UNSUNG UNDERREPRESENTED WOMXN BIPOC LBGTQIA2S+ EXCEPTIONAL LITERATURE FRINGE GENRES REBELLIOUS AUTHORS ANTI-CORPORATIONS SMALL PRESS
UNSUNG UNDERREPRESENTED WOMXN BIPOC LBGTQIA2S+ EXCEPTIONAL LITERATURE FRINGE GENRES REBELLIOUS AUTHORS ANTI-CORPORATIONS SMALL PRESS
We publish books that refuse silence.
In 2026, Unsolicited Press continues its commitment to bold, necessary work across fiction, poetry, memoir, translation, and hybrid forms. These books interrogate power, grief, justice, desire, ecology, motherhood, spirituality, and resistance without apology or dilution.
Our writers challenge dominant narratives and expand what literature can hold. Many of these voices come from the margins; all of them are essential.
This is not trend-chasing.
This is not neutral publishing.
This is literature as presence, persistence, and proof.
What We’re Breathing into Life in 2026.
NEW AND UPCOMING
What if the body—your own body, or someone else’s—became the most unreliable narrator you’ve ever met?
From post–World War I New York to pandemic-era Savannah, from the quiet kitchens of Maine to the heat-soaked streets of Malaysia, THE LEG IN QUESTION unravels the strange, haunting, and often darkly funny ways our flesh betrays us. A young woman insists her healthy leg must be removed. A physician faces ghosts of the living and the dead. A mountain cabin turns feral. A debutante circuit shields a gay man on the cusp of a terrifying new epidemic.
Across fifteen stories, doctors and patients collide in moments where the body’s mysteries—its failures, obsessions, hungers, and grief—expose the fragile seams between sanity and longing. These are tales of medicine and mortality, yes, but also of the tender, reckless, astonishing human spirit trying to make sense of it all.
Jen & Gary’s Infinite (Quantum) Entanglements is a multiversal romantic comedy that’s as zany as it is heartfelt, as vulgar as it is sexy, as violent as it is sweet, and as funny as it is sad. It’s a story that takes “love comes in many forms” both literally and figuratively, showcasing it in the most unique and bizarre ways possible. Beneath the chaos, the book pulses with heart (and maybe even a little insight) that makes the wild premise worth the ride.
Swerving Sizes is a collection of microfictions that are all exactly 100, 200, or 300 words long. The book is divided into two sections. “Regular,” the first section, features work in a realistic vein. “Extra,” the second section, features work that is surreal, absurd, and/or structurally innovative.
Cleah Lucky was a handful in life. In death, she is even worse. When her three estranged children gather for the reading of her will, they expect complications. They do not expect a master list of demands. Holiday gatherings. Approved menus. Required outfits. Designated games. A theme song. And a rotating custody schedule for her urn. Thanks to a legally airtight trust, they cannot collect a cent unless they cooperate. As the siblings attempt to honor their mother’s absurd instructions, resentment builds, alliances shift, and their grip on patience stretches paper thin.
A sharp and heartfelt story about what we owe the people who raised us and the price of getting what we think we deserve.
In The Book of Destructions, Margarita Vélez Verbel dismantles the foundations of inherited power. The sacred is interrogated, the familial pedestal cracked open. Father and mother lose their mythic shine, and society emerges as a snarled, punishing knot where freedom and dignity are routinely sacrificed.
Nothing holds still here.
Pain burns clean through memory.
God mirrors the patriarchy that worships Him.
The “destruction” at the heart of this book is the deliberate breaking of the ancient rules meant to keep women obedient, invisible, and domestic.
David—the acclaimed king who felled Goliath—appears instead in his full grotesquerie: a predatory man who cloaked violence against girls in divine approval. John the Baptist—self-appointed moral sentinel—hurls “whore” at Salome’s mother while ignoring the rot within his own tradition. And in a satisfying reversal, the prophet who despised women is finally undone by a woman’s whim, a poetic justice rendered with the sharp edge this book wields so well.
Vélez Verbel’s work is not an act of destruction for its own sake. it is a necessary breaking, a blaze set to the myths that have ruled women’s bodies and lives for millennia.
PARTED GODS opens in the suspended breath between life and impact, a van, a sunset, a body lifted into the air, and from that instant unfolds a story that refuses to sit still. Antonella Adamo, a celebrated painter on the edge of collapse, finds herself slipping into the memories of her twin brother Federico, a jazz pianist finally stepping into the light. Together they move through Berlin’s restless art world, the myth stained shores of Sicily, and a final reckoning in New Orleans where love, art, and fate collide.
What begins as a narrative of twins becomes something stranger and more mythic. Parted Gods asks what it means to be split from the person who completes you and whether art can repair the fracture or only deepen it.
Félix-Díaz brings a cinematic sensibility shaped by his work in theater, poetry, and screenwriting. The result is a novel that moves like music, lyrical, urgent, and deeply alive. Parted Gods feels as expansive as myth and as intimate as memory.
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JOY is the new full-length collection of poetry by Francis Daulerio, author of If & When We Wake, Please Plant This Book, and With a Difference. Beginning with one pregnancy and ending with another, JOY examines the ways in which we keep ourselves alive, centering around the birth of Daulerio’s first child while coping with the loss of friend and collaborator, Scott Hutchison. With a foreword by acclaimed author Maggie Smith (Good Bones, Keep Moving), and cover art by UK artist Helen Ahpornsiri, this life-affirming collection highlights what Bon Iver’s Sean Carey describes as “Daulerio’s relentless hope and love,” encouraging readers to push through hardships to find their own sense of meaning.
DREAM POP ORIGAMI: A PERMUTATIONAL MEMOIR ABOUT HAPA IDENTITY is a beautiful, ambitious, interactive, and engrossing lyrical memoir about mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis. This experimental work of creative nonfiction examines, celebrates, and complicates what it means to be Asian & white, Nisei & hapa, Midwestern & Californian, Buddhist & American at the same time. In this stunning collection of choose-your-own-essays and autobiographical lists, multiracial identity is a counterpoint of memory, language, reflection, and imagination intersecting and interweaving into a coherent tapestry of text, emotion, and voice.
— A 2025 MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD FINALIST—
Life is short. We blink, and it is gone. In a world filled with joy and pain, beauty and magic, how does one even attempt to experience it all? How can a person possibly find that moment of nirvana and hold on to it forever? For most of us, we call the day a success if we simply get out of the door on time. Wells Lowell Monasmith, however, has a secret, one that has been passed down for generations allowing certain individuals the chance to have their cake and eat it too. A chance to hold on to those special moments a little longer.
As the Monasmith family gathers at the funeral of their only brother and son, they learn about an unbelievable familial trait that has been hidden from them for their entire lives. With a little post-humanous help from their son, Margaret and Charles Monasmith must guide their adult children through the implications of the power that courses through their veins.
IN WELLS' TIME is the story of a family with a little magic in their blood. For Wells, it is both a gift and a curse. For his family, it is a reality they must come to terms with as they learn from the triumphs and failures of the brother who died too young and lived an entire life between the pages of time. With any luck, the Monasmith family might just get a little closer to answering the question: How should we spend our time?
At the center of THE BALLAD OF TWO SISTERS are Stella and Helen, two sisters who die on the same day. One fragile and one strong, the sisters confront the troubles of the past and the uncertainty of the future as they seek connection, joy, and completion. Though at times circuitous, the paths the sisters travel ultimately lead them back to each other, until finally, they can never be parted.
BESTSELLERS
Debutiful Named MOUTH One of the Best Debut Short Story Collections of 2025
In MOUTH, Kerry Donoghue’s provocative debut, the ways we consume—from the drinks we can't put down to the lovers we can’t resist—reveal deeper hungers we often keep hidden. A competitive eater, a rodeo clown, a pearl diver, and a mermaid-in-training are just a few of the outsiders in this collection, each grappling with their own consuming desires. Whether through alcohol, infidelity, or chasing perfection, these characters are forced to confront what they’re truly starving for—and who they become when they can't fill that void. MOUTH asks: when our appetites define us, how do we survive the hunger?
You May Feel a Bit of Pressure: Observations from Infertility's Heart-Wrenching Ride by Amy Gallo Ryan tells the maddening, mysterious story of one woman's unexplained infertility through a spectrum of emotions that will be familiar to each of the millions of women fighting their way to motherhood. From Hope to Shame, Courage to Grief, Disappointment to Dread to Uncertainty, this book, with unflinching honesty, explores the many painful, palpable human truths at the heart of a most common experience we've only scratched the surface of understanding.
Lit Hub named MOSAIC one of the “100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025.
