2023 Fiction and Poetry From The New School Community
Here are titles that piqued our interest this year.
Ways to Build Dreams: A Ryan Hart Story, by Renée Watson (BA, Liberal Arts, 2008); Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.
Ryan, who wonders why “everyone has a big dream except me,” also worries about her impending leap to middle school. Of this latest work by a Newberry Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author, Book Page writes that “elementary school readers will not only be entertained but also readily identify with the sometimes-overwhelming sense of change that Ryan faces.”
The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez (former Instructor, Creative Writing), Penguin Random House.
It’s spring, 2020. America is on lockdown. With a friend stranded on the West Coast, a woman moves into his Manhattan apartment to care for Eureka, his parrot. So begins a plague year journal of unlikely companionship. Of Nunez’s justly acclaimed novels, New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner writes, “I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny – good and strong company.”
Feathers Together, by Caron Levis (Faculty, Creative Writing) with illustrations by Charles Santoso, Abrams Books.
Storks mate for life, but when Malena’s injury prevents her from making the winter migration from Croatia to South Africa, she’s separated for the first time from Klepetan. Then a human friend helps shelter her while she awaits Klepetan’s return. A retelling of actual events, Feathers Together, says Publishers Weekly, recounts a “moving, affirming story of commitment that withstands change.”
I Have Seen the Bluest Blue, by Natalee Cruz, (MFA Creative Writing, 2023), Ugly Duckling Press.
The poet mediates on the deportation to Mexico of a stepmother and its effects on the family. In a Poetry Foundation review, poet Diego Báez observes that “through refrains and repetition, Cruz enacts a series of minor but meaningful adjustments…The result is a tender and genuine articulation of a family’s ongoing anguish.”
Clementine by Ann Hood (Assistant Professor, Creative Writing) Penguin Random House.
Hood, a New York Times reviewer has observed, “is brilliant at showing the ordinary moments of a family’s heartbreak.” Clementine, a teenaged girl, grapples with guilt and isolation following her sister’s sudden death. “This beautifully crafted novel ends with hope yet avoids trite platitudes or easy solutions,” concludes a review in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books at Johns Hopkins University Press.
And don’t forget these previously highlighted titles:
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, by Sidik Fofana, (Lecturer, Creative Writing Program), Simon & Schuster.
Eight interconnected stories bring us the lives of tenants in Harlem’s fictional Banneker Terrace apartment house as they struggle to raise children, fulfill dreams, and deal with neighborhood gentrification. Winner of a 2023 Gotham Book Prize. “American speech is an underused commodity in American fiction,” the Wall Street Journal wrote, “and it’s a joy to find such a vital example of it here.”
Lucky Dogs, by Helen Schulman (Fiction Chair, Creative Writing Program), Penguin Random House.
“If you think it’s #TooSoon to satirize #MeToo, go back to your yoga mat,” writes New York Times reviewer Alexandra Jacobs. She calls this thinly veiled fictional retelling of the seedy Harvey Weinstein scandal “deeply knowing, properly indignant, and – maybe the best revenge – very funny.”
On Air with Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks, (MFA, Creative Writing, 2010), HarperCollins.
In a sequel to From the Desk of Zoe Washington (named a best book of 2020 by Parents Magazine), 14-year-old Zoe follows up her enterprising reporting to free her wrongfully imprisoned birth father with a podcast to build support for his dream of opening a new restaurant. Naturally, she’ll be the pastry chef.
Sea Change, by Gina Chung (MFA, Fiction, 2021), Penguin Random House.
Turning 30, lonely and adrift, Ro finds solace with a companion who signals mood shifts by changing colors. It’s Dolores, a giant Pacific squid in the aquarium where Ro works, and an emotional link to her deceased marine biologist father. One reviewer found this debut novel by Chung, who has previously received a Pushcart Prize for short fiction, “awash in effective and moving storytelling.”
Lauren Leiker is a research assistant and Bruce Cory is editorial advisor at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.