README.txt, the highly-anticipated memoir from Chelsea Manning, published this week to a wave of media attention. Jordy Rosenberg for The Washington Post praises the “electrifying opening” of the memoir, adding: “README.txt serves as an insider confessional turned inside out for the 21st century. The perverse secret of our era, one that Manning details in multiple surreal encounters with military bureaucracy, is that everything is already known. Manning is canny in her refusal to simply embrace the confessional mode often demanded of trans writers and whistleblowers alike...Manning’s memoir may thus give us less, not more, of what we may think we know about her. But this is an artful refusal, and an important one…The narrative progression that unfolds over these pages forms a sublime arc.” Meanwhile, Margaret Sullivan for The New York Times Book Review writes: “Manning weaves together her role as a whistle-blower — utterly disillusioned by what she saw and experienced in the military — with her sad personal story…Manning’s memoir fills in some blanks and, most important, adds a searing personal element. The writing in README.txt is vivid, as its narrative moves from an Oklahoma childhood to community college in Maryland to an unpredictable decision to enlist — brought about partly by dire financial need — which eventually brought her to the Middle East.” Elsewhere, Manning sat down with ABC, CBS, WBUR and NPR Fresh Air’s podcast to discuss her memoir and her polarizing public image. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the memoir on October 18, 2022.

HEAVY, HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELVES IN AMERICA, and LONG DIVISION author Kiese Laymon is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Foundation’s bio of Laymon reads: “Kiese Laymon is a writer bearing witness to the myriad forms of violence that mark the Black experience. Laymon’s writing across genres is grounded in radical honesty and his perspective as a Black Southern man. He exemplifies a commitment to revision in his writing practice and through his capacity for frank self-reflection.” Scribner published HEAVY on October 16, 2018, HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELVES AND OTHERS IN AMERICA on November 10, 2020, and LONG DIVISION on June 1, 2021.

Laura Warrell's debut novel SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM has received an abundance of critical acclaim following its publication. The book was longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and is one of six shortlisted candidates for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize (after also being selected as Barnes & Noble’s Discover Pick for the month of October), which "celebrates the very best new authors, elevating the joy of spotting fresh voices early on in their careers.” The novel was also featured on a flood of most-anticipated lists, widely praised as a “sensual and sinuous debut...a kaleidoscopic character study, a polyphonic riff on the modern-day Casanova” (Oprah Daily), “an enticing exploration of jazz music and the inner lives of women” (The Hollywood Reporter), and “a big-hearted multicultural world” (Apartment Therapy). A review from The Boston Globe raves: “Warrell excels at describing…points of contact — more often bruising impact than connection — conveying the varying degrees of longing, loneliness, and even aversion that can bring two people together, at least for a night…She’s also skilled at describing jazz — and, perhaps more important, what the music means to a musician…[T]his sprawling and ambitious book [is] an improvisation, and at its best, it’s beautiful.” Meanwhile, The New York Times praises: “Structured like a jam session, the novel favors a series of riffs over any one melodic theme...[E]legant, unexpected and wrenching…[A] literary high-wire act.” The Los Angeles Times featured a full profile of the author, and Lit Hub published a piece by Warrell titled “Why Jazz? Laura Warrell on Devotion to a ‘Dying’ Art Form,” where she delves into the inspirations for her novel. Lastly, the novel is an Indie Next List pick, as well as a Good Morning America Buzz Pick. Pantheon published SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM on September 27, 2022.

LIFE IS EVERYWHERE by Lucy Ives published to a wave of glowing reviews from Bookforum, The Los Angeles Times (“brilliantly berserk,” “often hilarious,” “a novel of academia…Its depiction of department dynamics is so pitch perfect as to be truly disconcerting to anyone with personal experience”) and The Rumpus, which hails Ives as “a Big Ideas writer on the level of Gaddis, or DeLillo, or Wallace…[O]ne of our greatest under-the-radar geniuses,” the novel an “achievement [that] demands attention.” The Chicago Review of Books places it "among the most audacious, effective, and ambitious books of recent vintage," "a novel of multitudinous brilliance and luminosity...as wide-ranging and risk-taking a novel to be found this side of Infinite Jest." The novel has also been recommended on new book roundups from Bustle, Inside Hook, and Lit Hub, the latter of which also published a new excerpt of the novel. Graywolf Press published LIFE IS EVERYWHERE on October 4, 2022.

AN IMMENSE WORLD by Ed Yong has been longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The shortlist will be announced on November 15, and the winners will be announced on January 29. Random House published the book on June 21, 2022.

