By Kristen LaRue-Sandler — October 6, 2025
Five faculty members in the ASU Department of English announce volumes recently published or imminently forthcoming. Works include a monograph, a novel, a co-authored study, an anthology, and a journal special issue. Topics covered include political rhetoric, Greek tragedy re-told, Chilean literature and higher education, top-rate science fiction stories, and speculative arts and sciences.
‘Rules for Reactionaries: How to Maintain Inequality and Stop Social Justice’ (NYU Press, 2025)
Lee Bebout’s timely political analysis is due out this October. From the publisher:
“In our increasingly polarized society, violence and echo chambers drown out all possibility of civil discourse. Thinly veiled racism, misogyny, and homophobia dominate media coverage. Again and again, national debates on race, gender, and justice go in circles. Is our language failing us?
‘Rules for Reactionaries’ serves as both a faux guidebook for ultraconservative debaters and an analysis of their rhetorical strategies. Lee Bebout lays out how language can be manipulated by those who wish to suppress progressivism and maintain structures of inequality. Taking his readers across the turbulent political landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, he delineates the rhetorical strategies that have long been used to hinder progressive movements. Bebout identifies evasive tactics such as “All Lives Matter” and “Not All Men,” which promote conservative viewpoints and disrupt calls for change. It’s an old problem that keeps rearing its ugly head, and the only way to disrupt it is to anticipate and identify it.
‘Rules for Reactionaries’ reveals how language both reflects and shapes our politics. By reminding us each of the power we possess, Bebout challenges us to not only combat the rhetoric of reactionaries, but to change our own way of thinking.”
Bebout is a professor in the ASU Department of English’s literature program.
‘A Harvest of Furies: A Novel’ (Lanternfish Press, 2025)
Hayden Casey’s debut novel is out this month. From the publisher:
- “Orrie and Emma’s family has been cursed for centuries, and as the siblings approach adulthood, the curse is starting to rear its head once again. Their father, Aggie, returns from war a stranger. His arrival shatters the fragile semblance of normality the family has cultivated in his absence. One by one, sordid secrets claw their way to the surface, exposing the rot underneath.
It’s not long before the deaths begin–and the voices in the walls grow louder.
This contemporary retelling of Aeschylus’s ‘Oresteia,’ set in the American heartland, takes an unflinching look at how foreign war scars the intimate landscape of home–not just in the days of ancient Greek tragedy but in every time and place."
Casey is an instructor of English at ASU, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing in 2022.
‘Gabriela Mistral y la Universidad de Chile’ (Archivo Central Andrés Bello, 2025)
Elizabeth Horan’s co-authored exploration of Mistral’s affiliation with the University of Chile was released in September. Translated from the publisher:
- “This book, the result of research conducted by historian Elizabeth Horan in collaboration with and co-authored by Gabriel González of the Andrés Bello Central Archive, shows how the relationship between the Nobel Prize winner in Literature and the University of Chile traces an alternative history of the bridges between society and culture that have been at the core of this public university's vocation. The networks and exchanges fostered by Mistral, with a permanent and refined strategy, transcend specific milestones and showcase the interaction of broad ideals regarding the strengthening of public education, both inside and outside the classroom.”
Horan is a professor in the ASU Department of English’s literature program.
‘The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025’ (Mariner Books, 2025)
This volume in the “Best American” series was edited by Nnedi Okorafor. From the publisher:
- “Of science fiction and fantasy, guest editor Nnedi Okorafor writes, ‘There are times when it feels like a box, but within it, technically, you can expect anything.’ The twenty stories in this collection simultaneously fulfill and defy expectations of genre, showcasing boundary-pushing authors at their best. In this year’s ‘Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy,’ a robot will struggle to make friends, a team of auditors determines the financial value of a lifetime, an alien species will teach you how to read, and maybe, just maybe, someone will finally do something about the kid in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Omelas hole. From the joyous to the terrifying, to the heart wrenching and the absurd, these stories encourage you to open your mind and, as Okorafor promises: ‘Watch your world expand.’”
Okorafor is a professor of practice with a dual appointment in ASU’s Department of English and in the Interplanetary Initiative.
Dædalus (Summer 2025)
Ayanna Thompson edited this special issue of the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From the introduction:
- “'How will we think about the past in the future?’ asks the new issue of Dædalus. Scholars and artists answer with poetry, drama, short fiction, scientific and humanistic thought, and visual art. Together, they speculate about which aspects of our present historical moment will compel, attract, haunt, and plague thinkers years from now.
The issue confronts the harms we inflict on each other and our planet, while imagining a bridge toward a more equitable tomorrow. From escaping regressive tax models to de-commodifying the arts to rethinking human relations after first contact with intelligent alien life, the contributors envision what is needed to conjure this future.
A unifying theme in the issue is the recognition that people need time and encouragement to think about the future—that we must face the worst outcomes to avoid them, and that a better future must first be dreamed to be realized. Through speculative thinking and the power of the arts, this collection encourages us to see ourselves outside of the constraints that persist today.”
Thompson is a Regents Professor of English at ASU, where she is executive director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.