"The beautiful strangeness of language and the sobering strangeness of life are braided into lyrical brilliance in Aldo Amparán’s second book. Here, what haunts the speaker and the language itself is so startling, so deftly stapled down, I often found myself spellbound. Here, queerness and borders are sites of refusals and consolations. These poems are undeniable and exquisite."
—Eduardo Corral, author of Guillotine
"Guggenheim fellow Moscaliuc presents lucid, lithe, and gripping poems about growing up in a Romania besieged by dictatorial tyrannies, intrusive and crushing....The need for secrecy, the valor of helping others, the malignancy of informers, and systemic corruption are all addressed with chilling matter-of-factness. Moscaliuc’s lyrical and sensuous palimpsest poems of her life in the U.S. evoke a world in sharp contrast even as the past is hauntingly present."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
The 2024 Alice James Award Editor’s Choice
"Martino’s debut collection lounges on Lake Michigan beaches, looks out on Milwaukee’s skyline, and provides readers with myriad ways to enjoy these poems. ... Scrap Book asks what we inherit from our parents, what lies behind a broken relationship, and the meaning of conviction and the handcuff 'chaining us to memory.'"
—Abby McCabe, Booklist Starred Review
Part of the Jean Valentine Series
"Swensen's insightfully idiosyncratic prose lyrics connect readers to their surroundings in new and surprising ways, reintroducing things and investing them with a prescient awareness and intelligence."
—Library Journal Starred Review
"Ina Cariño's Reverse Requiem addresses the ghosts of history, which through language and tender attention, Cariño exhumes and brings to aliveness with sumptuous naming. Working against silence and power and deeply imbued with liberatory politics, the poems are an ode to self, lineage, and love. This work is a triumph."
—Cathy Linh Che, author of Becoming Ghost, Split, and An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History
"The poet shows how we wear our loneliness with care, even a beautiful resilience, until the day a soft hand of curious innocence touches us, leading us to put away the things that have made themselves our fears about love. The light fills the empty, tattered sketched in Vollmer's latest work. These are poems that bring the global nature of who we are into a time when fantasies of pure being flood into our spaces. Inspired by Cesare Pavese, Vollmer reminds us of the complex beauty of our souls, how love takes root in every detail of who we are, despite the real dangers of war and conflict. This is quintessential work by one of our finest poets."
—Afaa M. Weaver, author of A Fire in the Hills
NEW RELEASES:
"The beautiful strangeness of language and the sobering strangeness of life are braided into lyrical brilliance in Aldo Amparán’s second book. Here, what haunts the speaker and the language itself is so startling, so deftly stapled down, I often found myself spellbound. Here, queerness and borders are sites of refusals and consolations. These poems are undeniable and exquisite."
—Eduardo Corral, author of Guillotine
"'Men instilled in me /an empty. I’ve grown up/ without a body // of my own.' The traumas and vital reclamations of 'Self-Portrait of the Stolen Body' come midway in Amparán’s visceral second collection and its poems full of hauntings, of trauma reflected from the opening loose crown of sonnets filled with closets and candlelit rooms and wounded and severed bodies. ... Amparán depicts the brutalities of the world unmitigated by art."
—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub
September 2026
ISBN: 9781967149001
Also Available via Bookshop.
"Martino’s debut collection lounges on Lake Michigan beaches, looks out on Milwaukee’s skyline, and provides readers with myriad ways to enjoy these poems. ... Scrap Book asks what we inherit from our parents, what lies behind a broken relationship, and the meaning of conviction and the handcuff 'chaining us to memory.'"
—Abby McCabe, Booklist Starred Review
"Nick Martino's formally inventive debut poetry collection draws on his mother's journals and 1980s Polaroids to capture a family dynamic overshadowed by divorce and incarceration."
—Rebecca Foster, Shelf Awareness Starred Review
June 2026
ISBN: 9781949944792
Also Available on Bookshop.
"Guggenheim fellow Moscaliuc presents lucid, lithe, and gripping poems about growing up in a Romania besieged by dictatorial tyrannies, intrusive and crushing....The need for secrecy, the valor of helping others, the malignancy of informers, and systemic corruption are all addressed with chilling matter-of-factness. Moscaliuc’s lyrical and sensuous palimpsest poems of her life in the U.S. evoke a world in sharp contrast even as the past is hauntingly present."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
August 2026
ISBN: 9781949944808
Also Available via Bookshop.
