The reign of the color-blob book cover has slowly come to an end over the last several years, and various pretenders to the throne have taken their best shot at being the next trend—sans-serif minimalism (The “Cusk”); brightly-colored paper-cut-out illustrations, usually involving women (The “Bernadette“); and of course, the perennial text-over-full-jacket-evocative-photograph (The “Prestige White Author”).

We’re here to report that a new contestant is entering the field in 2024 (or at least Knopf is really trying to make fetch happen). Folks, allow me to introduce… the Pastel Sky.

The Limits by Nell Freudenberger (Knopf, April 2024)

 The Second Coming by Garth Risk Hallberg (Knopf, May 2024)

One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon (Knopf, June 2024)

This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour (Dutton, July 2024)

Is it just me or do you feel calmer looking at these? Maybe the design team at PRH is trying to help give us a little serotonin boost next year, seeing as nearly everything else about 2024 is shaping up stressful. Either way, I can already see the new-release hardcover table at my local indie bookstore, dappled with oh so many gender-reveal-party skies. Not to mention the inevitable inclusion of grayscale gradients, for seriousness, and the genre-fiction addition of neon colors, and so on. How many of them will end up on the 2024 best cover design list? Stay tuned to find out.

Ice, #9316 © Meghann Riepenhoff, from Meghann Riepenhoff: Ice © Radius Books.

Often described as though it was accident rather than alignment, coincidence means the coming together of two things in a more or less harmonious version of a collision, and it is in that spirit a coincidence that at a certain point in the European middle ages the mother of God became an important figure of mercy and intercession and femininity in Christian life as a new source of blue pigment arrived—pulverized lapis lazuli from far-off Afghanistan—that allowed painters to depict intense and vivid shades of blue as never before, and this blue known as ultramarine was most particularly dedicated to depicting her robes, and blue became her color, all of which I delved into after returning to view some of these paintings in which the robes pour off her like water and ripple around her feet as if in inlets and bays, paintings that make me wonder if rather than thinking of all that blue as celestial, the garb of the queen of heaven, as she was also known, it makes her aquatic, oceanic, marine, ultramarine, a living and lifegiving spring or lake, an ocean giving rise to new conditions for life as the cyanobacteria did, an entity whose liquidity is also the female condition in ways that have sometimes worried men, the porousness of those bodies that men sometimes enter and babies sometimes exit, of the flow of blood and amniotic fluid and words, of the undermining of the fantasy of solidity that is the homophobic ideal of impenetrable and autonomous manhood, when in actuality everyone and each of us is a container punctuated by openings with which to smell, to hear, to breathe, to be penetrated as a camera’s aperture is by light itself and relies constantly on inhaling and exhaling, a sort of drinking of the sky and its oxygen, on eating and excreting, the body that is also an erratic fountain of tears, urine, spit, sweat, ejaculate, the menses of fertility and the blood of injury, to say nothing of all the internal secretions of the glands, and is itself two thirds or more water, the blood an interior ocean with the salinity of an ocean moving in waves pumped along by the heart, the water of the body finding an echo in what we call a body of water, and bodies of water are themselves also not discrete, as in self-contained, but forever being added to by tributary streams and rivers and springs or being drained by distributary channels or evaporating into humidity and clouds that become storms, rain, hail, snow, sleet, returning to the solid and liquid surface of the earth: all of this to say that in one such medieval Nativity, the robe flows like water, the child who is also a god lies on a scallop of deep blue on the ground as if afloat, the god whose blood will become a symbol in a church whose rites are full of liquidities, including transubstantiation, anointment, and baptism by immersion or sprinkling with water that has been blessed, and implicit in all this is the possibility that the divine mother so often called a vessel is herself a body of water, which is a reminder of that inward sea of darkness in which each of us swam during the months before birth, and that a camera—a word that means chamber or room—is or was also a vessel of darkness into which light penetrates to impregnate the film with its image, and that the Bible is a book written by desert-dwellers in which the finding of water is often a miracle and a gift.

Ice, #6039 © Meghann Riepenhoff, from Meghann Riepenhoff: Ice © Radius Books.

*

The processes of photography were liquid for most of the medium’s history, more so and less so in various media, utterly so in Muybridge’s wet-plate era when the glass negative had to be coated with emulsion in a dark-tent on site, less so when wet plates were replaced by dry-plate film and then celluloid strip and sheet film late in the nineteenth century, but even when I learned darkroom techniques, they involved the rites of spiraling the 35mm film strips into a canister in darkness and then in the dimly lit chamber bathing the film and then the exposed photographic paper in various solutions, with the gentle sound of sloshing in cans and trays and sinks and gushing from faucets, so that the whole thing felt like alchemy and transubstantiation and mystery, and what it means to go digital, dry, and into daylight has not yet been fully explained, but it must have an impact on how artists think and see, and it all makes me think of the other liquids in visual art including clay slurry, molten metal for casting, and the squish of fresh paint carefully brushed onto the canvases of the Virgin, sloshed and poured and splashed at a certain abstract-expressionist moment that was always seen as being about the actions of the artist but was as much about the fluidity of the medium, a sea of paint hitting its canvas shores, but always left to dry so that the flow stopped and something resembling permanence or at least durability was achieved, and of course the work in this book was made by coating the paper itself in the liquid cyanide mixture in darkness and bringing it to the water’s edge to impress upon it the movement and refracting power and processes of water, liquid and frozen into crystalline formation, capturing not a split second like a snapshot but a passage of time in which the water moves or freezes into crystals, and then bringing it back for another bath, a watery process about water and in the course of so being about what water is always about when it’s liquid, namely that condition we call fluid, as in changeable, evanescent, escaping captivity, the antithesis of frozen and captured.

Ice, #6447 © Meghann Riepenhoff, from Meghann Riepenhoff: Ice © Radius Books.

*
Frozen, we say, to mean that something stopped, because ice stops things, it holds things still, holds itself still so that some of the best records of the distant past we have include ice cores from Greenland whose bubbles let scientists measure the mix of gases in the ancient atmosphere, frozen bodies of ancient men and mammoths in permafrost in Siberia or ice in the Alps, frozen viruses in graves of Spanish flu victims in Alaska, and even to say “freeze” makes me think of those children’s games where someone would call out that word as a command that we were all to suddenly hold still wherever we were no matter how comic or awkward our position, and beyond that to think of the mystery of how the pure liquidity of water becomes that solid thing ice, so that in the cold places anyone can walk on water as a god is said to have strolled on the Sea of Galilee, so that a recent pastime in cold places was recording a thrown cup of hot water freezing solid before it hits the ground, rather as the water appeared to freeze in the instantaneous Muybridge photographs, how much photography has itself been considered a project of freezing the river of time, with latitude for the artists who entertain blur or capture sequence or otherwise allow not the sharp shard of an instant but a bit of the flow of time; frozen we would say for something that stopped, and thaw for a relationship restarted or repaired after a while; there is a perspective from which to argue that the liquid is free and mobile and unrestricted and thereby better than what is stilled into ice crystals, but freezing protects things, and solidity has its charms, and really life on earth is made possible by the properties of water including the temperatures at which it is liquid and gaseous and solid, and life on earth is now troubled and menaced by the circumstances we have created in which the earth warms, the ice melts, the oceans rise, the elegant synchronicity of seasons and species are warped and shattered, and both drought and flood, along with fire, do what they have not before in this era we call interglacial because it was preceded by the ice ages that packed up so much of the earth’s water in ice that shorelines were far lower than they are now, but what comes next will not be an interglacial but a further melting of ice that will change, is changing, all the shorelines again, and everything else.

____________________________

From the essay “Seven Sentences on the Frozen and the Fluid” by Rebecca Solnit from Meghann Riepenhoff: Ice from Radius Books. Co-published with Yossi Milo. Photography by Meghann Riepenhoff. Original Text by Rebecca Solnit. Used with permission of the publisher, Radius Books. Photos copyright 2023 by Meghann Riepenhoff. Text copyright 2023 by Rebecca Solnit.

For what is now the eighth time in a row, I am pleased to present the best book covers of the year—as chosen by some of the industry’s best book cover designers.

This year, I asked 47 designers to share their favorite covers of the year, and they came back with a grand total of 139 covers (!), representing work by 85 different designers for 74 different imprints at home and abroad. The designers’ choices, and their comments, are below.

But first . . . the stats.

The stats:

The best of the best book covers:

First place (12 mentions):

Szilvia Molnar, The Nursery 
design by Linda Huang (Pantheon, March 21)

*
Second place (8 mentions):

Olga Ravn, The Employees
design by Paul Sahre (New Directions, February 7)

*
Third place (tie—6 mentions each):

Greg Jackson, The Dimensions of a Cave 
Design by Jamie Keenan (Granta Books, October 26)

Celina Baljeet Basra, Happy 
Design by Alex Merto (Astra House, November 14)

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The presses with the most covers on the list:

First place:
FSG (19 covers)

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Second place:
New Directions (11 covers)

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Third place:
Pantheon (7 covers)

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The designers with the most different covers on the list:

First place:
Na Kim (7 covers)

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Second place:
Alex Merto (6 covers)

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Third place (3-way tie)
Jamie Keenan, June Park, Jaya Miceli (5 covers each)

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The best month for book covers:

First place:
August (20 covers)

*
Second place:
September (19 covers)

*
Third place:
October (18 covers)

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The full list:

Szilvia Molnar, The Nursery (Pantheon, March 21)
Design by Linda Huang

Such wonderful simplicity, but also cleverly articulating a newborn’s not fully developed vision and the new mother’s struggle with her dissolving identity. Love the placement of ‘A Novel’.

–Holly Ovenden

Everything about this cover is so elegant and minimal. Using “a novel” as part of the illustration is such a clever way to keep from adding more elements to it.

–Vivian Lopez Rowe

–Na Kim

I gasped when I first saw this cover. Such a genius idea that speaks perfectly to the title while also avoiding cliches. The blurring is perfection.

–Jaya Nicely

Yes.

–Erik Carter

Perfectly captures the bleariness of new motherhood. Best design use of “A Novel” I’ve seen in a long time.

–Jenny Carrow

Tender, brilliant, beautiful. I almost can’t believe that Linda was able to get this approved, but I’m so glad she did.

–Alicia Tatone

Although this cover is blurred we know exactly what we’re looking at. Playful and surprising, yet elegant.

–Stephanie Ross

It’s placement of “a novel” for me. Genius!

–Cecilia Zhang

What a smart and sophisticated solution, it’s really beautiful.

–June Park

It’s perfect. The perfect choice of color, type, and image. Linda managed to find a refreshing way to evoke the tenderness, pain, and love of motherhood.

–Arsh Raziuddin

Such a bold, simple and evocative visualization of postpartum depression. Love the way “a novel” is set here and becomes part of the narrative.

–Yang Kim

Olga Ravn, The Employees (New Directions, February 7)
Design by Paul Sahre

YESSS!

–Janet Hansen

–Na Kim

No water cooler talk in this office. The dripping “s” in the title is a smart way to echo the overflow above.

–Stephen Brayda

Sinister stock image and haunted office noticeboard type, this cover looks like nothing else. Also the back cover is a work of art in itself.

–Tom Etherington

This is my favorite book cover of 2023. The image is left to sing and the simple, off-kilter type works perfectly in concert.

–Beth Steidle

This seems like a depiction of an intrusive thought a bored office worker would have while at the water cooler. The falling ’s’ adds to the overall despondent mood.

–Stephanie Ross

The cover is beautiful, but the back cover is even better.

–Arsh Raziuddin

For me, the most striking cover of the year, hands-down. The back cover is just as good, too.

