CMU Press
Publishing books since 1972, with a particular focus on poetry and literature.
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Previously Published
Those Absences Now Closest
Those Absences Now Closest
Night Wing over Metropolitan Area
Night Wing over Metropolitan Area
Introspective poems that balance past and present beauty and pain. Hoppenthaler’s fourth collection gives voice to a hard-earned weariness that acknowledges but resists resignation. As Grammy Award-winning songwriter Rosanne Cash puts it, “Hoppenthaler’s attention to the specifics of nature—hummingbirds, Japanese maples, snowfall—are like embroidery, stitched through and holding together the sharp memories and images of loss, longing, regret, and hope.” These subtle yet powerful poems assay aging, spirituality, contemporary political concerns, death, the struggles of a mentally ill child, and related marital pressures. In the end, the poems conclude with a sense of resiliency and purpose reinscribed.
Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff
Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff
A fresh and modern take on one of the most classic poetic forms in the Western literary tradition. “What if creatures in other galaxies / have a vague sense that something is missing, / but don’t know it’s Little Richard, Shakespeare, / and cornbread with plum jam?” In this collection, Robert Thomas presents eighty nontraditional sonnets that explore love and jealousy—the traditional obsessions of sonnets—from nontraditional angles. Other galaxies are jealous of Earth in these heartbreaking, funny, ecstatic, profound, and never boring poems.
Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison
Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison
From a Pulitzer Prize winner, a collection of poems originally sent on postcards to writer Jim Harrison In the late 1990s, when poet Ted Kooser was recovering from cancer surgery, he started sending postcards to his friend Jim Harrison, a novelist known for Legends of the Fall and numerous other books. On each postcard, he wrote a poem. Harrison did the same in return. In 2001, Kooser turned his half of the exchange into Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, a collection of engaging, witty, clever, insightful poems that serve simultaneously as snapshots of a friendship and a view into a poet's daily observations.
Spring 2026 Titles
Konbit
Konbit
The book Konbit, Sony Ton-Aime is published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
The Paris of Appalachia
The Paris of Appalachia
A study of the city of Pittsburgh’s unique history and spirit. Maybe you never wondered if any metro area nearly straddles the borders of three major regions of the country, but The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-First Century tells us why this city is a place apart. It’s not East Coast, Midwest, or Southern, but the rest of America can fret about how to label Pittsburgh. It’s just fine being a walkable town that plays a big city on TV. Brian O'Neill, who walked its streets for more than three decades as a newspaper columnist, fell in love with the place from the moment he arrived. And when you read what he found, odds are better than even that you will, too. This reissue of the book includes a new introduction.
Tear Here
Tear Here
The book Tear Here: a Novel, Matthew Pitt is published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Killing Orpheus
Killing Orpheus
An ambitious collection of poems that reckon with life and death through the point of view of famous speakers throughout history and literature, spanning from Penelope to Frankenstein’s monster. A book that holds death in one hand and wonder in the other, Killing Orpheus explores the horror of mortality, the brutality of history, and the gentle miracles of love. Using received forms, especially the sonnet, this collection cycles through various speakers, including an aging Penelope, Frankenstein’s monster, Isaac beneath Abraham’s blade, and an elephant in Hannibal’s army. Here are sprays of flowers and hungry alligators, lethal snakes, and a baby’s first breath. Here are poems that reckon with death, but for the sake of life. Here is a poetic consciousness that shows us we must dare to make “a truce with loss” in order to go “spinning into love’s bizarre abyss.”
Dear Second Husband
Dear Second Husband
Follow the everyday lives of those trying to keep up with a changing Nashville, Tennessee. Set in the rapidly changing city of Nashville, Tennessee, the characters in Dear Second Husband struggle to make their marriages, friendships, and families thrive despite the pressures of modern life. An unapologetic widower, a self-destructive musician, a teacher grieving a miscarriage, and a mother trying to be everything for everyone rely on resilience and persistence to find joy and belonging in the fragile connections between one another.
Cameo Blue
Cameo Blue
A ruminative collection of poetry that is mystified by life in our built and natural world.Cameo Blue is a spiritual topography, recording the traces of people in their environments, natural and otherwise, and the portents, memories, and signs they use to navigate their path or understand the precipices they face. Lush with color, weather, and imagery, some poems are driven by breathless conjecture, or propelled by the acute observation that often comes with shock, when time stands still and a camera flash reveals the gap between external and internal, hope and fear, past and future. Other poems cross physical and emotional space more quietly, with a narrative voice like the intimate whisper of a secret podcast. The collection is its own immersive environment for the reader to fall into, with poems that take on a talismanic quality, laden with haunted characters, resonant objects, and occult signs.
2008
2008
Disillusioned former high school sweethearts must come to terms with their past and present in the face of a tragedy. It’s 2008: the age of the blog, the dawn of social media, and the birth of the smartphone. Obama is running for president on a slogan of hope, while in the shadows, an opioid crisis emerges, and the housing market teeters. Stevie and Sam, two old high school flames who have grown up and grown apart, are brought back together in the aftermath of a tragedy that throws them off the tracks of their lives. Sam, a struggling realtor, is determined to solve a mystery at any cost. Stevie hits on a plan for a “redo” that involves abandoning her adult life to relive her teenage glory days. As both struggle inside the mediocrity of their early adulthoods, the disenchanted world begins to reveal itself, and secrets threaten to overwhelm them. On the cusp of a new era of uncertainty, these old friends must find ways to reconcile their past and find their way home.
Fall 2025 Titles
The End of the Clockwork Universe
The End of the Clockwork Universe
A luminous new perspective on aging, science, and the tender strangeness of being alive. What does it mean to exist in a universe that refuses to stay still? In The End of the Clockwork Universe, Fleda Brown weaves together the vastness of cosmic discovery with the intimate textures of daily life. Ranging from quarks to catalytic converters, snapping turtles to black holes, these poems trace the mysteries of time and perception, offering a voice both unsentimental and deeply compassionate. With wry humor and unending curiosity, Brown walks the fine line between knowing and not knowing, between order and entropy. Her poems wander through scientific revelation and personal reflection and capture the quiet astonishment of existence. The End of the Clockwork Universe does not seek to solve life’s uncertainties, but sings to them, leaving behind echoes of resilience and the sheer joy of paying attention.
Jackson State
Jackson State
Unflinching and deeply human—Derek Green perfectly encapsulates the quiet dramas of modern America. The characters in Jackson State live in a land of contradictions—where wealth and poverty, beauty and decay, hope and despair exist side by side. In this striking collection, Derek Green brings the American Midwest to life, tracing the tensions of class and race through intimate, unforgettable stories. A father’s protective instinct threatens to unravel his family. A single mother must confront the dangers lurking outside her door. Two siblings navigate the fallout of their father’s militia ties. On the shores of Lake Michigan, a prodigal daughter’s return forces a reckoning with the past. With sharp prose and stark realism, Green captures the struggles and complexities of contemporary American life, establishing Green as a storyteller in the tradition of Carver, Updike, and Cheever.
The Little Lights of Town: Stories
The Little Lights of Town: Stories
Stories of resilience, belonging, and the quiet beauty of life on the edge of the wild. In The Little Lights of Town, acclaimed poet and memoirist Jonathan Johnson turns to fiction, bringing to life the rugged landscapes and tightly knit communities of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Against the backdrop of Lake Superior’s cold, untamed shores, his characters navigate love, loss, and the relentless pull of home. From those who choose to stay despite the ever-present shadow of isolation to those searching for connection in a land where nature looms larger than life, these stories illuminate the quiet urgencies of human existence. With prose as lyrical as it is unflinching, Johnson visualizes a place where the past lingers in the streets, and where even in the darkest winters, little lights continue to shine.
Markers and Shrines
Markers and Shrines
A poetic exploration of how we carry the past forward: reshaped but never broken. In Markers and Shrines, Margot Schilpp traces the moments that define us—the losses that strip away our former selves and the resilience that emerges in their wake. These poems illuminate the way the past etches itself onto the future, displaying how experience, no matter how painful, strengthens and redefines us. With lyrical precision and a musician’s ear for language, Schilpp crafts a world where memory lingers and meaning deepens. Her unembellished eloquence and eye for striking detail turn the everyday into something enlightening, reminding us that even in loss, there is beauty. Markers and Shrines is a reflection on survival and the unseen forces that shape who we become.
No
No
Pine
Pine
Poems that travel through time and terrain, seeking solace in the raw physicality of the world. To grieve is to search. In Pine, Jonathan Johnson’s poems travel across continents: through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Scottish Highlands, the Greek islands, and the mountain wildernesses of the American Northwest, seeking meaning in the spaces left behind. These poems embrace the raw physicality of place, uncovering the deep textures of the natural world as both a witness and companion to loss. Amid the perpetual elegy of everything, Pine offers moments of improbable wonder. Johnson’s voice is steady and rich with narrative, guiding us through landscapes of memory and wilderness alike. In this intimate collection, grief and grace are intertwined, and the world—against all odds—goes on.
Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories
Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories
Eighteen unforgettable stories of women navigating the beauty and chaos of Miami. The Tamiami Trail cuts through the contradictions of Miami: a city shaped by swamps and skyscrapers, violence and desire. In Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories, Jennifer Bannan brings us eighteen vivid portraits of women navigating this teeming, volatile landscape. An adolescent trapped in a toxic relationship. A middle-aged woman entangled with a reckless boy. A marketing executive profiting off the chaos of hurricanes. These women—mothers, daughters, lovers—take their chances in a world where environmental and personal disasters collide, where the ocean’s expanse mirrors the risks they take with their own lives. Steamy, sharp, and deeply human, Tamiami Trail depicts the beauty and brutality of Miami, evoking its lush landscapes and relentless energy. With wit and sharp insight, Bannan maps the unruly desires that drive her unforgettable characters and the city that shapes them.
Trying x Trying
Trying x Trying
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