Want to gift a book? Let the best of Philly writers help.
Airea D. Matthews, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Nikil Saval, Warren C. Longmire, Jacqueline Goldfinger, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, and Greg Pizzoli come through with book recs this holiday season.
Philadelphia is packed with literary talent. We chased after some of the city’s finest to ask what projects they’re working on, and got them to suggest what books (and tickets!) to gift this holiday season.
For the aspiring or established poet in your life
Who: Philadelphia’s Poet Laureate Airea D. Matthews is the author of Simulacra, which won the prestigious 2016 Yale Younger Poets Award. Matthews is currently an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College, where she directs the poetry program.
Currently working on: a new hybrid memoir Bread and Circus, composed of poetry and prose poems that tackle “poverty, class, and race while exploring where economic theory and reality meet”; forthcoming from Scribner in May 2023. She’s also developing an online speakers’ network for Philadelphia area writers coming in early 2023 and in 2024, she’s launching a literary arts residency in Sicily. (Also, she’ll be reading at the Free Library of Philadelphia on Dec. 19)
Holiday season rec: Who’s Your Daddy by Arisa White.
“It’s a hybrid [genre-bending] memoir that features a queer, Black, Guyanese American carving her own path while undertaking a search for her estranged, biological father. It’s at once a book of poetry and a creative nonfiction where the voice is lyrically compelling. Plus, the idea of the literary as an archive of life strikes me as liberatory.”
For true crime readers, and those who love deep takes on human behavior (and scenes of Philly)
Who: Emma Copley Eisenberg is cofounder of Blue Stoop, a hub for Philadelphia’s literary community. She’s the author of the nonfiction book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice of 2020.
Currently working on: a novel called Housemates, which begins in a group house in West Philadelphia and is forthcoming from Hogarth/Penguin Random House in spring 2024. The story “follows two queer women on a road trip through Pennsylvania as one tries to untangle a complicated legacy left to her by her college professor.”
Holiday season rec: The Days of Afrekete (fiction) by Asali Solomon and Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (nonfiction) by Rachel Aviv.
The Days of Afrekete is “such a smart, nuanced funny book that captures what it’s like to be living in the bizarre world of right now (plus it takes place in Philly). Strangers to Ourselves is a “fantastically strange and complicated collection of Aviv’s magazine pieces for The New Yorker about the ways humans both do and don’t (mostly don’t) understand what goes on in our own minds.”
For lovers of history and architecture, and beautifully written prose.
Who: State Sen. (Philadelphia District 1) Nikil Saval is the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. A former editor (and current board member) at n+1 Magazine, Saval is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Currently working on: Rage in Harlem: June Jordan and Architecture, forthcoming from MIT Press in May 2023. The nonfiction work grew out of a lecture he delivered to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design about an unusual collaboration between poet June Jordan and architect Buckminster Fuller to develop an environmental redesign of Harlem in the wake of 1960s violence. He’s also working on another book called Everything is Architecture, forthcoming from FSG.
» READ MORE: How ‘outsider’ Nikil Saval toppled a longtime state senator in Philly
Holiday season rec: 2 A.M. in Little America by Ken Kalfus.
“It’s a really brilliant book that takes place in a postcrisis, apocalyptic world and is about an exile — someone who has to flee the United States.” Line by line, Saval says, it has some of the best prose writing he’s ever encountered.
For a music lover who needs to read the untold stories
Who: Poet Warren C. Longmire is the author of OPEN SOURCE (Radiator Press, 2021). His second work, Bird/Diz: [An erased history of Bebop] (Bunny Presse, 2022) was released this past November. He’ll be sharing it in a stage performance with Poet and saxophonist Elliott Levin on Feb. 15 at Fergie’s Pub.
You can also catch him host Monday Night Poets at the Free Library starting Dec. 19. Longmire will also be headlining the House Poet Spoken Word Dance Party at Divine Lorraine in February.
Currently working on: a collaboration with poet Heather Bolan to produce a forthcoming online chapbook called Highlights and Blackouts.
» READ MORE: There’s a world of haiku on a single corner in Camden
Holiday season rec: They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays by Hanif Abdurraqib, The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limón, and Choose Your Own Beginning (Poems) by Amy Saul-Zerby.
