March 20, 2025, 9:15am

Small presses have had a rough year, but as the literary world continues to conglomerate, we at Literary Hub think they’re more important than ever. Which is why, every (work) day in March—which just so happens to be National Small Press Month—a Lit Hub staff member will be recommending a small press book that they love.

The only rule of this game is that there are no rules, except that the books we recommend must have been published, at some time, and in some place, by a small press. What does it mean to be a small press? Unfortunately there is no exact definition or cutoff. All of the presses mentioned here are considered to be small presses by the recommending editors, and for our purposes, that’s going to be good enough. All of the books mentioned here are considered to be great by the recommending editors, too. If one intrigues you, consider picking it up at your local bookstore, or ordering through Bookshop.org, or even directly from the publisher.

Today, we’re recommending:

Duplex by Kathryn Davis
published by Graywolf Press (2013)

Graywolf is one of the most beloved small presses in the literary landscape, not least because they publish knockout after knockout. It’s hard to choose a favorite, but I love to recommend Kathryn Davis’s beautiful, bonkers novel Duplex, which is dear to my heart for many reasons, but first and foremost for its reminder that despite the supposed conventions of genre and form and the marketplace, novels (and novelists) can actually do anything they want.

In this book, Davis writes sharp, clean sentences and dreamy complex ones. She writes about teenage girls and robots and the myths that both divert from and create our everyday experience and motherhood and the nature of time and a sorcerer called Body-without-Soul, also known as Walter. It is all deeply familiar and absolutely brand new, in a way I have never encountered before or since. Davis can show you the sidewalk and make it fascinating. Imagine if Leonora Carrington rewrote The Virgin Suicides—though honestly, if that description appeals to you, you’ve probably already read this novel. Also congratulations, you are the right kind of person. But I actually think that everyone who reads this book takes something slightly different away from it: such is its complexity and subtlety, such is its mystery. It’s not the easiest trip to take, but it is a deeply rewarding one.

–Emily Temple, Managing Edditor

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Namely, Wylde, whose group is supposed to advocate for the city’s biggest banks and real estate firms, appeared to endorse Letitia James for mayor if Eric Adams folds amid multiple criminal investigations and indictments. 

Yes – that Letitia James, the New York Attorney General who supports taxing the city’s wealth and job creators and who is part of Albany’s lefty Dem ruling elite. And yes – it’s that Tish James who weaponized her office and brought a nothing-burger case against Donald Trump for fibbing on a loan application that he paid back. 

Kathryn Wylde, center, whose group is supposed to advocate for the city’s biggest banks and real estate firms, appeared to endorse Letitia James for mayor.  Getty Images for IBM

The consensus: If she can go after Trump for so little, what’s stopping her from squeezing billions out of the big banks?

Hence the bewilderment over Wylde’s quote in The NY Times: “If the mayor were unable to run for re-election, she (James) could be a consensus candidate that business and labor could get behind.”

If Letitia James can go after Trump for so little, what’s stopping her from squeezing billions out of the big banks? Robert Miller

Well maybe labor, but certainly not the business types I’ve spoken with.

“Members of the New York City business community might want Tish James to be mayor of a city, but not this city,” said one. Another: “This person (James) tried to destroy Trump instead of going after real problems like why toothpaste at drug stores is locked behind partitions.” And another: “Gross … I’m glad I let my membership lapse.”

Adams is facing multiple criminal investigations and indictments.  Brigitte Stelzer

I asked Wylde why she thought it was smart to make such a statement, since she does, after all, rep the business community. Her response: “That was an observation not an endorsement.”

Tell that to your members.

The post Kathryn Wylde stuns members with Letitia James for mayor statement appeared first on Our Story Insight.