The Year in (Ig) Books

2018 was, hard to believe, our 17th year! (Time flies when you’re trying to change the world one book at a time!) We really lived up to our motto, stolen from George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.” On the Eng Lang side, we released several well-reviewed and award-nominated novels, including Dan Sheehan’s Center for Fiction longlist selection, Restless Souls; Michelle Bailat-Jones Unfurled, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly; Andrew Valencia’s dystopian Lord of California, about a future in which California has seceded from the U.S.; and Daniel Abbott’s gritty all too real tale of the effects of poverty on one community, The Concrete, which Andre Dubus called  a heartbreakingly beautiful novel, an honest work of art…[which] heralds the debut of a remarkable and important young American novelist.”

Our non-fiction side saw the release of Brian Evenson’s Bookmarked, Kirkus starred review rumination on Raymond Carver; Stephanie Woodard’s vital book on the state of the Native American community, American Apartheid; and Mickey Hess’s memoir/treatise on what it means to be a white ally in the struggle against racism, A Guest in the House of Hip Hop.

…AND FORWARD TO 2019

We will begin the new year with Womanish, Kim McLarin’s stirring essay collection on what it means to be a black women in today’s turbulent times; Allen Morris Jones Montana by the way of Brooklyn crime novel, Sweeney on the Rocks; The End of Roe V. Wade, which looks at the possible end of legalized abortion in America; Strike Back, which details the history of public union militancy to provide a roadmap for a new generation of public employees facing unprecedented attacks on their labor rights; The Tribalization of Politics, on how Rush Limbaugh’s racially-primed rhetoric against President Obama tribalized our politics and helped elect Donald Trump; and best-selling author Steve Almond’s Bookmarked volume on John Williams’s Stoner. And that’s just the first half of 2019!