Mosaic is a story of exploration and self-identification, of grief, relationships, tackling mental health, and how to walk through difficult times when there is nowhere else to go. The story follows Laura, who along with her husband Jason, embarked on having a baby, only to go on a journey that spanned over five years. Over this time, Laura learned the hard truth about pregnancy loss, the medical field, and how to negotiate unforeseen difficulties. She persevered through four high-risk pregnancies, with the last one being a pregnancy more successful than the rest. Yet, it posed many tribulations, launching Laura and her husband into the world of an unpredictable birth, fetal abnormalities, their premature baby, the NICU, and breath-holding. Through the story, the book delves into grief and resilience, and how they work together to get Laura through a difficult time in her life. It shows how relying on her own mother also taught her how to enter motherhood for herself, no matter at what stage she considered herself to be a “mother.” Mosaic explores how to use challenges to change us into better versions of ourselves.
Meriwether Clarke’s debut collection of poems, BODY MEMORY, traces the formation of identity against a landscape of gendered dehumanization, alienation, and violence. With lyrical clarity, her poems illuminate an interior voice searching for independence and connection amidst personal loss, social isolation, and righteous rage. Both tender and fierce, Clarke’s poems reveal an essential perspective on contemporary femininity.
BOOKS BY WOMXN
In a post-pandemic world, how do we rebuild what is broken? POOL PARTIES dives into dinosaurs, pop culture, hospital beds, barnacles, geology, and the soil of the midwest to dig through and sift our aching to heal the psyche. Found poems about crystals, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and building trails are just some of the topics of these playful yet sometimes dark poems. Once shielding ourselves from the world in tiny boxes, we now long to break the glass, feel the sun, and one another, but it is scary. Try to connect we must, if we fail, we must fail better. What rooms are our safe spaces? What woods? From Ranch for Sale, As is: “In the god trees you disappeared into Port wine and too many off-ramp brown eye role-playing games. My heart in a 1960s ranch-style basement. Thought you’d come in, shake out the red and white checkered tablecloth, pull aside the daisy patterned curtains.” MacBain-Stephens invites us to dive into the deep end of the pool where it is always too cold at first. We don’t trust our own pleas for help and need a third operator to repeat our words back to us: “the operator whispers / plays the soundtrack to The Third Man / listens in, but this isn’t Orson Welles in black and white beauty…” (from The Telephone Operator Knows When to Plugin.) POOL PARTIESis a delicious awkward visit to that place you left too quickly, just when it was getting interesting.
The bright red fish are gone from a sports fishing destination lake in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, and the Nez Perce Tribe and the government want to know why. Biologist Jess MacKinnon tears into the mountains on her motorcycle to solve the mystery. She takes the place of a government scientist, Ben Fletcher, who drowned in that very same lake. Jess knew Ben, and not just professionally—but that’s a secret.
There are a lot of secrets in the tiny mountain town of Still Lake, including one that puts Jess in danger: Ben’s death was no accident. With help from a quirky private investigator who describes herself as “not neurotypical,” Jess solves the mystery of Ben’s death and the mystery of the fish. She comes to terms with her own past, too, including her connection to Ben Fletcher, his privileged parents, and the biases of social class that destroyed their relationship.
Based on a real-world environmental disaster, THIRSTY CREEK is a murder mystery and ecological mystery combined, a story about human arrogance, greed, and unintended consequences.
Fifty percent of proceeds from THIRSTY CREEK support the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, a place-based nonprofit in Wallowa, Oregon.
Lilith was the first woman. Adam was her husband before Eve was fashioned into his wife. Lilith knew herself to be Adam's equal and refused his demands of submission. She has been cast as a demon who left Adam for a new lover, the fallen angel Samael. "Night Hag," one of Lilith's many epithets, has been ostracized as a thief in the night, a baby stealer, a demon of abortion, a sex glutton-- a woman guilty of the crime of choosing when and if she becomes a mother.
NIGHT HAG speaks of femininity through the eternal voice of Lilith, the first woman. NIGHT HAG is an exploration of yin strength and autonomy of body, heart, and mind. NIGHT HAG invites readers to consider the distinctions between selfishness and self-care.
Dive into the bittersweet, beautifully peculiar world of Patricia Q. Bidar's Pardon Me for Moonwalking, a collection of short stories that illuminate the offbeat, the tender, and the painfully human. Each story offers a glimpse into the extraordinary moments of seemingly ordinary lives, from fleeting encounters with strangers to lifelong battles with identity and connection.
