James Merrill House Fellows

Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2) By Marlon James Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780735220201
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Published: Riverhead Books - February 15th, 2022

“Masterfully flips the first installment on its head... James makes the mythic tantalizingly real.’” —Esquire
 
"Even more brilliant than the first.” —Buzzfeed

An Instant New York Times Bestseller and NPR Best Book of 2022 pick

 


Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1) By Marlon James Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780735220188
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Riverhead Books - February 4th, 2020

One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize 

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

The New York Times Bestseller

Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post


Orphic Paris By Henri Cole Cover Image
$15.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781681372181
Published: New York Review Books - April 3rd, 2018

A poetic portrait of Paris that combines prose poetry, diary, and memoir by award-winning writer and poet Henri Cole.


Felon: Poems By Reginald Dwayne Betts Cover Image
$15.95
ISBN: 9780393542035
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 30th, 2021

Winner of the NAACP Image Award and finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

“A powerful work of lyric art.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice


Blizzard: Poems By Henri Cole Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780374603212
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - September 21st, 2021

Henri Cole, one of our greatest poets, explores the discordant nature of our condition on earth in Blizzard, his tenth collection.

“An artist of the greatest gifts.” —Louise Glück


What Noise Against the Cane (Yale Series of Younger Poets #115) By Desiree C. Bailey, Carl Phillips (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Desiree C. Bailey, Carl Phillips (Foreword by)
$20.00
ISBN: 9780300256536
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Yale University Press - April 13th, 2021

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry, this Yale Series of Younger Poets volume is a lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourself
 
“Bailey invites us to see what twenty-first-century life is like for a young woman of the Black diaspora in the long wake of a history of slavery, brutality, and struggling for freedoms bodily


Swan Song By Armen Davoudian Cover Image
$12.00
ISBN: 9781949344172
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
(This book cannot be returned)
Published: Bull City Press - October 13th, 2020

Poetry. California Interest. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. A swan song is a song of departure: after a lifetime of silence, the legend goes, the mute swan breaks into song just before leaving this world for good. Armen Davoudian's SWAN SONG chronicles what it's like to take leave of a home, a country, a past life.


Some People Let You Down (Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction #19) By Mike Alberti Cover Image
$14.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781574418156
Published: University of North Texas Press - October 29th, 2020

The nine stories in Mike Alberti’s debut collection shine a sharp light on small-town American life —not the Arcadian small towns of yesteryear, but the old mill towns hanging on after the mill has stopped running, the deserted agricultural communities in the middle of vast industrial farms, places where bad luck has become part of the weather.


Riots I Have Known By Ryan Chapman Cover Image
$16.00
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781501197314
Published: Simon & Schuster - November 17th, 2020

Longlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Ryan Chapman’s “gritty, bracing debut” (Esquire) set during a prison riot is “dark, daring, and laugh-out-loud hilarious…one of the smartest—and best—novels of the year” (NPR).

A largescale riot rages through Westbrook prison in upstate New York, incited by a p


Averno: Poems By Louise Glück Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780374530747
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(This book cannot be returned)
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - February 6th, 2007

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE


Poems 1962-2012 By Louise Glück Cover Image
$25.00
ISBN: 9780374534097
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - November 5th, 2013

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

The collected works of the inimitable Pulitzer Prize–winning poet


Somewhere in Space (OSU JOURNAL AWARD POETRY) By Talvikki Ansel Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9780814252246
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(This book cannot be returned)
Published: Ohio State University Press - December 9th, 2015

The poems in Talvikki Ansel’s Somewhere in Space work to locate us in this world and its mix of the made and natural, the cultivated and untamable.


My Shining Archipelago (Yale Series of Younger Poets) By Talvikki Ansel Cover Image
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780300070323
Published: Yale University Press - March 27th, 1997

The winner of the 1996 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Talvikki Ansel for My Shining Archipelago.

"Ansel`s poetry is refreshingly original," says the distinguished poet and contest judge James Dickey. "She renders the heat, the closeness, the mystery, and the terrible fear of the undisclosed, the lurking, the waiting to happen.


What Noise Against the Cane (Yale Series of Younger Poets #115) By Desiree C. Bailey, Carl Phillips (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Desiree C. Bailey, Carl Phillips (Foreword by)
$20.00
ISBN: 9780300256536
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Yale University Press - April 13th, 2021

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry, this Yale Series of Younger Poets volume is a lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourself
 
“Bailey invites us to see what twenty-first-century life is like for a young woman of the Black diaspora in the long wake of a history of slavery, brutality, and struggling for freedoms bodily


Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood By James Baldwin, Nicholas Boggs (Editor), Jennifer DeVere Brody (Editor) Cover Image
$22.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781478000044
Published: Duke University Press - August 24th, 2018

Four-year-old TJ spends his days on his lively Harlem block playing with his best friends WT and Blinky and running errands for neighbors. As he comes of age as a "Little Man" with big dreams, TJ faces a world of grown-up adventures and realities. Baldwin's only children's book, Little Man, Little Man celebrates and explores the challenges and joys of black childhood.


Swan Song By Armen Davoudian Cover Image
$12.00
ISBN: 9781949344172
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
(This book cannot be returned)
Published: Bull City Press - October 13th, 2020

Poetry. California Interest. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. A swan song is a song of departure: after a lifetime of silence, the legend goes, the mute swan breaks into song just before leaving this world for good. Armen Davoudian's SWAN SONG chronicles what it's like to take leave of a home, a country, a past life.


Cusp: Poems By Jennifer Grotz Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780618302468
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Published: Ecco - August 17th, 2003

Entre chien et loup — between dog and wolf. This French colloquialism for twilight informs Jennifer Grotz’s debut poetry collection, Cusp. A winner of this year’s Bakeless Prize for poetry, Grotz explores the peculiar territory of middleness — neither dark nor light, not quite familiar but not fully unknown.


