step forward there are always new and exciting ways to continue to grow. That said, it is a lot of time and effort that is only appropriately invested in someone interested in sticking with it. 

Work Study Fellowships and Internships. For applicants interested in learning, but not able to commit to an extended period of time, we offer a limited number of Fellowships and Internships. These run for a minimum of 3 months and are tailored on a case-by-case basis. Fellows and Interns are  expected to perform real, useful work on a steady and consistent basis for the duration of their time at the press. 

Affordable Housing. We also have a few options for affordable housing near the press. Either a room ($750 per month) in a shared apartment with others involved at the press or an entirely separate apartment. Please inquire if you are interested.

On unpublished and unpublishable work

On Twitter, essayist Paul Crenshaw asks: 

What’s the collective noun for all your unpublished pieces, the detritus and debris from writing, the cast-offs and castaways languishing on their little file of an island?

One of the team members at Pen & Anvil -- and why DO so many people have access to our social media account? -- pinged my handle in a reply, taking the view, I suppose, that this is the sort of question I'd have fun in answering. They were right! Here is my reply: 

I resent that you think I think about this a lot. Though, I do. Viz: Jeofails. Compost. Hellboxlings. Bad jokes. Benthic snow. Sequestra. Woundikins. Pendlings. Beneficiaries of no one's orphanotrophism. Dead squibs. Pulp cabinet. Diple heap. Hobobooks. Ye olde parapraxial hoard.

Of course I think about this a lot. Most of my writings are stillborn. My rate of return on personal poetry submissions is.... not a number I wish to quote here. Those writings that do survive the rigors and wrenchings of gestation and birth most often turn out to be not suited for life. Those, I allow to wither and perish -- sports, errors of the lineage. They would only be rejected by editors, rightly so. Kill your darlings, friends, and weep not for unadopted children. Writing is a brutal art. 

Do check out all the replies in Crenshaw's original thread -- some really lovely metaphors and phrasings are on display!

Stross on tech-free fiction

 Prolific novelist Charlie Stross earlier this month weighed-in on the habit of "serious" novelists to omit many basic features of the modern world:

My take: any “literary” novel that doesn’t exist in a world with magic internet mirrors in every hand, strange plagues exploding out of wet markets in Wuhan, and invisible killer robots haunting the skies above Kandahar, is historical nostalgia for a world that went away in 1990.

User Pickwick invites us to characterize such boring fiction as "grimdull", contrasting with e.g. "grimdark" and "grimpunk."

The deadwhitemaleness of school curricula and the YA canon

From the timeline, on that bird site, of Massachusetts poet Johnny Longfellow:

Try imagining all the public tax dollars that land in the coffers of the copyright holders of canonical texts. Then, you'll understand much of what underlies and drives toxic YA lit debates regarding which texts are deemed worthy of inclusion/exclusion within school curricula.

Imagine, too, the profits made by publishers who republish and promote works in the public domain for use in school curricula, minus any need to pay agents, authors, or their estates. So too, the profits made by those who create supplementary texts to accompany such works.

Yet, such factors are little discussed in YA circles, lest they distract from the seemingly well-intended and righteous topics of pedagogical practice, the inclusion of traditionally marginalized voices, and what values are transmitted to children/young adults via the humanities.

Emily August reviews Cat Dossett

We have learned of a generous review of one of last year's Komma Series chapbooks, Odysseus & Eden by Cat Dossett:

Y’all, just yesterday I was musing about starting a utopian society organized around poetry. Lo and behold, today I picked up this little morsel of versitude from Pen and Anvil Press’s Komma Series, a series of micro-chapbook publications. Check out the series mission statement:“The bite-sized booklets of the Komma Series are a mouthful of literature each, intended to be read in a single sitting. When you’re done with one, pass it along! Look for them lying around in Boston, Portland, or New York City. When you see one waiting to be read, go ahead and pick it up. Give it a home in your hands for a ten-minute lit snack. Then when you’re finished, leave it behind for the next person to find, in an ATM lobby, on a train station bench, in the coffeeshop, at the pub.” 