–Luke Bird

Celina Baljeet Basra, Happy (Astra House, November 14)
Design by Alex Merto

Joyful, smart, eye-catching—instantly iconic.

–Holly Ovenden

–Na Kim

Amusing, witty, and incredibly clever—a funhouse distortion of the stereotypical happy face. Turning the book over is an added treat—you’re greeted with an inverted version of the cover, with that elongated smile turned wistfully upside down.

–Devin Grosz

This makes me feel happy.

–Tyler Comrie

Always a sucker for a bold smiley (and frowny!) face cover.

–Yang Kim

Just makes you smile. The use of the space is the key to this. Looks so nice on the shelf too.

–Jon Gray

Greg Jackson, The Dimensions of a Cave (Granta Books [UK], October 26)
Design by Jamie Keenan

See also: the front flap!

The back flap as front cover is a perfect backwards way to start this journey.

–Stephen Brayda

A truly weird cover, and the flaps made me laugh out loud.

–Tom Etherington

This design is so clever and trippy—tricking you into thinking you are looking at the back flap of the book. What’s really great is that the entire jacket follows through with the concept.

–Laywan Kwan

I love the back flap image on the front cover. So clever!

–Jaya Miceli

The U.S. design is excellent as well, but a particular nod of respect to the U.K. design, a mind-bender of a jacket.

–Mark Abrams

Brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. So good it’s almost unsettling.

–Luke Bird

Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult (Random House Canada, May 23)
Design by Kate Sinclair

Gorgeous execution!

–Janet Hansen

–Erik Carter

The juxtaposition of the cool, linear paint “tears” with the hyperreal portrait is enough to make ME cry. Achingly gorgeous.

–Alison Forner

Stunning interpretation of a coming-of-age novel. The super-tight crop and brush strokes work brilliantly.

–Luke Bird

I love the use of photography and paint here. Just beautiful and emotive.

–Jon Gray

Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio (Zando, March 7)
Design by Alex Merto

The liquidy script, creepy monster, and colorful geometric shapes combo create an intriguing and magical world I want to learn more about.

–Janet Hansen

The contrast between the cheery, childlike shapes and the monster lurking down on the bottom edge makes for a compelling cover.

–Stephanie Ross

The creature catches you by complete surprise in its unexpected placement beneath all the happy shapes and loopy type. The eeriness of those eyes stayed with me, even after I put the cover down. Unsettling in all the best ways.

–Cecilia Zhang

I had no idea Alex was behind this cover the whole year I’d admired it. I love everything about it; the choice of fonts, the colorful shapes, the crouching monster… everything seems to be in perfect harmony, but the tension is palpable. I want a poster!

–June Park

It’s not easy to make a cover with a red-eyed monster appealing…I guess that is unless you’re Alex Merto.

–Grace Han

Justin Torres, Blackouts (FSG, October 10)
Design by Na Kim

Hauntingly beautiful. The glossy slab in the center, the glimmer of the gold typography, the creature emerging from the inky blackness—the alchemy of these elements reflect the novel’s theme of a story blotted out and then resurrected.

–Devin Grosz

This cover is a perfect example of how to do a lot with very little. It’s an exercise in minimalism and contrast that manages to feel lush, textural, and mysterious.

–Beth Steidle

Simple but effectively executed black-on-black art. It’s smart and elegant.

–Yeon Kim

“It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me out,” said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. “Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you’ve done it.” -The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

–Mark Abrams

I already thought it was perfect, and then I saw ‘a novel’. Brilliant.

–Arsh Raziuddin

Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down (FSG, February 14)
Design by Na Kim

This cover feels simultaneously bold and delicate. I can’t get over the “A Novel” disappearing into the haze. Another one that made me gasp on first sight.

–Jaya Nicely

I love how beautifully simple yet atmospheric this book cover is, It’s mesmerising, like staring into the literal sun!

–Kishan Rajani

Moody! I love looking at this.

–Anna Kochman

When it comes to effectively utilizing negative space, Na Kim dominates—and this cover is no exception. It’s like a colorful abstract painting that evokes pure emotion.

–Pete Garceau

Ada Zhang, The Sorrows of Others (Public Space Books, May 9)
Design by Janet Hansen

In a world of big shouty titles, this cover really stands out. So elegant and understated.

–Tom Etherington

Simple, quiet and beautiful. I love the gradating colors.

–Jaya Nicely

The delicately intertwined arrows work as a perfect visual metaphor for these stories—evoking the journeys undertaken by the characters across continents, generations, and deep within their own emotional landscapes. A quiet gem.

–Devin Grosz

–Allison Saltzman

Victor Heringer, The Love of Singular Men (New Directions, September 5)
Design by Pablo Delcan

Eye-catching perfection. I can’t stop staring at the sun. The red type on top of the green creates just the right amount of vibration.

–Sarah Schulte

–Na Kim

Simple geometric shapes, beautiful colour and Ed Ruscha type on an uncoated paper. Take my money.

–Tom Etherington

The simplicity and confidence of this cover just work!

–Cecilia Zhang

John Wray, Gone to the Wolves (FSG, May 2)
Design by Thomas Colligan

My favorite cover of the year. I’m a huge fan of the metal lettering + foil + pink endpapers.

–Stephen Brayda

–Na Kim

Exquisitely channeling the heavy-metal-death-cult vibe.

–Lauren Peters-Collaer

The type! The holographic foil! Just so much fun and visually electrifying.

–Yang Kim

Bryan Washington, Family Meal (Riverhead, October 10)
Design by Grace Han

You can hear these forks scraping! The odd colors add even more tension.

–Jenny Carrow

Bryan Washington’s covers have all been so bold and witty, and this most recent one is no exception!

–Cassie Gonzales

This color combo is so unexpected and strangely appealing. I really love when color can do a lot of the heavy lifting in creating a compelling cover. And this is a great example of color that is not in your face but still eye-catching.

–Lauren Harms

The interlocking forks! This cover feels so fresh.

–Lauren Peters-Collaer

Olga Ravn, tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, My Work (New Directions, October 10)
Design by Joan Wong

I love everything Joan Wong x New Directions. Joan has a beautifully distinctive style, and she continues to do something surprising each and every time. Poster please!

–June Park

Meltingly good.

–Mark Abrams

Beautiful.

–Grace Han

Another bold interruption of a sweet image, this time with a more disturbing feel.

–Lucy Kim

Adam Thirlwell, The Future Future (FSG, October 17)
Design by Alex Merto

A thrilling mash-up of old and modern, brilliantly executed. It’s also hilarious that the lady is plummeting rather violently yet her expression remains unperturbed.

–Linda Huang

Perfect execution of an exceptional concept. Everything works in concert here to evoke both old and new.

–Alison Forner

The use of color, texture, and repetition is incredibly engaging. Every choice is so well conceived.

–Emily Mahon

It’s not just the treatment of the artwork, but the way the type echoes it that really makes me love this.

–Lucy Kim

Jamel Brinkley, Witness: Stories (FSG, August 1)
Design by Na Kim

I knew this would be one of my favorites of the year as soon as I saw it. So smart, the kind of simple that is anything but. Really elegant.

–Jamie Stafford-Hill

Even when you figure out the footprints are thumbprints, your brain still refuses to see it that way. So simple and so brilliant!

–Jamie Keenan

This is just beautiful, simple and clean. A lovely idea beautifully executed. The finished book feels nice too.

–Jon Gray

Zadie Smith, The Fraud (Penguin Press, September 5)
Design by Jon Gray

This gradient + type combo kills me. So good.

–Lauren Peters-Collaer

–Allison Saltzman

Jon Gray does it again.

–Emily Mahon

Maggie Millner, Couplets (FSG, February 7)
Design by June Park

I love how mirrored bold type treatment becomes the cover image. Pink and red!

–Jaya Miceli

What more can I say? I love clever typographic solutions. I love how the type forms a beautiful abstract shape. I love the red-pink palette. I love the display font.

–Linda Huang

So simple and so so charming.

–Anna Kochman

Mathias Énard, tr. Frank Wynne, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild (New Directions, December 5)
Design by John Gall

I need to blow this up and hang it on my wall.

–Janet Hansen

A collage with a depth and perceived dimensionality not always seen with this art creation technique.

–Nicole Caputo

The delicate type juxtaposed with the boldness of the collage, the balance of it all just works for me.

–Yang Kim

Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco, August 8)
Design by Vivian Lopez Rowe

Great use of color, love a grid design especially one with such intriguing and charming illustrations.

–Kelly Winton

This color palette is gorgeous. A lot is going on in this design and yet the whole thing is still soft and moody.

–Zoe Norvell

–Allison Saltzman

Jenn Shapland, Thin Skin (Pantheon, August 15)
Design by Tom Etherington

A truly gorgeous cover. These soft, ethereal rainbow waves elegantly wrap around to the back of the jacket, organically integrating all of the type in a sophisticated way.

–Sarah Schulte

There is a calming feel to this cover. The type is thoughtfully placed, while the undulating shapes move your eyes around the entire space.

–Kimberly Glyder

I love this by Tom Etherington, so calming and beautiful! It’s a work of art.

–Anna Morrison

Jac Jemc, Empty Theatre (MCD, February 21)
Design by June Park

A personal favorite for not only the content of the novel but the brilliant solution of how to place such a long subtitle. I love the bright colors and little stars throughout.

–Jaya Nicely

So funky and vibrant, you just want to keep looking at it and get lost in the ribbons.

–Cassie Gonzales

The spiraling type is SO FUN! The cadence of the ribbon bunching adds dimension and movement; reading the copy was a mini adventure! The sharp drop shadow is an added plus. June is an absolute pro!

–Cecilia Zhang

Jean Beagin, Big Swiss (Faber & Faber [UK], February 9)
Design by Kishan RajaniThis cover brings me pure joy. Perfection!

–Janet Hansen

This cover really packs a punch. The crop of the dog’s noses works so well—and that tongue!

–Holly Ovenden

Jen Beagin, Big Swiss (Scribner, February 7)
Design by Jaya Miceli, art by Anna Weyant

Bold image that is victorious in striking so much mystery between title and the ambiguous expression and composition…and gravity!

–Nicole Caputo

Bold, sexy—I love it.

–Yeon Kim

Anne Enright, The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape [UK], August 31)
Design by Suzanne Dean and illustration by Anna MorrisonThis striking cover feels both vintage and contemporary. I love the subtle pink type against the orange. That gaze draws me in completely.

–Sarah Schulte

Beautiful colours and such a striking and thoughtful illustration.

–Holly Ovenden

Gabriela Wiener, Undiscovered (HarperVia, September 26)
Design by Kelly Winton

This bright, citrusy palette is so pleasing to look at. That soft green is sublime. The hole punches through the objects add a satisfying layer of mystery.

–Sarah Schulte

The shapes around the artifact remind me of rock climbing holds and I love how that implies a solitary and intense struggle with heritage, identity or history. I also like the nostalgic and fading quality of watercolor.

–Vivian Lopez Rowe

King Young-sook, trans. Janet Hong, At Night He Lifts Weights (Transit Books, November 14)
Design by Justin Carder

I love the energy of this cover. The whimsical type treatment paired with the bubbly illustration, shattered into pieces like a broken plate, is intriguing.

–Sarah Schulte

A clever way to depict a character on the cover, without really showing them. The illustration is gorgeous as is the movement of the type.

–Alicia Tatone

Helen Schulman, Lucky Dogs (Knopf, June 6)
Design by Janet Hansen

Such an evocative photograph and great use of negative space. This cover reminds me of Sofia Coppola (high praise in my book!).

–Kelly Winton

I love how there are so many parts of this cover that are uncomfortable—the empty space, the slightly misshapen square, the fidgeting hands and the handwritten text shoved right up against the title.

