The Volta: Friday Feature

Best Books of 2012
Evie Shockley Shouts Some Fabulous and Noteworthy Books Released in 2012
(Without Regard to Superlatives)

image of I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women

Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Brown, Teresa Carmody, and Vanessa Place, Eds. I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women. Les Figues Press.
image of The Vital System

C. M. Burroughs. The Vital System. Tupelo Press.
image of SECESSION

Amy Sara Carroll. SECESSION. Hyperbole Books/San Diego State University Press.
image of Slow Lightning

Eduardo Corral. Slow Lightning. Yale University Press.
image of Engine Empire

Cathy Park Hong. Engine Empire. W. W. Norton.
image of Racial Things, Racial Forms

Joseph Jeon. Racial Things, Racial Forms: Objecthood in Avant-Garde Asian American Poetry. University of Iowa Press.
image of The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed To Be

Harryette Mullen. The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed To Be: Essays and Interviews. University of Alabama Press.
image of Ascension

Giovanni Singleton. Ascension. Counterpath Press.

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Evie Shockley is the author of two poetry collections, the new black (Wesleyan, 2011) and a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006). From 2007-2011, she co-edited the poetry journal jubilat. Her work also includes a critical study: Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (Iowa, 2011). She is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing.