Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecrafts are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science.

In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.
 

In Invasive species, Marwa Helal's searing, politically charged poems touch on our collective humanity and build new pathways for empathy, etching themselves into memory. This work centers on urgent themes in our cultural landscape, creating space for unseen victims of discriminatory foreign (read: immigration) policy: migrants, refugees—the displaced. Helal transfers lived experiences of dislocation and relocation onto the reader by obscuring borders through language.

Living in small-town Utah has always been an uneasy fit for Tunde Akinola’s family, especially for his Nigeria-born parents. Though Tunde speaks English with a Midwestern accent, he can’t escape the children who rub his skin and ask why the black won’t come off. As he struggles to fit in and find his place in the world, he finds little solace from his parents who are grappling with their own issues.

Sweeping, stirring, and perspective-shifting, A Particular Kind of Black Man is a beautiful and poignant exploration of the meaning of memory, manhood, home, and identity as seen through the eyes of a first-generation Nigerian-American.
 

Navy veteran Steven Dunn’s second novel plunges into military culture and engages with perceptions of heroism and terrorism. In this shifting landscape, deployments are feared, absurd bureaucracy is normalized, and service members are consecrated. water & power is a collage of voices, documents, and critical explorations that disrupt the usual frequency channels of military narratives.

The Sobbing School presents songs for the living and the dead that destabilize and de-familiarize representations of black history and contemporary black experience. What animates these poems is a desire to assert life, and interiority, where there is said to be none. Figures as widely divergent as Bobby Brown, Martin Heidegger, and the 19th-century performance artist Henry Box Brown, as well as Bennett's own family and childhood best friends, appear and are placed in conversation to show that there is always a world beyond what we are socialized to see value in, always alternative ways of thinking about relation that explode easy binaries.

An exploration of the interconnectedness of the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska, the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, and the larger Arctic region, revealing the fragile and intertwined lives of people and animals surviving on an uncertain landscape. Kantner’s lifetime on the tundra underpins his compelling account of the politics of caribou, race relations, and cultural priorities vs. resource extraction. Kantner’s stunning full-color photographs enhance his depiction of community, habitat, and the timeless passage of caribou throughout.

An exploration of the interconnectedness of the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska, the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, and the larger Arctic region, revealing the fragile and intertwined lives of people and animals surviving on an uncertain landscape. Kantner’s lifetime on the tundra underpins his compelling account of the politics of caribou, race relations, urban vs. rural demands, subsistence vs. sport hunting, and cultural priorities vs. resource extraction. Throughout the book, Kantner’s stunning full-color photographs enhance his depiction of community, habitat, and the timeless passage of caribou.

Are you feeling dismay, despair, disillusion? Need a break from the ho-hum, the hopeless, and the hurtful? Feel certain there’s a version of our world that doesn’t break down into tiny categories of alliance, but brings everybody together into one clattering chorus of glorious pandemonium? Amy Leach invites you into a book of praise songs, poetry, critique, soul-lifting philosophy, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature. It is equal parts joy and call to reason—where reason means taking care of the earth and everything in it.

Such Color collects the best poems from Smith’s award-winning books and culminates in thirty pages of brilliant, excoriating new poems. These new works confront America’s historical and contemporary racism and injustices, while rising toward the registers of the ecstatic, the rapturous, and the sacred—urging us toward love as a resistance to everything that impedes it. This magnificent retrospective affirms Smith’s place as one of the twenty-first century’s most treasured poets.

A transgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure—from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama—Purnell's characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it—or perhaps because of it—they shine.