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|  | This is the season to read Ruth Awad's Outside the Joy, out now from Third Man Books |
| Outside the Joy by Ruth Awad |
|  | Ruth Awad’s full poem “Reasons to Live” is also available in The Atlantic |
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| “Because if you can survive
the violet night, you can survive
the next, and the fig tree will ache
with sweetness for you in sunlight that arrives
first at your window, quietly pawing
even when you can’t stand it.”
—“Reasons to Live” by Ruth Awad, part of her collection Outside the Joy, edited by Chet Wiese at Third Man Books |
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| Since I last wrote to you, Ruth Awad received a starred review in Publishers Weekly for her book Outside the Joy.
"These poems mourn with ferocity and clarity, animals and objects rearing up like a ‘weep of wolves,/ a drought of bullets, the claws of a catalpa, a mother’s unworry,/ a wilderness of blood.’ It is the hurt—and Awad’s bravery in facing it—that lends these poems their remarkable power and vividness.”
Ruth’s launch at Two Dollar Radio included a raffle with rare records from Third Man; Maggie Smith reading this line from Goldenrod: “Let us talk more about how dark the beginning of a day is”; and new work from Will Evans. And it was beautiful to hear Ruth read the Sarah poems out loud (with Sarah in the audience, no less!), and to hear Ruth introduce another one of her poems with, “I’ve never read this poem out loud before, and maybe I won’t ever again.”
If you’re in Columbus, you can hear Ruth read at Northern Lights library on April 22 with Sara Abou Rashed and Mandy Shunnarah. If someone you know is having a hard time right now and you want to reach out, this is the right book to share with them. |
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| Congratulations to Ellen O’Connell Whittet! |
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| Ellen O’Connell Whittet just sold her first novel!
Ellen’s book What We Become in Flight was one of my first projects at Jonquil Editorial, and I’m so proud to work with her again on this beautiful debut. No other writer has covered IVF and childbirth so fearlessly as she does here—it’s intimate and eye-opening and as expertly written and imagined, just as you’d expect.
Negotiated by Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord, the finished book has sold to Dzanc for publication in Fall 2026, and will be edited by Chelsea Gibbons. |
| Jonquil Editorial books coming in 2025 |
|  | Cover design by Young Lim |
| Elena Sheppard’s memoir is coming from St. Martin’s Press in September 2025, and it’s available for preorder. In her newsletter, she writes, “The women in the top upper left hand corner of the cover are my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother; the map in the bottom right is the area in Cuba where my family is from. Seeing this is absolutely wild, I won’t lie. There is my family. . . . It’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written, the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. I’m proud of it and a little terrified for it to make its debut into the world. But I absolutely cannot wait for you to read it.”
And in Emma Straub’s words: “This poetic memoir weaves together Cuban history and family history into a tapestry that is both rich and threadbare.” Elena’s editor at St. Martin’s Press is Sarah Cantin. Elena herself does some freelance editing, too, in case you’re in need of some expertise. |
|  | Cover design by Beste M. Doğan |
| Punctuating more than twenty years working for the Advocacy of the Coalition for the Homeless, Patrick Markee is publishing Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age this year. It’s a broad, heartfelt look at the direct relationships between policy changes, hostile architecture, and the people of New York, structured around the city’s famous landmarks. It’s also a testament to the power of going into spaces that are supposed to care for our most vulnerable and witnessing what needs to change. The book was acquired by Carl Bromley, then edited by Mike Lindgren. It’s a lead title for Melville House, coming December 2025. |
| Keep an eye out for these titles, too |
|  | Rosie Schaap’s The Slow Road North was released by Mariner Books this week, and she is a guiding compass in my reading life, so I’m tracking the book down as soon as I can. In a conversation with Robert Lee Brewer for Writers Digest, she says she wrote the book because “I had a powerful, long-lingering sense that I’d somehow ‘failed’ at grieving by trying to postpone or ignore it. . . . The better I got to know Glenarm and the people who live here, I knew that the village itself had poignant stories to tell of its own loss, grief, and resilience—and that these stories would inform and deepen my own.” Her book was acquired by Susan Canavan, then edited by Pilar Garcia-Brown, and finally landed in the hands of editor Emma Effinger.
It’s been five years since lockdown, and How To Be Disabled in A Pandemic is just out from NYU Press, edited by Mara Mills, Harris Kornstein, Faye Ginsburg, and Rayna Rapp, it calls “for just policies and caring infrastructures, not only in times of crisis but for the long haul.” Alice Wong mentioned in her newsletter that any disabled person in the US is eligible to receive a paperback, and you do not need to disclose any details about your disability to do so. (It’s worth noting that March 12, was the 35th anniversary of the Capitol Crawl.)
