Outside Detroit on the island of Gross Ile, the Kurkjians receive news that Mari, the eldest of their youngest generation, has swum into the depths of Lake Michigan with no intent of returning to shore—the consequences of which drag out a deeply rooted pain passed down from generations before. More than a century earlier, Gregor, the great-grandfather and patriarch of the Kurkjian family, survived the Armenian Genocide after fighting for his freedom atop Musa Dagh. Decades later and miles away, Gregor’s epic mythos is inherited by his family as they navigate living in its shadow. As the Kurkjians now struggle with their new, devastating loss, secrets and shortcomings rise to the surface, forcing each relative to decide where their own story fits in the narrative of their family’s fraught history.
The poetry collections Bel, Nous, Goety, Youel and Funest, have been collected in Taps (Todos Contentos Y Yo También Press) for the first time, and represent nearly a decade of work. These five poetry collections trace the development of one of contemporary poetry's most singular, defiant and disquieting voices.
Angelica For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution
Across nationalities, languages, and cultures, across the divides of war, grievance, and geography, Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton’s influential sister-in-law, wove a web of soft-power connections that spanned the War for Independence, the post-war years of tenuous peace, and the turbulent politics and rival ideologies that threatened to tear apart the nascent United States.
In this enthralling and revealing woman’s-eye view of a revolutionary era, Molly Beer breathes vibrant new life into a period usually dominated by masculine themes and often dulled by familiarity. In telling Angelica’s story, she illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.
In defiance of life’s intractable march forward, Red Wilderness sounds the strange fathoms of the past, weaving a living song beyond what haunts our country and ourselves. Coleman’s second collection interpolates American history with his own family’s legacy, reflecting on national identity, Blackness, taboo, faith, and remembrance while enacting a multigenerational chorus of poems that stretches back to the Civil War. In these restorative lyrics, an end is an entrypoint to memory and reimagination, to something unending—a spiritual freedom, collective strength, and boundless love threading separate years into one strand. Red Wilderness visualizes an intimate, living archive that maps myths and realities of blood, boundaries, geography, and genealogy, and Coleman brilliantly curates the sound of time’s river wending across ancient land.
In this debut collection, tangled bonds of love and family collide with a natural world both fragile and ferocious. Set across the Midwest and rural Appalachia, the stories in Joyriders offer a resonant vision of rural and small-town life: lonely, half-haunted landscapes are pierced with moments of light, and even the most taciturn faces conceal inner worlds both rich and strange. Comfort and heartache abound—entangled, inseparable. Characters’ paths repeatedly bend in unforeseen directions, and the shape of each story surprises—illuminating, in this way, the surprising contours of entire lives.