"Ina Cariño's Reverse Requiem addresses the ghosts of history, which through language and tender attention, Cariño exhumes and brings to aliveness with sumptuous naming. Working against silence and power and deeply imbued with liberatory politics, the poems are an ode to self, lineage, and love. This work is a triumph."
—Cathy Linh Che, author of Becoming Ghost, Split, and An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History
"In their second full-length collection, Whiting Award–winner Cariño bends time. Challenging the theory that entropy can only increase, these poems pull ancestors and ghosts known and hidden to the fore, evoking a shared timeline that bends in many directions ... A slim collection that feels much heftier than its page count, this is a luminous work."
—Sara Verstynen, ALA Booklist
April 2026
ISBN: 9781949944778
Also Available via Bookshop.
NEWS:
Featuring collections from new & returning Alice James authors Anna Maria Hong, Lia Purpura, Jacques J. Rancourt, and Jill McDonough
Featuring collections from new & returning Alice James authors S. Brook Corfman, Karan Kapoor, Ellen Doré Watson, & Shira Erlichman.
Congratulations to Anna Maria Hong, Winner of the 2026 Alice James Award for her manuscript, Dispellations.
Featuring collections from new & returning Alice James authors Matthew Olzmann, Donald Revell, J. Mae Barizio, Nicole Cooley, & Kevin Goodan.
Alice James Books will Publish Olatunde Osinaike’s next collection, Image + Likeness, in August of 2027.
Alice James Books will Publish Judith Vollmer’s next collection, The Pavese Stone, in March of 2026.
Congratulations to Malvika Jolly & zakia henderson-brown, winners of the 2025 Alice James Award and Editor’s Choice.
The author of two previous books of poetry, Mörling will publish her third collection, Lumina Station, with Alice James Books in November 2026.
Alice James Books is elated to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $45,000.
No Ruined Stone author Shara McCallum’s Behold is forthcoming in September 2026 from AJB. Welcome home, Shara!
Father Dirt author Mihaela Moscaliuc’s Heartmoor is forthcoming in August 2026 from AJB. Welcome home, Mihaela!
Brother Sleep author Aldo Amparán’s second poetry collection The House Has Teeth is forthcoming in September 2026 from AJB. Welcome home, Aldo!
Kelly Grace Thomas’s poetry collection Future Tense is forthcoming in October 2026. Welcome, Kelly!
Established to provide a unique opportunity to women writers, the Jean Valentine Series will publish books authored by mid-career, women-identifying poets. Selected poets will receive a cash prize and publication by Alice James Books.
Alice James Books is elated to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $45,000.
Alice James Books is thrilled to announce new titles forthcoming from Andrés Cerpa & Ina Cariño!
Iain Haley Pollock’s poetry collection All the Possible Bodies is forthcoming in September 2025. Welcome home, Iain!
Alice James Books is thrilled to announce new titles forthcoming from Leigh Sugar, Michael M. Weinstein, & Cecily Parks!
Alice James Books is thrilled to announce new titles forthcoming from Joan Larkin, Alicia Ostriker, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, and Ally Ang!
Duy’s poetry collection Zombie Vomit Mad Libs is forthcoming in November 2024. Big welcome, Duy!
Alice James Books will publish Alessandra Lynch’s 5th poetry collection, Wish Ave, in October 2024. Welcome back, Alessandra!
Alice James Books will publish Matthew Nienow’s poetry collection, If Nothing, in January 2025. Welcome back, Matthew!
Ayokunle’s poetry collection Autobiomythography of is forthcoming in September 2024. Big welcome, Ayo!
Alice James Books is a recipient of a Poetry Fund grant from the Amazon Literary Partnership and Academy of American Poets.
WHAT OUR POETS SAY:
Cole Swensen
Part of the Jean Valentine Series
"Swensen's insightfully idiosyncratic prose lyrics connect readers to their surroundings in new and surprising ways, reintroducing things and investing them with a prescient awareness and intelligence."
—Library Journal Starred Review
May 2026
ISBN: 9781949944785
Also Available via Bookshop.