HENRY HART ’76
Seamus Heaney’s Gifts
LSU Press
Irish poet Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, maintained that poetry mysteriously came to him like a gift of grace. This warm and affectionate portrayal, by an English professor at William & Mary who knew the poet quite well, probes Heaney’s preoccupation with gifts and the exchange of gifts and his belief that anyone born with a gift such as his for poetry was ethically bound to share it with others. Hart traces Heaney’s commitment to sharing his poetry as a public art to the gift the poet’s parents gave him as he left home for boarding school at age 12—which inspired his renowned poem “On the Gift of a Fountain Pen.”
JONATHAN P. EBURNE ’93
Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry
University of Minnesota Press
The author, a professor of comparative literature, English, and French at Penn State, delves into the contradictory frictions and messiness of scholarly inquiry and how the tools of creative critical thinking work. He invites readers to think in bold new ways by scaling things up—things as diverse as insect microhabitats, failed writing experiments, time, and memory systems— into exploded mashups that reveal their riot of possibilities. “What a weird and welcome journey,” says one reviewer.
BRAD PARKS ’96
The Boundaries We Cross
Oceanview Publishing
In this suspenseful novel packed with plot twists, Charles Bliss, a married teacher at an elite Connecticut boarding school, is accused of philandering with a student who happens to be the daughter of a high-powered state senator. The student has filled her journal with incriminating fantasies and yearning for Mr. B. and confided to her mother that they had an inappropriate encounter. When she then mysteriously disappears, his only hope to clear his name is to find her.
LINDSAY MACMILLAN ’16
Summer on Lilac Island
Harper Muse
After the gig economy in Los Angeles leaves Gigi Jenkins destitute, the rebellious young woman returns to her horse-and-buggy Mackinac Island hometown in Michigan to spend the summer with her mother, only for them to play matchmaker for one another, drive each other nuts, and overcome years of misunderstandings. Filled with vivid characters, this evocative tale of second chances makes for an entertaining summer read.
These books were not included in our print edition.
JAMES P. LENFESTEY ’66
The Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements
Milkweed Editions
Inspired in part by Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, poet Lenfestey, a former professor and journalist, fearlessly celebrates his 80-year-old body parts, lazy royal namesake, and more—from Bruce Springsteen and Robert Frost to ice skaters, fruit flies, and the letter “n”—in his joyful eighth collection.
DOUGLAS MARTIN ’72
American Reporter
Self-published
Following his four-decade career with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the journalist digs into personal memories of his family and childhood growing up in a small town in Iowa, his insatiable curiosity, and his later work writing storied newspaper obituaries in this memoir.
MARISOL NEGRÓN ’93
Made in NuYoRico: Fania Records, Latin Music, and Salsa’s Nuyorican Meanings
Duke University Press
Negrón tells the cultural history of salsa, beginning with how Fania Records capitalized on salsa’s Nuyorican imagery in the 1960s to cultivate a global audience. She draws on interviews with fans, legendary musicians, and music industry figures as well as analyses of songs, albums, and films to show how salsa’s Nuyorican aesthetics challenged mainstream notions of Americanness and Puerto Ricanness and produced an alternative public sphere through which New York’s poor and working-class Puerto Ricans could confront racialization and colonial power.
SHARANG BISWAS ’12, Th’13
The Iron Below Remembers
Neon Hemlock Press
This captivating queer love story follows archeologist professor Laxman Yadav and his superhero boyfriend Saviour. Crafting an intricate alternate reality where South Asian imperial interest has colonized much of the world, Biswas interweaves comic book tropes, academia, politics, and sex in this genre-blending novella.
