What is this?
THE FRONTLIST is my weekly (ish) newsletter dedicated to new and forthcoming books, including exclusive career insights from the writers, editors, agents, and publishing professionals who make them.
I love speculative fiction, narrative nonfiction, poetry about space/nature/history, and books with a strong sense of place and time — so the titles covered here often reflect my personal taste.
There are two editions of the Frontlist:
Monthly book previews: A curated list of my 10-15 most-anticipated new books coming out every month. Here’s an example.
Behind the book: A three-part Q&A with the people who made an upcoming book — from conception to publication. Here’s an example.
The Frontlist is free for everyone, but if you click a Bookshop.org link and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small percentage of the revenue. You can subscribe to the newsletter for free — or you can subscribe at a monthly ($5) or yearly ($50) rate to help me keep every issue free for unpaid subscribers.
The amazing, hand-lettered wordmarks for The Frontlist were designed by Cristina Vanko.
Who am I?
I’m a culture journalist who covers books and video games — usually for Esquire these days, but also for The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Inverse, Polygon, BOMB magazine, and a bunch of other publications.
I’m currently writing a book called A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls for Simon & Schuster’s One Signal imprint (a division of Atria Books). It’s a narrative biography of Margaret C. Anderson, the queer and forgotten literary pioneer who faced a criminal trial in New York City for being the first to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses.
I founded the Chicago Review of Books in 2016, the Southern Review of Books in 2020, and the Chicago Literary Archive in 2021. More about me here.