–Jamie Keenan

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery and Other Stories (Picador, June 6)
Design by Alex Merto; illustration by Tim Lahan

I love that the text almost isn’t present (graceful as it is)—the illustration maxes out the visual space and the touch of blood signals the story before you even read the title. Keen and gorgeous.

–Alban Fischer

A redesign of a classic that feels both timeless and yet entirely new. Tim Lahan’s illustration is the perfect nod to the titular story.

–Alicia Tatone

Mona Awad, Rouge (S&S/Marysue Rucci, September 12)
Design by Oliver Munday

Love the intriguing dream-like head of the rose / jellyfish combination.

–Holly Ovenden

The novel itself descends into a frightening yet irresistible world, so fusing a jellyfish with a rose is a stroke of genius. Both are beautiful, yet both can inflict pain—one with its tendrils, the other with its thorns. The lush type treatment furthers the seduction.

–Devin Grosz

Tezer Özlü, tr. Maureen Freely, Cold Nights of Childhood (Transit Books, May 2)
Design by Sarah Schulte

So original and elegant. I love the flowing placement of the type and how it works with the illustration.

–Anna Morrison

Such a sweet, whimsical illustration with a surprise pop of color in the vessel. Love the unusual composition.

–Linda Huang

Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born? (Astra House, September 5)
Design by Rodrigo Corral, 3D illustration by Danny Jones

I’ve always been drawn to covers that pose a question to the reader, and this one is quite literally full of them. The insistent repetition of the title question, the unnatural pastel flowers rising to obscure the words from view—gorgeous and unnerving.

–Devin Grosz

A brilliant and beautiful image that seems indeed to be a perfect marriage of poetry, art and tech and that draws the viewer in enough to inspire a win for design and for the team and author who approved this, as the title is parsed slightly more slower than most covers out there today. Refreshing.

–Nicole Caputo

Harald Voetmann, tr. Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen, Sublunar (New Directions, August 1)
Design by Jamie Keenan

Looks good, smells even better.

–Erik Carter

The title streaming down from the nostrils is a nice (yet slightly gross) touch—this cover is wacky in the best way.

–Stephanie Ross

Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood (FSG, March 7)
Design by Jon Gray

Amazing movement and depth . . . the hand-drawn, edgy quality screams thriller.

–Kimberly Glyder

This cover has a great sense of movement. It’s easy to imagine the type, trees, and drone on the cusp of being swept away in the wind.

–Stephanie Ross

Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, The Centre (Gillian Flynn Books, July 11)
Design and illustration by Jonathan Bush

The attention to detail in this illustration is astonishing. The entire cover is dangerous and lush.

–Laywan Kwan

I love a twisted still life! The venus fly traps, the skull, the spilled coffee—every sinister detail is spot on.

–Alison Forner

Kaitlyn Tiffany, Everything I Need I Get From You (MCD x FSG Originals, June 14)
Design by Thomas Colligan

It’s just… perfect. I don’t know what else to say. It’s perfect! Makes me want to be a fifteen-year-old girl again.

–Alicia Tatone

10/10 perfect execution.

–June Park

Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Michael Hofmann, Kairos (New Directions, June 6)
Design by John Gall

This one forces you keep trying to work out what exactly is going on and noticing another new bit.

–Jamie Keenan

Beautiful, ominous.

–Mark Abrams

Ida Vitale, tr. Sarah Pollack, Time Without Keys (New Directions, September 4)
Design by Tyler Comrie

So tender and edgy. If Tyler did this in Photoshop, it’s just brilliantly executed.

–Linda Huang

Sings.

–Mark Abrams

Robert Plunket, My Search for Warren Harding (New Directions, June 6)
Design by Oliver Munday

Food for thought!

–Erik Carter

So Monty Python. The way you see just under a half of Harding’s rueful eye peering out at the reader, .

–Mark Abrams

Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase (Vintage Classics [UK], March 8)
Design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi

The full series.

Suzanne Dean’s designs for the reissues of the Murakami series (illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi) are so unique, eye catching, and captured the spirit of Murakami’s writing so beautifully.

–Anna Morrison

This design of this series is a celebration of Japanese illustration, reflecting the narrative in a colourful and playful way, and the obi wrap-around is inspired. Any Murakami fan would be ecstatic to receive this series.

–Kishan Rajani

Will Hermes, Lou Reed: The King of New York (FSG, October 3)
Design by No Ideas

My favorite part of this half-jacket, pre-printed case combo is how “Lou Reed” peaks out from behind the jacket, like a crown on top of Lou Reed’s head.

–Stephen Brayda

The case for simplicity.

–Tyler Comrie

Claudia Dey, Daughter (FSG, September 12)
Design by June Park

Having this much black and then this loud pop of color is such a bold choice. It feels so much like a movie poster.

–Vivian Lopez Rowe

The simplicity, contrast, and overall vintage quality of type and design really resonates. It’s one of those simple and effective covers, where you say…why didn’t I think of that??? But I didn’t….June Park did, and it’s stunning!

–Pete Garceau

Adam Mars-Jones, Caret (Faber & Faber [UK], August 17)
Design by Jonathan Pelham

The full series.

There’s something about the hierarchy of the type that feels wrong—it took me a moment to distinguish the title from the author, but that’s the type of rule-breaking that makes this so memorable and confident. I didn’t realize that this book was part of a series, which makes it all the more compelling. The sophisticated color combo is also winning.

–Linda Huang

Not easy to make a typographic series design feel as fresh and as striking as this. There’s retro nod which I love.

–Luke Bird

Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child (FSG, September 5)
Design by Na Kim

I love Na’s covers for Yiyun Lee. Everything feels so considered.

–Grace Han

I love the bold interruption of the pregnant pear shape into that charming dog painting.

–Lucy Kim

Yu Miri, tr. Morgan Giles, The End of August (Riverhead, August 1)
Design by Lauren Peters-Collaer; art by Seahyun Lee

I love these colors together. It’s such a contemporary choice and the contrast to the traditional imagery in the painting adds so much depth.

–Vivian Lopez Rowe

I love that red and pink combo. The combination of traditionalism and modernity is really striking.

–Emily Mahon

Steven Millhauser, Disruptions (Knopf, August 1)
Design by Janet Hansen; illustration by Dylan C. Lathrop

What’s not to love about this cover? It’s engaging, striking, and uses eyes in a way that’s never been done before (which is no small feat when it comes to book covers).

–Pete Garceau

I mean who couldn’t love all those teeny tiny eyes? She found the perfect piece of art for this!

–Lucy Kim

Wendy Cope, The Orange (Faber & Faber [UK], November 9
Design by Pete Adlington“At lunchtime I bought a huge orange, the size of it made us all laugh”. The naivety and simplicity of this cover speaks so aptly to the beautiful prose of Wendy’s poem, I love it, I’m glad it exists.

–Kishan Rajani

Somehow a perfect blend of nostalgia, wit and design balance. The clashing palette works so well.

–Luke Bird

Noreen Masud, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton [UK], April 27)
Design by Josie Stanley Taylor
Again it’s the clever use of space and colour that make this cover so appealing. An unusual colour palette.

–Jon Gray

Boo Trundle, The Daughter Ship (Pantheon, June 27)
Design by Jenny Carrow

The illustration and type feel spontaneous and fresh. I’m intrigued by these figures in a hot tub/boat. What are they scoping out?

–Emily Mahon

Megan Kamalei, Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury, August 29)
Design by Jaya Miceli

Lush and beautiful. It feels intriguing, raw and emotional. It really draws you in.

–Yang Kim

Pratchi Gupta, They Called Us Exceptional (Crown, August 22)
Design by Arsh Raziuddin

This cover speaks to this subject matter so succinctly and emotively—from the perfect placement of the bindi and the sharpness of the Kajal, it speaks to the idea of the ideal Indian woman and wider expectations of the model minority. It’s brilliant.

–Kishan Rajani

Jesse David Fox, Comedy Book (FSG, November 7)
Design by Thomas Colligan

A charming collection of fonts and shapes.

–Tyler Comrie

Harold Rogers, Tropicália (Atria, July 18)
Design by Laywan Kwan

The artwork is gorgeous and the color and type work so beautifully together.

–Lucy Kim

Ed Park, Same Bed Different Dreams (Random House, November 7)
Design by Will Staehle

–Allison Saltzman

I.S. Barry, The Peacock and the Sparrow (Atria, May 30)
Design by Claire Sullivan

Love me a good spy cover! Type, color, perspective, and figure placement are all spot on.

–James Iacobelli

Iliana Regan, Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir (Agate, January 24)
Design by Morgan Krehbiel

I just completely lose myself in the gills of this mushroom.

–Mark Abrams

Irina Zhorov, Lost Believers (Scribner, August 1)
Design by Emily Mahon

I love the dimensional collaged overlay with the hand lettered type. Beautifully executed.

–Jaya Miceli

Alison Mills Newman, Francisco (New Directions, March 7)
Design by Joan Wong

–Anna Kochman

Zahra Hankir, Eyeliner: A Cultural History (Penguin Books, November 14)
Design by Lynn Buckley

This could have easily fallen into a predictable trap, but Lynn took a completely unexpected approach and turned it into a work of art.

–Alison Forner

Claire Fuller, The Memory of Animals (Tin House, June 6)
Design by Beth Steidle, art by Lisa Ericson

Absolutely beautiful art by Lisa Ericson and the minimal type with subtle gradient does a great job at toggling between the foreground and background without distracting from the art and its message.

–Nicole Caputo

Erica Berry, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear (Flatiron, February 21)
Design by Keith Hayes; illustration by Rokas Aleliunas

I love how bold, evocative, and graphic this cover is—a real standout in the nonfiction world.

–Beth Steidle

Melissa Bank, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Viking [UK], May 18)
Design by Annie AtkinsI was super excited to see that Annie Atkins had been commissioned by Saffron Stocker to bring her talents to book covers. Because if you know her work, you know that each of these patches were painstakingly designed and made in real life. Annie’s design process and philosophies are an inspiration in a time of “quick” Photoshop and AI generative art.

–Lauren Harms

Manon Garcia, The Joy of Consent (Belknap Press, October 3)
Design by Jaya Miceli

Who knew a gradient could be so sexy?! Love how the type just barely touches the shape.

–Jenny Carrow

Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy (Footnote Press [UK], June 8)
Design by Luke Bird
It’s possible I am especially vulnerable to the Melty Look.

–Mark Abrams

Sarah Cypher, The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine, April 25)
Design and illustration by Holly Ovenden

The attitude of this design—the figure itself, yes, but also the scale and interaction with the gorgeous typography—is simply everything.

–Morgan Krehbiel

Sandra Newman, Julia (Mariner Books, October 24)
Design by Luke Bird

I love a typographic cover and this one works so well. The way 1984 is almost peering over the title, as a looming presence is so impactful.

–Kishan Rajani

Fernanda Melchor, tr. Sophie Hughes, This is Not Miami (New Directions, April 4)
Design by Jamie Keenan

Jamie is always good at finding new ways of saying things. This captures streets at night and I love the use of colour.

–Jon Gray

Rita Chang-Eppig, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Bloomsbury, May 30)
Design by Mia Kwon and Patti Ratchford; illustration by Yuko Shimizu

The illustration is incredible! I love it when there are different levels of information in a design. This works on both a detailed micro level with the waves and the ship, and a macro level with the face.

–Laywan Kwan

Joshua Bennett, Spoken Word (Knopf, March 28)
Design by Tom Etherington

Great texture and craft.

–Tyler Comrie

Ling Ling Huang, Natural Beauty (Dutton, April 4)
Design by Kristin Del Rosario

I think I remember my mouth uncontrollably popping open the first time I saw this one—it’s just so unique. And those pokes!

