Robert Herschbach’s debut collection, Loose Weather, interweaves empirical observation with history, politics and myth. The resulting poems are lyrical yet ambitious in scope, searching out the root existential questions underlying our engagement with this world. With precise language and an artist’s eye for visual detail, this poet investigates the nature of exploration-geographical, cultural, psychological, erotic-as […]

Set between the 1920s and the present day, Strivers and Other Stories explores a range of African-American and Southern voices reflecting characters striving towards their versions of the American dream. In 15 stories, we meet teachers and doctors, train porters and factory workers, soldiers and musicians; mothers, fathers, children and spouses; mentors and mentees. With […]

A silent old man climbs into his secret hole, burdened by his Great War bargain–his voice for life with his beloved. On this night in April 1963, the burden of silence passes from old to young. The debut novel of Texas native Elizabeth Bruce is a lyric tale of violence, redemption, and love reclaimed through […]

The characters in Kathleen Wheaton’s linked stories are exiles-from their native countries, their families, their objects of desire. Political refugees from Argentina’s “dirty war,” survivors of a Cuban shipwreck and of Franco’s Spain all navigate life as foreigners, whether in Madrid, Buenos Aires or suburban Washington, D.C. With wry, nuanced compassion, Wheaton follows these resilient […]

In this brave, elegiac debut, How to Prove a Theory, Nicole Tong relies on empirical evidence to construct meaning in the wake of a series of losses that include a childhood lost to trauma, a best friend lost following childbirth, a brother-in-law, a father, and a generation of children in the poet’s hometown after a […]

Elizabeth Knapp’s poetry explores the intersections between modern society, personal mortality, and cultural immortality. In this, her second collection, celebrities come and go, while the collection’s patron saint, Emily Dickinson, presides over all. At its heart, this book is about loss and its endless reverberations, while at the same time, it embraces the notion of […]

Kira Franklin, a black newspaper reporter in Southwest Virginia in 1993, begins to question her own culture when she pursues a story on a local Cherokee community raising money to reclaim ancestral lands. The Harper family is part of a long line of Cherokee tribe leaders, and their knowledge and devotion to retaining their history […]

The poems in this volume explore the experiences of love and loss; of motherhood and childhood; and of living between the two cultures of America and Bulgaria.

From Depression era Mississippi to the suburbs of modern America, to the trials and tribulations of smart young women struggling to make a name for themselves in the arts, Feldman delves deep into the dreams and emotions of regular people and makes them beautiful and accessible. This prize-winning collection of short stories and two novellas, […]

Capital Queer: A Pride Celebration from Washington Writers’ Publishing House spotlights bold queer voices from DC, Maryland, and Virginia—celebrating love, resilience, and identity in a powerful literary tribute to pride and community. It’s the first in a series of pocket-sized collections from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, showcasing our region’s rich cross-section of literary talent.