Scores of reviewers are reading traditionally-published books across genres from small, independent, U.S. presses published between December 1 2024 and November 30 2025. This will culminate in a list of 100 Notable Small Press Books published late November 2025.
Defining our terms: When we say across genres, we mean reviewers are reading literary fiction and story collections, poetry, memoir, essays, general nonfiction, romance, horror, sci fi/fantasy, YA lit, children’s lit, comics/graphic novels, and literature in translation. Traditionally-published means we are not reading self-published books or books from hybrid publishers, where authors are required to pay the publisher for some costs. Small press means 50ish or fewer titles published per year. Independent press means independently-owned publishers and not imprints of Big Five publishing houses.
Our commitment: We are committed to including books across genres. We are committed to including books across presses. We are committed to including a diverse array of books, including books from authors of historically marginalized groups.
Find us across social media at #100smallpress. Follow Miriam on Bluesky for updates.
Update: We have a home - and a great one - for the list, but the news is still under wraps. Stay tuned! You won’t be disappointed.
Reviewer Application:
Most reviewer positions are filled. Remaining genres are listed below.
If you are a BIPOC reviewer interested in any genre, please email miriam @ miriamgershow dot com with your preferred genre and 2-3 sentences explaining your qualifications to review in that genre.
Small Press Interest form:
Be part of our directory of small presses (300+ and growing) for reviewers to request review copies.
Small Press Author Interest form:
If you’re a small press author with a publication date between December 2024 - November 2025, enter your information here. This does not guarantee a reviewer will reach out. But one might!
Reviewer Bios
Shamana Ali is a voracious reader, having been entranced by the music of words since childhood. She has worked in the publishing industry, edited professionally, is a published and performing poet, and enjoys reviewing books with a view to encouraging authors to be their best.
Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate New York. She is the author of the novel Child of Light (Whiskey Tit 2025), the chapbook Dangerous Women (dancing girl press 2022), the play Kinderkrankenhaus (Sagging Meniscus 2021), and the novel The Book of the Last Word (Whiskey Tit 2019).
Elizabeth Byers is a retired community organizer. She has a magical delight in reading and sharing the fantastic books that she finds.
Wendy Call is author, co-editor, or translator of eight books, including No Word for Welcome, Telling True Stories, and the annual anthology that she co-founded, Best Literary Translations. Her co-translation of Mikeas Sánchez’s How to Be A Good Savage and Other Poems won the 2024 International Latino Book Awards Gold Medal for Best Translation.
Jamey Gallagher’s writing has been published in more than seventy venues, including Punk Noir Magazine, Poverty House, Shotgun Honey, Pembroke Magazine, Bull Fiction, and LIT Magazine. His debut collection, American Animism, will be published by Cornerstone Press in 2025.
Amalia Gladhart’s short fiction has appeared in The Common, Leon Literary Review, Portland Review, Cordella Magazine, and other journals. Published translations include “Jaguars’ Tomb” (by Angélica Gorodischer) and “The Potbellied Virgin” (by Alicia Yánez Cossío).
Allison Green is the author of a novel, Half-Moon Scar (St. Martin's), a memoir, The Ghosts Who Travel with Me (Ooligan), and essays that have appeared in publications such as The Gettysburg Review, Calyx, and Utne Reader. She lives in Seattle, where she teaches at Highline College.
Debra Gwartney is the author of two book-length memoirs and many essays. Her work was included in Best American Essays in 2022 and 2023, and she’s been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Western Oregon.
JoeAnn Hart, the author of Arroyo Circle, writes about the pervasive and widespread effects of the climate crisis on the natural world and the human psyche. She is a regular reviewer of environmental fiction and non-fiction for EcoLit, as well as Terrain.org.
Jenny Hayes lives in Seattle and has an MFA from the low-residency program at U.C. Riverside - Palm Desert. Her writing has appeared in the Coachella Review, Seattle Review of Books, Had, Spartan, Litro NY, and other interesting places.
Diane Josefowicz is books editor at Necessary Fiction and the author of Ready, Set, Oh: A Novel and L'Air du Temps (1985). A story collection, Guardians & Saints, is coming in October 2025 from Cornerstone Press.