–Zoe Norvell

Stephen King, Holly (Scribner, September 5)
Design by Will Staehle

Understated creepiness, with glow in the dark spot gloss. What’s not to love!

–James Iacobelli

Guy Gunaratne, Mister Mister (Pantheon, October 3)
Design by Jack Smyth

I love the energy and punk rock feel of the type and illustration.

–Jaya Miceli

Delia Cai, Central Places (Ballantine, January 31)
Design by Cassie Gonzales

So much warmth and spirit.

–Anna Kochman

Benjamín Labatut, The MANIAC (Penguin Press, October 3)
Design by Bennett Miller / DALL-E 2

Haunting. Of note, from the back flap: “the image on this jacket was created by Bennett Miller, using OpenAl’s DALL-E 2 software. He arrived at the final product by making extensive edits on variations of an image generated using the following prompt: ‘a vintage photograph of huge plumes of smoke coming from an enormous UFO crashed in the desert.'”

–Mark Abrams

Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You (Viking, February 21)
Design by Elizabeth Yaffe

Creative way to turn type into imagery.

–Yeon Kim

Janika Oza, A History of Burning (Grand Central Publishing, May 2)
Design by Albert Tang; illustration by Simone Noronha

There is something wonderfully magnetic and lush in this illustration. It feels both classic and contemporary. And I love the unconventional framing typography. Looks fantastic in person and on screen.

–Lauren Harms

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Silver Nitrate (Del Rey, July 18)
Design by Regina Flath

Super commercial and super good! I love the details like the sloping title and the screen on the image.

–Jamie Keenan

Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch (Knopf, September 19)
Designed by Kelly Blair

I love the pairing of this historical illustration with modern hand lettering.

–Laywan Kwan

Robert Peckham, Fear (Profile Books [UK], September 7)
design by Tom Etherington

This eerie, funny-creepy design gives me 2024 vibes right now.

–Mark Abrams

Classic Ghost Stories (Vintage Classics, March 1)
Design by Andrew Davis

The level of detail that Andrew puts into his covers, blows me away. The way the beautifully illustrated crow fills the cover and the red ribbon that flows through it all, is just perfect.

–Pete Garceau

Andrew Lipstein, The Vegan (FSG, July 11)
Design by Cecilia R. Zhang

I love the humor of the illustration contrasting the title and the simplicity of the composition. It looks vintage yet contemporary, and the neon green is so fun.

–Jaya Nicely

Jacqueline Crooks, Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape [UK], March 2)
Design by Jodi Hunt
This cover is energetic and eye-catching. The integration of 80s inspired typography and image has been executed beautifully and I can’t help but to be drawn to this cover.

–Kishan Rajani

Dolki Min, tr. Victoria Caudle, Walking Practice (HarperVia, March 14)
Cover art by Dolki Min

There’s so many layers to this cover. I love that the art and text come together, making this a unique cover. No idea what’s going on, but I’m intrigued.

–Yeon Kim

Christine Grillo, Hestia Strikes a Match (FSG, April 18)
Design by Na Kim

I’ve been obsessed with this cover since the moment I saw it.

–Cassie Gonzales

Isabel Zapata, tr. Robin Myers, In Vitro (Coffee House Press, May 9)
Design by Zoe Norvell

I am struck by this cover every time I see it. The color palette and the image so perfectly capture the strangeness, interiority, and otherness of what happens within our own bodies.

–Beth Steidle

Ismail Kadare, tr. John Hodgson, A Dictator Calls (Counterpoint, September 19)
Design by Farjana Yasmin

–Allison Saltzman

Andrea Dunlop, Women Are The Fiercest Creatures (Zibby Books, March 7)
Design by Olga Grlic

Amazing combination of title and art.

–James Iacobelli

Hannah Michell, Excavations (One World, July 11)
Design by Arsh Raziuddin

When I look at this my eyes just yoyo backwards and forwards between the title and young kids and It’s a great use of empty space.

–Jamie Keenan

DK Nnuro, What Napoleon Could Not Do (Riverhead, February 7) Design by Lauren Peters-Collaer; art by Amoako Boafo

Lauren’s hand lettering pairs so beautifully with Amoako Boafo’s art.

–Grace Han

Henry Hoke, Open Throat (MCD, June 6)
Design by Rodrigo Corral

Captivating Rorschach-esque art with hidden elements begs to be picked up.

–Yeon Kim

Athena Dixon, The Loneliness Files (Tin House, October 3)
Design by Beth Steidle

This cover perfectly captures the paradox of urban loneliness. Also, the attention to craft on this cover is remarkable—the imperfect rectangles and the slightly off-center circles all come together to give it that midcentury modern flavour…an homage to a time when the Align-Window didn’t exist.

–Cecilia Zhang

Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Galley Beggar Press [UK], July 13)
Design by Holly OvendenSuch a dexterous balance of movement, color, and type. The spilling hinted at is clever and sensuous. I’ve been transfixed by this cover since I first saw it.

–Alban Fischer

Lauren Beukes, Bridge (Mullholland, August 8)
Design by Kirin Diemont

This edition takes a conventional sci-fi-thriller look and throws it out the window. Love those colors!

–Zoe Norvell

Sheila Heti, Pure Colour (FSG, February 13)
Design by Na Kim

What Na Kim did with this cover was take one of the most direct cover designs possible while still leaving room for ambiguity with a giant Ellsworth Kelly blob.

–Erik Carter

Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent (Flatiron, January 10)
Design by Keith Hayes; art by Sasha Vinogradova

Love how the art—unsettling and beautiful at the same time—gets to shine here. Seamless type integration, pearl finish, and sculpture emboss make this a really striking package.

–Jamie Stafford-Hill

A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton (Granta Books [UK], September 21)
Design by Jo WalkerLove Jo Walker’s design for The Glutton. It’s so fun.

–Anna Morrison

Yasunari Kawabata, The Rainbow (Vintage, November 7)
Design by John Gall

Trippy. What was this guy smokin’ when he made this?

–Tyler Comrie

Sally Wen Mao, The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, August 1)
Design by Kapo Ng; art by Ah Xian

I first saw this cover on display in my local bookstore, and literally stopped mid-conversation to run across the room for a closer look. Something about the restraint in the design is just so exciting.

–Morgan Krehbiel

Jessica Johns, Bad Cree (Doubleday, January 10)
Design by Emily Mahon

What a pairing of type and image! The typography is really fantastic and lends sophistication. Love the simplicity.

–Lauren Harms

Martin Riker, The Guest Lecture (Black Cat, January 24)
Design by Kelly Winton

The layered views offer a glimpse into a confused world, while the serene color palette and structured type balance out the chaos.

–Kimberly Glyder

Reggie Watts, Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again (Tiny Reparations Press, October 17)
Design by Ben Denzer

This cover is bonkers and brilliant!

–Jenny Carrow

Sara Gran, Come Closer (Soho Press, September 26)
Design by Caroline Johnson

LOVE LOVE LOVE everything about this cover!!

–James Iacobelli

Vauhini Vara, This is Salvaged (W.W. Norton, September 26)
Design by Keith Hayes

A clean and heartbreaking design. I like how the windswept flower appears to force the type further and further apart.

–Beth Steidle

Paul Murray, The Bee Sting (FSG, August 15)
Design by Na Kim

Perfect, as always.

–Lauren Peters-Collaer

Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind (Astra House, October 17)
Design by Alicia Tatone

I love how this one asks you to look closer.

–Anna Kochman

Keith Rosson, Fever House (Random House, August 15)
Design by Ella Laytham

A perfectly balanced cover that only gets better the closer you look at the textures and details.

–Cassie Gonzales

Sam Sax, Pig (Scribner, September 19)
Design by Matt Dorfman

The negative space, the colors, the Paul Rand-esque illustration—Matt can do no wrong.

–Alicia Tatone

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act (Penguin Press, January 17)
Design by Rick Rubin + Pentagram

Simple, daring, and brave enough to take risks (no quotes, sticker barcode) like Rubin himself.

–Stephen Brayda

Andrew Ridker, Hope (Viking, July 11)
Design by Tyler Comrie

An excellent photograph that pairs perfectly with the title. Humorous and sentimental.

–Kelly Winton

Djuna, tr. Anton Hur, Counterweight (Pantheon, July 11)
Design by Tal Goretsky

Love the colors and surreal quality of this cover. That eyeball!

–Jaya Miceli

Mary Ziegler, Roe: The History of a National Obsession (Yale University Press, January 24)
Design by Alex Camlin

It’s so incredibly hard to create something fresh and unexpected for books like these. I love how this captures the raw energy of one of the most important issues of our time. It feels urgent and unbridled.

–Alison Forner

Daljit Nagra, Indiom (Faber & Faber [UK], September 7)
Design by Kishan Rajani
I’m always mesmerized by Rajani’s use of color. Here, everything just snaps with such precision and verve. And the texture lends a real warmth.

–Alban Fischer

Herman Hesse, tr. Kurt Beals, The Steppenwolf (W.W. Norton, January 3)
Design by Jaya Miceli

Something about the unsettled energy of the illustration and type just grabs me. Plus, it’s a wolf in a suit.

–Jamie Stafford-Hill

Maya Binyam, Hangman (FSG, August 8)
Design by Alex Merto; art by Belkis Ayón

AMAZING art by Belkis Ayón.

–Anna Morrison

Michele Mari, tr. Brian Robert Moore, You, Bleeding Childhood (And Other Stories, August 8)
Design by Holly Ovenden

Such an imaginative take on a wunderkammer. I love how the illustrated elements are falling playfully against the structured type.

–Grace Han

Tatsuhiko Ishii, tr. Hiroaki Sato, Bathhouse and Other Tanka (New Directions, November 7)
Design by Oliver Munday

Love the contrast between the zoomed-in intimate photograph and small-scale digital type.

–Janet Hansen

Mariana Enriquez, tr. Megan McDowell, Our Share of Night (Hogarth Press, September 12)
Design by Donna Cheng

The yellow of the nails and typography pops off this jacket in person.

–Zoe Norvell

Zechen Xu, tr. Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang, Beijing Sprawl (Two Lines Press, June 13)
Design by Andrew Walters

I mean, yeah.

–Mark Abrams

Saba Alemayoh, Tekebash & Saba (Interlink Books, April 4)

The textures and patterns lend such a rich and warm sense of place to this cookbook. Cookbook industry, please take notes.

–Morgan Krehbiel

Nora Roberts, Inheritance (St. Martin’s Press, November 21)
Design by Ervin Serrano

Shouting out a category normally not on people’s radar. Love the mood and composition here, not to mention the swash on the N!

–James Iacobelli

Soula Emmanuel, Wild Geese (Feminist Press, September 12)
Design by Dana Li

The hole punches are such an efficient way of adding a sense of fleeting moments, memories and partially processed feelings to a cover that is essentially just a very simple typeface and an image.

–Vivian Lopez Rowe

Daniel Nayeri, The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams (Levine Querido, March 7)
Design by Stephen Brayda; art by Daniel Miyares

I love every bit of this cover—the brushstrokes in the type, the color palette, the little shadow characters, and the stars at the top.

–Cassie Gonzales

Joe Coscarelli, Rap Capital: an Atlanta Story (Simon & Schuster, October 10)
Design by Chips

mic drop

–June Park

Joyce Carol Oates, Zero-Sum (Fourth Estate [UK], July 20)
Design by Julian HumphriesSo simple and yet so arresting. It infuses the familiarness and distance of the image with a degree of uncanniness and allure. I’m a little jealous, actually.

