Spring has (mostly) sprung in my neck of the woods, and I am so relieved. The sun and the blooms remind me of how much beauty there is in the world, despite, despite, despite. I hope you’ll get to experience those moments soon, too. In the meantime, check out this list of fabulous new Southern releases!
The Negroes Send Their Love:
Poems, Perspectives, and Possible Futures
By Sean Hill
March 3, 2026
Milkweed Editions: “Posing questions that belie their simplicity, Sean Hill’s new collection is rooted in our shared history, lived experience, and a speculative future. It considers how we fashion identities through formative relationships with history and community, with our ancestors, our children, and ourselves. These connections underscore our ties to nature and emphasize humanity’s seemingly inevitable turn to violence.”
200 Monas
By Jan Saenz
March 3, 2026
Little, Brown and Company: “For fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Miranda July comes a whip-smart, irresistible novel about a college senior who has 48 hours to sell her recently deceased mother’s surprise stash of rare pills, or suffer the consequences. Unashamedly brash, bold, and blistering, 200 Monas is a truly one-of-a-kind read, a playful and honest examination of sexuality and grief, and a sharp, searing love letter on how to release all that’s inside you.”
Long Eye
By Kwoya Fagin Maples
March 10, 2026
Hub City Press: “Inspired by Mami Wata, a water spirit of West African folklore, Maples explores the power and divinity of being a Black woman, a mother, a thinker, a protector, and creator. The poems emerge from a neurodivergent mind navigating writing, parenthood, and the Atlantic waters of the South Carolina Lowcountry. The sea and its many creatures serve as guides — for survival, resistance, and transformation.”
Tore All to Pieces
By Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.
March 17, 2026
The University Press of Kentucky: “Tore All to Pieces is a fragmented novel that delves into the lives of Appalachian characters with similar struggles, backgrounds, and experiences and examines how people are often lonely despite these connections. Each narrative, presented in the form of a poem or short story, bends and weaves like the roads of Appalachia. Each character’s voice is richly portrayed in gripping and lyrical language, uniting the stories in a quest for truth, genuine understanding, and respect.”
Nowhere
By Allison Gunn
March 17, 2026
Atria: “Mare of Easttown meets The Outsider in this twisty and chilling crime thriller about a series of disappearances in a small, fundamentalist town and what one broken family must do to remain together as dark forces close in.”
Anywhere Else: Essays on Florida
By Rachel Knox
March 24, 2026
University Press of Florida: “Writing with clarity and searing honesty about real issues refracted through this prism of pop culture, Knox is both witty and vulnerable. In these essays, whether she’s bobbing in the warm waters of the Gulf or running through the trailer parks of her childhood, Knox portrays a Floridian struggling with a deep, complicated love of her home state. Anywhere Else is a book for anyone who resonates with the message that home may not be a perfect place, but that it is worth fighting for.”
Horses
By Jake Skeets
March 24, 2026
Milkweed Editions: “In poems employing numbers significant to Diné thought and lifeway, Skeets explores the reclamation of land, imagination, and language — a world beyond environmental apocalypse, where joy is possible and where transformation is embraced over erasure. … Fiercely observant, brilliantly constructed, and hauntingly incisive, Horses evokes both the end of a world and a new dawn emerging on the horizon.”
Rubble Masonry
By Rose McLarney
March 27, 2026
LSU Press: “Rubble Masonry is a collection of lyric essays that takes its title from the practice of stone masons who, rather than using materials cut to ideal measurements, work with found rocks’ natural shapes. It combines the rich images and musical language of poetry with prose’s capacity to share personal narratives and information from wide-ranging sources. Diverse content and innovative form distinguish a book that explores the places in which its author, Rose McLarney, finds herself as a woman from the mountain South—in history, national dialogues, public spaces, the natural world, and lineages that extend beyond an individual’s life on earth.”
A Spell for Saints and Sinners
By Emily Carpenter
March 31, 2026
Kensington: “Like a gender-flipped Saltburn set amidst the moss-draped, haunted beauty of Savannah, this intoxicating blend of Southern suspense and modern witchcraft from bestselling author Emily Carpenter casts a spell of class, power, and possession.”
Night Owl
By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
March 31, 2026
“Night Owl navigates questions and concerns for the environment that envelops us. It meditates on our connections to family and beloveds, and explores our position within the broader beauty of the planet. Just as the night transforms how we see things, love in its many forms shifts our understanding of togetherness and the natural world. And these poems are deeply suffused with love—each an expression of Nezhukumatathil’s captivating responses to the animals, plants, and people who have her heart and enliven her world.”
Southern Review of Books 