Rebecca Morgan Frank’s Anticipated Books of 2017

As editor-in-chief, I get the honor of bringing you the last installment of our week-long Anticipated Books countdown to 2017 and wishing you a Happy New Year– may books continue to challenge us; to bring joy, pleasure and solace; to expand our knowledge and compassion; to introduce us to new perspectives and voices; to connect…

Joanna Luloff’s Anticipated Books of 2017

At the end of this tumultuous year, it is tempting to want to move on and train our gaze onto the new. Like many of us, I imagine, I’ve been thinking about what reading and writing can do—politically, socially. To me, these seemingly solitary acts encourage empathy, curiosity, engagement, and self-scrutiny. I hope, too, that…

Sara A. Lewis’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Always Happy Hour, Mary Miller (Liveright, January) This book’s cover image is a woman in a bathtub eating Chinese takeout and drinking wine straight from the bottle. These are stories I can get behind. If all of them are even half as good as “Little Bear,” which was published earlier this year in the Mississippi Review,…

Natalie Mesnard’s Anticipated Books of 2017

In Full Velvet, Jenny Johnson (Sarabande, February) Sarabande’s Marketing and Publicity Director Ariel Lewiton recently gave me a sneak peek at some of their 2017 titles, and I admit to falling in love with the soft, sensual cover of Johnson’s forthcoming debut poetry collection. Inside, Johnson, a Whiting Award winner and the 2016-17 Hodder Fellow,…

Derrick Austin’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, Charif Shanahan (Southern Illinois UP, February) In a geographically sprawling collection—set in Morocco, The United States, and Europe—Shanahan writes of the bond between all three regions, bonds established by the brutal legacies of slavery, colonialism, colorism, and racism. He writes through global history as well as family history as…

Wendy Oleson’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Writing this list reminds me, at a time I so need it, that there’s much to look forward to—particularly emerging voices from small, independent presses. There are many talented writers who coming to us with urgent messages, and we are desperate to hear them. The Education of Margot Sanchez, Lilliam Rivera (Simon & Schuster, February)…

Barrett Bowlin’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Patty Yumi Cottrell, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney’s) When you see Cottrell’s work in so many literary mags and online ’zines, and when every sentence of hers stands out to you like a sutured line of poetry, you’re waiting for her work to get its proper introduction. And that’s hopefully what will happen when her debut…

Katy Didden’s Anticipated Books of 2017

When you say “2016,” it sounds benign, a choriamb of grinning “t” and “e” sounds. Looking back now, it seems clear that the rhythm signaled the start of a march. As it turns out, 2016’s most defining characteristic was being too easily divisible. We lost David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael, and we…

Brian Trapp’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Since 2010, Memorious editors and contributors have compiled lists of our most anticipated titles of the new year. Last year’s picks included Emma Cline’s masterful novel The Girls, Han King’s Man Booker-winning drama The Vegetarian, and our new Assistant Poetry Editor Derrick Austin’s Trouble the Water, which Mary Szybist selected for the A. Poulin Jr. Award….