–Alban Fischer

Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart (Little, Brown, August 29)
Design by Lucy Kim

There is so much texture in this cover! The concentric circles bring my eye right to the center. I also find it refreshing to see a historical fiction cover that doesn’t rely on setting or fashion.

–Laywan Kwan

Emma Cline, The Guest (Random House, May 16)
Design by Oliver Munday

Feels both vintage and entirely modern. Always appreciate Oliver Munday’s designs.

–Kelly Winton

Anna Metcalfe, Chrysalis (Granta Books [UK], May 4)
Design by Jack Smyth
There is something so loose and appealing about the lines in the illustration.

–Tom Etherington

Percival Everett, Dr. No (Influx Press [UK], March 16)
Design by Jamie Keenan
It’s just so strange and fun and intriguing, definitely makes me want to know more about the book.

–Jamie Stafford-Hill

Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon (37 Ink, October 3)
Design by Rex Bonomelli

The lettering and graphic illustration create the perfect tension for this memoir about the author’s strict Rastafarian upbringing.

–Kimberly Glyder

Mia Couto, tr. David Brookshaw, The Drinker of Horizons (FSG, March 14)
Design by June Park

It’s amazing how the ship in the far distance pulls you right in.

–Zoe Norvell

Raja Shehadeh, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Other Press, March 28)
Main image courtesy of the author; background image Private Collection (credit symbol) Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images

The layering of elements is so beautifully executed here. The push-and-pull between foreground and background ask some questions while drawing me in—to me, the ultimate bar for a memoir cover.

–Morgan Krehbiel

Alice McDermott, Absolution (FSG, October 31)
Design by Alex Merto

This one must be seen in person. The special effects are stunning.

–Jenny Carrow

Miranda West, ed., The Book of Do (Do Book Co, August 8)
Design by Tom Etherington; illustrations by James Victore

So elegant and also playful. Such a sweet and tender design.

–Kelly Winton

Dwight Garner, The Upstairs Delicatessen (FSG, October 24)
Design by June Park

Park’s type work is always so cozy and considered. And that big field of oversaturated red! The muchness this cover achieves with such economy is nothing short of wizardry.

–Alban Fischer

Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice (Riverhead Books, January 3)
Design by Gregg Kulick

A jolt of energy.

–Kimberly Glyder

Jinwoo Chong, Flux (Melville House, March 21)
Design by Beste Miray Doğan

Love this. Excellent contrasts with that bright yellow, huge sharp black type, organic/digital liquid splash. Still fresh and eye catching every time I see it. (Also, gotta appreciate a four letter word on two lines.)

–Jamie Stafford-Hill

Stacy Jane Grover, Tar Hollow Trans (University Press of Kentucky, June 20)
Design by Jaya Miceli

So impactful. I love how emotive the painterliness is here.

–Lauren Peters-Collaer

Marie Ndiaye, Vengeance is Mine (Quercus Publishing [UK], October 26)
Design by Jack Smyth
The interplay of weird shadowy shapes and the type got me.

–Mark Abrams

Tariq Trotter, The Upcycled Self (One World, November 14)
Design by Greg Mollica; collage by Najeebah Al-Ghadban

This cover speaks to how prolific Black Thought is, and the depth of his music and his story. The modern and fresh collage is spot-on.

–Emily Mahon

David James Duncan, Sun House (Little, Brown, August 8)
Design by Lucy Kim

A big deal book with a big look cover. What sets this jacket apart for me is that while there are big graphic elements, there are also really fine details. Simple and striking.

–Lauren Harms

Tom Comitta, The Nature Book (Coffee House Press, March 14)
Design by Tree Abraham

One thing about me? I simply love a collage. And the weirder the better.

–Morgan Krehbiel

Another month of books, another month of book covers. Here are my favorites from November—an elegant and controlled group, on the whole, to offset the traditional American month of excess.

Ben Austen, Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change; cover design by Keith Hayes (Flatiron, November 7)

There’s nothing that new about this tonal bisected style for nonfiction, but this version, with the two walking figures, is so clean and energetic that it caught my eye.

Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables; cover design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead, November 7)

Another bisected cover, in an entirely different way. I’m a sucker for these vintage illustration collages, I have to say. (Also I’m a poet, apparently.)

Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat; cover design by Zoe Norvell (Biblioasis, November 7)

There is a simple, sad elegance to this cover that I just love.

Ed Park, Same Bed Different Dreams; cover design by Will Staehle (Random House, November 7)

“I love how Will Staehle’s cover instantly conveys two of the novel’s dreams—on the left, a ghostly vision of forgotten history (a scene from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo), on the right, a glimpse of fevered possibility (one of my characters is a science fictioneer),” Park told Lit Hub. “The fonts rock. Subtly threaded in gold is the title, translated into the language of my ancestors—Korean—something I never would have dreamed to suggest, but which ties it all together. I asked if my Korean name could be woven in as well, and there it is, three syllables only my family knows. I actually still can’t look at this without crying.” Read more here.

Tatsuhiko Ishii, tr. Hiroaki Sato, Bathhouse and Other Tanka; cover design by Oliver Munday (New Directions, November 7)

The power of the crop!

Celina Baljeet Basra, Happy; cover design by Alex Merto (Astra House, November 14)

What do you do with a title like Happy? I guess if you’re Alex Merto, you just lean allllllll the way in.

Zahra Hankir, Eyeliner: A Cultural History; cover design by Lynn Buckley (Penguin Books, November 14)

Clearly the correct text treatment, among other things.

King Young-sook, tr. Janet Hong, At Night He Lifts Weights; cover design by Justin Carder (Transit Books, November 14)

This one is very beautiful, in my opinion, with wonderfully surprising text and color choices.

Ishion Hutchinson, School of Instructions: A Poem; cover design by Crisis (FSG, November 21)

I love a good text cover—this one is giving “magical life-changing book that you found in a corner in the library” vibes.

James W. Jennings, Wings of Red; cover design by House of Thought (Soft Skull, November 21)

What a font, what a mood.

Image courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Is the point of art to bring us into ourselves, or out? I mean the Parkway theater is my favorite place to go to get out of the heat—I can even stare at the high-concept magenta wallpaper in the bathrooms, digitized popcorn kernels “oating” by. Or notice the shining light outside as it settles over the decaying turn-of-the-century buildings across Charles Street, all those gorgeous reds and browns and look at those plants growing through the cracks in the bricks.

Usually when I go to an old theater I study the details, but with this theater you walk in and you just think: architect. Because the whole place has been gutted, and reimagined. Where did they get all this money?

Tonight I’m watching Boom for Real: The Late-Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which reveals nothing about Basquiat that wasn’t already part of the public record—he was brilliant and wild, charming and manipulative, seductive and ambitious—he was homeless as a teenager, he did a lot of drugs, he became the toast of the art world, he died way too young.

Everyone already knows the myth that Basquiat was a lone genius destroying convention to create his own form. Yes, he was driven to remake himself as a lone visionary in order to become a top-tier art-world  commodity, and this actually happened, which is rare for anyone, especially a Black artist, but we already know this killed him, so why portray posthumous canonization as a glorious path? Unless the movie is just about making more money for the ghouls of the art world who have already made millions and millions from Basquiat’s death from an overdose at age twenty-seven.

I’m thinking about the Basquiat show I saw in Seattle in 1994, six years after his death—gazing at those paintings I felt an immediate sensory kinship with the dense layers of self-expression, the wildness, the raw beauty, the way language was interwoven with the visual, became the visual, until it was overcome by it. The movement, the free association that became a method and a system of organization, the disorientation that opens the mind.

The way we can create our own language, the symbols and the strength, the bending, the mesmerizing nurturing scream. I left that show wanting to create, knowing I could create, knowing. In the lobby of the Parkway Theatre there’s a flyer for a new building  across from the train station that says:

THE ART OF BALTIMORE

NOW LEASING.

In the photo, it just looks like your average prefab yuppie loft to me, so I’m not sure where the art is, but I guess they mean this neighborhood, designated by the city as an ARTS DISTRICT to change blight into bright lights. The marketing of Baltimore as a creative hub—artists as tools for displacement, a sad story that has obliterated so many neighborhoods over the last several decades, but here it feels more blatant. Maybe because these funded institutions sit in an area so obviously neglected by the city for so long.

Just across the street from the Parkway there are Black people slumped on their stoops in drugged-out immobility due to decades of structural neglect, and next door there’s Motor House, an art gallery/theater/bar complex with a design show called “Undoing the Red Line.”

I walk out of the Parkway, and the graffiti on the street doesn’t look  that different than the graffiti in the movie. Is it on display? As if to say: We want what happened in New York in the ’80s to happen here, now. There’s even an alley behind Motor House where graffiti is legal, and all day long there are photo shoots and staged parties promoting multicultural consumption in a segregated city.

Back on Charles, where there’s another movie theater, and then half a block of upscale bistros, and then everything ends at the bridge over the highway and there’s the train station, illuminated. I turn the corner and there’s some huge new building like a spaceship that’s landed to promote gentrification, so much air conditioning that there’s a giant puddle  in the asphalt.

Oh, wait, that’s the building from the flyer, the Nelson Kohl Apartments, this is it, with a wood-paneled entry and a white cube gallery in the lobby showing bland abstract art, two rectangular fiberglass planters in front, painted black and textured to look like cement. Two grasses planted to one side, and then four almost-dead grasses on the other. The entrance faces the parking lot over the highway, with the train station on the other side. I stand outside to watch for anyone going in, but they must all be inside with their air conditioning.

I decide to go to the show at Motor House—the bar in front looks like a suburban advertisement for urban living, but the show in the lobby is actually about redlining. It’s mostly about New York and DC, although I do learn a few things about Cross Keys Village, where I went with Gladys as a kid, a sprawling gated housing development in  Baltimore—a mixture of townhouses, a hotel, and mid-rise buildings in a leafy enclave, complete with a Frank Gehry–designed high-rise and a mall that includes Betty Cooke’s modernist gift shop that Gladys loved.

Apparently Cross Keys was marketed to both Black and white home owners when it was built in the 1960s, unlike the whites-only history of neighborhoods nearby, like working-class Hampden and posh Roland  Park.

At Motor House they have a sign thanking the city for funding the space—I look it up when I get home, and it cost six million to renovate, funded by an organization called BARCO, or Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation, dedicated to “creating working spaces for Baltimore’s growing community of artists, performers, makers and artisans.” BARCO also recently completed an $11.5 million renovation of another space in the area, Open Works.

I look up the Parkway Theatre, and the renovation cost $18.5 million, including a five million grant from a Greek foundation. So there was international funding involved. For a movie theater in Baltimore. Then there’s the nineteen million spent by another nonprofit developer, Jubilee, to renovate the Centre Theatre to house the Johns Hopkins and MICA film programs right around the corner. This is a staggering amount of money in a city struggling for basic services.

All this empty corporatized language promoting Baltimore as an arts hub, a creative crossroads, a robust creative sector, an incubator for the creative economy. Which fits right in with the marketing of the Nelson Kohl Apartments, named after two famous dead designers who had nothing to do with it, and claiming to be THE ART OF BALTIMORE, with studios starting at fifteen hundred dollars, “surrounded by art, music, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and one of the world’s premiere art colleges. When you live here, you can paint your own canvas—differently every day.”

Fifteen hundred dollars for a studio, in a city that’s mostly in collapse. Walking back up Charles, there’s a performance space in a former dry cleaner’s where everyone looks like the people in the Basquiat  movie—the same ’80s outfits, only now everyone’s wearing all black, you can’t even have fun anymore with your studied indifference. Crossing the street to walk home—past the Crown, where I danced my ass off to terrible ’80s music and campy projections on white sheets, and everyone stared at me but no one approached.

