Persea Books

Independent publishers since 1975
(7)

Founded in 1975 by Karen Braziller and Michael Braziller, Persea Books is an independent literary publisher of fiction and nonfiction, contemporary American poetry, poetry in translation, books for young adults, literary anthologies for the classroom, and rediscovered classics.

07/29/2024

▶️🔊🎧

Wherein Major Jackson reads poetry by Gary Young from his brand new book AMERICAN ANALECTS.

•••

07/27/2024

Swipe to see our recommended song pairings with GLASS JAW, Raisa Tolchinsky’s “vulnerable, tensile, and brave” debut (Lisa Russ Spaar).

What songs come up for you as you read?

07/21/2024

The delicious summer combo of reading and listening to music has inspired in us some song pairings with our recent releases! 🎵

How did we do pairing these tracks by Birdtalker, Nick Drake, and Billie Holiday with AMERICAN ANALECTS by Gary Young? We hope you’ll read and see. And then, of course, we want you to add what songs the poems evoke for you ⬇️ in the comments.

American Analects uses the Analects of Confucius as an inspiration to mediate upon the life, death, and the subsequent loss of the poet’s influential, beloved mentor—the painter Gene Holtan. These poems are juxtaposed with poems about other losses—of parents, of friends and friends of friends. Still, this is not a dour book. Many poems celebrate our ability to inspire, to comfort, and to nurture one another. In the end, American Analects is about resiliency, about moving on from personal loss, from the pandemic, and from catastrophic fires, to rejoice in what remains.

“There’s no word for what Young does, only for what he accomplishes—the capturing of small, daily miracles.” —Dorianne Laux

07/20/2024

Don’t worry, it’s still summer! But we will have solace for you once it’s not: fall poetry books! We have advance reading copies of collections by Allison Blevins (out in November), Alexandra Teague (October), and Joy Ladin (September). Amazing, amazing, amazing.

(Interested in reviewing any of these? Email us at [email protected])

•

07/18/2024

“…Hoffman compounds contradictions in dense, unflinching prose poems.” —Imogen Osborne reviews EXPLODING HEAD, an OCD memoir in prose poems, for On the Seawall. Read the commentary in full at the link in our story!

❤️‍🔥

07/11/2024

“My body does not belong to me” from AMERICAN ANALECTS by Gary Young, which was published last week. Get your copy and discover the landscapes—natural, bodily, spiritual—of these meditative poems on family, friendship, and the aging self.

06/30/2024

spot the difference 👀 between these arcs?

Companions ONCE OUT OF NATURE: SELECTED ESSAYS ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF GENDER and FAMILY: POEMS, both by Joy Ladin are coming September 10th.

These two volumes span Joy’s reflections on gender, feminisms, family, race, disability, and divinity. Both feature artwork by David Orr on the cover. 🪶🌳

06/26/2024

Morning commute made better by a little reading.

AMERICAN ANALECTS by Gary Young, called “the work of a master craftsman” by Ellen Bass, is out in July. The wait is almost over!

05/31/2024

Alexandra Teague’s “The Horse That Threw Me” was named a runner up for ’s Poem of the Year! We’re excited for [ominous music intensifying], her forthcoming book of poems (with a cover that is nothing short of epic).

Congrats, .teague!

05/24/2024

One author, two genres. This September, Persea Books is glad to be publishing FAMILY, a book of poetry, and ONCE OUT OF NATURE, a book of essays, by the esteemed Joy Ladin. Preorder coming soon!

“Ladin gives us one of the most startlingly beautiful depictions of mid-life transfeminine transition currently written.” —Mitch Kellaway, Lambda Literary

Corresponding cover artwork by David Orr.

05/24/2024

One author, two genres. Persea Books is glad to be publishing FAMILY, a book of poetry, and ONCE OUT OF NATURE, a book of essays, by the esteemed Joy Ladin this September. Preorder coming soon.

“Ladin gives us one of the most startlingly beautiful depictions of mid-life transfeminine transition currently written."—Mitch Kellaway, Lambda Literary

Corresponding cover artwork by David Orr.

05/14/2024

🎶Something in the orange tells me we’re not done…🎶talking about BOUND by Jubi Arriola-Headley.

05/13/2024

Congratulations to Michelle Peñaloza, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award for her poetry collection All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems, which Persea will publish in 2025.

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon and Kundiman, Michelle has also received support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Loghaven, Willapa Bay AIR, Caldera, 4Culture, Artist Trust, PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists), Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. You can find her most recent work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California.

Congratulations to Michelle, as well as to Karin Gottshall, whose collection Eclipse Season is the contest runner-up!
•
•

05/12/2024

Happy Mother’s Day.

“Song for the Unborn Mother” by Stacie Cassarino. From EACH LUMINOUS THING (Persea Books, 2023).

04/30/2024

Sports 🤝 Poetry

Tune in to "Talking Title IX" to hear talk writing, amateur boxing, gender, and more with host Dr. Ellen Staurowsky.

Listen here: https://buff.ly/3xWI6bj

04/29/2024

Thank *you* for 4,000 followers on Instagram! And over 11,000 across our platforms. We love the independent and small publishing community!

04/24/2024

We're confident Rachel Galvin's desk is piled high with books she's reading (see answer #2!). Thank you, Rachel!

