Fiction & poetry

Scott Austin Tirrell · Self-published · 2026

Abandoned by her father and raised by the streets of Grafton Notch, Jezelle survives by trusting no one. When a strange magic awakens within her, it offers more than escape, it offers power. But in a city that preys on broken children, power makes her valuable, dangerous, and hunted. To claim the life stolen from her, Jezelle must decide what she is willing to become.

Sarah C. Beckmann · Finishing Line Press · 2026

A poetry collection structured as a crew race exploring girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood through the experiences of a rower and writer. These poems subvert the historical dominance of male heroes by celebrating ordinary female heroism, while examining love, home, and what it means to be an American woman today.

Joshua Bennett · Penguin Books · 2026

Bennett marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. with a book-length work of poetry about the country and some of its distinctive figures. The piece features remarkable people or inventions from each of the 50 states, meditating on their place in the nation's cultural fabric.

Scott Austin Tirrell · Satirrell Publishing · 2025

A fantasy novel that follows 11-year-old Mishal, a gifted yet troubled boy inducted into the secretive Order of Thanatos. Set in the grim and mystic realm of Lucardia, the story is framed as a first-person memoir chronicling Mishal's initiation as a novice psychopomp - one who guides the dead across the Threshold into the afterlife. As Mishal navigates the Order's rigid hierarchy, academic rigor, and spiritual mysteries, he begins to uncover unsettling truths about death, the soul, and the hidden agendas of those in power. Haunted by a spirit he cannot abandon and burdened by a forbidden artifact, Mishal must decide whom to trust and what to believe as his abilities grow - and as the line between duty and damnation begins to blur.

Kevin McLellan · Yas Press · 2024

In this book of poetry, physical and emotional qualities free-range between the animate and inanimate as though the world is written with dotted lines. With chiseled line breaks, intriguing meta-poetic levels, and punctuation like seed pods, McLellan's poems, if we look twice, might flourish outside the book's margin, past the grow light of the screen, even (especially) other borderlines we haven't begun to imagine.

Laura Beretsky · Haley's · 2023

Beretsky's memoir, "Seizing Control," details her journey with epilepsy, discrimination, and a major surgical procedure to reduce her seizures. After two surgical interventions, she has been seizure-free for eight years, though she notes she will always live with epilepsy.

Helen Elaine Lee · Atria Books · 2023

This novel from Helen Elaine Lee focuses on a queer Black woman working to stay clean, pull her life together, and heal after being released from prison. In lyrical and precise prose, Lee paints a humane and unflinching portrait of the devastating effects of incarceration and addiction, and of one woman's determination to tell her story.

Joshua Bennett · Penguin · 2022

In this deeply personal book, Bennett, a visiting professor who joins the MIT faculty this summer, recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth. The central section features an alternate history where Malcolm X is resurrected from the dead, as is a young Black man shot by police some 50 years later. The final section includes poems about fatherhood, on the heels of Bennett's first child being born.

Maia Weinstock · MIT Press · 2022

In "Carbon Queen," Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus (1930-2017) defied expectations and forged a career as a leading scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus, who made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials, helped reshape our world in countless ways - from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague.

D. Fox Harrell · Wizards of the Coast · 2022

"Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel" is an anthology of 13 stand-alone adventures set in wondrous lands for the roleplaying game "Dungeons & Dragons." Harrell's chapter, "The Nightsea's Succor," is inspired by the diverse historical continuities, innovations, and kindred futures shared across African American people, roots, and ancestors.

Isabelle de Courtivron · Iconoclaste · 2022

De Courtivron was born after World War II in Paris, into a family with conservative values. When her family moved to the United States, she discovered another culture: its dress codes, its language, and especially its protest movements. In this memoir, written in French, de Courtivron evokes the feminist struggles in which she took part in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and the impact they had on her life.

Sarah C. Beckmann · Finishing Line Press · 2021

Beckmann's first collection of poetry, "Naiad Blood," describes a young woman who discovers herself in the sport of rowing. Although she grew up near the sea, she falls in love with boats and the water all over again, in a whole new way; crew not only provides her with an avenue for personal growth, but also alters her outlook on life. Taking creative inspiration from Greek myths and other cultural ideas around womanhood, "Naiad Blood" acknowledges social norms and issues that women face, and also directly challenges them.

June L. Matthews · BookBaby · 2021

This is a memoir by astronomer Mildred Shapley Matthews, daughter of the well-known astronomer Harlow Shapley and mother of June Matthews. Based on recollections, correspondence, and conversations with her father and mother, Martha Betz Shapley, Shapley Matthews explores what it was like growing up with a science impresario and the longtime director of the Harvard Observatory. Matthews and Bogdan worked for several years after Shapley Matthews' death in 2016 to create this readable version of her manuscript.

Renée Green · Primary Information · 2021

Green's debut novel is an homage to (and parody of) the historically male-dominated genre of the road novel. Set between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and combining the genres of road novel, countercultural memoir, travel journal, epistolary novel, and screenplay, it is the record of the mind of a young woman coming of age as an artist, traveling in Mexico, and exploring the bohemian milieu of 1980s New York.

Sherry Turkle · Penguin · 2021

In this vivid narrative, Turkle ties together her coming of age and her pathbreaking research on technology, empathy, and ethics. Growing up in postwar Brooklyn, Turkle searched for clues to her identity in a house filled with mysteries. Before empathy became a way to find connection, it was her strategy for survival.

Rania Ghosn · Actar · 2021

This graphic novel makes climate engineering and its controversies visible in five stories assembled from the deep underground to outer space. Each "geo-story" - Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud - depicts possible future Earths that we come to inhabit on the heels of a geoengineering intervention.

Sara Seager · Crown · 2020

A pioneering planetary scientist, Seager searches for exoplanets - especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of her husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. As she struggles to navigate life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanets and the technical challenges of exploration.