Now Read This: September 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators

Black Joy Unbound: An Anthology

Inspired by a deep longing for writing that embodies the vivacity of Blackness and Black life, Black Joy Unbound is a multi-genre collection that encompasses a broad spectrum of literary writing on Black joy.

Maps You Can’t Make by Mariella Saavedra Carquin

Trauma takes up real space within us, and it can be so difficult to hold. How do we access that place of longing and loss, of fragmented memory and grief? How do we carry it as we walk in the world? There’s no map for this, no clear path through the internal landscape it reshapes, no easy way to make meaning of our lives in that disoriented state. Mariella Saavedra Carquin confronts hard truths in this powerful debut collection, pushing through layered complexities of immigration, race, and identity to find a way forward.

Interior Landscape by Mirta Rosenberg (Translated by Yaki Setton and Sergio Waisman)

Mirta Rosenberg (1951-2019) is a key poet of the ’80s generation in Argentina. In Interior Landscape, Rosenberg explores questions of life and death, of changes experienced in one’s body through time and the resulting changes in perspective. These poems contemplate the dislocation of the self, posing questions about the relationship between subjectivity, perception, the body, and memory. Rosenberg’s voice is at once autobiographical and critical, displaying the interior landscapes of its experience as well as the complex ways that language forms a fundamental part of that experience. Originally published in Spanish in Argentina in 2012, Interior Landscape is the first book-length translation of Rosenberg’s poetry to be published in English.


Do you have a lit journal issue, chapbook, book, or other work that’s about to be published? Email us at vagabondcityliterary@gmail.com to be added to our Books Available to Review list and/or featured on an upcoming Now Read This list.

Vagabond City Literary Journal

Founded in 2013, we are a literary journal dedicated to publishing outsider literature. We publish art, prose, reviews, and interviews from marginalized creators.