From Renee Gladman to Uljana Wolf: 10 Small Press Books to Check Out

As the nation’s only nonprofit distributor, Small Press Distribution is dedicated to getting small press literature to the people who want to read it. As such, we’re grateful to our main customers—indie bookstores—the outward-facing purveyors who present our books to the public with flair and aplomb. To celebrate the great individuality of our favorite indie stores across the country, SPD’s asked a few of them to shine a monthly spotlight on ten of their favorite SPD-distributed titles. This month, we’re excited to host Providence bookstore Riffraff.

Riffraff is a bookstore, coffee shop, and bar in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence, RI. We aim to stock diverse books by underrepresented voices, including a lot of books from independent presses and titles in translation, especially books you might not have heard of before. Riffraff draws its inspiration from the best independent bookstores and neighborhood bars, establishments that are welcoming and comfortable and integral to the community. It’s the kind of place where readers looking for a selection of thoughtfully curated books might sit down at the bar and ask their neighbor what they’re reading, and where those meeting a friend for a good inexpensive drink might also pick up a book at the same time. The bar opens at 11 am along with the bookstore, and you can also get books, tea, or coffee until we close at midnight.

Paol Keineg, Triste Tristan, trans. Laura Marris and Rosmarie Waldrop
(Burning Deck, 2017)

Electric, racy and raucous language, superbly translated. Poetry with a sense of humor counterbalanced with sobering reflections on place, loss, and memory, and an overarching celebration of the Breton language on top of it all.

Aase Berg, Hackers, trans. Johannes Goransson
(Black Ocean, 2017)

A ruthless, relentless feminist manifesto. Berg hacks the patriarchy, infests it like a parasite. Goransson hacks the book stunningly into an inventive English.

Uljana Wolf, Subsisters: Selected Poems, trans. Sophie Seita
(Belladonna*, 2017)

Uljana Wolf is a master of interplay across languages, and she has met her match in Sophie Seita. A dizzying display of bilingual wit to prove that “two heads are better than ohne.”

Sara Uribe, Antígona González, trans. John Pluecker
(Les Figues, 2016)

If Bolaño’s 2666 were a poem, it would be Antígona González. A pastiche of real stories about bodies lost in the drug war in Mexico and of the different Antigones of literature come together in one fictional woman’s search for her elder brother. 

Marianne Fritz, The Weight of Things, trans. Adrian Nathan West
(Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2015)

A haunting novel, deceptively framed as a domestic tragedy but concealing, in its breathless exhalations, an abrasive commentary on society writ large. 

Bhanu Kapil, Ban en Banlieue
(Nightboat Books, 2015)

This fragmented, poetic text explores the intersection of women’s bodies and turbulent politics, confronting the issues from a multitude of angles and emotional vantage points, in the end working to float above it all, to escape the tortures. 

Virginia Grise, Your Healing Is Killing Me
(Plays Inverse Press, 2017)

A timely manifesto advocating a better, less-individualized outlook on self-improvement, based on the author’s interactions with a wide, wide variety of people doing all kinds of work, all of it orbiting the notion that we can and need to be better to each other for each other. Grise is here to crystalize their collective message. 

Galo Ghigliotto, Valdivia, trans. Daniel Borzutzky
(co-im-press, 2016)

Valdivia is a city in southern Chile that has been tinged by bloody battles, ruthless colonization, and a devastating earthquake. In Ghigliotto’s poetry, it’s a city alive with myths, legends, ghosts, and memory. “Valdivia / is the screams of a woman / roaming in the night / in all directions.” Ghigliotto recounts Chile’s blood and violence in jarring language that’s often scary and always electrifying.

Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
(Rescue Press, 2017)

A truly hilarious and poignant novel with a tremendous premise at its center: a gay student at a small Midwestern college who can shapeshift. 

Renee Gladman, Calamities
(Wave Books, 2016)

A connected series of essays, all taking as their framework the strictures of a single day, and then examining the body’s movements and reactions to it. Gladman is phenomenally talented and insightful.