Doomstead Days by Brian Teare (Nighboat Books)

Doomstead Days by Brian Teare: 2019 Poetry finalist

By Tess Taylor

“To praise this, blame that, / Leads one subtly away from the beginning, where / We must stay, in motion.” This quote from John Ashbery’s “Houseboat Days” anchors Teare’s latest

Essays One by Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Essays One by Lydia Davis: 2019 Criticism finalist

By David Varno

Davis’s exciting debut collection of nonfiction, ranging from craft lectures to essays about writers and artists to notes on the translation process, is a great gift to readers, particularly those

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker (Tin House Books)

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker: 2019 Poetry finalist

By Hope Wabuke

Given Morgan Parker’s subject matter in Magical Negro—how the black female body moves through the world, how the black body is seen and othered—it is logical that Parker’s interrogation of