The Small Press Titles You Don’t Want To Miss This Summer

Small presses have long been the home of the debut short story collection. I absolutely love short stories, and even I sometimes am overwhelmed by the number of debut story collections.. Yet, the three debuts on this list, Now I’m Photogenic, Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think, Debris, stand out and bring bring originality, voice, and leverage the genre to tell powerfully compressed narratives and point to why small presses are such an important home for collections.

And while not debuts, The Grief Shop (linked stories) paired with Purgatoire (a novel-in-stories) further showcase how stories are a versatile structure with the ability to offer both narrative satisfaction and surprise.

While the plots may range, the books on this list all have deep characterization at their center. Across drownings (at least two, plus some river spirits), COVID-style plagues (three, in addition to an undiagnosed illness), living in a squat house (on two different continents), and embezzlement (from adolescents to adults), it is truly the people at the heart of these books that make this season’s titles sing.

Hub City Press: The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann

In 1985, novelist Nancy Lemann returned to her hometown of New Orleans on assignment from Vanity Fair to cover the corruption trials for racketeering, fraud, and bribery of Governor Edwin Edwards. Rather than a straightforward courtroom report, what emerges is the convergence of a story about corrupt politicians, and a story about what it means to go home, framed by Big Easy elements like gulf oysters and humidity. Originally published by Knopf in 1987 and infused with wistfulness for a glitzier time, this reissued edition surfaces another type of nostalgia: One for those who remember the heyday of glossy magazines and glamourous editors. Ultimately, The Ritz of the Bayou is a time capsule, but it is a beautiful one.

Modern Artist Press: Chitra Demands to Go Home by Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay

After being widowed and suffering a stroke at age 75, Chitra’s children send her to Tranquil Town, a skilled nursing facility in Ohio. Chitra does not understand why neither of her sons will open their homes to her; after all, she spent her life caring for them. She longs to return to Kolkata, where the family owns a large home, occupying her days with fantasies of escaping Tranquil Town to return to India. In Chitra Demands to Go Home, Mukhopadhyay gives voice to the familiar and frustrating dynamics of familial expectations, and the challenges of managing aging parents along with both raising children and taking care of ourselves. A thoughtful and relatable novel.

Forest Avenue Press: Purgatoire by Liz Prato

This novel-in-stories tracks Italian immigrants who made their home along the banks of the Purgatoire river. While fiction, the stories feel historically accurate to turn-of-the-20th Century rural America: A woman is meant to join her husband in southern Colorado, but when she arrives from Italy, he is gone; families are destroyed by booze, secrets, and hard living; a mother will not give up on her dream of reuniting with her children. Prato writes with attention to the specific landscape and to the inner lives of her characters, creating a beautifully nuanced world for this multi-generational story.

New Vessel Press: My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden

A young, unnamed narrator is afflicted by a neurological condition that remains undiagnosed but still impacts her body and speech. Living with her traditional Muslim family in the Azerbaijani diaspora somewhere in secular Russia, she is also trapped between nations: She is not Russian enough for her classmates, and not Azeri enough for her grandparents. The novel centers on the narrator’s body, eyebrows, hands, tongue, and tells both the medical and cultural significance of each. And, because her body is not operating the way it is supposed to, she has failed at the most important task for women in patriarchy: becoming a bride. Meticulously detailed and deeply reflective, My Dreadful Body is both an accomplishment of form and narrative.

Tin House: Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller

Ursula is 16 and living in a group home under the supervision of a social worker. When she gets a job at a nearby art school, her eyes are opened to a world that is very different from her own. The experience is extremely formative, and decades later, readers see Ursula as a renowned but reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym. When a television journalist starts reaching into the past, Ursula is faced with a reckoning. Her old life, which holds the terrible secret of a deadly crime, has long haunted her, and now it might catch up with her, too. A dark, satisfying thriller.

Heydey: The Last Human Bear by Greg Sarris

Mary is an indigenous Pomo woman, living in 1930s Northern California. She shares a home with her stepmother, and they support themselves by selling herbs and working in agricultural production, picking fruit like strawberries and apples. There is mystery around her family that includes a hint of scandal, and Mary is determined to make her own way, no matter what other people think or say about her. Her stepmother, as part of family tradition, has taught Mary how to become a Human Bear, a menacing shapeshifter who poisons her enemies, and Mary uses this power when she needs to. In The Last Human Bear, Sarris sets a lyrical story of a tenacious indigenous woman against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America to great effect.

Unnamed Press: Daytime Moon by Kerri Schlottman

When Isa’s brother shows up on the doorstep of her boyfriend’s sleek New York City apartment, the barrier she’s put up between herself and her past is punctured. She came to the city to try and escape the grief of having lost both her mother and her twin sister. Now, the man who raised her is dying, and she is suddenly on a plane back to Southern California. Isa has always had a sixth sense, but in her hometown, her visions are clouded, even after she and her brother begin to uncover family secrets. Daytime Moon is a moving and heartfelt exploration of the bonds between siblings, the power of both chosen family and blood family, and the ties of trauma.