Q: In just one word, describe your this year.
A: One word for this year's NatPoMo:
Q: What poems have your attention right now?
A: I'm reading new books by Giancarlo Huapaya, Cecilia Vicuña, Jamila Medina Ríos, Faisal Mohyuddin, Don Mee Choi, Aaron Coleman's new translation of Nicolás Guillén, and Michael Cooperson's translation of Impostures.
Q: Name a poet, living or not, whose work you wish people talked about more.
A:
Living: Cecilia Vicuña
Dead: César Vallejo

Swipe to see Rachel at an event with the Irish consulate at the end of January, with Irish poet Julie Morrissy! She's reading from her book of poems, UTEROTOPIA.

04/23/2024

: "Ode to the Lone Star State" by Jubi Arriola-Headley shared by Major Jackson on The Slowdown! 🤩 🤩 🤩 This poem comes from BOUND, published just a few months ago.

Listen here: https://buff.ly/4d5Mrc6

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.

04/22/2024

Short and sweet responses from Sara Wainscott--and my cats are Spark (black) and Rio (fuzzy)--for our micro interviews!

Full text:

Q: In just one word, describe your this year.
A: Eclipsed
Q: What poems have your attention right now?
A: The Most Foreign Country by Alejandra Pizarnik trans. Yvette Siegert and So Tough by Jared Stanley
Q: Name a poet, living or not, whose work you wish people talked about more.
A: Jessica Johnson

Thank you, Sara, for the recs!

04/20/2024

Persea’s Jubia Arriola-Headley and Alexandra Teague poetry-ing gorgeously among the wine bottles as prt of tye in Columbia, Missouri
•
•

04/17/2024

A cup of joe and a brief poetry chat with Kimberly Grey (and her adorable pug) in celebration of National Poetry Month. Full text in the caption!

Q: In just one word, describe your this year.
A: I would describe this national poetry month as . While it is important every year, this has been a year of tumult and pain for the whole world. There is so much suffering and I hope people know they can turn to poetry, maybe not to relieve the suffering, but to know it or witness it.
Q: What poems have your attention right now?
A: Right now I am reading Julietta Singh's lyric essays "No Archive Will Destroy you" and Maggie Millner's amazing "Couplets."
Q: Name a poet, living or not, whose work you wish people talked about more.
A: I think the poet Chiyuma Elliott is beyond incredible and her work deserves much more attention. Check out AT MOST (Unicorn Press) and BLUE IN THE GREEN (The University of Chicago Press).

04/17/2024

"They [Tolchinsky's speakeres] skitter between bravado and shame, naivety and knowing—confident in their ability to hit and be hit, but always aware of the coaches, promotors, and spectators, men who define the rules of this underground world."

Raisa Tolchinsky's GLASS JAW reviewed in Pleiades Magazine. Gratitude to Katherine James for penning it!

04/11/2024

of the recites "To Find Stars in Another Language" by Elizabeth Bradfield. Go listen! 🎧

This poem was collected in her book ONCE REMOVED (2015); it was first published on The Rumpus as video a collaboration with Demet Taspinar in April, 2013.

04/10/2024

Soon!

04/03/2024

TONIGHT! Rsvp to attend.

03/23/2024

Swipe to read a small but mighty poem from GLASS JAW by coming out on 04/02.

03/13/2024

“Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer For Our First Home)” by Patrick Rosal is up on . 🩵🌦️ Of this poem, Pat shares, ”Mary Rose and I endured many decades trying to figure out where to live. Finally stable, our confusion was so deep[…]This poem proceeds from uncertainty, affirmation, supplication, promise, lament, a need to declare, ‘My beloved is my home, and I hers.’ Not to possess the water and the terrain, but to listen to it, fashioning a space together for song and work, for grieving, gathering, and rest”.

Read the full poem on at Poets.org.

03/09/2024

Tara Curtis on Cynthia Marie Hoffman and EXPLODING HEAD in the .

https://buff.ly/48P7FYe

03/09/2024

Thank you to (& cat!) for showing love to Jubi Arriola-Headley’s BOUND. 🧡

Address

90 Broad Street, Suite 2100
New York, NY
10004

Telephone

+12122609256

Website

http://www.perseabooks.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Persea Books posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Persea Books:

Videos

One week from today: come see us at the Brooklyn Book Festival. We'll be vending books and saying hi to friends all day at booth #211! #brooklynbookfestival #brooklynbookfest #bbf #bk #bkny #brooklynliterary #newyorkliterary #newyorklitscene #literaryevents #bookfest #bookfair #booksale

Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck have curated a trove of love poetry you won’t want to miss. WE CALL TO THE EYE & THE NIGHT: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage is available for preorder now, with a September release date. Purchase from our website and get a 40% discount with the code SUMMERLOVING at checkout. 💘 #preorder #preordersale #booksale #discountbooks #poetrycommunity #arabpoetry #arabheritage #lovepoems #writemorelove

BOOKTRAILER1

In honor of Shawn R Jones' debut, DATE OF BIRTH--officially published TODAY!--hear her read from the collection: "Dirty Little Secrets Are Just Another Set of Facts". With thanks to Shawn and the Persea interns for their work on this! #poem #poetry #poetryreading #newbook #firstbook #napomo #pubday

It's #NationalPoetryMonth and Persea's interns are thrilled to kick it off with a project featuring Shawn R. Jones, author of DATE OF BIRTH. This collection, winner of the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, comes out in less than two weeks. There's still time to pre-order: https://buff.ly/3GbLMqJ.

Here is Emily Van Kley’s vertical poem “Bodies” from her new collection ARRHYTHMIA. This aerial interpretation choreographed & performed by the poet herself will surely move you! ARRHYTHMIA is available from local and on-line booksellers everywhere!