Bidar's characters grapple with isolation, unspoken longing, and the complex tangle of relationships in settings that range from suburban living rooms to shadowy city streets. With sharp prose, wry humor, and poignant insights, this collection explores themes of love, regret, and the elusive search for meaning in a chaotic world.
Pardon Me for Moonwalking is a literary kaleidoscope of modern life, showcasing the subtle beauty of human resilience and the power of small, unexpected connections.
POPULAR FICTION
IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.
Marc's hand slipped and he played the secret chord that summons the Devil—the same chord Jimi Hendrix and Robert Johnson knew. The one Keith Richards’ ghost showed him years ago in a moment of weakness. When all hell breaks loose, Marc is pulled into a quest to collect magical artifacts from rock and roll history to prepare for a showdown with the Devil. Marc’s road is instantly beset with supernatural forces working against him, but he isn’t alone. Not by a longshot. Riding shotgun is his band of misfits: the pop-culture loving Bollocks; the burgeoning rock journalist Maybelline; the occult practitioner Tanner; and Marc’s ghost buddy who brought this all about in the first place, Keith Richards.
Along the way he crosses paths with Papa Legba and one of the biggest rock stars of the 20th century, who just so happens to be the Devil’s son. Failure means eternal damnation—not only for himself, but for his friends and Keith Richards' ghost, who needs Marc to help him win back his own soul traded years ago. Armed with one of the most famous guitars in history, a leather jacket that may have been worn by Elvis, and a magic guitar pick, this should be a piece of cake. But when bargaining with the Devil, it might take more than tricks and sick guitar riffs to save their souls.
A young woman travels through Europe in the late nineties after she learns of her ex-girlfriend's suicide, whose ghost follows her around. She meets an array of people, including a tarot reader, a gay farmer, an expat trans woman, and a French lesbian with a dreamy pit bull. Discovering new love and friendship while remembering the struggles of her past relationship, the story weaves between the narrator's present-day adventures and coming-of-age love, sewn together by existential conversations with the ghost of her ex.
NO ONE'S LEAVING is curated to a soundtrack of Gen X music—from Jane's Addiction to The Cranberries to PJ Harvey—and touches on themes of queer love, heartbreak, grief, and mental health.
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood.
Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Stefan, whose own father died in prison while on a hunger strike, promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his story, has grown sympathetic to his cause and complicit in his pushback against prejudiced accusations.
Their mutual attraction and struggle for equilibrium is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.
LET EVENING COME is the love story between the son of an Indigenous family displaced from their ancestral home on the Tar Sands of Canada and a motherless farm girl from Michigan. Together they combat suspicion and bigotry on both sides of the border and the cultural differences that separate them.
The men in ANIMAL HUSBANDRY, Taylor García’s new short story collection, are in the midst of their own personal apocalypses as the real and artificial world decays around them. Struggling to find the future versions of themselves, the husbands, fathers, bachelors, lovers, influencers, and healers in these stories learn to stop fighting and start transforming. As Mario's job is eliminated due to AI, he begins mixing with his polyamorous neighbors, while his wife falls for a chat bot, sending their marriage to the breaking point in the title story, Animal Husbandry. In “Journey to the Edge of the Earth,” TikTok-famous flat earther, Carl "Flat Manly" Bonifacio, realizes his theories are bogus and that he must shut down his platform, plus, cancel a fraught cruise to the so-called edge of the earth. Circus strong man and ladies man Dominic sustains a career-ending shoulder injury that forces him to rethink his life choices in this circus melodrama, "Circle of Death.” Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid's Tale, what happens when men's bodies are legislated? “Medicine Box” is told in retrospect by an ayahuasca shaman's son far into the future.
MEMOIRS THAT PUSH LIMITS
Stacey Freeman had no idea what she was in for when she looked inside her husband’s suitcase, but what she found would change the course of her life and her children’s forever. Set in Short Hills, New Jersey, I BOUGHT MY HUSBAND’S MISTRESS LINGERIE tells the relatable story of a woman once happily married to her high school sweetheart who had watched her marriage slowly deteriorate without seeing the reality around her. But the moment she did and realized divorce and full physical custody of her three young children were imminent, she had no choice but to re-evaluate her life, her goals, and her definition of success.