They Can’t Kill Us … Longmire says, is a “wonderful wonderful work, featuring essays about Chance the Rapper and Carly Rae Jepson.” The Hurting Kind is “so so good,” because it features Limón’s connection to nature. Both poetry collections, Longmire says, “deal with pandemic living and the use of art in those times–how to keep the focus on what you love to make.”
For your loved one who wants words that leap off the page … and onto the stage
Who: Jacqueline Goldfinger is a Philadelphia-based playwright and author of Playwriting with Purpose and Writing Adaptations and Translations for the Stage (cowritten with Allison Horsley), published by Routledge. They are also the cofounder and director of creative affairs at Tripwire Harlot Press.
Currently working on: Goldfinger’s opera, Alice Tierney, will premiere at the Oberlin Opera Company in January. The libretto, written in collaboration with Philadelphia-based composer Melissa Dunphy, is based on an infamous true murder story from the days of colonial Philadelphia and features Penn archaeology students who excavate Tierney’s home to figure out what really happened to her. Goldfinger is also premiering a new choral work, A Bright Morning Dawns with Philadelphia conductor and composer Dominick DiOrio of the Mendelssohn Chorus. And their new play, Backwards Forwards Back, will premiere in 2023.
» READ MORE: Meet a hot Philly playwright — and a really big stork
Holiday season rec: Three Plays by Christina Anderson, Rarities and Wonders by Phillip Howze, and Doodles from the Margins: Three Plays by Hansol Jung.
Fans of Anderson’s play, How to Catch Creation, (produced at Philadelphia Theatre Company), and fans of Jung’s plays, Wolf Play and Among the Dead — both performed at Theatre Exile — will enjoy the latest works from these powerful playwrights. Goldfinger says these books include visual art alongside the text, “They’re mini-performances on the page.”
From Pizza to Prayer Rugs — a spectrum of books for the 10-and-under crowd
Who: Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow is the author of four children’s books — ranging from picture books, to middle grade fiction featuring young Black and Muslim protagonists. A former educator, her 2020 picture book Your Name Is a Song was named a National Endowment for the Arts “Read Across America” book. Her latest works include Abdul’s Story and Hold Them Close: A Love Letter to Black Children, which features artwork by Patrick Dougher (whose mural adorns the Norris Street underpass).
» READ MORE: Meet the authors with Philadelphia ties working to diversify children’s books
Currently working on: Salat in Secret is a picture book forthcoming in summer 2023; about a boy who receives a prayer rug, but is too shy to ask to use it during the school day and so finds out-of-the-way places to practice his faith. Additionally, Thompkins-Bigelow is coauthoring a novel for 8- to 12-year-olds called Grounded, about four young adult Muslims who are trapped in the airport after a religious conference.
Holiday season rec: Twelve Dinging Doorbells by Tameka Fryer Brown
“It’s the quintessential holiday book for any family gathering,” according to Thompkins-Bigelow.
Who: Greg Pizzoli is the author of eight kids’ books including PIZZA!: A Slice of History, which was released last August and named a Best Book of the Year by New York Public Library. He has illustrated nearly a dozen more. Pizzoli has an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts, where he then taught silk-screening for seven years before leaving to make picture books full time.
Currently working on: MISTER KITTY IS LOST! is forthcoming from Little, Brown in January. Called a “preschool crowd pleaser” by Kirkus, the book emphasizes colors, counting, and finding a lost cat. Also the third installment of Pizzoli’s Baloney and Friends graphic novel series — titled, Baloney and Friends: Dream Big! — comes out in paperback this January. It’s designed for kids aged 6-9 who enjoy comics.
» READ MORE: Do you know the watermelon man?
Holiday season rec: Anything illustrated by Philadelphia author-illustrator Zachariah OHora. Pizzoli says his 2-year-old daughter is especially obsessed with Ohora’s No Fits, Nilson! Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann is the perfect book to read to his newborn, and Very Special House by Ruth Krauss is one of Pizzoli’s personal favorites.
“I love reading it because the language is rhythmic without falling into the saccharine rhyming conventions that happen so often with picture books, and it’s genuinely fun to read aloud. The pictures are by Maurice Sendak, so of course, incredible.”