Lines in the Shed
Ryan Tracy, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Auntie Press through Troy Book Makers
Cover designed by Suyash Chitrakar ’25
Lines in the Shed offers at-close-range portraits of a social fracture, everyday paranoia, and unspoken antagonisms, major and minor. At home in the American quotidian tradition of O’Hara, Williams, and Wright, these poems never lose sight of what matters, what’s gay, what comes up short, what we can’t live without, and what endures in the daily struggle to live in the world with strangers, family, and—perhaps the book’s most urgent heroes—friends.
You’re Too Young to Understand
Liz Sjaastad ’89
Itasca Books
Born to a Russian immigrant father scarred by the trauma of WWII and a mother silently battling schizophrenia, Sjaastad was thrust into chaos from a young age. This powerful memoir traces her journey from a childhood steeped in instability to the hard-earned healing of adulthood. With grace and vulnerability, she invites readers into a world where caring for the very people who failed to protect you becomes an act of reclamation.
Love Letters to a Serial Killer
Tasha Coryell ’10
Penguin Random House
An aimless young woman starts writing to an accused serial killer while he awaits trial and then, once he’s acquitted, decides to move in with him and take the investigation into her own hands in this dark and irresistibly compelling debut thriller.
“Coryell expertly renders her protagonist’s uneasy perch between love and suspicion. This is un-put-downable.”
—Publishers Weekly
We Declare You a Terrorist
Tim Lord ’98
Dramatic Publishing
After being held hostage in a Moscow theatre by terrorists demanding an end to Russia’s war in Chechnya, a Ukrainian-Russian playwright is still haunted by the relationships he made during the crisis and unable to move past the tragic events that surrounded the siege’s conclusion. In a desperate attempt to understand what he and his country have become, he attempts to sneak into Chechnya only to be captured by Russian agents and suspected of being a terrorist himself. All alone in an interrogation room on the Russian frontier, he is forced to confront just what happened during those 57 hours in 2002.
Men at the Brink Masculinity in the 21st Century
David P. Jachim ’71
International Psychoanalytic Books
Drawing on mythology, psychoanalytic investigation, and sociocultural trends, this book traverses the ever-changing landscape of masculinity from classical images to current-day sociocultural perspectives on the male gender. The author explores early roots of the masculine character, the skewed view of the masculine character in mental health research, as well as the impact of present-day male taglines such as “patriarchy” and “toxic masculinity.” The text illustrates the misunderstanding of men’s needs and treatment by mental health practitioners, the media, as well as the social justice system.