HOW YOUR GIFT HELPS
Alice James is a not-for-profit organization that publishes books that matter by authors who have important stories to tell and is dedicated to collaborating with writers to foster their artistic growth and engagement with the public. Many books by Alice James authors drive conversations about important social issues we’re facing right now, bringing individuals across the nation into closer conversation with one another via literary art.
The press is unique in its collaborative approach with artists. We work closely together during all phases of a book’s life to produce a collection that not only tells a powerful story but that resonate aesthetically with readers nationwide.
Your gift sustains our work, supporting established and emerging writers who might otherwise go unheard in telling their stories, connecting with their audiences, and ultimately building and growing a more understanding, equitable, and just community through literature.
DONOR BENEFITS
We extend our deepest gratitude to all of our donors. Thank you for your ongoing support and friendship.
SUBSCRIBE + 100
The easiest way to support Alice James Books is through an annual subscription plus a $100 donation, which includes the benefits listed below for donations at the $200 level. With an annual subscription cost of $85 for 8 AJB books, subscribers SAVE up to 35% off the cover price and receive automatic shipping of books as they are published. 8 books of poetry a year + your donation = Subscribe + 100. Renewable annually.
FRIENDS OF ALICE JAMES BOOKS
$200–499
Donors at this level receive a special invitation for two to all Alice James book launches, where patrons can meet AJB poets and other poetry lovers. They will also receive a promotional code for a free e-book of their choice.
SUSTAINING DONORS
**Benefits include those listed above, plus:
$500-999
Donors at this level receive a signed AJB book which they may choose to gift.
MAJOR DONORS
**Benefits include those listed above, plus:
$1,000–4999
Donors at this level receive a season’s worth of books which they may choose to gift and an invitation for two for any special press events for supporters, poets, and friends of AJB.
$5,000–9999
Donors at this level receive a choice of seven books published by the press which they may choose to gift and an invitation for two for any special press events for supporters, poets, and friends of AJB.
$10,000+
Donors at this level receive a year of AJB books which they may choose to gift and an invitation for two for any special press events for supporters, poets, and friends of AJB.
VOLUNTEER
Click here to learn more about internship opportunities at AJB.
Alice James Books is about putting the best contemporary poetry in the hands of avid readers in communities nationwide, and volunteers are often at the very heart of our aims, especially when they support and participate in various press activities like those listed below. If you are interested in volunteering please e-mail us or call the office at 207-926-8283.
Event Volunteers
The press holds many events throughout the year, and benefits greatly by venue donations and the presence of volunteers eager to donate their time and efforts to make a difference. AJB also holds manuscript screenings virtually during the fall months. Volunteers are always desired to participate in the important process of screening as a reader.
Volunteering Professional Services
Chances are, you have certain talents that we just don’t, so why not put those to good use? In-kind contributions enhance your professional scope, while affording the press greater opportunities to focus on its mission and vision. Expertise in areas like fundraising, marketing and publicity, computer technology, and many others are all very welcome. Contact the press to discuss how you can contribute to making books that matter with your super skills.
WISH LIST
We always welcome in-kind donations! See our wish list of items we commonly need around the office below.
AJB’s Wish List:
• Software
• Event coordination and/or sponsorships
• Apple devices: Computers and handhelds
• Furniture: desks, tables, chairs
• Equipment: printers, recording, photography
• Supplies: 8 ½ x 11 & 11 x 17 reams of printing paper
• Office cleaning service
• Audio and/or video production services
• Professional development & training for staff and board
FEATURED TITLES
Katie Marya
The 2020 Alice James Award Editor’s Choice
Longlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award
Featured in Poets & Writers Magazine's “Page One”
Recommended by The New York Times
“Marya's debut lands in the gorgeous, messy place where the sacred and profane overlap. Sugar Work has a compelling narrative bent and generous eyes, stunning in its southern reality and recognition of suffering and work. Marya is a psychologically astute poet, a bright new talent in touch with her own humanity and that of others—allowing strippers dignity on stage, and looking upon addicts and her own young self with nuance and compassion.”
—Megan Mayhew Bergman
June 2022
ISBN: 9781948579261
Sumita Chakraborty
Winner of the 2022 GLCA New Writers Award
A finalist in the 2020 Foreword INDIES Awards
A finalist in the 2020 Julie Suk Award
"Chakraborty writes poems that are full of life and joy even when she is thinking through violence and grief, but in their sweep, they defy easy notions of aboutness."
—Elisa Gabbert for The New York Times
A Bookmarks Most-Anticipated Poetry Collection for Fall/Winter 2020
September 2020
ISBN: 9781948579117
Jean Valentine
Recommended by Publishers Weekly,LitHub, and Library Journal
"A new retrospective of her work, Light Me Down, out this week from Maine-based press Alice James Books, showcases Valentine’s ability to charge between the dreamy and unalloyed precision. ... These are poems of snow, of the quiet, profound transformation, of moments of altering nothingness in the night. Valentine, who died in 2020, does with language what poetry is meant to do with language, which is to go beyond it."
—Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
April 2024
ISBN: 9781949944594
Kelly Grace Thomas
"Future Tense is a thoughtful, beautiful meditation on the slow, aching, and sometimes miraculous state of intertwined grief—in a manner that is not only about sadness, but also, through its rich imagery and world-building, asks a reader to consider what they love, what they have, perhaps, taken for granted, and how to adjust the arc of their own universe."
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
"Future Tense is memoir-in-verse gifting us ample permutations of longing. Kelly Grace Thomas charts the overlap (both temporal and metaphorical) of her mother’s death and trying for a child. True to the title, tension lights up this collection. In eclectic structures, whether careful tercets or sprawling fragments, Thomas ricochets between loss and desire until they blend. When it comes to the myriad expectations and stigmas placed on the infertile body, Thomas is willing to lay so much bare for us, unflinchingly charting desperation and the cost of wanting."
—Shira Erlichman, author of Odes to Lithium
October 2026
ISBN: 9781967149049
Also available on Bookshop.
Shara McCallum
"Shara McCallum’s Behold is the kind of book that first stunned me into the abiding love I have for language. At once mystical, political, and lyrical, these poems redraw the boundaries of what we might consider the limits of human insight. Poems like these remind us that, if there is ever to be a fully realized awakening in terms of our relationship to history, we need poetry."
—Tim Seibles, author of Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems
“This skillful collection uncovers the intersection of art’s public and private dimensions.”
—Publishers Weekly
"[Behold] is a praise hymn to close attention, soulful contemplation, and, for the reader, a curated voyage of discovery."
—The Scotsman
September 2026
ISBN: 9781967149025
Also available on Bookshop.
Malena Mörling
“Malena Mörling has the gift of looking at ordinary things with such wonder it can feel like visionary hunger."
—Robert Hass
November 2026
ISBN: 9781967149063
Also available on Bookshop.
zakia henderson-brown
The 2025 Alice James Award Editor’s Choice
“zakia henderson-brown delivers a gorgeous debut, richly layered and refreshingly diverse in form and tone. These are poems to savor, to soak in, to wonder alongside. Lyrically poignant, sharply chiseled, and deeply felt; this collection is an incredible journey through cultural and familial histories and spaces, through grief and love and survival, through witness and reparation and remembrance.”
—Morgan Parker
January 2027
ISBN: 9781967149995
Also Available on Bookshop.
DeeSoul Carson
Finalist for the 2025 Alice James Award
Finalist for the 2025 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize
“A work that pulses with grief, musicality, Black spirituality, and the tension between rage and resilience. Through powerful meditation on lineage, the body, spoken work, and spiritual contradiction, Carson crafts a book that does not shy away from the absurdities of daily survival in a world that demands Black people should shoulder grief without pause.”
—Tupelo Quarterly
“The poems of The Laughing Barrel testify and tease, weep and wink, dance on the edge of despair. DeeSoul Carson’s far-out forms reshape our everyday. Tony! Toni! Toné!, magnolia trees, and Granny watching Jeopardy! combat spam texts, spam ads, and spam speech. Every line possesses the kind of levity shared by laughter and prayer. Every poem is an invigorating invocation sent up and over to us. This is a remarkable debut by a truly original new poet.”
