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Cheers to this year’s collection of books published by UCLA English alumni, faculty, and students.

Air Jordan by Professor Adam Bradley. This coffee table book delves into Jordan’s life, legacy and cultural influence. Bradley spoke about his work on this book in a profile by UCLA Humanities.

Maternity, Monstrosity, and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare by alumna Sara Burdorff. This work uses an adaptation of monster theory to rethink the foundations of epic-heroic immortality. Burdorff spoke about her new work on the New Books Network podcast, “New Books in History.”

Rebel Girl and the Godfather: New York City’s Italians and the Fight for Civil Rights by Professor Jeffrey Louis Decker. This work details the story of how an Italian American housewife and community organizer battled a Brooklyn Mafia boss and political activist for the hearts and minds of a white working class in revolt.

Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles, edited by Professor Barbara Fuchs and other contributors. This collection features seven plays and is a first-of-its-kind anthology that explores adaptations of 17th-century Hispanic comedia within contemporary Los Angeles theater.

Bug Hollow by Continuing Lecturer Michelle Huneven. The novel follows the lives of the Samuelsons, a middle-class family from Altadena, California, over the course of five decades, as they cope with the aftermath of a tragedy. In a UCLA Humanities interview, Huneven detailed how she owed her new book to her students.

Spoiled: Asian American Hostility and the Damage of Repair by Assistant Professor Summer Kim Lee. In this work, Lee examines how contemporary Asian American artists challenge expectations that their work should repair the wounds of racial trauma.

Coyotes and Culture: Essays from Old Malibu by Professor Claire McEachern. This unique collection of essays offers a gripping exploration of the precarious beauty and peril of California’s iconic coastline. McEachern discussed her venture into creative non-fiction in a UCLA Humanities story.

Mavericks of Style: The Seventies in Color by Professor Uri McMillan. In “Mavericks of Style,” McMillan tells the story of New York City’s downtown art and fashion scene of the 1970s through the lives and careers of experimental Black and Brown artists.

Smart Girl: A First-Gen Origin Story by alumna La’Tonya Rease Miles. Miles’s memoir redefines first-gen and Black student narratives, highlighting mass media, pop culture, and sports as key to shaping identity, resilience, and community. She spoke about her academic journey and her new book with UCLA Newsroom.

Regaining Unconsciousness: Poems by Professor Harryette Mullen. This is Mullen’s first new collection in twelve years. In this collection, Mullen confronts the imminent dangers of our present to sound an alarm for our future, to wake us out of our complicity and despondency: Can we, even still, find our way to our unconscious selves, beyond our capacity to harm, subdue, and consume? She spoke about her new anthology in a UCLA Magazine profile.

The A-Word by undergraduate student Alyssa Murray. Murray self-published her debut novel in January. She spoke with the Daily Bruin about her writing and self-publishing process.

Marion Milner: On Creativity by Associate Professor David Russell. Part of the “My Reading” series, this work is about Marion Milner’s writings and artworks on creativity, which act at the interface of literature, art, and psychoanalysis.

The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats by Associate Professor Danny Snelson.  This text “offers contingent reading strategies and creative methods to help make some sense of this always-evolving media landscape,” Snelson described in a first person profile with UCLA Humanities.

The Hermeneutics of Distraction in Early Medieval England by Associate Professor Erica Weaver. This text is part of Oxford University Press’s monograph series, “Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture.” In “Hermeneutics,” Weaver argues that the threat of distraction is not only a modern concern, but a concern that also existed during the medieval period.