JUNE 2025

Don't miss these small-press titles making a big splash this month!

• An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon Press; October 15, 2024), a poetry collection that interrogates "the education one receives from the institutions of academia and family," was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
• Rara Avis by Blas Falconer (Four Way Books; August 15, 2024), a poetry collection that “captures in sparse, moving verse both the splendor and the loneliness of what it means to be exceptional,” received the Publishing Triangle’s 2025 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.
• Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms by Joan Kwon Glass (Perugia Press; September 24, 2024), a debut poetry collection that "is part lamentation and part hymn—an illumination of diasporic hungers, hauntings, absence, and resilience," received the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry.
• Yard Show by Janice N. Harrington (BOA Editions; October 15, 2024), a poetry collection that “speaks to the Black American Imagination in all its multiplicity,” received the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry.
• No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books; May 13, 2025), which “explores how our actions can shape the future and the liberatory possibilities of embracing uncertainty,” debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.

We're thrilled to share the finalists for the eleventh annual FIRECRACKER AWARDS. These awards, given by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), honor the best independently published books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and the best literary magazines in the categories of debut and general excellence. We’ll be announcing the winners at a virtual awards ceremony on June 26, 2025, and in the meantime, we hope you’ll help readers discover these fifteen exemplary books and eleven magazines!

June is Pride Month! To help you spotlight books by LGBTQ+-identifying authors all month long (and year-round), we've put together 12 books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction for the occasion—all published by independent literary presses. Happy Pride!

We spoke with Alisha Jeddeloh, founding fiction editor of Brink Literary Journal and editor-in-chief of Brink Books, in our latest spotlight on an independent publisher. She says, “Brink is a nonprofit independent publisher of hybrid writing. Through our publications, we create space in the literary world for hybrid, cross-genre, and unclassified works by emerging and established writers and artists.”

July is Disability Pride Month, and we're excited to share a roundup of 10 fiction, poetry, and nonfiction titles for the occasion! We hope you'll spotlight these books—all published by indie presses—in your bookstore next month and year-round.

Discover poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that published last month from independent literary publishers—including Akashic Books, Bellevue Literary Press, Deep Vellum, and Hub City Press. 

The Los Angeles Review of Books reports on how the loss of NEA funding will impact small publishers and literary magazines. Fuente Fountain Books is the recipient of a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts. PEOPLE reports that the Hurston/Wright Foundation is rebranding the Legacy Awards as the Zora Awards. Dzanc Books recently opened Dzanc House, a new arts center and community space in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Seven Stories Press has acquired Two Dollar Radio. Autumn House Press won the 2025 AWP Small Press Publisher Award, and Torch Literary Arts won the 2025 AWP Writing Organization Award.

In this month's installment of Editor's Note, a feature that showcases the range of perspectives and curatorial expertise represented by our members, we're featuring Lynn Nugent, editor of The Iowa Review, who writes about reading literary magazines in print in the digital age.