Past the Eagle, another old building gutted and renovated with a surprising amount of money—usually a leather bar doesn’t have an upstairs cabaret and dance floor, a leather shop with an art gallery, and multiple streamlined spaces on the main floor. Not that anyone in the bar was friendly, but at least  there were nice bathrooms.

And then I go into the convenience store where the register is behind bulletproof glass, my usual place to get an unrefrigerated bottle of water. A trans woman shaking a bit from drugs is ordering knock off perfume, chewing gum, talking on the phone: “I’m on the stroll.” A drug dealer steps in front of me to count out a huge stack of bills.

I get my bottle of water, and then back on the street I’m thinking about all the contrasts—the NPR studio with signs out front that say WARNING DON’T SIT HERE WALL IS UNSTABLE, the members-only jazz club that  I assumed before was a Black space, but when I walk by now it’s all white guys outside, in between sets.

All the businesses that are never open, but the storefronts still advertise what was there before. The rehab center is the fanciest building  on the block—across the street there’s a new art gallery featuring Black artists, in an old brick building.

And I find myself invigorated by the contrasts, the possibility for something surprising to happen—only this is how gentrification works. You look for what you can’t find elsewhere, in neighborhoods where people are having trouble finding anything, and then eventually there isn’t any neighborhood except the one that replaced the neighborhood.

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Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is available via Soft Skull.

The bunny is having its book cover moment. If you don’t believe me, head to your closest bookstore and look for recent award winners: you’ll find Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, recently shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, cozied up next to last year’s winner for fiction, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. In between, you might see Rabbit Cake, Cursed Bunny, Hell Bent, Bunny, Some Trick, and Wow, No Thank You, with space reserved for the forthcoming The Book Censor’s Library.

Not all of these books actually deal with the leporid, but all of them, in some way, are invested in the cultural connotations of the rabbit. The western imagination often associates rabbits with fertility and lust, as in, “to f*** like rabbits.” But, as I discovered when I chatted with rabbit owners, lovers, and interpreters, it’s the bunny’s associations with femininity, creativity, and anxiety that makes her an especially resonant symbol of the 2020s.

Time periods often become associated with animals. Consider the twee owls of the 2010s, immortalized on so many ModCloth prints and chunky costume jewelry. The 2010s owl was a nostalgic callback to the midcentury owl, a kitsch symbol related to the environmentalist movement. Similarly, the playful, gregarious dolphin became a common motif in girl’s bedrooms of the early 2000s. If there’s one animal that might emerge as the preeminent symbol of the pandemic era, the rabbit is as worthy a contender as any.

The rabbit’s association with fertility is based in biology—a rabbit can have as many as twelve babies in a single litter, and they can produce three to four litters in a year. That reproductive metaphor is central to Annie Hartnett’s Rabbit Cake, about a young girl dealing with the loss of her mother. “Rabbit Cake is about grief and how it can multiply and expand in weird ways.” Annie told me, “The rabbit is the perfect symbol for that.” As writer Vera Blossom put it, the sexuality associated with rabbits is distinctly feminine: “It’s not virility, which we might associate with animals like bulls. It’s not the sperm of the male rabbit that creates abundance, but the mysterious power of the female rabbit to create so many babies.”

Hence Playboy bunnies, hence Lola Bunny, hence terms like “snow bunny,” “buckle bunny,” and “beach bunny.” The bunny, Vera points out, is a crepuscular animal, i.e. a creature most active during the twilight hours. Their association with the evening, as well as their penchant for sitting twitchingly still makes them, according to Vera, “as psychic as you can be without actually being psychic. If we follow the rules of yin and yang, these traits are associated with the dark and feminine yin.”

Maybe the rabbit’s connection to a spirit world is why we pull them out of hats with the tap of a magic wand. Dream interpreter and Internet semiologist Autumn Fourkiller confirms the cultural ties between the rabbit and the feminine: “The rabbit, according to some religious traditions, is seen as an unclean animal. This is what lends it power as a sexual symbol. It’s not just fertile within a traditional heterosexual marriage, it’s an animal without sexual inhibition.” As an animal that is often preyed upon, the rabbit’s connection with the feminine feels unfortunately apt.

It’s unsurprising that most of the books listed above explicitly invoke the dark, feminine yin Vera referred to. Bunnies feel like an appropriate mascot in a literary culture increasingly fascinated by grisly female novels, where bookfluencers shill skincare in the same breath that they recommend novels by Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh, where the word “horny” appears in headlines for The New York Times. Autumn also brought up the Christian symbolism of the rabbit as a symbol of rebirth—that a rabbit’s ability to reproduce themselves relentlessly is more than just proof of fertility. It’s proof of their ability to survive.

The rabbit as a symbol of resistance feels connected to another potent symbol associated with rabbits, that of the trickster. Br’er Rabbit, the trickster figure of Black Southern folklore, has roots in an oral tradition that can be traced through back through the trans-Atlantic slave trade to African storytelling. Br’er Rabbit is theorized as a symbol of resistance for Black enslaved people, a hero that used his intelligence to make up for his limited power. Autumn confirmed that the hare occupies a similar space in Cherokee culture as a wily trickster.

The trickster rabbit archetype that uses its wits to solve real-life problems feels quite distinct from the symbol of a semi-psychic feminine bunny. But these seemingly disparate symbols share a fidgety self-awareness, and are married in perhaps the most famous rabbit in pop culture: Bugs Bunny, the gender-bending trickster demigod inarguably bestowed with material cleverness and cosmic self-awareness.

The rabbit’s penchant for silent observation is why they can make good companions. I talked to rabbit owner Emmanuelle Maher, who explained that their rabbit, Peter, often feels more like a “tender roommate” than a pet. “Our love is cultivated by existing in one another’s presence,” Emmanuelle wrote to me, “The bathroom falls under his jurisdiction and so most of our coexistence revolves around me wiping my ass as he stares blankly in my general direction.” Mary Oliver’s “Sometimes” comes to mind: “Instruction for living a life:/Pay attention./Be astonished./Tell about it.”

What better metaphor is there for a writer than the always-watchful rabbit? And in particular for female, femme, and queer writers, who spend our time in the public always creating while always watching for predators. Again, I return to the rabbit as a symbol of resistance and survival: “Rabbits aren’t as timid or fearful as you might expect them to be,” Annie said to me of their childhood rabbit, “They can actually be quite brave.”

Rabbits’ symbolic connection to womanhood is brought to the fore in the way the rabbit holds so much space in the cultural imagination while still being devalued. In Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch, the titular hutch refers not to an actual rabbit warren but to a run-down apartment complex with little privacy. On the first page, a teenage girl dies, or, as Gunty puts it: “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only eighteen years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen.” Invocation of The Virgin Suicides aside, Blandine’s death immediately calls to mind the symbols of sacrifice and mysticism that we’ve come to associate with rabbits. In the same paragraph, Gunty refers to some of Blandine’s spiritual obsessions that will define her short life: “It’s like your soul is being stabbed with light, the mystics said, and they were right about that, too.”

Rabbits do appear in minor roles in Rabbit Hutch: they’re one of the animals Blandine’s three neighbors begin to sacrifice when they all fall in love with her. “You think they’re silent creatures, rabbits, until you try to kill them,” one of the rabbit-killers says to a police officer investigating Blandine’s death. But though they’re not a major character, rabbits feel like an especially potent and important symbol for the novel. Not just for Blandine, whose strange allure and mystic fascinations are central, but for the entire complex of neighbors who live and die pressed up closely to each other.

The first epigraph in Rabbit Hutch is a quote from Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and Me, (1989) from a woman in Flint, Michigan who sells rabbits as “pets or meat.” Her explanation that male rabbits in close proximity will kill each other resonates throughout the novel, a harbinger of Rust Belt practicality and a clarification of why it matters that the Rabbit Hutch is known by that name. There are many metaphors one could use to describe an apartment where everyone lives on top of each other, but unlike a can of sardines or a nest?—pile?—of rats, a rabbit hutch conjures strange, mystical desperation.

There’s no single thread tying together these bunny books, some of which feature literal rabbits and some only metaphorical. But the rabbit’s connections to feminine creativity, survival, and quiet observation make it an apt symbol for contemporary literature, and for a literary culture increasingly attuned to women’s stories. These book-cover-bunnies are not helpless objects of subjugation; they’re resonant figures of rebirth and regrowth after lifetimes of survived violence and cruelty, after the last three years of mass illness and mass death.

So if you’re dreaming of rabbits, take note from the little critters and pay closer attention to the worlds that surround you. “Rabbits make their moves in deceptive ways,” Autumn told me. “If one is trying to get pregnant, a rabbit can be a good omen. If one is struggling financially, a rabbit can represent a turning of the table: better days ahead. But if one is in bed with their new paramour, and they dream of a rabbit, their guard should be up. I’m not suggesting an immediate break-up. Just, you know, some caution.”

I hate Paris. It’s something about the mix of imperial pomp and saccharine cutesiness in the streetscape. It’s also the terrible food, I think. And though quite a few European cities confuse rudeness with personality, in Paris there is just something about the sheer frequency of interpersonal unpleasantness that, over time, becomes wounding to the human spirit. Mostly my hatred of Paris is a reaction to a very dull and conventional city’s vastly inflated reputation. I’m broadly with Le Corbusier here: raze the center, build a highway and some skyscrapers, then fill the space between with gardens and vegetable patches. That at least would be interesting.

I was in Paris, nonetheless, for a gathering of global “thought leaders” interested in the benefits of making the modern city more green. It was, in fact, an auspicious location. The mayor of Paris had just announced a plan to surround the city’s major landmarks with trees, creating an “urban forest” to help meet a goal of being 50 percent covered by trees by 2030. This was no small endeavor: “The city imagines turning the square in front of city hall into a pine grove,” wrote the journalist Feargus O’Sullivan, “while future springtimes will see the opera house’s back elevation emerge from a sea of cherry blossom. The paved plaza at the side of the Gare de Lyon will become a woodland garden.”

The conference I was attending—a self-described global “movement,” in fact—was a forum for scientists, planners, political leaders, and others to come together around a shared green city agenda. It was big: several hundred attendees from around the world at the Sorbonne, including many major figures from the world of urban ecosystems, with an art program, an accompanying book of “flash fiction,” and a “farm-to-table” banquet. For an event happening on a university campus, it was slickly choreographed—with a rolling program of public “dialogues,” “microtalks,” and “seed sessions,” ranging from how to finance green infrastructure to how to meditate with plants. There were speeches from various French political and business figures, a wordless performance about street trees that I didn’t understand, and lots of talk about biodiversity and the psychological benefits of nature. I went to one session where you got to wear a VR headset to see what your green roof might look like and one where you had to pretend to be a place and then be psychoanalyzed as if you were that place. An artist gave a talk on how she likes to dance with nature in the city, and later I saw her weaving her body, with great deliberation, through the array of small potted plants that lined the meeting’s entranceway.

There was something very charming but also oddly evangelical about all of this—like a weird mix of Silicon Valley and Christian revivalism. “Your project is so sacred and so wonderful,” said one speaker to another. Someone else said to a panel of presenters, “Your talks are so beautiful and poignant.” A planner told the crowd, with great seriousness, “My job is to be a healer.” You get the idea. At the beginning of each day, everyone had to stand up, look around, and introduce themselves to the people nearest to them—it was that kind of conference.

Amid the fervor and the enthusiasm and the—I wrestle with my own cynicism here—basically good desire to fill the city with trees and birds, to plan in a more ecologically sustainable way, and so on, I was struggling with a larger problem—a problem that runs through the work of the great park designers of the nineteenth century, the revolutionary modernists of the twentieth, and, as we will see, a whole host of other major urban movements and philosophies. That problem explains a lot of my own suspicion about this entire scene and is one of the major issues I want to help myself understand as I move around this world.

