Catapult Is Closing Down, but the Work Lives On

If you’re tapped into the indie publishing world, you may have heard last week about the dissolution of cornerstone Catapult Books. After 10 years of helping emerging writers find footing in a turbulent literary ecosystem, Catapult announced it would cease operations by the end of the month. Neither current employees nor the union, the Catapult Workers Collective, will transfer to the new buyer, and until recently, it was unclear what would happen to the forthcoming titles for Spring 2027. Despite fears, we’ve confirmed that all the Catapult Group’s forthcoming titles will still be released as planned.

It’s an unpredictable and disturbing time to navigate literary publishing. It certainly feels worth noting that the company was sold while the Catapult union was on the brink of contract bargaining, and that union members were notified that continued employment was “not an option.” The sale of Catapult raises concerns for authors and publishing professionals alike, and there’s no doubt that Catapult’s absence from the independent publishing landscape will be keenly felt.

Now that the Spring 2027 titles have been confirmed, we feel it’s more important than ever to share these books. Pre-ordering is a great way to show support for these authors, and to affirm our continued need for the kind of valuable work Catapult was doing in the literary landscape.

–Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas
Assistant Editor

Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud

Untranslatable is an “irresistible, razor-sharp memoir about a literary translator’s many selves—artist, mother, global citizen—as she navigates the strange convergences of family and work, life and craft.” Elisabeth Jaquette, author of Minor Detail, calls it “a gift to anyone who cares about language, love, and how the stories that shape us are told.” 

A Handful of Arrows by María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead

The author of Optic Nerve and Portrait of an Unknown Lady is back with a genre-bending collection exploring how “works of art move both through the physical world and our cultural imaginations.” Adam Thirlwell calls it “an inside-out novel about memory and forgetting that will leave every reader disturbed, enriched and delighted.” 

The River Drowns the Able Swimmer by Xujun Eberlein

This memoir spanning from the end of the 19th century into the present is a multi-generational story following Eberlein’s grandmother, mother, and herself “as they define themselves against a backdrop of China’s turbulent history” and “struggle to build a life of one’s own amid the perturbations of capital-H history.”

Rose by Oksana Vasyakina, translated by Elina Alter

Rose is the third book in Vasyakina’s trilogy, this time telling the story of an autofictional Vasyakina attempting to understand the story behind her aunt’s life and death that explores “lineage . . . the intimacy, pain, and resilience that define womanhood in a patriarchal world.”

The Vanishing Act by Eoin Connolly

Eoin Connolly’s The Vanishing Act is “part apocalyptic satire, part cri de coeur for our overwhelmed nervous systems.” The novel follows a “socially inept” copywriter named Colm whose climate-anxiety leads him make the decision to vanish “first from the Internet and then completely.”

Best Debut Short Stories 2026 edited by Kendall Storey and Elizabeth Pankova

Featuring the winners of the 2026 PEN/Robert J Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, this anthology celebrates new voices in literature.

The Ruiners by Ellena Savage

Described as a “sharp, funny, and deeply felt consideration of global capitalism and its misdoings,” Ellena Savage’s debut novel follows 29-year-old Pip and her new boyfriend, Sasha, after Pip spends her inheritance money on a falling-apart house on an “environmentally ravaged” island in Greece. 

The Rootless Elysium by Aatish Taseer

A “meditation on migration, identity, and the fragile idea of America as a ‘creedal nation,’” Taseer’s The Rootless Elysium follows Taseer on a Route 66 road trip that grows into something much more. As Taseer journeys across America, he “confronts the competing seductions of rootlessness and rootedness, the persistence of race and history beneath a myth of new beginnings, and the uneasy realization that exile is no longer temporary.”

Notes on Postcards by Jennifer Croft

Jennifer Croft’s new memoir is an exploration of “wanderlust, love, and motherhood seen through a lifelong collection of postcards . . . posing fundamental questions about why and how we connect to each other, to our histories and geographies, our languages, pictures, and ourselves.”

Jealousy by Sarah Haas

“An obsessive, propulsive memoir” about, as the title suggests, jealousy. Haas follows the path of jealousy throughout a relationship and across “art, myth, photographic technology, and perception.” A personal story that opens into fascinating questions about the broader culture, the book asks: “What if the only way to understand ourselves is to embrace jealousy? To admit it as a part of the self—even if the worst, most despotic part—and then to honestly describe and so face it.”

Doppelgänger by Sam Riviere

Riviere’s Doppelgänger is a “hilarious, scathing, and absurdist critique of contemporary culture set in a fictional university town in the near future where a contagious ‘twinning’ trend has swept across the student body.” Readers will ask: “Is this a scathing critique of contemporary culture or a virtuoso game of cat and mouse? Who’s to say? A bit of both, probably.”

On Another Planet They Can Save Me by Lieke Marsman, translated by Sophie Collins

When poet and novelist Lieke Marsman was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer in 2017, she was told it was incurable. On Another Planet They Can Save Me follows an “intellectual journey that challenges the limits of the rational, secular worldview she once trusted. As she undergoes radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and multiple surgeries—including the amputation of her arm—[Marsman] turns to theology, philosophy, mythology, and science in an urgent quest for hope.”

Cloud Six by Amy Fusselman

Amy Fusselman’s Cloud Six follows a couple who, after dying in a plane crash, find themselves on the “lowest tier of heaven, filled with laughter and dread, fear and acceptance, and family bonds even death can’t break.” Cloud Six offers “a blistering yet humorous take on the many trials of contemporary life, including parenting, substance abuse, depression, gun violence, and climate change.”

The Birthing Tree by Amanda Peters

From the author of The Berry Pickers comes a new “unforgettable novel about a woman who must confront her family’s buried truths and memories of passionate young love when her grandmother’s death leaves her as the only guide to her community’s future.” The Birthing Tree is a “sweeping yet intimate novel [that] follows one woman’s journey to protect the land, the traditions, and the memory of the women who came before her—and to decide which parts of her inheritance she will carry into the future.”

The Loneliest Tree in the World by Mariana Salomão Carrara, translated by Julia Sanches and Alison Entrekin

The Loneliest Tree in the World is a “whimsical novel by a beloved Brazilian writer [that] follows a family of tobacco farmers through the eyes of various objects in their home—an old mirror, a pickup truck, a protective work smock, and a sick, loving tree.” Translated by Julia Sanches and Alison Entrekin, “Mariana Salomão Carrara experiments with language and form to portray a family in crisis.”

Replace Me by Amber Husain

Amber Husain’s Replace Me is “a bold and engrossing exploration of replacement—professional, romantic, and political—and the anxiety it stokes in our ever-shifting cultural landscape.” Considering the widespread fear of employment obsolescence in the age of AI, Husain asks: “As we reach a collective breaking point, how do we navigate modern life’s ship of Theseus’s and reclaim our agency?”

Tongue by Kathryn Crowcroft

Tongue is “a curious and vulnerable exploration of the cultural, medical, and religious history of the human tongue alongside a personal reckoning with speech and silence.” Of her archival research on the tongue at the University of Cambridge, Crowcroft writes “As I enquire into the hidden, the taboo, the absences, there is a kind of power in making this record, in choosing what gets stored and excluded.”

Sensual World by Lauren Friedlander

Sensory World is “a surreal, Midwestern campus gothic about two young women at an avant-garde acting school whose obsessive pursuit of their craft tests the limits of their bodies and their trust in each other.” In this surprising and unexpectedly dramatic novel, Lauren Friedlander asks: “Just how much of yourself will you sacrifice in the name of art?”