Window Left  Open: Poems By Jennifer Grotz Cover Image
$16.00
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781555977306
Published: Graywolf Press - February 2nd, 2016

The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.
--from "Poppies"


The Wild Laughter: Winner of the 2021 Encore Award By Caoilinn Hughes Cover Image
$24.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781786077806
Published: Oneworld Publications - July 28th, 2020

'A grand feat of comic ingenuity, mischievous and insightful, and full of resonance for the way we live now...


Gathering Evidence By Caoilinn Hughes Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781847772626
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Carcanet Press Ltd. - March 1st, 2014

Forms of a World: Contemporary Poetry and the Making of Globalization By Walt Hunter Cover Image
$33.00
ISBN: 9780823282210
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Published: Fordham University Press - January 8th, 2019

What happens when we think of poetry as a global literary form, while also thinking the global in poetic terms? Forms of a World shows how the innovations of contemporary poetics have been forged through the transformations of globalization across five decades.


Ruthie Fear: A Novel By Maxim Loskutoff Cover Image
$26.95
ISBN: 9780393635560
Availability: Ships to Our Store in 1-5 Days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 1st, 2020

Winner of the 2021 High Plains Book Award in Fiction

In this haunting parable of the American West, a young woman faces the violent past of her remote Montana valley.


Agatha of Little Neon: A Novel By Claire Luchette Cover Image
$26.00
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780374265267
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - August 3rd, 2021

A National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree

“An enchanting, sparkling book about the many meanings of sisterhood.” —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29


Small Gods By Matthew Minicucci Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781936970476
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: New Issues Poetry and Prose - October 3rd, 2017

In exquisitely mysterious prose poems ranging from epistles to proofs, Small Gods meditates on deeply human questions of faith, creating an inward, almost timeless landscape that widens outward from the familial and the existential and that opens up to the stars.


Translation: Poems (Wick Poetry First Book #21) By Matthew Minicucci Cover Image
$16.00
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781606352625
Published: Kent State University Press - August 28th, 2015

Winner of the 2014 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
Jane Hirshfield, Judge


Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury By Sigrid Nunez, Peter Cameron (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Sigrid Nunez, Peter Cameron (Afterword by)
$15.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9781593765828
Published: Soft Skull - August 6th, 2019

This "tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society" (The New York Times) is an intimate portrait of the life and marriage of Leonard and Virginia Woolf from a National Book Award-winning author.


Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag By Sigrid Nunez Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781594633348
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Riverhead Books - October 7th, 2014

From the author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award.
"The masterpiece of the ‘I knew Susan’ minigenre" – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America’s most esteemed and fascinating cultural figures, and a deeply felt tribute.


What Are You Going Through: A Novel By Sigrid Nunez Cover Image
$26.00
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780593191415
Published: Riverhead Books - September 8th, 2020

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR, PEOPLE, AND O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS’ TOP BOOK OF 2020

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“As good as The Friend, if not better.” —The New York Times
 
“Impossible to put down . . . leavened with wit and tenderness.” —People


These Women: A Novel By Ivy Pochoda Cover Image
$27.99
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780062656384
Published: Ecco - May 19th, 2020

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

AN LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE, MYSTERY & THRILLER FINALIST * AN INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS FINALIST, BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL * A MACAVITY BEST MYSTERY NOVEL FINALIST

A Recommended Book From


Fruit (Wisconsin Poetry Series #1) By Bruce Snider Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780299326746
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: University of Wisconsin Press - March 10th, 2020

Bruce Snider’s third poetry collection grapples with what it means to be childless in a world obsessed with procreation. Poems move between the scientific and the biblical, effortlessly sliding from the clinical landscape of a sperm bank to Mount Moriah as Abraham prepares Isaac for sacrifice.


The Son of Good Fortune: A Novel By Lysley Tenorio Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9780062059598
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Ecco - April 27th, 2021

A Recommended Book From:
USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle * 
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The Millions


Monstress: Stories (Art of the Story) By Lysley Tenorio Cover Image
$16.99
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780063010147
Published: Ecco - July 7th, 2020

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, startling, and gloriously unique stories set amongst the Filipino communities of California and the Philippines—now with a new preface by the author 


The Five Wounds: A Novel By Kirstin Valdez Quade Cover Image
$26.95
ISBN: 9780393242836
Availability: Ships to Our Store in 1-5 Days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 30th, 2021

Winner of The Center for Fiction's 2021 First Novel Prize
Shortlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel


Night at the Fiestas: Stories By Kirstin Valdez Quade Cover Image
$25.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780393242980
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 23rd, 2015

Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction

A New York Times Notable Book of 2015

Set in northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about growing up in a land shaped by love, loss and violence.


Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love By Keith S. Wilson Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781556595615
Availability: Available at One of Our Locations
Published: Copper Canyon Press - May 21st, 2019

"Wilson's collection is romantic yet world-weary, bereaved yet fortified―a kindred reflection of the heart in the modern world." ―Publishers Weekly Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love is a collection whose poems approach family, politics, and romance, often through the lens of space: the vagaries of a relationship full of wonder and coldness, separation and exploration.


Centaur (Wisconsin Poetry Series) By Greg Wrenn Cover Image
$16.95
Currently Unavailable
ISBN: 9780299294441
Published: University of Wisconsin Press - May 17th, 2013

Greg Wrenn's debut collection opens with a long poem in which a man undergoes surgery to become a centaur. Other poems speak in voices as varied as those of Robert Mapplethorpe, Hercules, and a Wise Man at the birth of Jesus. Centaur skitters along the blurred lines between compulsivity and following one's heart, stasis and self-realization, human and animal.