The problem is that everyone in Paris basically seemed to think more nature was good. But no one ever actually said what meant by “nature” in the first place. What they meant by this term was, I guess, what most people mean by it: green things, trees, parks, birds, open space, clean air. This was never actually said, though, and so I was left wondering. We’re all convinced that there’s something wrong with contemporary city life. We’re equally all convinced—I think—that much of what’s wrong has to do somehow with an absence of nature. And that absence seems to go in two directions. On the one hand, there’s not enough natural stuff in cities—too few trees, not enough otters. On the other hand, a kind of unnatural way of living has taken hold among city people—too much sitting in air-conditioned buildings, too much concrete, too much stress and speed. All of this, I think, is fairly uncontroversial.

But it was unclear to me then—it still isn’t clear to me now—what it is, exactly, that makes the city so unnatural in the first place. Maybe this seems like hairsplitting, but truly, if put on the spot, I don’t think I know what “nature” actually is. And while we’re at it, I’m not even sure I know what counts as “the city” and what doesn’t. Walk as far as you can in a city such as London or Shanghai. Walk through Swansea, even. Where does the city actually end? At what point—exactly—do you enter the great “outside” of modern urban life?

In an influential essay in 1938, Lewis Mumford, perhaps the greatest American critic of urban planning, defined a city as that place where “the diffused rays of many beams of life fall into focus.” Cities, said Mumford, are the culmination of humankind’s domination of the earth; they’re where the need for industry and cooperation have come together. Cities are the great sites of monumental and public life they are living museums of themselves, cathedrals to their own glory and to the forms of life they make possible; cities are where vastly different kinds of people can come together with different functions, and desires, and needs, that somehow are orchestrated into the great four-dimensional fold of human social life.

This seems like a fine description of Rome in the fourth century or London in the nineteenth. But it tells us more or less nothing about daily life in a midsized regional city in the early twenty-first century—which is to say, it tells us nothing about the mundane, unremarkable, badly planned, and more or less ugly places where almost all urban life plays out today. “The future of the city” sounds like a fine topic for discussion until you realize that we are talking about a category that includes Beijing, Poughkeepsie, Byzantium, Atlantis, and Limerick.

Airy talk tells us little about what actually counts as “the city” and what doesn’t—about what is urban space, what is a natural environment, and what actually marks the break between these categories. This really matters. In Paris, lots of people were convinced that the future of the city inevitably meant bringing healthier, greener, more natural, noncity things into it, even reshaping and replanting the city itself around those things.

But take a concrete tower block—for many people the epitome of unnatural urban living and the great icon of modern, nature-conquering architecture and planning. There’s nothing obviously unnatural about concrete. Even the raw béton brut, the concrete that gives its name to the distinctive style we call brutalism; the chalk, clay, and various chemical admixtures that make up a cement; the sand, gravel, and slag of aggregate; the water that binds it all together . . . all of these things are unambiguously of the earth. All of them are found in, and harvested from, the wild outdoors. All of them have been bobbing around the surface gloop that covers this planet at least as long as we have, and likely longer. To rub one’s face against a concrete wall and to rub it against a leaf is, no doubt, a different sensory experience—but it is not a difference that is obviously marked by contact with “nature.” Yes, someone might say, but surely there is something in the processing of these raw materials that somehow shifts the end product into the category of the unnatural. This does not seem convincing. Just as with moral panics around “processed food,” the act of mixing, processing, and combining is complex, but it is not doing any metaphysical work. There is no process that can make things unearthly, no churn that lifts them out of the same chalky, debased realm that humans, along with every other living creature on the planet, have always inhabited. “The dams of beavers and the webs of spiders are presumably natural,” says the environmental philosopher Steven Vogel—then, “why are the dams built by humans or the polyester fabrics they weave not so?” If we feel things to be unnatural—if on principle we dislike a modern art gallery, say, or a Cup-a-Soup—well, we are entitled to our moralism, but no one is obliged to grant this feeling any philosophical or scientific status.

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Excerpted from The Living City: Why Cities Don’t Need to Be Green to Be Great by Des Fitzgerald. Copyright © 2023. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Christopher Payne was en route through Brooklyn on his way to the MTA Overhaul Shop in Coney Island, where they rebuild and maintain subway cars. As he passed storefronts, bodegas, and restaurants, he commented, “‘STEAKS, CHOPS, SEAFOOD’—you don’t see that on the signs for diners anymore.” Payne is renowned for his photographs documenting industry in America. When he creates images of things being produced, he feels the urgency of knowing that all manufacturing processes change and disappear over time. He conveys the power and beauty of making things. All sorts of things: Steinway pianos, Whirlpool washing machines, Kohler urinals, Airbus planes, and electric vehicles shuttling down the assembly lines at Ford and Rivian. His focus ranges from traditional processes serving niche markets to ultramodern technologies.

Payne had photographed in the MTA Overhaul Shop several times already. In the cavernous skylighted space, he had the swagger of someone who understands the work done there, which won the respect of the workers. They knew from previous shoots the exactitude and precision—the eccentricity—he exhibits when composing a photograph. In his steel-toed boots and hard hat, Payne stalked the aisles lined with trains like a museum curator searching for treasures to put on display. Today his mind was set on a forty-ton subway car. He wanted to document the moment when the train is hoisted into the air to facilitate work on its undercarriage. Payne envisioned a moment when the elevated car would align with the car behind it in a way that would be deeply satisfying. This moment of geometric and compositional sublimity had eluded him so far. He is a perfectionist.

There is nothing loose or improvisatory about Payne’s work. As we entered the shop that morning, he said, “We’re going to get medical with this—like, surgical.” He will return to the same location five or even ten times in pursuit of an imagethat is escaping him or to redo an image he thinks he can do better. That’s what he was up to this day in Brooklyn. He set up his tripod and, as he was shooting, he directed the men moving the car into position to lift it a few inches higher here or drop it a few inches there. They endured several rounds of his requests because, as much as he admires the tremendous skill they bring to their labors, they seemed to admire the obsessive, sometimes baffling perfectionism he brings to his art. At one point, as he kept honing the exact composition he wanted, he said, “I don’t know if I am chasing something that is unattainable.”

Red/blue editing pencils before dunking in blue paint. General Pencil Company, Jersey City, New Jersey

It was thrilling to see the colossal subway car handled like a toy. Scale plays a major role in Payne’s work. Pencils in a factory in Jersey City look monumental, and a row of airplane fuselages on an assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, looks tiny. He shoots behemoths like nuclear submarines, wind turbines, and printing presses with the same flair and eye for detail he brings to shooting tiny fiber optics and computer innards. The steel-and-copper hatch of a nautical submarine could be, at first glance, a watch component. One of his most delightful photos shows a man inside a huge New York Times printing press, engulfed by the tangle of wires, cables, and gears he is cleaning. Payne loves seeing humans inside machines.

Circular forms appear regularly in Payne’s pictures. A worker’s tiny legs peek out from below the huge steel sunflower of a jet engine. Rows of massive wheels are lined up in a locomotive factory in Fort Worth, Texas. Hundreds of spools of wire are mounted on the spokes of a gigantic orange wheel in the Nexans high-voltage subsea cable plant in Goose Creek, South Carolina. Chartreuse golf balls whirl- ing in a vibrating buffing chamber at the Titleist factory become graceful minimalist sculptures. One imagines him walking onto a factory floor filled with machinery and feeling the same jolt of inspiration that Monet once felt gazing at water lilies and van Gogh felt in a field of haystacks. The manufacturing world is Payne’s muse.

In 2010, a yarn mill in Maine caught Payne’s interest. The once-booming textile industry in the United States had shrunk dramatically in recent decades, and one of the main obsessions that fuels Payne’s art is the desire to capture traditional manufacturing processes before they disappear. The mill became the first of more than twenty that Payne documented throughout New England. One morning he received a call from the owner of the S & D Spinning Mill in Millbury, Massachusetts, a place where Payne had spent some time. The owner said, “You might want to come up today. We’re running pink.”

Wool carders. S & D Spinning Mill, Millbury, Massachusetts

Prior to that, whenever Payne had been on-site, they were running black, white, and gray wool. Payne, who lives in upper Manhattan, still chuckles when he recounts thinking to himself, “Do I want to give up my parking space right outside my apartment to drive three and a half hours to the mill?” Of course he did. He made one of his iconic photos that day—a deliriously pink sea of unspun fuzzy wool fiber stretched across a bank of gray rollers cascading down from the ceiling. The interlocking lines and angles formed by the grid of rollers, ladders, fencing, and vividly magenta gossamer fibers form a rhythmically harmonious composition that would hold its own against a rigorous Mondrian-esque abstraction if it weren’t for the unruly wool puffs wafting about on the floor and webbing down from the rafters. This fiber would eventually be used for hardware-store paint rollers. Payne is always ready to drop everything to go to a factory in pursuit of a color or moment in the industrial process that he has been chasing.

Even when the product being manufactured isn’t colorful, hints of cobalt blue, sunny yellow, and fire-engine red pop up in Payne’s photographs, thanks to factories using these primary hues as warnings and decorative accents. He waited months to get the spaghetti strands of blue pastel at the General Pencil factory in Jersey City. Gloved hands gently hold the soft material atop a stack of wooden boards cut with ridges to shape the strands. The scene is rendered with Payne’s classically cinematic Rembrandt lighting evenly illuminating the hands while letting the background fall into darkness. There is an air of timelessness to the image. Payne says it is hypnotizing to watch someone do a repetitive motion. When he was in one of the textile mills, he spent the better part of a day making a portrait of a man doffing a large spool of wool roving (wool fiber that has been processed but not yet spun) because he wanted to catch the moment of peak elegance.

This is usually the aim when Payne is photographing workers. He will labor over a portrait with the same fierce attention to minute shifts in position and lighting that he brings to his still-life images, trusting that he will have a chance to remake a picture due to the repetitive nature of assembly-line and factory work. The task will be repeated. He wants to illuminate and celebrate the skills of the workers and to honor their craftsmanship. There is no excuse for not getting it right. A tour through the Steinway piano factory in 2002 started Payne on his mission to document industry in America. He was overwhelmed by the beauty and delicacy of the artisans’ work and found himself thinking about it for the next decade. He eventually gained privileged access to the factory and began what would become a three-year project to show how pianos are made. He found it to be a “very meditative place,” and says, “When I saw them bending the wood for the piano around the rim press, I said, ‘Oh my God, that is the first step in the creation of a concert grand that will eventually end up in performance halls around the world,’ and I almost cried.

This is when the wood is transformed into the unmistakable silhouette of the piano. Before that, it is just planks.”

PEEPS Marshmallow Chicks cooling on a conveyor belt before packaging. Just Born Quality Confections, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

The smell of wood was everywhere. Much of the work is done by eye with chisel in hand. A “belly man” literally lies on top of the sound boards on a table cut out in the shape of a piano as he does his work. Payne’s grandmother and mother taught piano, and his father was a classical musician. He feels this has influenced his photographic work. He originally trained as an architect and worked as one for twelve years. When the Recession hit in 2008, he found himself at a cross- roads, realizing that he preferred being in actual physical spaces to drawing the plans for future buildings. He turned to photography full-time, crediting his years of translating three-dimensional spaces into two-dimensional drawings with giving him a deeper understanding of form and function.

I first met Payne when Bonni Benrubi, his gallerist at the time, showed me his stunning photographs from the Steinway factory in the spring of 2012. We published those images in the New York Times Magazine, where I have been the director of photography since 1987. Since then, I have enjoyed working with Payne on numerous projects. We commission him because of his singular ability to make gloriously monumental photos that illuminate what he refers to as the “grandeur and sublimity” of industrial processes.

