American Literature

Reimagining Realism
A New Anthology of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century American Short Fiction
Edited by Charles A. Johanningsmeier and Jessica E. McCarthy

This fresh, diverse anthology of American short fiction challenges readers to interrogate commonly held ideas about the genres of realism and naturalism. Little-known writers and crucial voices from underrepresented groups join stalwarts such as Stephen Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mark Twain to offer a more inclusive perspective on American history and culture from the Civil War through World War I.

House of Incest
By Anaïs Nin
· Introduction by Allison Pease
· Foreword by Gunther Stuhlmann

Originally published in 1936,  House of Incest  is Anaïs Nin’s first work of fiction. Based on Nin’s dreams, the novel is a surrealistic look within the narrator’s subconscious as she attempts to distance herself from a series of all-consuming and often taboo desires.

Welcome to the Neighborhood
An Anthology of American Coexistence
Edited by Sarah Green
· Foreword by David Baker

In this rich anthology poets, fiction writers, essayists, and illustrators—with open minds and nuance—ask what it means to be neighbors.

Collages
By Anaïs Nin
· Introduction by Anita Jarczok

First published in 1964 and now reissued with a new introduction by Anita Jarczok, Collages showcases Nin’s dreamlike and introspective style and psychological acuity. Seen by some as linked vignettes and some as a novel, the book is a mood piece that resists categorization.

Good-bye, Son and Other Stories
By Janet Lewis

Lewis’ only collection of short fiction was first published in 1946, but remains as quietly haunting today as it was then. Set in small communities of the upper Midwest and northern California in the ’30s and ’40s, these midcentury gems focus on the quiet cycles connecting youth and age, despair and hope, life and death.

Good-bye, Son and Other Stories
By Janet Lewis

Lewis’ only collection of short fiction was first published in 1946, but remains as quietly haunting today as it was then. Set in small communities of the upper Midwest and northern California in the ’30s and ’40s, these midcentury gems focus on the quiet cycles connecting youth and age, despair and hope, life and death.

The Constant Listener
Henry James and Theodora Bosanquet—An Imagined Memoir
By Susan Herron Sibbet

In 1907, in a quiet English village, Theodora Bosanquet answered Henry James’s call for someone to transcribe his edits and additions to his formidable body of work. The aging James had agreed to revise his novels and tales into the twenty-four-volume New York Edition. Enter Bosanquet, a budding writer who would record the dictated revisions and the prefaces that would become a lynchpin of his legacy.Embracing

The Man Who Created Paradise
A Fable
By Gene Logsdon
· Foreword by Wendell Berry
· Photography by Gregory Spaid

The Man Who Created Paradise, a fable inspired by a true story, tells how young Wally Spero looked at one of the bleakest places in America—the strip-mined spoil banks of southeastern Ohio—and saw in it his escape from the drudgery of his factory job.

A Saturnalia of Bunk
Selections from The Free Lance, 1911–1915
By H. L. Mencken
· Edited by S. T. Joshi

H. L. Mencken’s reputation as a journalist and cultural critic of the twentieth century has endured well into the twenty-first. His early contributions as a writer, however, are not very well known. He began his journalistic career as early as 1899 and in 1910 cofounded the Baltimore Evening Sun.

Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories
By Anaïs Nin
· Introduction by Allison Pease
· Foreword by Gunther Stuhlmann

Written when Anaïs Nin was in her twenties and living in France, the stories collected in Waste of Timelessness contain many elements familiar to those who know her later work as well as revelatory, early clues to themes developed in those more mature stories and novels. Seeded with details remembered from childhood and from life in Paris, the wistful tales portray artists, writers, strangers who meet in the night, and above all, women and their desires.These

Trapeze
The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955
By Anaïs Nin
· Edited by Paul Herron
· Introduction by Benjamin Franklin V
· Preface by Paul Herron

Anaïs Nin made her reputation through publication of her edited diaries and the carefully constructed persona they presented. It was not until decades later, when the diaries were published in their unexpurgated form, that the world began to learn the full details of Nin’s fascinating life and the emotional and literary high-wire acts she committed both in documenting it and in defying the mores of 1950s America.

The Secret of the Hardy Boys
Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate
By Marilyn S. Greenwald

The author of the Hardy Boys Mysteries was, as millions of readers know, Franklin W. Dixon. Except there never was a Franklin W. Dixon. He was the creation of Edward Stratemeyer, the savvy founder of a children’s book empire that also published the Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew series.The

Winter of Artifice
Three Novelettes
By Anaïs Nin
· Introduction by Laura Frost

Swallow Press’s reissue of Winter of Artifice, with a new introduction by Laura Frost, presents an important opportunity to consider anew the work of Anaïs Nin who laid the groundwork for later writers, but whom critics frequently dismiss as solipsistic or overblown.

Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean
Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia
Edited by Adrian Blevins and Karen Salyer McElmurray

In essays that take wide-ranging forms—ideal for creative nonfiction classes—established and emerging writers with roots in Appalachia take on the theme of silencing in Appalachian culture. They write about families left behind, hard-earned educations, selves transformed, identities chosen, and risks taken.

Every River on Earth
Writing from Appalachian Ohio
Edited by Neil Carpathios
· Foreword by Donald Ray Pollock

Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio includes some of the best regional poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from forty contemporary authors such as David Baker, Don Bogen, Michelle Burke, Richard Hague, Donald Ray Pollock, and others.