Bøker utgitt av Acre Books

Persephone in the Late Anthropocene vaults an ancient myth into the age of climate change. In this poetry collection, the goddess of spring now comes and goes erratically, drinks too much, and takes a human lover in our warming, unraveling world. Meanwhile, Persephone's mother searches for her troubled daughter, and humanity is first seduced by the unseasonable abundance, then devastated by the fallout, and finally roused to act. This ecopoetic collection interweaves the voices of Persephone, Demeter, and a human chorus with a range of texts, including speculative cryptostudies that shed light on the culture of the "Late Anthropocene." These voices speak of decadence and blame, green crabs and neonicotinoids, mysteries and effigies. They reckon with extreme weather, industrialized plenty, and their own roles in ecological collapse. Tonally, the poems of this book range between the sublime and the profane; formally, from lyric verse and modern magical-realist prose poems to New Farmer's Almanac riddles and pop-anthropology texts. At the heart of this varied and inventive collection is story itself, as Demeter deconstructs "whodunits," as the chorus grasps that mythmaking is an act of "throwing their voices," and as their very language mirrors the downward spiral of destruction. Together, the collected pieces of Persephone in the Late Anthropocene form a narrative prism, exploring both environmental crisis and the question of how we tell it.

A crumbling marriage. An ancient mystery. And a way to change the past . . . When archaeologist Aaron Keeler finds himself transported eighteen years backward in time, he becomes swept up in a strangely illicit liaison with his younger wife. A brilliant musician, Violet is captivated by the attentive, "weathered" version of her husband. The Aaron she recently married--an American expat--has become distant, absorbed by his excavation of a prehistoric site at Kilmartin Glen on Scotland's west coast, where he will soon make the discovery that launches his career. As Aaron travels back and forth across the span of nearly two decades, with time passing in both worlds, he faces a threat to his revelatory dig, a crisis with the older Violet--mother of his two young children--and a sudden deterioration of his health. Meanwhile, Violet's musical performances take on a resonance related to the secrets the two are uncovering in both time frames. With their children and Aaron's lives at risk, he and Violet try to repair the damage before it's too late.

Nancy Au's debut collection is rich with scents, sounds, imaginative leaps, and unexpected angles of vision. These seventeen stories present the challenges facing characters whose inner and outer lives often do not align, whose spirits attempt flight despite dashed hopes and lean circumstances. Marginalized by race, age, and sexuality, they endeavor to create new worlds that honor their identities and their Chinese heritage. Au excels at inhabiting the minds and hearts of children and the elderly. In the title story, Sophie Chu dresses daily in her increasingly shabby elephant costume to ensure her missing parents recognize her upon their return. In "The Unfed," a village elder seeks to revive, with her dimming magic, a mountain community struck by tragedy. "Louise" follows, with deceptive hilarity (involving a one-eyed duck), the nuanced give and take between May Zhou and Lai, dissimilar yet passionate partners considering parenthood. The volume also offers sparkling speculative work that taps into the strength of nature--fox spirits and fire beetles, swollen rivers and rippling clouds--to showcase the sometimes surreal transformations of Au's protagonists. Spider Love Song and Other Stories treads the fault line that forms between lovers, families, friends, cultures--exposing injuries and vulnerabilities, but also the strength and courage necessary to recast resentment and anger into wonder and power. Au's lyrical style, humor, and tender attention to her characters' fancies and failings make this powerful debut a delight to read.

"A. Molotkov's third poetry collection,Synonyms for Silence, traverses a terrain of terror and wonder. These sharp, brief lyrics and prose poems subject the world to ethical and metaphysical scrutiny, examining the familiar as well as the unknowable aspects of human existence and contrasting our transient chemical reality with our ability to manifest meaning"

"Follows Juan Gutéirrez, a self-employed single father, as he navigates a tumultuous year of inescapable change. His daughter, Stella, is on the verge of moving away to college; his lover, Jared, is pressing him for commitment; and his favorite watering hole--a ramshackle dive presided over by Bob the Bartender--is transforming into a karaoke hotspot. The story is set in a neighborhood that is also changing, gentrification inciting the ire of the established community. Upon the unexpected death of one of the bar's regulars, Juan is sent reeling, and a series of upheavals follow as he both seeks and spurns intimacy, pondering the legacy of distant parents and a failed marriage and grappling with his sexuality--all the while cycling and dating, drinking at Nicks Lounge, and parenting a determined and defiant child-become-woman. When his incarcerated father dies and Stella reveals she's pregnant, Juan is forced to examine the emotional bonds that both hold and hinder him, to reassess his ideas of commitment, of friendship, of love. His encounters with various characters--his mother, his ex-wife, a middle-aged punker, an aspiring acupuncturist, a dapper veteran--lead Juan to the realization that he himself must change to thrive. This is a story of making family and making mistakes, of rending and of mending. As a Latinx queer father with a mixed-race daughter, Juan exemplifies the ways identity connects and divides us"--