SLP News + Updates: August 2023
Hello everybody,
Happy summer! We just wrapped a week in the upper 90s in Nebraska (nothing like our friends in Arizona, we know, we know) and we’re tilting our bodies toward the promise of fall because we’ve got some HOT THINGS COMING YOUR WAY. But more on those in a minute, because we also had some HOT THINGS happen at SLP since our last newsletter on May 1.
We announced our next short story/flash fiction book: Jillian Danback-McGhan’s Midwatch, a short story collection exploring warfare and its aftermath from the perspective of women service members, set to release in February 2024 (right in time for AWP24). Watch for the cover reveal in early October!
As always, major thanks and gratitude to our dedicated team of SS/FF readers and our stalwart SS/FF editor, Pedro—and to all the authors who trust us with your manuscripts. You make this part of our jobs so hard!
Maybe This is What I Deserve by Tucker Leighty-Phillips was released on June 20th and we celebrated with a Zoom reading where Tucker was joined by fellow SLP author Tyler Barton for conversation.
We closed nonfiction/hybrid chapbook submissions on June 1 (and should have a book announcement for y’all in the next couple of weeks—sorry, summer caught up to us and we’re running a little behind!)
We opened submissions for novels and novellas on July 1st (and we’ll be open until 11:59pm on September 1). Send us your book!
We’ve been collecting preorders for our next book publication, Colleen Burner’s novella Sister Golden Calf, and books will begin to ship in the next couple of weeks so make sure you place your preorder ASAP! Colleen will be reading at Powells in Portland on their official pub day (Sept 19—if you’re Portland-adjacent, don’t miss it!) so we’ll be hosting a Zoom reading event at 7pm CT on September 20th to celebrate the official release of Sister Golden Calf. Colleen will be in conversation with fellow SLP author (and novella-ist!) Anurag Andra. Register in advance here!
We ALSO revealed the INCREDIBLE cover and opened preorders (and ARC requests) for Sean Enfield’s forthcoming essay collection, Holy American Burnout!
Sean Enfield delves into the great American condition: burnout.
Threading his experiences both as a Texan student and later as a first-year teacher of predominately Muslim students at a Texas middle school, Holy American Burnout! weaves personal essay and cultural critique into the historical fabric of Black and bi-racial identity.
Enfield intersects examinations of which voices are granted legitimacy by virtue of school curriculum, the complex relationship between basketball and education for Black and brown students, his students’ burgeoning political consciousness during the 2016 presidential campaign, and cultural figures ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Hamlet.
These classroom narratives weave around Enfield’s own formative experiences contending with a conflicted bi-racial family lineage, reenacting the Middle Passage as the only Black student in his 7th grade history class, and moshing in both Christian and secular hardcore pits.
As Enfield wrestles with the physical, mental, and emotional burdens that American society places on educators, students, and all relatively conscious minorities in this country, he reaches for an education that better navigates our burnt-out empire.
Sean Hill, author of Dangerous Goods and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor: "In Holy American Burnout!, his urgent and insightful debut essay collection, Sean Enfield shares tales as varied as finding connections in churches and moshpits as well as teaching at a Muslim middle school. Enfield shows us what white supremacy looks like from the liminal vantage of a biracial kid coming of age in the aughts in Texas. He tells us facts we should know and reminds us of truths we shouldn’t forget. These formally engaging essays are at turns vulnerable, poignant, and funny, and Enfield always shows wise care for those in his essays, his readers, and himself. Holy American Burnout! introduces a new necessary voice, and I’m immensely grateful for that.”
Sara Eliza Johnson, author of Vapor and Bone Map: "Driven by an empathic imagination and formal invention, Holy American Burnout! is a book of marked complexity and honesty. 'What do we do with a history we’d rather forget?' Enfield asks, and then guides us on a sweeping journey across the many landscapes of America—from classroom to mosh pit to open highway—from which we emerge with a more expansive conception of its many historical and ongoing traumas, and how we might heal the wounds without erasing their scars."
Daryl Farmer, author of Where We Land: Stories and Bicycling Beyond the Divide: "In a richly woven collection, the personal essays in Holy American Burnout! give profound insights into the current reality of America, taking on race, inequality, violence, and education. Centered around his time teaching an all-boys class at a Muslim school in Texas, Enfield delves into this period’s most significant social and political questions. In the spirit of Baldwin and Abdurraqib, the essays herein are vulnerable and honest, stunning in their reach for clarity. An impressive debut from an exciting new voice!"
Copies of Holy American Burnout! will ship in the weeks immediately prior to December 5th, the official publication date, so HOP TO IT!
Also, we’ve got a presence on Threads (sigh) and our director is on Bluesky, so if you’re abandoning Twitter (sorry, we’re never going to use the single letter), we get it. We’ve got a robust Instagram (have you checked out our Five-Star Fridays where we spotlight five-star reviews y’all have given our books over the past years on Goodreads??) and we’ll be on Twitter for awhile, but stick with us somewhere online because we want to stick with you.
To make sure you don’t miss anything between this email and our next (on November 1), here’s a quick rundown of dates to watch for:
mid August: Nonfiction/hybrid chapbook acquisition announcement!
September 1: Novel/novella book submissions close
September 19: Sister Golden Calf publication day!
September 20: Join us at 7pm CT for a Zoom reading and conversation to celebrate Sister Golden Calf (and please register in advance)
October 1: Nonfiction/hybrid book submissions open
early October: Midwatch cover reveal, preorders and ARC requests open
See you there, or see you here, but we’ll see you soon!
<3
Split/Lip Press