Stories of characters who face tragedies alongside their canine companions.
 
Noley Reid’s fourth book, Origami Dogs, is a testament to her mastery of the form. Here, dogs rove the grounds of their companions’ emotions. The creatures in this short story collection often act subtly, serving as witnesses without language, exacerbating tension and providing relief to the human characters. Sometimes they are central to the stories’ plots, such as in the lead story, “Origami Dogs,” which focuses on Iris Garr, a dog breeder’s teenage daughter, as she begins noticing odd birth defects in new litters and realizes she must confront her mother, whom she loves yet cannot help but resent. In some stories, teens struggle toward womanhood or wrestle with sexuality and queerness, confronting parents who are unable to provide the care or support they need. In other stories, Reid’s characters are adults striving to be better spouses, parents, or both, and are often grappling with life-changing events—like a new disability or the loss of a child. Despite the gravitas of these tragedies, with Reid’s touch, they feel alive, present, and painfully close. Reid brings us to her characters in the fierce damp aftermath of calamity and asks us to dwell with them until new possibilities arrive.

At these tipping points, the characters of Origami Dogs stand ready with their dogs (or memories of them), to take the next step. By turns tender, moving, and devastating, this story collection is a celebration of the bond of devotion possible between humans and dogs, and it presents an intimate rendering of the lives we share.
 

 A personal lyrical essay collection by a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir.
 
“I am a butterfly at half-mast. Muscles coiled like springs. I have not unwound yet,” writes Julie Marie Wade in Otherwise. In this series of intimate, braided essays written throughout her 30s, Wade traces her own unwinding and becoming through probing lyricism. As a daughter, lover, lesbian, and writer, she invites readers on a journey of self-discovery framed by memory, literature, and popular culture. Touching and tender, empathic and insightful, Otherwise revels in its author's self-acceptance at the threshold of mid-life.
 

A debut collection featuring formally diverse poems that address topics from misogyny and mental health to race and identity.
 
Alexis Sears’s debut collection, Out of Order, is a collage of unapologetic intimacy, risk-taking vulnerability, and unwavering candor. A biracial millennial woman, Sears navigates the challenges of growing out of girlhood and into womanhood with its potential dangers, interrogating the male gaze, beauty standards, and confidence and identity. Pop culture references run through the collection, with rock icons David Bowie and Prince and poets like Kenneth Koch offering windows into desire and adaptation. In these poems, Sears works through heavy topics, such as loneliness, mental illness, chronic pain, the legacies of race and racism, and the aftermath of a father’s suicide. As she writes, “I’m learning something every ravishing day / and none of it is easy.”
 
This young poet demonstrates an uncommon mastery of craft, writing in forms including the sonnet redoublé, sestina, canzone, and villanelle. With all her linguistic skills, Sears’s work remains approachable, offering readers a striking blend of honesty, humor, anguish, joy, and surprise. Drawing influence from contemporary poets like Mark Jarman, Erica Dawson, and Tiana Clark, Sears cuts a path of her own.
 
Out of Order was the 2021 winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize.
 

A debut collection featuring formally diverse poems that address topics from misogyny and mental health to race and identity.
 
Alexis Sears’s debut collection, Out of Order, is a collage of unapologetic intimacy, risk-taking vulnerability, and unwavering candor. A biracial millennial woman, Sears navigates the challenges of growing out of girlhood and into womanhood with its potential dangers, interrogating the male gaze, beauty standards, and confidence and identity. Pop culture references run through the collection, with rock icons David Bowie and Prince and poets like Kenneth Koch offering windows into desire and adaptation. In these poems, Sears works through heavy topics, such as loneliness, mental illness, chronic pain, the legacies of race and racism, and the aftermath of a father’s suicide. As she writes, “I’m learning something every ravishing day / and none of it is easy.”
 
This young poet demonstrates an uncommon mastery of craft, writing in forms including the sonnet redoublé, sestina, canzone, and villanelle. With all her linguistic skills, Sears’s work remains approachable, offering readers a striking blend of honesty, humor, anguish, joy, and surprise. Drawing influence from contemporary poets like Mark Jarman, Erica Dawson, and Tiana Clark, Sears cuts a path of her own.
 
Out of Order was the 2021 winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize.