Plan to read these books from Unbound festival authors
This year's Unbound Book Festival is just over a month away — April 20 through 23 in downtown Columbia.
For some festgoers, that means we've reached homework time. They want to read as many books by festival authors as they can in advance. Other readers will take a wait-and-see course, checking out books after the fact, digging deeper into the catalogs of authors who intrigue them in person.
Whether you're a now-or-later reader, here are 11 books — crossing genre, tone and topic — from this year's Unbound field that you'll want to make space for in your life.
More:Unbound Book Festival lineup rounding into form with poets, comic creators, novelists with range
Danny Caine, "Picture Window"
Genre: Poetry
Publication date: 2023
Description: The Lawrence, Kansas-based Caine, one of our foremost poets on nostalgia, Americana and our generation's expression of a universal need to belong, examines concepts of family and home against personal circumstances and a global pandemic.
One fellow writer said: "It is one thing to step into a writer’s world and feel its indescribable alchemy, but what a gift it is to enter that place walking hand-in-hand with the person who made it. Caine is with us in Picture Window the whole way." — Matt Mitchell
V.V. Ganeshananthan, "Brotherless Night"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2023
Description: A young woman follows her medical aspirations into an unsettling location — a field hospital during the Sri Lankan civil war.
One fellow writer said: "Brotherless Night is my favorite kind of novel, one so rich and full of movement that it’s only later I realize how much I have learned. V. V. Ganeshananthan drew me in from the very first line, and the intricacies of her characters’ lives made it easy to stay." — Sara Nović
Ross Gay, "Inciting Joy"
Genre: Essays
Publication date: 2022
Description: Known for his deeply humane, soulful poetry, Gay's generosity bends further into this collection of essays about family, soft strength in suffering and connecting the labor of our bodies and our hearts.
One fellow writer said: "Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart. Ross Gay will break your heart. He will break it and advocate for breaking it over and over. Why? So we can choose our life, our survival, our full humanity." — Ada Limón
Megan Giddings, "The Women Could Fly"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2022
Description: A young Black woman seeks to understand her mother's disappearance against a backdrop where witches work their magic and governments mandate marriage.
One reviewer said: "Giddings ingeniously blends her harrowing parable of an all-powerful patriarchy with insights into racial imbalances." — Publishers Weekly
Gabino Iglesias, "The Devil Takes You Home"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2022
Description: An out-of-work dad desperate to help his ailing daughter is drawn into the violent world of cartels — and a realm even more horrifying.
One reviewer said: "It’s one part road narrative, one part waking nightmare, and one part revelation. And just like some revelations past, this one has something apocalyptic lurking inside." — Tobias Carroll, Tor.com
Jennifer Maritza McCauley, "When Trying to Return Home"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2023
Description: The debut story collection from McCauley, also an accomplished poet and University of Missouri grad, promises — as her publisher notes — to span "a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond" while meditating on "belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms."
One reviewer said: "The stories hang together in surprising ways, often linked across time — McCauley excels at historical fiction as well as contemporary. Individually, they are each admiringly gutsy and tender, with flashes of poetry. ... What can’t McCauley do?" — Kirkus Reviews
Lydia Millet, "Dinosaurs"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2022
Description: One of the great journey-to-destination novels in recent memory, Millet's protagonist, Gil, walks from his former home in New York to his new dwelling in Arizona after a heartbreak. What he finds there — and how he shapes his new home — says much about how we live in community and bind together.
One reviewer said: "How we can nurture ourselves, the people dear to us, and the world around us are key issues in this gentle, meditative novel, told from Gil’s point of view to slowly build a marvelously full, if inadvertent, self-portrait." — Kirkus Reviews
Buki Papillon, "An Ordinary Wonder"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2021
Description: This Maya Angelou Prize winner revolves around Oto, an intersex boy studying at a Nigerian boarding school.
One fellow writer said: "This brilliant and ultimately uplifting debut antidotes the hard realities of gender-based violence, secrecy and family estrangement with the transformative forces of Yoruba spirituality, intergenerational nurturing and queer forms of kinship. From all that's foreclosed emerges a story of hope and optimism towards possible futures." — Isabel Waidner
Benjamin Percy, "The Ninth Metal"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2021
Description: The first novel in Percy's Comet Cycle (the third installment is due in September) examines life in a Minnesota town after a breach in the interstellar fabric leads to what some descriptions have called a futuristic "gold rush," in which a new energy source is discovered and can be used for something even more powerful.
One reviewer said: "Percy’s dead-on local color, strong central characters, and well-integrated flashbacks into the making of a modern samurai will delight and entertain both comics fans and serious science fiction readers." — Publishers Weekly
Patrick Rosal, "The Last Thing"
Genre: Poetry
Publication date: 2021
Description: This new and selected volume broaches the breadth and depth of Rosal's particular joys and concerns as a poet.
One fellow writer said: Rosal's "lines are a mixture of inheritance and innovation, seeds sown in the margins of a system we were never meant to survive." — Jamila Woods
Matthew Salesses, "The Sense of Wonder"
Genre: Fiction
Publication date: 2023
Description: An Asian-American NBA star attracts attention while living out a story that complicates easy narratives the media foists upon him.
One reviewer said: "Clever is an apt word to describe The Sense of Wonder, as it’s so richly layered. By merging the worlds of sports and entertainment (and the ways the two overlap), the novel astutely captures the tension between the public and personal lives of sports stars." — Rachel León, Chicago Review of Books
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Sci-fi, poetry and more: an Unbound Book Festival reading guide