Taking readers around the world and back in time for an emotional ride through her childhood and adolescence, marriage, separation and divorce, navigation of bicontinental co-parenting, introduction to mid-life dating, and return to work, Stacey Freeman invites readers to share in her hits and misses in this no-holds-barred portrayal of what happened in the aftermath of discovering the person she loved and trusted most had betrayed her. Oscillating between periods of despair and laughter and often landing somewhere in between, Stacey Freeman’s memoir in essays serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and how sometimes gifts can come from the most unexpected people and places.
A Slice of Orange: loving and leaving the Osho/Rajneesh cult is a tale of spiritual discovery that goes horribly wrong. In search of bliss and belonging, Nicola Ranson travels from her Canadian convent school to India, and then to the cult headquarters in Oregon where she was on security duty when the FBI uncovered the source of the largest domestic bioterrorism attack in modern U.S. history. Forty years later, she shares her deeply personal experiences of the free-love utopia that devolved into conspiracy, poisonings, and attempted murder.
Piecework is a lively collection of intergenerational essays on how people create possibility and place through the arts, culture, and heritage. Women and children play central roles in these ethnographies and autoethnographies. Their stories and struggles, ideas and breakthroughs, affirm the exponential power of families, schools, and communities to shape their own destinies through creative action. We learn that change is a collective endeavor, shaped on the ground, with the people we know and the communities we cherish.
The book is structured into three themes: classrooms, communities, and migrations. The essays on schooling include hard-to-find ethnographies from artivist classrooms serving children and teens. We first meet the author as a somatic child, then witness her as a mother collaborating with children and adults through innovative arts education projects. Classrooms become spaces for critical thinking and joyful contestation using design, dance, music, or poetry. Public schools mobilize faculty and leverage local resources to bring theater, costume, design, and painting within reach. Multiple settings and scenarios reveal how the arts can be integrated into studying almost anything, while inviting young people to be seen and heard while thinking imaginatively and empathetically. The essays about community focus on youth activists, adult leaders, and path breaking women ancestors. Teens alchemize pain into power as storytellers and advocates. Curators and artists rewrite history to honor a musical matriarch. Community arts leaders gather across neighborhoods to share strategies for spatial justice in the context of gentrification. The essays on migration take a historical turn as the author digs into ancestral archives for clues about her family’s activism, migration stories, and refugee experiences. She unearth’s stories of community organizing, art making, and resilience. The book includes provocative interviews about writing, freedom, and women’s authorship with cultural promoters in Nigeria and Brazil. Piecework concludes with a pep talk for future culture makers.
MEANINGFULL: 23 LIFE-CHANGING STORIES OF CONQUERING DIETING, WEIGHT, & BODY IMAGE ISSUES is a blend of motivational self-help, memoir, psychology, and health and wellness. Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an expert in eating and body image issues, and a woman on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food and body.
A $702 billion global diet/nutrition and weight loss industry shows that people worldwide are devoted to achieving maximum health and their desired bodies. Yet mainstream approaches are failing these individuals, and sadly, science proves this. Intent on gaining the “health” and “happiness” that diets promise, consumers keep trying. They become sad and frustrated, believing they’re failing when they’re not. They simply need a legitimate, alternative path, which MeaningFULL offers. Through the contributors’ diverse, real-life mini-memoirs followed by Spotts-De Lazzer’s commentaries, readers will learn about themselves and discover their unique, unconventional formulas for conquering their issues. Along the way, MeaningFULL will also guide them toward more self-appreciation, wellness, and fulfillment.
MASTERFUL POETRY
Longlisted for the 2025 Massachusetts Book Awards, KISS & RELEASE, a meditation in a rush, is driven by the intense voice of an observant, insistent & emotional “I.” He’s an urban gay man who admits he’s here with a date, but you never know how the night will end. He has several loves, at least a few fuckboys, and many
most spells are made with words & broken by a kiss, why not the other way around?
what is more intimate than a whisper?
how long will yr wife be gone?
Have you ever noticed it? asks “Love Is Finished Again,” a poem cycle revealed in seven movements. The sequence muses on how we end up in the same place over & over in sex & love & everything. The only real change is through decay that makes ruins, noseless busts, caves of Pompeii, brothel rooms. Even language & communication decay, as a number of mashup and collaborative poems explore.
Are you ready for the beats? This book is a party and a romance. It’s a lucid dream.
This poetry accuses, brags, confesses, obsesses, panics & promises. It discos, raves & swings. It falls in love during a hookup but gets bored at a four-way. It woos the Zodiac; tries to get its virginity back; invents sex as a religion, mythologizes masculinity & succumbs to its devils; kills a snake to resurrect a lover; gives a blowjob at a dirty book store; goes to see bad performance art; looks for love & finds it everywhere/wherever.
