For the first time in its decades of existence, the Washington State-based independent press Empty Bowl has published the work of an Asian American female author.

The work in question is Virga, a full-length book of poetry written before and during the pandemic, and the author is Shin Yu Pai, a writer, photographer, and editor with no shortage of accolades. Virga is Pai’s eleventh collection of work, and her first full-length book of poetry in eight years. It follows and consists of unpublished poems written during the time that Pai assembled her last project ENSO, which was released by Entre Rios Books at the beginning of the pandemic and made Boston Globe’s “Best Books of 2020” list.

Every seasonal edition of They Call Us features a new adjective. Fall, “They Call Us Witches.” Winter, “They Call Us Bossy.” Year-round, They Call Us empowers.

This literary magazine is spellbinding—particularly the Fall edition. Magic happens when womxn gather, bewitching all with creative storytelling mediums of media, art, and literature.

Mercy House, Alena Dillon’s debut novel, centers on Sister Evelyn, a fierce, wise-cracking, and ultimately kind-hearted nun who helps run a small Brooklyn shelter for women fleeing from domestic violence. When Bishop Hawkins threatens to close the home, Evelyn fights to save Mercy House and protect its residents, a struggle which forces her to face abuse in her own past.

Dina Nayeri’s first two books, the novels A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Refuge, pulled in threads from her life; her Iranian childhood, her time as a refugee in Italy, her settling in America. The second book in particular flowed from mind to pen, from pen to page. “It just fell out of me,” Nayeri said. Only when she arrived at her latest book and first work of nonfiction, The Ungrateful Refugee, did Nayeri really grapple with what to say, and how. 

Meng Jin’s debut novel, Little Gods, utilizes a network of characters and their lives to tell the story of Su Lan, a physicist who is forever changed after giving birth to a daughter in Beijing on the night of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Through the eyes of her daughter, husband, and a neighbor, the complexity of Su Lan and her experiences are revealed.

Perched comfortable on a sunken sofa in a Chicago café not far from her teaching job at Columbia College, Kate Wisel looks every inch the badass. Bits and pieces of her characters from darker pages of her prize-winning novel Driving in Cars with Homeless Men shine through in her outfit, a black hoodie and black jeans. 

In The Tenth Muse, by Catherine Chung, aged renowned mathematician Katherine, who’s on the precipice of a new mathematical discovery, muses over the details of her fascinating life. A woman of profound inner strength, she surmounts professional obstacles, betrayals, and treks the entire world to solve her own personal mystery.

Adharanand Finn initially set out to complete an assignment about ultramarathons for The Guardian. What happened next involved a two-year journey comprised of hundreds of miles captured not in an article, but in a book, The Rise of the Ultra Runners: A Journey to the Edge of Human Endurance. 

Sea Witch Rising is the second book in the Sea Witch duology by author Sarah Henning. It is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.  The novel follows Alia, a mermaid who asked the Evie, the Sea Witch, to help her become human in order to be with the boy she loves, Prince Nikolas. The Sea Witch agrees to the mermaids’ request but with concessions: Alia’s time on land is limited to three days, in which she must make the prince fall in love with her or she will perish, and she must do it without her voice. 

Readers of As Good As The First Time (Dafina 2018) fell in love with Sugar Lake, the small Georgia town at the heart of K.M. Jackson’s Sugar Lake series. Fell in love, and then arrived at the last page and had to leave. Nearly a year, they waited before they could return to Sugar Lake, and to Aunt Joyce’s bakeshop, Goode ‘N Sweet. Nearly a year since they met New Yorkers Alexandrea and Olivia Gale, come south to help Aunt Joyce and, in Olivia’s case, to get pulled back into a relationship she’d left behind years ago.

Artist Matt Huynh works with brush and ink, pulling technical inspiration from Western comics and Eastern sumi-e (ink brush painting). He frequently uses his art to explore and amplify stories of refugees, of migrants and asylum seekers and their communities. For the October/November issue of The Believer, Huynh created Cabramatta, pulling readers into the Australian city he grew up in. 

Adrienne Brodeur’s debut memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me tells the story of the affair the author’s mother Malabar had with a close family friend. Early on, she drew her daughter, Brodeur, into the subterfuge, a conspiracy which lasted years and had long-lasting effects on Brodeur.

The memoir was bid on by fourteen U.S. publishers in a heated auction, with foreign rights sold in numerous countries. Entertainment Weekly called it a “twisted mother-daughter story” that “could be the next big memoir.” Film rights were preemptively bought by Chernin Entertainment, with Kelly Fremon Craig, director of “The Edge of Seventeen,” set to direct.

