{"id":308826,"date":"2026-04-10T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=308826"},"modified":"2026-04-08T15:21:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:21:36","slug":"15-must-read-small-press-books-of-spring-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/15-must-read-small-press-books-of-spring-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Must-Read Small Press Books of Spring 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I was texting with the editor of my most recent book about how there seem to be cycles in in literature, some kind of zeitgeist or collective unconscious, like how for a minute there were so many retellings of Frankenstein<\/a><\/em> (like this<\/a>, and this<\/a>, and this<\/a>, and this<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speculative fiction has been having a moment for a while, and in many works\u2014including the ones on this list\u2014there is also a deep current of loss and isolation. And ghosts. What\u2019s interesting to me, just as how the Frankenstein<\/em> retellings came from really different writers, is the way the through lines in books from this season cross generations, genres, and perspectives. The story collections from Patricia Henley and Tayyba Kanwal, whose debuts have nearly three decades of distance between them, have a lot more in common than the jacket copy would suggest. Similarly, ire\u2019ne lara silva and Wesley Brown capture a kind of familial longing, though Brown\u2019s realism is literary (in the genre sense) and silva\u2019s is magical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My editor said he\u2019s starting to see a lot of Icarus metaphors, but what I\u2019m seeing is writers using narrative to try and articulate our contemporary moment, even if their work is set in the 14th<\/sup> Century, like Lauren C. Johnson. None of these books fly too close to the sun, but all take that same soaring ambition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n