A 2024 Best Book Awards Winner for Urban Poetry, and Finalist in both the Narrative and Contemporary Poetry categories, THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD is Douglas Cole’s first poetry collection to explore the prose poem. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire, Octavio Paz, Claudia Rankine and James Wright, Cole tells a tale of the world in fragmentary, dreamlike poems rich in musical language that retains a mystery bringing readers back again to see what shimmers at the edge of the page. If the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, then these poems are visions wrought in moonlight.
In classical Chinese Zen painting, nature is large, human presence often nothing more than a tiny hut. In the Tradition of Mountains and Rivers, clarity of vision comes most often with a journey up and out of the world of political intrigues and warfare and pettiness. A similar vision comes through the poetry in The Cabin at the End of the World. But as the 12th-century Zen poet, Ikkyu, also known as Crazy Cloud, writes: one cannot truly experience enlightenment in seclusion. It must happen in the world, in a lover’s kiss, in a night of revelry and drinking. Just so, THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD explores truth and beauty in the world of people and their lives, and even when we do reach the Mountain and Rivers in the section titled “Windows of the Sea,” human remnants, outposts, graves and ghosts still hover close under the surface. Any “escape” is directly confronted and put away. Here in the world we find paradise.
EXQUISITE CORPSE, the sixth poetry collection by renowned Chilean poet Malú Urriola (1967–2023), translated by Elena Barcia, showcases Urriola's intensely personal and innovative voice. Oscillating between deep self-reflection and playful Dadaist influences, these poems dive into the emotional intensity of memory—whether through vivid sexual encounters or profound personal grief—often morphing into surreal, imaginative leaps. Her work brims with allusions to music, literature, and the natural world, deeply exploring what it means to live and think as a poet in the modern world. As Urriola writes, her aim is "to navigate the instant, to delay its departure a while, fine-tuning the ear of the eye in that brief journey of presence.”
Inspired by Dadaism’s embrace of unpredictability, Exquisite Corpse breaks from traditional poetic form, blending graphics, shape poems, aphorisms, philosophical reflections, and free-form meditations on poetry itself. Her thoughts spiral and loop like jazz riffs, crafting a richly layered reading experience. Wry, intelligent, and moving, the collection delves into themes of urban life, academic arrogance, female sexuality, existentialism, and the beauty and solace found in nature, music, and poetry.
Exposed. Vulnerable. Words that describe the poetry in Kris Godspeed Amos’s collection, but certainly not the only one: Love. Survival.Perseverance. These too stand out.
ARE YOU READY TO LOVE YOURSELF A BLACK MAN? allows us, readers of literature/purveyors of society a direct view of our relationships with African-American men. The collection, short in pages, is full of depth and deep introspection on concepts such as mental health issues, relationship and family conflict, and intracultural strife, to systematic oppression, racism, prejudice, and sexism. Amos explores his observations, contributions, and position on these topics.
Built with lyric in mind, the underbelly of each poem is rhythm. This beat tells the story of the Black Man, and his relationship with the world. Completely relevant and in desperate need of reflection by a society that still hasn’t fully experienced the love of a man of color,ARE YOU READY TO LOVE YOURSELF A BLACK MAN? is meant to be read by all regardless of color, race, religion, sex, or gender.It is a book designed to start conversations and discussions on the topic that matters most: humanity is universal.
Love books and a little bit of mystery? Dive into a literary adventure with our Book Boxes, Subscriptions, and Surprises! Each box is a treasure chest packed with handpicked reads from Unsolicited Press, exclusive merch, and a sprinkle of bookish delight. Perfect for the curious reader who thrives on discovery or as a gift for the bibliophile in your life. Whether you choose a one-time treat or an ongoing subscription, every delivery is a celebration of indie literature. Because who doesn’t love surprises, especially when they’re wrapped in stories?
BUNDLES, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND SURPRISES.
If you’re new to Unsolicited Press, this is the place to begin.
This bundle brings together three books that reflect the range, intelligence, and emotional clarity of our catalog.
These are books that listen closely to the world and respond honestly.
Because what’s life without a little literary chaos?
