Marge Piercy’s unflinching clarity of vision continues to be the kind of sturdy example so vital to literature. She has long been teaching and in the public arena, on the humane side of almost every contemporary issue. …more

Hesperus Press collected four long-neglected critical essays for their new collection, Virginia Woolf’s On Fiction. Her criticism, like her fiction, is an utter delight. …more

In three very different but equally gorgeous sections, Griffith guides us through every poetic form from sonnet to villanelle, all while examining the idea of what it means to be in one place instead of all others, what it means not to know your own momentum and position at the same time, to never see the moon from every window. …more

Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation considers the humiliations of our lives and culture – from Liza Minelli to Eliot Spitzer to his own father. …more

If you harbor desires for truly deserved happy endings and sharply drawn prose, then you will relish every page of Liz Moore’s new novel Heft.

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These poems are often about the strange, complex and imperfect mapping of nature—human and wild—onto our 21st century lives. …more

These poems are about unintentional association, the ways our minds wander even when — especially when? — they’re trying to wrap themselves around a given idea. …more

Lawrence Weschler’s collection of essays, Uncanny Valley, compiles some his best essays with the same perspective that he brings to each essay – an impulse to find the subtle convergences in the mundane. …more

This is an intelligent and well-crafted poetry that demands multiple readings. And it is a voice–perhaps a bit apprehensive and damaged by experience–that seems willing to express it all, even the ugly and cruel. …more

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead should be hailed not simply as a fabulous piece of writing but as a landmark debut of a new genre, invented by others but perfected here.

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Ann Beattie’s collagist new novel, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, questions the inherent value of fiction. …more

These are poems that want to be breathless, that want to mirror the intensity of passion and desire and heartbreak, and leave the reader light-headed. …more

Goldbarth still infuses his poems with an old-fashioned, childlike wonder at the marvels of our world, along with a bemused chuckle at the ways in which we so obviously fall short of our lofty goals. …more

Will Boast’s debut story collection, Power Ballads, is tied together by a compelling and evolving drummer named Tim, who will stay with you long after you finish the book. …more

The poems are themselves stealthy, hiding but then eventually revealing themselves to the writers. Or the stealth writers, both Seaton and Ace autonomous and authentic somewhere in that collaborative voice. …more

Playwright Alan Bennett set his sights on fiction in his new comedic collection, Smut. …more

Ben Marcus’ fourth novel, The Flame Alphabet, uses well-worn myths as a way to expose and explore the pressing questions that we often forget thrum at the heart of our most common traditions and rituals. …more

Haunted by the paradoxes associated with Shakerism that both glorified and doomed it, Kirchwey uses the place of Mount Lebanon to explore a layering of spaces and themes that accesses vast time and situation. …more

The Weary World Rejoices has its unadorned moments of grief, punctuated by moments of energetic wit and intelligent levity. …more

Event Factory is proof that as Renee Gladman has something new to offer, the perspective of invented linguistics encountered as a traveler. …more

Coleman’s work is functional and communal; she wields the oral tradition in a way that reflects her poetry ancestry—the blues queen, Koko Taylor, for example, or the fringe Beat genius, Bob Kaufman—but she also shows planed, hewn lines of intellectual poem-making. …more

In Francois Emmanuel’s new collection Invitation to a Voyage, the prose is elegant and refined, the subject matter heady yet accessible, and the execution nearly flawless. …more

In The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson has not only visited a nation curtained from the rest of the world, but has recreated it with compassion and humanity. The result is a relentless examination of what it means to be human in an inhumane world. …more

Innovation is at the heart of these poems, and King’s ability to see through the surface to the deeper and often disconnected intricacies of life make them pleasurable and powerful to read. …more

What is a woman’s place in a world full of overwhelmingly masculine ideas and works? Marthe Reed, in her newest book of poetry, Gaze, examines the many intersections between women and modern society as a whole. …more

Lynne Barrett’s story collection, Magpies, soaks in the muggy atmosphere of South Florida, with her well-told stories of swamplands and housing developments. …more

A Fire-Proof Box is a porous work, languages overlapped, breathing, an English translation that manages to capture the icy weight of classically “Russian” sensibilities. …more

Shalom Auslander’s first novel, Hope: A Tragedy, reminds us that the world is a horrible, sad place, but luckily it’s damn funny, too. …more

In Sam Benjamin’s debut memoir, American Gangbang, we follow an aspiring porn director as he finds what he’s looking for–and what he’s not. …more

The book’s strongest moments are often its quietest, as when the complexity of the speaker’s engagement with himself and the world is repulsed or rerouted by automatic prompts and alienation. …more