—Terrance Hayes
April 2027
ISBN: 9781967149155
Olatunde Osinaike
"Osinaike's sophomore poetry collection is loyal to the Westside of Chicago and to place as a poetic subject. The book insists readers leave and return—to journey a web of cross-modal Black artistry into which this book is woven. Osinaike, a poet committed to exactitude, casts his critical attention onto the dual states of seeing and being seen. Beyond its abstractions and atop its steady, quiet music, his poems explore love and creation through traditional received forms, and in forms this ambitious poet has forged himself."
—Maya Marshall, author of All the Blood Involved in Love
August 2027
ISBN: 9781967149162
Rosebud Ben-Oni
"Rosebud Ben-Oni makes quantum leaps in this second volume of her Discovery trilogy, galloping with Icelandic horses across post-apocalyptic realms of shimmering verse and the Multiverse. These poems show us how infinity resides within the bl∞dy hooves that mark the snow and in the trailing arc of fallen stars. Here is a surrealist poetry of proton and wishbone, of northern lights and stained glass shards, of blood and bloodline, and of dazzling, extraterrestrial possibilities."
—Deborah Paredez, author of Year of the Dog
June 2027
ISBN: 9781967149964
Jeffrey Thomson
"These rich, layered poems present us the world, and then surprise us with a world beyond that world. A simple journey by ferry to a dockside restaurant mirrors the journey of Orpheus; a runner in the 2013 Boston Marathon shadows his earliest Greek counterpart; the poet’s self-portrait reveals Charles Mingus playing the Sesame Street theme. Musical, sensual, deeply invested in the natural world, Rediscovered Beauty Room is a beauty for any reader to discover."
—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs
May 2027
ISBN: 9781967149971
Matthew Olzmann
"Being human is the bleakest, saddest, most incomprehensibly infuriating endeavor I have ever participated in. And yet. So much laughter. So many delicious things to eat. So many friends who make life worth living. Why is Matthew Olzmann one of the only poets I know who actually allows all of this to be true. Everyone talks about Matthew Olzmann as one of our funniest poets. Higher praise to me is that he is our true Bard of Oblivion. And that honesty. That ethics and care to not insist that it gets better becomes the most revelatory thing: honesty, which becomes a gateway to hilarity, which becomes the physical manifestation of laughter and crying and marveling and telling one's friends about it. At the end of the world may I have poetry and friendship and love like Matthew Olzmann. This book should be seen as part of an oeuvre of unrelenting fury and grace. Let that be the end of the world I am part of. Olzmann is unmatched and welcomes every one of us."
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of The New Economy
September 2027
ISBN: 9781949944006
J. Mae Barizo
Part of the Jean Valentine Series
"The magisterial journey of desire and grief in J. Mae Barizo’s Cloud Pantoums is stunningly laden with a scenographic music never since heard before. Such is the pitch of Barizo’s questing intellect that once again we are born aloft with the knowing that suffering and love instigate waves of a lyric exploration and human depth that often leave us breathless. I have such a profound regard for the deep intimacy that is Barizo's art. My heart yields to the sensuous thinking in these poems."
—Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man
October 2027
ISBN: 9781949944839
Nicole Cooley
"Nicole Cooley is my soul sister in poetry - both of us obsessed by trash, where it came from, where it takes us, where the thoughts go when contemplating it. Her lovingly precise and brilliant poems exalt the topic to giant realities confronting us all. With full truthful heart, she wanders the streets, improving them. I want to follow her."
—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Grace Notes: Poems about Families
November 2027
ISBN: 9781949944846
Kevin Goodan
"This is a book of gnawing; a poetry collection memory-quickened and harvest ready. And of the language; the words pour the reader into place, setting, being. Surrounded fully by sound and sight, one is submersed into these captured moments. A beautiful read."
—J.F. Merifield, author of only half-breathed air
January 2028
ISBN: 9781967149179
Franny Choi
A Book Riot Top Queer Poetry Collections to Read During National Poetry Month
Paris Review Staff Pick
A Book Riot Must-Read Poetry Collection
Recommended by Buzzfeed News
A Rumpus Book Club Pick
One of Nylon’s Best Books to Read in 2019
One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2019
". . . Choi creates an exhilarating matrix of poetry, science, and technology."
—Publishers Weekly
April 2019
ISBN: 9781938584992