STRANGERS TO OURSELVES by Rachel Aviv continues to be lauded with rave reviews. Hephzibah Anderson for the Guardian US writes: “Aviv is an instinctive storyteller and her book’s episodic, immersive format is underpinned by in-depth reporting as she tracks down those closest to her subjects...Her own language is meticulous, empathic, tirelessly inquisitive...[H]er approach to mental illness [is infused] with such humility and kinship and her complex, illuminating book is all the stronger for it.” The book was also praised by the Guardian UK, where reviewer David Shariatmadari writes: “A profoundly intelligent attempt to understand the conflicting stories we tell about psychological distress…[D]espite the rival camps and competing explanations, the riddle of mental illness is not so hard – its causes are ‘an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological, and environmental factors.’ But it can be unfathomably complex as it plays out in people’s lives. Ultimately, as Aviv’s remarkable book shows, only their own stories can make sense of it.” Lastly, the book received a positive review from Slate, where reviewer Mia Amstrong-López raves “[STRANGERS TO OURSELVES] is a beautifully written, profoundly researched narrative, and each time I try to describe it to someone, I stumble over words until I finally land on ‘You just have to read it’…[STRANGERS TO OURSELVES] is about identity: the way it is tangled up in our mental health systems and the cultural narratives about those systems—shifted and shaped and transformed by them… Worn-out, generalized narratives of mental illness often make our own stories feel static. Perhaps it is only through sharing them that we realize they rarely are.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the book on September 13, 2022.

Alta Journal published a rave review of Namwali Serpell’s lauded second novel, THE FURROWS. Anita Felicelli praises the book as an “intense, palimpsestic antinovel” with an “ingenious, off-kilter necromancy,” adding: “THE FURROWS relies on three voices to bring us into an exquisitely rendered nether space where visual likeness, name, and metaphor appear concrete, only to fall away in subsequent scenes...The more we read, the more we are strung along by competing sequences bound by Serpell’s sleek and unexpected syntax, her unnerving emotional observation and repeated images…The ambiguities of THE FURROWS superfuse techniques from Alfred Hitchcock films, especially VERTIGO, while also suggesting the French author Marie NDiaye’s LADIVINE. Yet Serpell opts for stunning emotional deepenings at every turn. Again and again, the novel exploits the literary potential of the Freudian uncanny to construct haunting multiplications rather than the transparent resolutions of traditional novelists.” Hogarth published the novel on September 27, 2022.

A new review in the Los Angeles Review of Books calls Peter C. Baker's PLANES a “propulsive,” “powerful,” "post–post-9/11 novel… with its own canny intelligence, [that] seems to know something that no one else does.” Knopf published the book on May 31, 2022.

Rachel Aviv was on The Ezra Klein Show podcast to discuss her nonfiction debut STRANGERS TO OURSELVES, as well as a variety of mental health topics such as “how mental states like depression and anxiety can be socially contagious, how mental illnesses differ from physical ailments like diabetes and high blood pressure, what Aviv’s own experience with childhood anorexia taught her about psychology and diagnosis, how having too much ‘insight’ into our mental states can sometimes hurt us, how social forces like racism and classism can activate psychological distress,” and more. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published the book on September 13, 2022.

Cathy Park Hong was profiled by New York Magazine’s Vulture as part of the “At Home in Asian America” issue, in a piece titled “The Poet Pundit: How Cathy Park Hong became liberal America’s go-to Asian thinker.” Clio Chang writes: “[I]n 2020, [Hong’s] career changed radically with the release of MINOR FEELINGS: AN ASIAN AMERICAN RECKONING, a collection of essays that explore her experience as a Korean American and a poet. The book, Hong said, was an attempt to ‘articulate Asian American interiority’ as well as a broader effort to recast and refine conversations about Asian Americanness... The collection came out four days before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in New York. Hong’s planned tour went to Zoom, and she anticipated that her book would get buried like so many others… In the ensuing months, Asian Americans reported being spat on and screamed at by strangers; the hashtag #StopAsianHate took off, and anti-Asian racism became visible in a way it never had before. MINOR FEELINGS had been on track to have a normal release, but — through a combination of some acclamatory reviews, word of mouth, and pure timing — it was perfectly positioned to meet the moment…MINOR FEELINGS is now in its 19th print run with 175,000 copies in circulation. Two years after its publication, it has become COVID canon.” One World published MINOR FEELINGS on February 25, 2020.

The Seattle Times reviewed Namwali Serpell’s stellar novel, THE FURROWS. Reviewer Hamilton Cain writes: “[THE FURROWS is] a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…Serpell blurs the delicate line between dreams and our waking lives. THE FURROWS is an English major’s dream date: Serpell taps influences across genres, from Virginia Woolf to Dashiell Hammett to Toni Morrison. Above all, the novel’s a valentine to cinema, and particularly to the oeuvre of Alfred Hitchcock; Serpell scatters Easter eggs throughout, allusions to THE LADY VANISHES, THE BIRDS, and most prominently, VERTIGO, with its feedback loops of eros and death. She delivers on the daring promise of her prizewinning debut, THE OLD DRIFT, while teasing out a jazzier, more intimate register, casting a spell that probes the fluid, disorienting flow of grief.” Hogarth published the book on September 27, 2022.

PATHETIC LITERATURE by Eileen Myles received a glowing review from Publishers Weekly. They write: “In this powerful anthology, poet Myles (I MUST BE LIVING TWICE) shares a wide-ranging but deeply focused reading list linked by the concept of pathos…The collection amounts to a solid argument for the value of literature that lays bare its author’s personal investment.” Grove Press will publish the anthology on November 15, 2022.