By Kristen LaRue-Sandler — May 7, 2026
Three faculty members and a student in the ASU Department of English announce books recently published or imminently forthcoming. Works include a poetry translation, a novel, a journal issue and an edited Shakespeare play and cover topics of love, sci-fi, language learning and revenge.
‘Postkolonial Kärleksdikt’ (Rámus, 2026)
This Swedish edition of Natalie Diaz’s Pulitzer-prize winning poetry collection, released in March, was translated by Athena Farrokhzad and Adam Westman. From the publisher (description translated by Google):
- “In ‘Postcolonial Love Poem,’ Natalie Diaz takes as her starting point an indigenous American people who are resisting their own extinction. She moves between abusive brothers and fabulous lovers, between desert nights and dammed rivers. Water, the original source of life, flows through the book, which cannot be distinguished from the body and refuses any attempt at enclosure. In the meeting of three languages - English, Spanish and Mojave - Diaz writes a sad and violent hymn to queer love in a cruel contemporary era.”
Diaz is a professor in the Department of English’s creative writing program and holds the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at ASU. She also directs ASU’s Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.
‘Absence’ (Soho Press, 2026)
Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut speculative novel launched in May just as he was finishing his coursework at ASU. From the publisher:
- “In this gripping, moving, and genre-blending speculative debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two rookie agents from the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs are dispatched to small-town Kansas to investigate a woman who claims to have returned from Spontaneous Human Absence, offering answers that could change everything.
People are 'popping,' disappearing one-by-one, into thin air: an ongoing global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.
Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. His job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken up by an unexpected assignment from the central office.
A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. Is her story true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for answers? Together with his no-BS partner Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.
A sweeping portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut novel is a vividly imagined speculative mystery of cosmic proportions, examining the stories we tell to get by.”
Hudson is a student in the MFA program in creative writing at ASU.
CALICO Journal 43:1 (February 2026)
This issue of the computer-assisted language learning journal published by University of Toronto Press was co-edited by Bryan Smith and Ana Oskoz, with an introduction titled “When Uncertainty Becomes the Context.” From the publisher:
- “The CALICO Journal, founded in 1983, is the official publication of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) and is devoted to the dissemination of information concerning the application of technology to language teaching and language learning. The journal is published online-only, is fully refereed and publishes research articles and studies and software and book reviews. Three issues appear annually and normally one of them is a thematic issue on current discourses and developments in Computer-Assisted Language Learning. CALICO's international editorial board and large group of authors and reviewers reflect its global readership.”
Smith is a professor and director of the CALL certificate in the ASU Department of English’s linguistics and applied linguistics program.
‘Titus Andronicus: The Arden Shakespeare’ (Bloomsbury, 2026)
With Curtis Perry, Ayanna Thompson edited this edition of the play by William Shakespeare that is to be released mid-May. From the publisher:
- “The bloodiest and brashest of Shakespeare's plays, this revenge tragedy begins with war and ends in mutilation and cannibalism. Acts of war and sexual violence across borders and within families highlight the importance of empire, Blackness and gender, alongside the familial and literal blood which characterise early modern and contemporary performance.
The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series ‘Titus Andronicus’ provides: 1. A critical introduction to the textual, cultural and performance history; 2. An edition that is rooted in a Jacobean revival performance of the play; 3. Detailed on-the-page notes explaining language, character and performance; 4. A clear page layout with an easy-to-read font and single-column notes; and 5. Images of relevant productions, paintings and texts.
The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series includes a new edition of every Shakespeare play, the poems and sonnets. Each volume is edited afresh by a leading scholar specialising in cutting-edge research on performance, gender, sexuality and race. These editions cover everything you need to know as a student, teacher, researcher, theatre-maker or performer of Shakespeare's works today.”
Thompson is Regents Professor of English at ASU, where she is also executive director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.