Erin Williams’ graphic novel Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame (Abrams ComicArts, October 8, 2019) gives an inside look at her past sexual experiences while offering an analysis of the way society looks at, and interacts with, women. Her cover, which features a woman wearing only a t-shirt and underwear standing on a platform in front of a crowded train, invites readers to explore the content within and holds meaning to Williams.

Press Enter to Continue is Spanish illustrator Ana Galvañ’s English-language debut. Translated by Jamie Richards and published by Fantagraphics, the book offers readers a series of surreal short stories exploring the negative effects of technology on society. Several reviews tout the book as “Black Mirror-eque” because of Galvañ’s use of psychedelic colors, abstract themes, and technological representations. Her cover is the first eye-catching concept for a reader and alludes to the content within. 

Poet and writer Hanif Abdurraqib strives to pursue whatever curiosities are in his mind when he sits down to write. The end result this time around is his latest poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, exploring grief, change, heartbreak, history, and moving forward. Fortune, out this month from Tin House Books, is his second poetry collection, following 2016’s The Crown Ain’t Worth Much. 

In Mistress of the Ritz, Melanie Benjamin’s most recent novel (May, Delacorte Press), Benjamin takes one of the most popular and captivating eras for historians, both professional and amateur, World War II, and shines a light on two individuals who remained in the shadows: Blanche and Claude Auzello. As caretakers of the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, hub of elegance and glamour, they had the awesome responsibility of keeping face for the Nazis while plotting subterfuge.

In recent years, Peter Mendelsund has been shifting his career from designing books to writing them. The former Associate Art Director of Alfred A. Knopf already has a couple of non-fiction titles to his name – What We See When We Read and Cover, with another, The Look of the Book, on the way – and has now stepped into fiction with Same Same, a twisting metafictional meditation on creativity. We asked him a few questions about this latest adventure between the covers.

Inspired by the biblical story of Hannah, who finally has a son, Samuel, after years spent longing for a child, author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg set out to write a story about the relationship between a mother and son. Set within the walls of fictional elite boarding school Dunning Academy, Blasberg’s The Nine (She Writes Press) reflects on the relationship of Hannah Webber and her only child, a son named Sam. Hannah has kept a close eye on Sam, being involved in his life and school as much as possible. Although she struggles with the desire to keep her son at home, Hannah believes that in order to give Sam the best education, he must become a student at Dunning  

Dr. Aysha Akhtar made her first foray into non-academic writing with Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies (Pegasus Books, May 2019). Throughout her book, Dr. Akhtar weaves stories of interactions between humans and animals with science, human experience, and social history to draw assertions about the connection between humans and animals: how we interact, develop empathy from, and benefit from relationships with animals. 

Released in April, Meg Elison's The Book of Flora (47North) wraps up her The Road to Nowhere trilogy. The post-plague society depicted in the book disrupts stereotypes of gender and sexual intimacy, and introduces new concepts of "normal" and hope for the future. Rife with gender fluidity, queer acknowledgement, and political undertones, The Book of Flora is, as Elison told Spine, “a call to action.” 

Imagine this: You’ve been in the examination room at your doctor's office for nearly 30 minutes, waiting to review an abnormal test result. Your anxiety, already elevated by the news something is amiss, has only been heightened by the detached manner by which you were received, processed, and shuffled into the waiting area. The doctor arrives and the news is grim; your treatment will be painful and the odds do not look favorable for your complete recovery.

In France for the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, Grace Kelly just wants to escape the flash-bulb pops and overlapping questions of the paparazzi. When British press photographer James Henderson chases her into the struggling boutique of Sophie Duval, the perfumer offers to hide Grace from prying eyes and cameras. This encounter, which is the first link in Meet Me in Monaco’s chain of events, forever entangles the lives of photographer, movie star, and perfumer.

Poet January Gill O’Neil, author of the fall 2018 release Rewilding, might not believe that poetry is ever necessarily on the side of power— but she does equate the two.

“Poetry is power,” O’Neil insists. “Making the choice to sit down and write or read a poem is power. It’s a choice. It’s self-care. It’s the start of a revolution. It’s change. Like a photo, a poem captures a moment. And that is powerful.” 

The Cave Canem fellow has been published widely to much critical acclaim, including in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares and Ecotone, among others. In 2018, she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and from 2012-2018, she served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.