For $15, you get:
📖 1 surprise book from our weird, wonderful backlist
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Snag Your Surprise Book ➡️
These stories live in the shadows: surreal, speculative, and unsettling in the best ways. They resist neat conclusions and linger long after the last page.
Together, these books offer a snapshot of the press right now: diverse, ambitious, and deeply human.
THE UNSOLICITED PRESS CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
Three-book selections from the Unsolicited Press archive, gathered around a shared literary mood. New every Monday. Always under $40.
MERCH
Show off your love for indie books with our Bookish Merchandise! From cozy tees that scream "reader vibes" to mugs perfect for fueling late-night page turns, we’ve got you covered. Add some literary flair to your life with stickers, totes, and more—all designed to celebrate your bookish personality. Whether you’re treating yourself or shopping for the bookworm in your life, these goodies are bound to bring a smile. Wear your love for books proudly (or sip it, or stick it—your choice)!
• 80% ring-spun cotton, 20% polyester
• Garment-dyed 3-end fleece with a 100% cotton face
• Fabric weight: 9.5 oz./yd.² (322 g/m²)
• Yarn diameter: 30 singles
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• Twill label
• The fabric of this product is OEKO-TEX Standard 100-certified
• Blank product sourced from El Salvador
Disclaimer: This sweatshirt undergoes garment-dyeing and softening processes, which may cause slight color variations.
This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
• Ceramic
• 11 oz mug dimensions: 3.79″ (9.6 cm) in height, 3.25″ (8.3 cm) in diameter
• 15 oz mug dimensions: 4.69″ (11.9 cm) in height, 3.35″ (8.5 cm) in diameter
• Colored rim, inside, and handle
• Dishwasher and microwave safe
• 100% combed cotton
• Heather colors are 15% viscose and 85% cotton
• Fabric weight: 5.3 oz/yd² (180 g/m²)
• Relaxed fit
• Cropped length
• Ribbed crew neck
• Dropped shoulders
• Side-seamed construction
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Double-needle hems
• Preshrunk
• Blank product sourced from Bangladesh
A tiny manifesto you can slap on your laptop, water bottle, mailbox, or the nearest corporate publishing catalog. “READ SMALL PRESS” is our rallying cry — a reminder that literature survives because readers choose to support the presses doing the real work. Weatherproof, matte, badass.
Product features
- Vibrant, long-lasting color printed with eco-solvent inks
- Matte UV protective laminate for weather and sun resistance
- Premium, water-resistant vinyl rated 5+ years outdoors
- Strong waterproof adhesive with easy-peel backing
- Eco-friendly inks and durable construction for indoor/outdoor use
Care instructions
- Use a soft, clean and dry cloth to gently brush any dust or dirt off from the center of the sticker outwards.
Literary Nights with Unsolicited Press. Hosted by Rosalia Scalia
Literary Nights is Unsolicited Press’s twice-monthly reading series hosted by acclaimed writer Rosalia Scalia. Each event spotlights bold, innovative authors whose work pushes past the limits of mainstream publishing. Intimate, unpretentious, and driven by the belief that literature thrives in community, Literary Nights brings writers and readers together for live readings that celebrate voice, craft, and the unmistakable fire of small-press storytelling.
SMALL PRESS, BIG MOUTH BOOK CLUB
A monthly book club celebrating the unruly brilliance of small-press literature featuring bold titles, intimate author salons, and a community of readers who don’t shut up about the books they love.
Publish Without Burning Out:
A Small Press Launch System for Authors Who Want a Real Career (Not a Meltdown)
A humane, repeatable way to launch books without sacrificing your health, creativity, or life.
Publishing a book shouldn’t feel like a slow-motion collapse. And yet—for authors and small presses alike—it often does. Launch plans spiral. Marketing feels endless. Outreach turns into self-doubt. Everyone is overworked, underpaid, and expected to somehow do more.
Publish Without Burning Out exists because that model is broken.
This system offers a realistic, ethical alternative: a clear, sustainable launch framework designed for people who actually make independent publishing happen.
The Small Press Publishing Collective
A membership community redefining what publishing can be. Free. Transparent. Collective.
The Small Press Publishing Collective is a free membership community created by Unsolicited Press to support writers, editors, and independent press-builders who believe that publishing should be transparent, ethical, and accessible.
Our mission is simple: to teach the publishing world as it really is, not as the industry benefits from portraying it.
We are here to dismantle gatekeeping, redistribute knowledge, empower literary workers, and build sustainable, people-centered publishing ecosystems.