Three of the most memorable photo essays we’ve published—the textile mills, the pencil factory, and even the New York Times printing plant—were self-assigned art projects that Payne either brought to us after they were complete or asked us for help with to gain access to a facility; he had no promise of publication upon their completion. Payne, who sold newspapers in Boston when he was a teenager, desperately wanted to shoot inside the massive Times printing plant in College Point, Queens. After we granted him access, he visited the plant more than thirty times, often into the wee hours of the morning, to get the best images of the presses running and the press operators at work. Sometimes he came away empty- handed if things didn’t align visually in the way he hoped they would. This deep engagement with his personal projects gives him the granular knowledge of the manufacturing process he needs to make the formally beautiful and informationally meaningful images he seeks.

Warp yarns feeding a Jacquard loom for the weaving of velvet upholstery. MTL, Jessup, Pennsylvania

The biggest challenge Payne faces is an unusual one for an artist. He is obsessed with process. When he is photographing inside a factory, there is a constant inner tug-of-war between his desire to make the most beautiful photo possible and his desire to show how something works. He says, “I struggle with the burden to show process. To convey useful information as well as beauty. It can’t just be beauty. It has to have meaning.” It is a self-imposed burden. We published the photo essay of the Times printing plant as a special section of the broadsheet. A selection of the photographs he made now hangs in the Times building in Times Square.

Payne cites as influences the work of Andreas Feininger, the photographer who covered industry for Life magazine in the 1940s and 1950s; Alfred Palmer’s factory portraits during World War II for the Farm Security Administration; the industrial photographs of Ezra Stoller (who was known primarily for his architectural commissions); and the pictures Joseph Elliott made at the Bethlehem Steel plant in the 1990s. Payne has grabbed the baton and run with it. He shares the appreciation of sculptural forms evident in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s seminal documentation of disappearing industrial architecture in Germany, of objects such as cooling towers, gas tanks, and grain elevators. The big difference between their photography and Payne’s is that they clearly had a formal agenda and Payne’s is both formal and humanistic. Payne also looks to Vermeer’s paintings for his portraiture because, he says, “I love the soft side light and the way his pictures are architecturally composed and ordered, with everything in its place for a reason.” Payne’s work will one day resonate in the way Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York photos from the 1930s do today. They will serve as historic records.

To succeed, photographers need to be opinionated. Payne’s photographs declare with clarity and passion his belief that American manufacturing is to be treasured and valued and the workers respected and honored with our attention. The hard labor of these workers has been documented by one of the finest documentary artists of our time. This book should be the topping-out ceremony that occurs when the highest feature on a tall building is attached to celebrate the end of construction. After all the work Payne has done in magnificently rendering the toil of the workers and the beauty of industrial processes, he should be able to step back to survey the breadth of his achievement, but as I write this essay, I know he is still trying to gain access to places he hasn’t been able to get into yet—a jet engine test site, a high-tech pharmaceutical lab, and a space capsule he has been dreaming about. There is always something more to photograph.

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Excerpted from Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne. Foreword by Kathy Ryan Copyright (c) 2023 Abrams Books. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Another month of books, another month of book covers. October is (arguably, I guess) both the best month of the year and the weirdest. The covers, naturally, follow suit. Here are my favorites from this year’s spooky season:

Guy Gunaratne, Mister, Mister; cover design by Jack Smyth (Pantheon, October 3)

Very cool mixed media collage, and even cooler custom text. Also, I’d like to say to the gentleman on this cover: hard same, man.

Athena Dixon, The Loneliness Files; cover design by Beth Steidle (Tin House, October 3)

“It is hard to visually represent loneliness in a way that does not skew towards the familiar—white expanses, empty rooms, curtains and windows, vases without flowers,” Steidle told Lit Hub. “And while those images successfully convey their message, this book is modern and urgent, and needed a different approach. Modern loneliness is crowded. It is filled with bodies, digital and analog, with real life on one side and manufactured life on the other.” Read more about it here.

Olga Ravn, tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, My Work; cover design by Joan Wong (New Directions, October 10)

My favorite kind of book cover: deeply—but oh so casually—deranged.

Jhumpa Lahiri, tr. Todd Portnowitz, Roman Stories; cover design by Janet Hansen (Knopf, October 10)

Crown shyness in vivid color.

Justin Torres, Blackouts; cover design by Na Kim (FSG, October 10)

“Explaining the concept behind the cover feels impossible and almost deranged because it’s an amalgamation of so many things!” Kim told Lit Hub. “The large black mass impeding the majority of the cover takes the shape of one of the torn pages from the Sex Variants Study (a book heavily featured throughout the novel). The application of black on black also nods to the stories within the stories, and the idea of shadows still existing in the dark. The peeking hyena is a character pulled from an illustrated children’s book within the novel. Like I said, this cover is a real hodgepodge of so many ideas and images, but hopefully it came together to create something cohesive and beautiful.” Read more about it here.

Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind; cover design by Alicia Tatone (Astra House, October 17)

Something something psychedelic grim reaper—a weirdly perfect cover for the book at hand. (Plus, the scythe looped through the O is a tiny touch of genius.)

Adam Thirlwell, The Future Future; cover design by Alex Merto (FSG, October 17)

I always love Merto’s sense of humor—there is something so simple about this, and yet so brilliant, something so elegant and yet so silly. (And true story: I picked this book up off my desk because of the cover, and read it, and loved it. Publishing success!)

Ahmed Naji, tr. Katharine Halls, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison; cover design by Sunra Thompson, illustration by Sophy Hollington (McSweeney’s, October 17)

It looks like the cover for an ultra-modern horror story—which in a way I suppose it is.

Reggie Watts, Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again; cover design by Ben Denzer, photograph of Watts by Sarah Pardini (Tiny Reparations Press, October 17)

A delightfully weird book cover for a delightfully weird performer.

Marie NDiaye, tr. Jordan Stump, Vengeance Is Mine; cover design by Keenan (Knopf, October 17)

This is a very effective version of the double layer/ripped paper technique; the red dagger is a double entendre all by itself.

Greg Jackson, The Dimensions of a Cave; cover design by Rodrigo Corral (FSG, October 24)

I mean, we’ve got Plato, lurking in the clouds like a god, his left eye closed behind—is it? yes—half a CD. What’s not to like?

K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats; cover design by Michael Morris (One World, October 24)

“I wanted it to feel dynamic, like it was coming at you but also drawing your eye in,” Morris told Lit Hub. “I wanted to somehow portray or hint at blood in a more unexpected way that would make the view look twice. A red string, that the main characters wear as collars sparked the idea of the red string abstractly portrayed as foliage that the dog explosively tore its way through.” Read more about it here.

A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton; cover design by Alicia Tatone (Scribner, October 31)

A cover that feels gluttonous indeed.

Ludmila Ulitskaya, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Body of the Soul: Stories; cover design and illustration by Sarah Schulte (Yale University Press, October 31)

So delicate, so lovely.

The simplest way to make a globe is to construct a sphere and paint it. The earliest globes would have been made of wood or metal, with the celestial or terrestrial map painted directly on by hand. Later, in the sixteenth century, hollow globes were made of thin sheets of metal which were then hand-painted. Mapping doesn’t lend itself to painting and lettering by hand, and cartography was in its infancy, so early painted globes were necessarily very inaccurate.

Later makers pasted blank gores onto the sphere to create a more forgiving canvas for the hand-painted map and lettering. These are called manuscript globes. The invention of the printing press meant that maps could be printed as gores. A silversmith or skilled engraver would etch a reverse map on copper plates before printing using a process known as intaglio, from the Italian word for ‘carving.’ In intaglio printing the etched plate is coated with ink, then wiped to leave ink only in the incised depressions, before being run through an etching press, in which dampened paper picks up the ink to create the printed image. Copper is a soft metal, so the plates lose their clarity relatively quickly; smaller print runs were therefore common. The effect, though, is very satisfying, with an intense character to the image. The globemaker then pasted the printed gores onto the globe and finally the painter would add color.

It was at this point that the globemaking craft became assimilated with the printing and publishing industry. Globes were after all now printed just like books, and since this time each edition has been referred to as a ‘publication.’ And as in book publishing, copying the map from a rival’s globe is plagiarism.

The golden age of the printed and then hand-painted globe coincided with the age of European expansion, reaching its peak at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In this period, as astronomical, geographical and cartographical knowledge developed apace, globemakers too were inspired to experiment and refine their art. In turn, the proliferation of printing presses made it possible over time to produce more globes at a less than exorbitant cost so they became more affordable to a greater number of people.

Nevertheless, the acquisition or commission of a globe was still the preserve of the aristocracy and the affluent merchant class. Because of the delicate and time-consuming nature of the work, a budding globemaker probably would have required considerable financial backing. Globes therefore were prized symbols of status and prestige.

Studying these venerable antique globes, it was striking to see how little the methods of manufacture had changed from the mid-sixteenth century until the twentieth century, albeit there is always a mystery about the exact construction and methods because so much is hidden under the surface – it was only in the last century that the rot set in. I knew that I had high aspirations but did not want to simply reproduce some sort of cheap faux-antique facsimile. Instead, my ambition was to produce a handmade globe that felt classic yet at the same time unusual, relevant and contemporary.

Bellerby Globes. shot by Tom Bunning for part of his ‘Crafted’ Series.

I come from a line of keen artists. My grandmother and my mother both loved painting with watercolors; my grandmother even taught it for many decades until well into her nineties. I have several of their paintings, although they are stored in my attic because, sadly, I just don’t share their enthusiasm for this medium; I don’t like the imprecision of the application, although more likely I don’t care for watercolors because I have never been very good at painting with them. However, in collaboration with the crispness of the cartography on a globe, watercolors acquire another dimension, allowing you to build up a rich color patina over many layers without obscuring the text. It really is a perfect match.

Watercolors were no doubt used on the finest old globes for this reason; indeed, I would go so far as to say they could have been invented for globemaking had they not been conceived centuries earlier than the first painted globe. Globemakers must surely always have planned to paint their globes with watercolors; they knew their creation would have pride of place in the purchaser’s house, so beauty was paramount. We might love the look of these old globes now, but when they were made, they were positively revered. Meanwhile Chiara Perano, a friend of Jade’s obsessed with astrology and mythology, had been designing a celestial globe, mapping the stars and drawing all eighty-eight constellations by hand. She also decided that my original basic cartouche was not suitable for her celestial globe, and she quickly came up with a much better design.

In the early years of Bellerby & Co., my approach to publicity and marketing was a little scattergun. Finding the correct person to contact at publications for editorial content was far from straightforward. I just fired off the odd email here and there, and occasionally the employee handling the info@ or press@ account would pass it on to the editorial team. Sometimes this miraculously resulted in some publicity for Bellerby & Co. globes, such as a tiny feature in House and Garden magazine.

Just as Chiara was finishing the first Bellerby & Co. celestial globe, the Perano Celestial model, David Balfour, the property expert on Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie Hugo, saw the House and Garden piece and commissioned me to make four globes for a scene in the film, one of which was to be a celestial globe in two pieces; they were going to film the scene in a clockmaker’s studio, so our globes fitted the bill.

The deadline for the Hugo globes was ridiculously tight – filming was due to start in June 2010, and I had to build in extra time for their in-house approval. And I was still learning many of the processes and practicing only on 50-centimeter globes; the commission was for a 40-centimeter celestial globe and three much smaller terrestrials. I worked into the night for weeks for next to nothing – I was just excited to be asked.

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Excerpted from The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft by Peter Bellerby. Copyright (c) 2023 Bloomsbury Publishing. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.