This week features new book releases from two past Identity Theory nonfiction contributors: Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Amy Leach. It's also the publication date of Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project book as well as the debut novel from Apogee editor Mina Seckin and a collection of stories inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Captioning the Archives by Lester Sloan and Aisha Sabatini Sloan
"In this father-daughter collaboration, Lester opened his archive of street photography, portraits, and news photos, and Aisha interviewed him, creating rich, probing, dialogue-based captions for more than one hundred photographs. Lester’s images encompass celebrity portraits, key news events like Pope John Paul’s visit to Mexico, Black cultural life in Europe, and, with astonishing emotion, the everyday lives of Black folk in Los Angeles and Detroit." -McSweeney's Press
The Everybody Ensemble by Amy Leach
"Amy Leach, the celebrated author of the transcendent Things That Are, invites you into The Everybody Ensemble, an effervescent tonic of a book. These short, wildly inventive essays are filled with praise songs, poetry, ingenious critique, soul-lifting philosophy, music theory, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature. Here, you will meet platypuses, Tycho Brahe and his moose, barnacle goslings, medieval mystics, photosynthetic bacteria, and a wholly fresh representation of the biblical Job." -Macmillan Publishers
1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
"The 1619 Project speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste that still define so much of American life today. It reveals the hidden truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life." -1619 Books
Four Humors by Mina Seckin
"This wry and visceral debut novel follows a young Turkish-American woman who, rather than grieving her father's untimely death, seeks treatment for a stubborn headache and grows obsessed with a centuries-old theory of medicine." -Catapult
Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin edited by Susan DeFreitas*
"Named for the anarchist utopia in Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction classic The Dispossessed, Dispatches from Anarres embodies the anarchic spirit of Le Guin's hometown of Portland, Oregon, while paying tribute to her enduring vision. In stories that range from fantasy to sci fi to realism, some of Portland's most vital voices have come together to celebrate Le Guin's lasting legacy and influence on that most subversive of human faculties: the imagination." -Forest Avenue Press
*The official publication date of this book varies across sources, but its editor announced it on Twitter as being published today, so I'm going with that.
Subscribe to our free newsletter to get weekly updates on new books.