Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

by
Staff
From the May/June 2015 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine

It’s not my fault.” God Help the Child (Knopf, April 2015) by Toni Morrison. Thirteenth book, eleventh novel. Agent: Amanda Urban. Editor: Robert Gottlieb. Publicist: Josefine Kals.

“All we got, mister, / Is an empty bowl and a spoon / For you to slurp / Great mouthfuls of nothing” The Lunatic (Ecco, April 2015) by Charles Simic. Forty-first book, thirtieth poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Daniel Halpern. Publicist: Martin Wilson.

 “The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story.” The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing, April 2015) by Elizabeth Alexander. Ninth book, first memoir. Agent: Faith Childs. Editor: Gretchen Young. Publicist: Linda Duggins.

“Do you feel that? he said / how far from home / we are?” Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, April 2015) by Matthew Rohrer. Ninth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Matthew Zapruder. Publicist: Brittany Dennison.

“I was born at the end of August 1913 as a human being of the male sex.” The Physics of Sorrow (Open Letter, April 2015) by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. Seventh book, second novel. Agent: Marc Koralnik. Editor: Kaija Straumanis. Publicist: Chad Post.

“In a beat-down house at the foot of a western butte, a woman sips her coffee and stares at her high school yearbook.” The Water Museum (Little, Brown, April 2015) by Luis Alberto Urrea. Sixteenth book, second story collection. Agent: Julie Barer. Editor: Ben George. Publicist: Morgan Moroney.

“All of them, who clutched their pocketbooks, who hid the money / for the light bill in the Bible, who counted, counted, and recounted // stacks of towels.” Fanny Says (BOA Editions, April 2015) by Nickole Brown. Second book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Peter Conners. Publicist: Jenna Fisher.

“In April of 2009, in the early hours of morning, my friend Kevin walked me home from a neighborhood bar a block away.” Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder (Blue Rider Press, April 2015) by Amy Butcher. First book, memoir. Agent: Samantha Shea. Editor: Vanessa Kehren. Publicist: Eliza Rosenberry.

“When the name / Luba lifts away / like a leaf in hard rain / or goes missing / from its cage— / a parakeet not answering / or a scrap of light / snagged by a cloud, / it must puff up, fueled by desire / of the one who calls” The Luba Poems (Red Hen Press, April 2015) by Colette Inez. Twelfth book, eleventh poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Kate Gale. Publicist: Esther Manilla Sawyer.

“I begin this story in a funeral home because I once read a Philip Roth novel that begins over a grave.” Lord Fear (Pantheon Books, May 2015) by Lucas Mann. Second book, memoir. Agent: Victoria Marini. Editor: Keith Goldsmith. Publicist: Michiko Clark.

“Lakshmi wept as we made our / way outward, blue devotion’s / annuity looped and led back, / reluctance’s allure yet to accrue.” Blue Fasa (New Directions, May 2015) by Nathaniel Mackey. Thirteenth book, sixth poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Jeffrey Yang.

“Now, what could I do with the boy? Joshua asked himself.” The Making of Zombie Wars (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2015) by Aleksandar Hemon. Sixth book, second novel. Agent: Nicole Aragi. Editor: Sean McDonald. Publicist: Sarita Varma.

For author podcasts and excerpts of books featured in Page One, visit us at www.pw.org/magazine.