Cat Dossett’s Odysseus & Eden is the 18th publication in the series. This smart, ruminating collection brings together three fascinating persona poems from the perspectives of three different mythical women: Penelope, Ophelia, and an unnamed Garden of Eden resident who seems to be Eve. These are feminist retellings that humanize and complicate three of western patriarchy’s most blamed and besieged female archetypes. The famously loyal Penelope, whose characteristic virtue is that she remained faithful to her absent husband Odysseus for twenty years despite over a hundred love interests, here finally unleashes her libidinal rage in a surprising way. Eve—the legendary scapegoat blamed for an entire humanity’s fall from grace (eye roll)—is reimagined as an embodied sexual subject who transgresses erogenous, rather than culinary, boundaries. And Ophelia, who we’re used to seeing as the tragic, long-suffering victim of Hamlet’s self-interested scheming, here compassionately contemplates her own history of mental illness.

The main theme Dossett draws from each tale is erotic betrayal, and the recurring image that links the poems together is blood, which smears and pools across the poems like an accusation. As a result, readers see these grossly twisted “love” stories for what they truly are. 

Dossett highlights the ways in which women have historically been sacrificed for the preservation of various kinds of kingdoms, and the ways those sacrifices are naturalized and glorified by being codified as myth. Like the best myth and fairy tale revisions, these poems helped me reexamine and deeply reconsider what our treasured cultural legends are truly encoding and passing down. 

#TheSealeyChallenge, day 28.  

The reviewer, Emily August, is an Assistant Professor of literature at Stockton University, and she came to Dossett's work as part of the Sealey Challenge, in which participants commit to reading a new book or chapbook of poetry every day in the month of August. If you'd like to receive a complimentary copy of one of our Pen & Anvil poetry publications for your own Sealey Challenge reviewing in 2021, drop us a line. 

Chateaubriand on the pelagian

 “Between the sea and the land is a stretch of pelagian country . . . 

... where the frontiers of the two elements become indistinct. Skylarks from the fields fly with sealarks. The plow and the fishing boat, a stone’s throw apart, furrow the land and the water alike. The sailor and the shepherd borrow from one another’s tongues: the sailor says ‘the waves are flocking,’ and the shepherd speaks of ‘fleets of sheep.’ The multicolored sands, the variegated heaps of shells, the kelp, and the silvery fringe of foam rise up to the blond or green edges of the wheatfields. I forget now on which Mediterranean island I saw a bas-relief depicting the Nereids pinning scallops to the hem of Ceres’s robe.”  

(from Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, the autobiography of François-René de Chateaubriand, 1848)

 

Seeing past the limits of majority status

Over the past few years, a number of linkages have appeared to which connect New England and Nigeria in the network of Pen & Anvil collaborators. This relationship is the product of several factors, not the least of which is the 2016 publication of a portfolio of ten African writers in Clarion magazine. (A tip of the hat here to editors Samantha Arnold and Emma Forbes for that work.) And the links in that network are growing all the time as we continue to share news of publication opportunities and new magazine issues and book launches, and engage in the chatter of social media.

This background suffices to explain how it is we came to turn our attention to a Facebook conversation between young Nigerian authors. The conversation is paradigmatic of similar questions and answers being exchanged in literary spaces all over the map, as awareness of structural inequalities in the arts (as in all domains) creeps a little higher in the hierarchy of social concerns.

The original post was authored by a young writer who expressed frustration with the "hypocrisy and double standard" applied to the depiction of cross-gender characters. He writes:

In many writing groups, male writers continually ask fellow writers to "teach" them how to write female characters without annoying them or offending them. And I always think: No one has ever asked males to teach them how to write MALE characters without offending us! It appears to me that it is okay to portray "this gender that betrayed Jesus" any way we want, but an innocent description of a woman's breasts is objectification.

Anyone who has been in a mixed-gender workshop environment has likely heard expressions of this sort of frustration. There certainly are differences in how the act of depicting a gendered character in fiction is evaluated depending on the gender identity of the author. Is there any way to account for these differences, without coming to the pat conclusion that an unjust double standard exists?

Into the conversation comes Chukwuebuka Ibeh. Based in Port Harcourt, the capital city of Rivers State, Chuk is a long-time Pen & Anvil contributor, with bylines in Clarion, Charles River Journbal, NERObooks, and Ampersand. His reply to the question above was so cogent that we asked his permission to reproduce here in full. He writes:

Generally, when writing about (or from the perspective of) a minority, as someone who's not part of that minority group, it is reasonable enough that you get insights from actual members of the group. This is because your own privilege as a member of the majority could blind you to the realities of the group you're writing about, and you end up feeding into a stereotypical, drawn-from-the-closet, cliche narrative in your portrayal.

Now, specifically, when cismen write about women, there's often a tendency to present idealistic portrayals that most actual women are unable to relate to. You're a writer yourself so you should know what a cringeworthy storytelling is. (Straight) male writers almost always fail when describing women, as they are so fixated on the physical appearance (which is often inaccurately described) and fail to take into cognisance the complex emotional makeup of the character. They come to the script with basic, internalized ideas of what a woman "should be": soft, tender, curved, malleable, nice breast, shapely hips etc etc.

It's NOT exactly the same thing as a woman writing a man. There's a visibility of sorts that come with being the majority. You are basically the mainstream and so is your story. It's why queer people are more likely to write straight people better than vice versa, why black people are more likely to write white people better, etc etc.

This is a great answer! It doesn't punch up or down; it speaks across the table to a fellow writer, and invites that person to be a better writer (and a more compassionate human) by overcoming a natural inclination to prioritize one's experience of the world as most normal. The original poster agreed, writing as a reply: "Visibility, majority: these are the convincing words."

All well worth quoting and sharing. You can connect with Chuk on Twitter, where he posts as @ChukwuebukaIbe4.

June 2020: Books Available for Review

Reviewers interested in receiving one of the books listed below for a review to appear in New England Review of Books (full-length review or interview), Clarion (full-length, microreview, review column, or interview), Pusteblume (for works in translation), or Poetry Northeast (for works pertaining to poetry and poetics) are asked to email press@penandanvil.com with a request. Please include any links to previous published reviews, and a brief description of the project you have in mind.