Regal House: When We Were Feral by Shasta Grant

In the wake of an accidental drowning and in the heady time of late adolescence, Sarah, Erin, and Maggie form a tight friendship, despite their different family structures. Maggie’s mother has left their trailer house, leaving Maggie with an absent father and a stoic brother; Erin, the sister of the drowned girl, has a mother whose disappearance is being investigated by authorities and is trying to make her way while her father checks out; and Sarah’s mom, the wife of a pastor, is almost always available to drive the three around or host dinner, but Sarah’s life is not perfect either. They must navigate their own relationships to parents, to one another, and to themselves, all while existing in the liminal space between girl- and womanhood. This is a novel that speaks to both the power and vulnerability of young women, female friendship, and growing up against a backdrop of loss. A riveting read.

Tin House: Paradise Pawn by Meg Richardson

Jackie and Kayla are 14-year-old best friends and coworkers at Paradise Pawn, the hock shop where both of their fathers work. It’s another sticky Florida summer, and they are both excited to start high school at a private academy. The girls see first-hand how money impacts life: Some people pawn everything from power tools to CDs trying to make rent, while others buy the shop’s expensive watches and diamond rings for themselves or as gifts. When Kayla’s scholarship falls through and Jackie is faced with a school year alone at a new school, she hatches a money-laundering scheme to raise the tuition. Packed with spot-on observations about best-friendship, Paradise Pawn deftly hits on the feeling of late adolescence, bad decision making and all. An absolute delight.

Seven Stories: The Grief Shop by Alex DiFrancesco

In the wake of a global tragedy, Gemma is attempting to cope with the numb fallout, just like everyone else. She dyes her hair regularly, just for something to do; she hangs out with her generationally rich friend Xander, who struggles to care about anything other than money; she narrowly escapes death after a woman from her past returns; and she takes a series of jobs she would rather not: at a café, a boxing gym, a funeral home. The Grief Shop is linked stories engendering the best of this genre. Each one works as a standalone, but as a collection it achieves the type of character depth offered by a novel. DiFrancesco captures the ennui of late stage capitalism and the post-covid world perfectly in this compulsively readable book.

SFWP: The Wedding by Vandana Nair

In her hometown for the extravagant wedding of her cousin, Dr. Ahilya Kapoor is thrust back into familial and cultural expectations. Despite her accomplished career as an epidemiologist, her parents would like nothing more than for her to settle down. Ahilya, on the other hand, is contemplating a huge career move. Still, she’s drawn to a wedding guest who is a London-based, India-born cardiologist. While Ahilya would never give up her own work, she does begin to entertain the idea that falling in love wouldn’t be so bad. However, when a mysterious illness begins to ripple through the wedding party, Ahilya’s medical training kicks into high gear, and her priorities become clear. The Wedding is a smart take on both the tension between families and women’s professional lives.

Black Lawrence Press: Now I’m Photogenic and Other Stories I Tell Myself by Jill Rosenberg

Left at home alone with her sister for the summer, a girl runs and runs, training for her Olympic dreams while her parents remain absent and her sister pulls away; a high schooler is groomed by her art teacher and her close friend is jealous of the intimacy; in two separate stories, twins and then triplets meet strange fates. In these 10 stories, which range from fabulist to hyper-real, Jill Rosenberg unpacks the inner lives of characters who long to fit in, to understand themselves, and to be loved. Each story is rendered with emotional intensity. Wonderfully raw.

Autumn House Press: Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think by Grace Spulak

Backdropped mostly by the austere beauty of New Mexico, a divorced woman keens for her children while she writes short-stories on her ancient laptop and laments submission fees; a veterinary student has a disastrous affair with her professor in his striking mountain home; two women are followed by a man worried about bears as they hike in Glacier National Park, and they wonder, as the meme goes, who is more dangerous: man or bear? In these stories, Spulak explores when empathy becomes enablement, when romantic commitment borders on criminal, and how the choices we all make to stay connected to the people we love sometimes have hard outcomes. Gorgeously complicated.

Press 53: Debris by Daniel S.C. Sutter

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Reading Lists

Step-siblings with no blood ties marry, and the union only further entangles the knot of their lives ; in the title story, an engaged couple must regroup after the Twin Towers fall, but return to old patterns despite the national tragedy and a venue change; a husband and father of two tries to absolve himself from having statutorily raped a teenager by focusing on the 1969 Apollo moon landing. In this debut, Sutter breathes in the South and breathes out a collection which is just as comfortable with the dreadful as the mundane. A writer to watch.

Forest Ave: Nice Places by Vincent Chu

Georgie has held a nondescript job at a nondescript tech company for a decade when he decides to leave the boring safety of a corporate salary and travel around the world. However, he doesn’t even make it to the train station before he is robbed of his belongings and his passport; from there, he begins to fake his journey. The novel maintains a kind of playfulness as Georgie and Ant, an art student and Georgie’s conspirator, work to recreate famous sites in Asia and Europe so Georgie can post pictures to his social media. But it also serves as a sobering look at online media culture. As George rises to influencer status, his fake-it-until-you-make-it popularity begs the question of what “making it” really means. Enjoyable, original, and fun.

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