Beth Kephart, a National Book Award finalist, is the award-winning author of more than three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher of memoir, and a paper artist. My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera (Temple University Press) was released in 2023, and Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday's News: A Philadelphia Story is due out from Tursulowe Press on April 1, 2025.
Kalen Landow is the sales director for Microcosm Publishing and an evangelist for all things books and reading. She lives in Denver, CO.
Raima Larter is the author of three novels, two short story collections, and one nonfiction science book. She is a former chemistry professor who hails from Colorado and currently serves as the Nonfiction Editor of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.
Brian James Lewis is president of the non-profit Empire & Great Jones Creative Arts Foundation and editor-in-chief of its publishing arm, E&GJ Press.
John P. Loonam has been publishing fiction, reviews and essays for over 30 years. His novel, Music the World Makes will be published by Frayed Edge Press in 2025 and his short story collection The Price of their Toys is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press.
Judith Claire Mitchell is a novelist (The Last Day of the War, A Reunion of Ghosts) and essayist whose most recent work appears in The Sun, The New England Review, The Sewanee Review, and similar literary journals. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is a professor emerita in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Creative Writing Program.
Helena Ramsaroop (she/her) is an Indo-Guyanese Canadian freelance editor, book reviewer and bioarchaeologist. She is the recipient of the 2024 Claudette Upton Scholarship, which is a national award from Editors Canada that recognizes a promising emerging editor.
Anne Rasmussen lives in Portland, Oregon. Her writing appears in Blood Orange Review, Little Fiction, Barren Magazine, and The Southeast Review, among others. She is an Assistant Fiction Editor for Split Lip Magazine and Pithead Chapel, and previously coordinated Late Night Library’s Late Night Interview column.
Tonja Matney Reynolds writes woman-centric literary and historical fiction, both short stories and novels. Her stories have appeared in various journals, including Streetlight Magazine, Still: The Journal, and 100 Word Story, and her craft article will be featured in a summer 2025 issue of Writer's Digest.
Catherine Rockwood has reviewed books and occasionally TV for Strange Horizons since 2015. She/they is also a poet, and a member of the editorial staff of Reckoning Magazine.
Diane Simmons is the author of numerous prize-winning works of fiction and non-fiction. Her novel Dreams Like Thunder is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in March 2025.
Shayne Terry's work has appeared in CRAFT, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere and has been supported by workshops and residencies at Bread Loaf, CRIT, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her first book is Leave: A Postpartum Account (Autofocus Books, 2025).
Nancy Townsley's debut novel, Sunshine Girl (Heliotrope Press, April 2025), was inspired by her long career as a newspaper journalist. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Hippocampus, The Big Smoke, Nailed magazine, the Timberline Review, Elephant Journal, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, and several anthologies.
Ash Trebisacci (they, them) is a writer and education abroad professional based in the Boston area. Their creative nonfiction has recently appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Off Assignment, and Hunger Mountain, among other places.
Robin Van Impe is a queer Belgian writer with an MFA Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she served as the Fiction Editor for Redivider. She was a 2024 finalist of the Arts & Letters Unclassifiable Contest and was shortlisted for the Smokelong Grand Micro Contest.
Angela Chaidez Vincent is a poet and fiction writer with a background of livelihoods in engineering, mathematics, and computer science. She’s the author of Arena Glow (Tourane Poetry Press, 2024) and lives in Fresno, CA with her wife, Lisa.
Kit Ward-Crixell (she/her) is a children's librarian who is always up for doing an experiment, building a robot or reading in a blanket fort. She believes that reading makes us free.
D. W. White serves as Founding Editor of L’Esprit Literary Review, Prose Editor for West Trade Review, and Publisher of Indirect Books, a new independent press launched this year. A Ph.D. in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois--Chicago, his writing appears in 3:AM, The Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Chicago Review of Books, among others.
Danielle Zaccagnino is a teacher, writer, new mother, and editor of Fast Flesh Literary Journal. Her first book, Suppose Muscle, Suppose Night, Suppose This In August, is available from Mason Jar Press.