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1. Albakry and Maggor: Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution
2. Ben Hinson: Eteka: Rise of the Imamba
3. Arlie Russell Hochschild: Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
4. Franck Salameh: The Other Middle East
5. J.D. Vance: Hillbilly Elegy
6. Gary Fincke: How Blasphemy Sounds to God
7. Joan Naviyuk Kane: Milk Black Carbon
8. R. Marie Griffith: Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics
9. Nadya Hajj: Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps
10. Joshua Bennett: The Sobbing School
11. Joel Edward Goza: America's Unholy Ghosts
12. Alan King: Point Blank
13. Yahia Lababidi : The Artist as Mystic
14. Umberto Saba: Ernesto
15. Eilis Dillon: The Island of Horses
16. Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Mandarins: Stories
17. Cass Sunstein: #REPUBLIC: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
18. Gabriel Gudding: A Defense of Poetry
19. Qais Akbar Omar: A Fort of Nine Towers
20. Sergey Gandlevsky: A Kindred Orphanhood
21. Viktor Sosnora: A Million Premonitions
22. H. E. Bates: A Month by the Lake and Other Stories
23. Katie Peterson: A Piece of Good News
24. Owen Davies: A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War
25. Kristin Dimitrova: A Visit to the Clockmaker
26. A. Marie Houser: After Coetzee: An Anthology of Animal Fictions
27. Carrie Jerrell: After the Revival
28. Alexandra Chreiteh: Ali and His Russian Mother
29. Paul Hudon: All in Good Time
30. Michael Sims: Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
31. Justine Mintsa: Awu's Story
32. Yahia Lababidi: Balancing Acts
33. Joshua Corey: Beautiful Soul
34. Ann Morgan: Beside Myself
35. Alex Epstein: Blue Has No South
36. Jack Kohl: Bone Over Ivory
37. Tom Sexton: Bridge Street at Dusk
38. Syeus Mottel: Charas: The Improbable Dome Builders
39. Clint Smith: Counting Descent
40. Richard Littler: Discovering Scarfolk
41. Machado de Assis: Dom Casmurro
42. Mary Maxwell: Emporia
43. Outcast: Feridon Rashidi
44. Szilárd Borbély: Final Matters: Selected Poems, 2004-2010
45. Michael Wolff: Fire and Fury
46. Austin Smith: Flyover Country
47. Tess Taylor: Forage House
48. Brenda Hillman: Fortres2
49. Kelly and Zetzsche: Found in Translation: How Languages Shapes Our Lives and Transforms Our World
50. Lawrence Shainberg: Four Men Shaking
51. Michael Schmidt: Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem
52. Micklethwait and Wooldrige: God Is Back
53. Alyson Foster: Heart Attack Watch
54. Michael Shermer: How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science
55. ed. Roberta Micallef: Illusion and Disillusionment: Travel Writing in the Modern Age
56. Kodi Scheer: Incendiary Girls
57. Phillipa K. Chong: Inside the Critic's Circle
58. Allen Ginsberg: Iron Curtain Journals: January-May 1965
59. Stanley Moss: It's About Time
60. Elizabeth and Stephen Ferry: La Batea
61. Liliana Ursu: Lightwall
62. Kevin Gallagher: Loom
63. Meia Geddes: Love Letters to the World
64. Melissa Green: Magpiety
65. Matt Rader: What I Want To Tell Goes Like This
66. Jack Nicholls: Meat Songs
67. Catao and Obstfield: Meeting Globalization's Challenges: Policies to Make Trade Work for All
68. Serhiy Zhadan: Mesopotamia
69. Michael Lista: Strike Anywhere
70. Mary Maxwell: Nine Over Sixes
71. Richard Fein: Not a Separate Surge
72. Hugo Mercier: Not Born Yesterday
73. Glyn Maxwell: On Poetry
74. Karen Swallow Prior: On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
75. David Ferry: On This Side of the River
76. B. J. Novack: One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
77. Thanassis Valtinos: Orthokosta
78. James Fenton: Out of Danger
79. Paula Arai : Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra
80. Fei-Hsien Wang: Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China
81. Michael E. Bratman: Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality
82. Marko Vešović: Polish Cavalry
83. Subcomandante Marcos: Professionals of Hope: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos
84. Ray Greenblatt: Twenty Years on Graysheep Bay
85. Mary Fulbrook: Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and The Quest for Justice
86. Hank Fox: Red Neck, Blue Collar Atheist
87. Kniss and Numrich: Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America's Newest Immigrants
88. Marzanna Kielar: Salt Monody
89. Theophile Gautier: Selected Lyrics
90. Giovanni Pascoli: Selected Poems
91. Hose Danial Garcia: shadowslongshoreman