Many of my favorite writers have left Substack, including Maris Kreizman, who mentioned that she is moving to Ghost for The Maris Review. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably already know Maris’s work as an editor, writer, and interviewer. She’s written extensively about the invisible labor that goes into books, and has suggested ways the publishing industry could remedy it. Her book I Want To Burn This Place Down will be out from Ecco this July, edited by Deborah Ghim. Maris recently wrote a piece about self promotion for LitHub that includes this clever publicity advice: “The biggest pros I’ve encountered have four or five stories that they can trot out for any occasion when they’re talking about the book.”
Casey Johnston was the first writer I knew who used Ghost, and if anyone knows what’s up, it’s Casey. I don’t lift (yet? sorry!) but she has so much good material related to not shrinking yourself down and instead gaining the muscle to lift cat litter up your apartment stairs, then the confidence to go for the barbell at the gym. You’ll recognize her voice from her column Ask A Swole Woman, her book Liftoff, her work for Ars Technica and Wirecutter, and her newsletter She’s A Beast. A Physical Education is out in May from Grand Central Publishing, edited by Karyn Marcus. Who can resist a book about power lifting with a blurb from Lidia Yuknavitch? |
| Kids’ Poetry Studio in Odesa, Ukraine |
|  | The third anniversary of the war in Ukraine arrived at the end of February, and as part of The Odesa International Literary Festival, the date was marked by a reading in Kraków by Ukrainian authors Yuri Andrukhovych, Andrey Kurkov, and Francesca Melandri, who shared texts by poets killed in the war, including Volodymyr Vakulenko, Maksym Kryvtsov, and Victoria Amelina. Aside from reading these words out loud (with Polish translation), this event was a benefit for Kids’ Poetry Studio.
Jonquil client Ilya Kaminsky writes, "When I visit Ukraine, I am struck by one thing that Western media never mentions. Those who work in STEM were able to flee more easily because they could find jobs abroad. So the war primarily affects those who work in the humanities— school teachers, those who work in bookstores, journalists, poets, museum workers – they are the ones getting bombed. The culture of this country is being bombed.
"So with Maya [Dimerli] and Oleg [Suslav] we have started the Poetry Studio. Our program is constantly evolving. There is now an annual kid’s poetry festival, and also the Almanac publication that Maya has mentioned. Oleg has a great idea of featuring kid’s poetry and creativity in the city-wide newspaper as well—to give people hope. I have also started a translation program for kids, inviting our poets to be in conversation with 20th century giants from other cultures. The war shoves its ugly foot into people’s lives in this city, but the exuberance of life wants to continue—and Poetry Studio is one way we make sure it does."
You can read poems by the students at poemsnotbombs.org, and support the organization through Paypal (eveningodesa@gmail.com). |
| Congratulations to Jonquil clients and friends |
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|  | Rescuing Q: Quandaries and Queries by Suzanne Moore |
| The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center just catalogued its 60,000th book, Rescuing Q by Suzanne Moore. “We celebrate the careful librarianship of many who have worked at the Poetry Center and helped bring us to this point, including current library staff Sarah Kortemeier, Julie Swarstad Johnson and Aria Pahari,” said Tyler Meier, Executive Director of the Poetry Center. In the fall, Tyler himself received the 2024 Friend of the Humanities Award for his eleven years of work at the Poetry Center.
Jonquil client Jason Beer received a 2025 Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant, and I can’t wait to hear what he writes after his trip. Read more in his newsletter.
Brian Michael Murphy, author of We the Dead, won the Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society for Cinema & Media Studies!
The NEA was smart enough to select Richie Hofmann for a fellowship this year.
I don’t know her personally, but Claire Zulkey asked her subscribers to raise $500 for the Trevor Project, and they raised $5,000 instead. |
| Small business shout-outs |
|  | Doris Bozzi spoke with me about Local Millers, a business she and her family started when they couldn’t access local flour during the pandemic. She’s doing so many things right, from partnering with Brandt Farms and its grain hub to paying attention to sustainable farming practices, to helping chefs and small business owners carry the flour her family mills. I could have written five times the length here (if you’re editing a food magazine and want to talk about milling, hit me up). Happy to work with Linda Baird and Katy Smith on this piece for Columbus Monthly. |
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