An Indie Next Selection for December 2021 A Ms. Magazine Recommended Read for Fall 2021 In March 2020, France declared a full lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Shortly thereafter, poets and friends Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Naïr—living mere miles from each other but separated by circumstance, and spurred by this extraordinary time—began a correspondence in verse. Renga, an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, is comprised of alternating tanka beginning with the themes of tōki and tōza: this season, this session. Here, from the “plague spring,” through a year in which seasons are marked by the waxing and waning of the virus, Hacker and Naïr’s renga charts the “differents and sames” of a now-shared experience. Their poems witness a time of suspension in which some things, somehow, press on relentlessly, in which solidarity persists—even thrives—in the face of a strange new kind of isolation. Between “ten thousand, yes, minutes of Bones,” there’s cancer and chemotherapy and the aches of an aging body. There is grief for the loss of friends nearby and concern for loved ones in the United States, Lebanon, and India. And there is a deep sense of shared humanity, where we all are “mere atoms of water, / each captained by protons of hydrogen, hurtling earthward.” At turns poignant and playful, the seasons and sessions of A Different Distance display the compassionate, collective wisdom of two women witnessing a singular moment in history.

“The most thorough, accurate, user-friendly, well-organized and inspiring guide for writers on the market today. Period.”—Richard Carlson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff This expert guide has put the dream of acquiring a publisher within reach for thousands of writers. Whether your book idea is a completed manuscript or still in the planning stages, The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book offers comprehensive, industry-savvy guidance on the steps to take to sell your book to a major publisher. Literary agents often advise their clients to read this book as their first step. Susan Page is the author of several bestselling self-help books, and a veteran of the publishing industry. Here, she’ll guide you step-by-step through the roadblocks that stall other writers and help you toward a publishing strategy that gets results. You’ll find in-depth information on the early steps to take, writing title ideas, developing winning book proposals, finding an agent, understanding publishing contracts, promoting your book, and more. Throughout the process, Page coaches you through both the emotional and practical obstacles you’re likely to face. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in a career as a published author. “Page, as her subtitle claims, really does tell you what you need to know to get happily published. This self-help author (If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?) knows what she’s talking about, whether she’s advising on how to write a book proposal, find an agent or promote one’s book . . . This is one of the more instructive guides to read before writing your book.”—Publishers Weekly

In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home. Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.

Wild meets Endless Love in this multilayered story of love, survival, and self-discovery McKenna Berney is a lucky girl. She has a loving family and has been accepted to college for the fall. But McKenna has a different goal in mind: much to the chagrin of her parents, she defers her college acceptance to hike the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia with her best friend. And when her friend backs out, McKenna is determined to go through with the dangerous trip on her own. While on the Trail, she meets Sam. Having skipped out on an abusive dad and quit school, Sam has found a brief respite on the Trail, where everyone’s a drifter, at least temporarily. Despite lives headed in opposite directions, McKenna and Sam fall in love on an emotionally charged journey of dizzying highs and devastating lows. When their punch-drunk love leads them off the trail, McKenna has to persevere in a way she never thought possible to beat the odds or risk both their lives.

DIVExamining the work of historians from Machiavelli to the present, Mark Salber Phillips examines the concept of historical distance and its role in historiography./div

In The Grace of Distance, his poignant, far-traveling new collection of poems, Matthew Thorburn explores the ways in which we try to close the distances we experience in modern life—between doubt and faith, between cultures, between ourselves and those we love. He seeks to name, and find, that elusive, essential sense of connection humanity hungers for. In one poem, a boy places a bell in the hollow of a tree so someone might find it. In others, an overworked baker wishes for an annunciation of her own, while a man calls down into a well until another voice calls back. Set in China and America, in the present and the distant past, Thorburn’s poems examine both Eastern and Western ideas of spirituality, looking closely at the ways we can lose faith, then sometimes find it again. The poems also confront the unbridgeable distances we must live with and the perhaps surprising grace they can provide—a greater sense of perspective, understanding, and peace—even as our lives move in the only direction they can, away from the past.

This is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place - a house in northern Aberdeenshire - and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Davidson reflects on art, place, history and landscape. Distance and Memory is his testament to the cold, clear beauty of the north.