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.

In the weeks leading up to its publication, README.txt by Chelsea Manning is garnering critical attention as one of this year’s most-anticipated books. The book was featured on must-read lists from The New York Times and Bustle. The Bay Area Reported featured it as part of its LGBTQ Fall roundup, alongside generous praise: “Manning diligently and passionately describes her decision to transition soon after her conviction as well as the days leading up to and following President Obama's commutation of her sentence and prison release, which became a swirling media scandal; certain to inspire heated debate and critical discussion among readers and political enthusiasts alike.” IN Magazine proclaims the book “fascinating” on its list of “Fall 2022’s Best New LBTQ+ Books to Read,” and TIME featured the book on its list of “The 33 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2022,” writing: “Though Manning’s story has inspired an opera and off-Broadway play, on top of plenty of headlines, her new memoir, README.txt, marks the first time she’s telling her full story in her own words.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish the memoir on October 18, 2022.

THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell published this week to a chorus of critical acclaim. A stunning review from Lynn Steger-Strong for The Los Angeles Times raves: “On the terms THE OLD DRIFT set out for itself, it was absolutely an accomplishment. Had I been assigned to write about it, I would have focused on all the ways, on its specific terms, it succeeded wildly. I bring in taste only to tell you that her second novel, THE FURROWS, out this week, is also a success on the terms it set out for itself. But it is a further testament to Serpell’s abilities and alacrity as an artist that, this time, I was completely in the thrall of the thing she made. The bombast of THE OLD DRIFT has been replaced with intimacy, intense emotionality and specificity, but the ambition, the acuity of the intelligence, remains… If THE OLD DRIFT put Serpell in conversation with Rushdie and García Márquez, THE FURROWS seems to stand on the shoulders of Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.” The New York Times ran a profile on Serpell, where Lauren Christensen writes: “Confronting sudden loss in her own life, Namwali Serpell has written THE FURROWS, a disquieting portrait of the human mind, warped by grief... [H]er breadth of expertise puts her in the intellectual minority. ‘Let’s put it this way,’ her colleague and former professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said. ‘It’s rare to find a creative writer who also has a Ph.D. in literary studies.’” Mary Retta’s review for New York Magazine’s Vulture raves: “The sort of grief Serpell depicts is complicated and unruly, which makes it feel tangibly real…THE FURROWS is, overall, a triumph. Serpell’s deft prose and languid narration come through beautifully throughout the novel.” Serpell sat down in conversation with Juana Summers for NPR’s WNYC Radio to discuss THE FURROWS. Elsewhere, Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, USA Today, Oprah Daily and others featured the book on roundups of the best new releases of September. Hogarth published THE FURROWS on September 27, 2022.

Andrew Sean Greer’s LESS IS LOST debuted on The New York Times Bestsellers list for the week of October 9, 2022, appearing at #10 on the Hardcover Fiction list. Little, Brown and Company published the book on September 20, 2022.