92. Whiskey Radish: Snow Walk (a hand-illustrated chapbook)
93. Ladette Randolph: Solos Volume 3 (an omnibus of Ploughshares fiction)
94. Josef Sorett : Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetic
95. Alison Hawthorne Deming: Stairway to Heaven
96. Carl Phillips: Star Map with Action Figures
97. Dora Malech: Stet
98. Edward Mackay: Swarming
99. Michael Filimowicz: Tatvan
100. Nancy Willard: The Adventures of Anatole
101. Ryan Honeyman: The B Corp Handbook
102. Duo Duo: The Boy Who Catches Wasps
103. Kate Tempest: The Bricks That Built the Houses
104. Andrew March: The Caliphate of Man
105. Bryan Caplan: The Case Against Education
106. Natalya Semenova: The Collector: The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces
107. Rochard Hatch: The Curious Lobster
108. Sergio Chejfec: The Dark
109. Johanna Skibsrud: The Description of the World
110. Buchanan and Powell: The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory
111. Magnus Mills: The Field of the Cloth of Gold
112. Nicholas Buccola: The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. and the Debate over Race in America
113. Ivo Goldstein: The Holocaust in Croatia
114. Edmund Gordon: The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography
115. Laura Van Den Berg: The Isle of Youth
116. Ilija Trojanow: The Lamentations of Zeno
117. Meia Geddes: The Little Queen
118. Andrus Kivirähk: The Man Who Spoke Snakish
119. John Burnside: The Music of Time
120. Michael Tennesen: The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man
121. Helen Vendler: The Ocean, The Bird and the Scholar: Essays on Poets & Poetry
122. Marina Keegan: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
123. Leonard Kress: The Orpheus Complex
124. Kirk Wulf: The Partly Chosen (pamphlet)
125. Michael Bazzett (trans.): The Popol Vuh
126. Kathleen Graber: The River Twice
127. Olafur Gunnarsson: The Thaw: Stories
128. Angela Flournoy: The Turner House
129. Jerry Z. Muller: The Tyranny of Metrics
130. Miller Oberman: The Unstill Ones
131. Bo Balder: The Wan
132. Iman Humaydan: The Weight of Paradise
133. Robert Priest: The Wolf Is Back
134. Joan Dempsey: This Is How It Begins
135. Jedediah Purdy: This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth
136. Renee Emerson: Threshing Floor
137. Maxim D. Shrayer: Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature: An Anthology
138. Naomi Oreske: Why Trust Science
139. Edmund Jorgensen: World Enough (And Time)
140. Raquel Balboni: XXX Poems
141. Eleanor Wilner: Before Our Eyes
142. Debbie Blue: Consider the Women: A Provocative Guide to Three Matriarchs of the Bible
143. Kathryn T. Long: God in the Rainforest
144. Nancy Freund Bills: The Red Ribbon: A Memoir of Lightning and Rebuilding After Loss
145. Marilyn McEntyre: When Poets Pray
146. Debasish Lahiri: Tinder Tender
147. Nathan J. Robinson: My Affairs: A Memoir of the Magazine Industry 2016-2076
148. Abhay K.: 100 More Great Indian Poems
149. Jane LaForge: Daphne and Her Discontents
150. Richard Scholar: Émigrés: French Words That Turned English
151. Jeffrey H. Ryan: Hermit - The Mysterious Life of Jim Whyte
152. Goirick Brahmachari: Joining the Dots
153. Molly McCully Brown: Places I've Taken My Body
154. Bruce Bond: Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand
155. Vanesha Pravin: Disorder
156. CP Surendran: Available Light

Crytids, Comics, and Sfé R. Monster

For fans of cryptids, try Canadian trans artist Sfé R. Monster's collection of monster-centric comics.

Included below is Eth's Skin, a webcomic with a focus on "mermaids, selkies, and sea monsters living in the old growth forests along the northern coast of British Columbia." Gorgeous character designs and visuals---plus this particular webcomic is free-to-read.

Sfé explains their method on their Patreon page thusly:

I create exclusively queer and genderqueer stories- comics that explore the width and breadth of gender identity, and showcase and celebrate the diversity of queerness. 

I am also a monster enthusiast, having made projects ... that investigate the weird, wonderful, and occasionally woeful creatures that lurk around the edge of our reality.  

Mystical beasts are an area of interest for us at Pen & Anvil. We are huge fans of Jorge Luis Borges and his Book of Imaginary Beings, even contributing new entries with our "New Book of Imaginary Beings," published to Clarion issue 17 in the winter of 2014. Over on Twitter, @dasneuesbuch serves as our tribute to Borges' bestiary.