The Cloud Intern
David Greenwood
Under the BQE Press, 2025, $19.95
David Greenwood’s The Cloud Intern is a debut novel that reads like a satire-laced startup manual coauthored by Kafka and Kara Swisher. Set aboard a floating tech utopia called the Sky Yacht, the novel follows reclusive mogul Chris Curtis—an Elon-ish figure in exile—whose encounter with an enigmatic intern named Zoraida launches him into a spiral of strange revelations and stranger choices. Greenwood skewers our fetish for innovation while poking tenderly at the brittle human bits underneath the cloud-based sheen. That he lives right here in Kingston, not Palo Alto or some desert biotech compound, makes this sharp little fable all the more delicious. Published by Brooklyn micropress Under the BQE, The Cloud Intern is a weird-and-wonderful local export you’ll want in your summer tote.
Plato and the Tyrant
James Romm
W. W. Norton & Company, 2025, $31.99
In Plato and the Tyrant, James Romm—James H. Ottaway Jr., professor of classics at Bard College—delivers a gripping narrative that peels back the layers of the philosopher Plato’s life, revealing a man deeply entangled in the political upheavals of his time. Drawing from Plato’s personal letters, Romm chronicles the philosopher’s ventures in Syracuse, where he sought to guide two tyrants named Dionysius towards philosophical rule. These endeavors, however, led to catastrophic consequences, including a civil war that reshaped Greek Sicily. Amidst this turmoil, Plato penned his seminal work, Republic, envisioning the concept of a philosopher-king. Romm’s account not only humanizes Plato but also offers a fresh perspective on the origins of Western political thought, illustrating how lofty ideals can clash with the harsh realities of power.
Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
Spiegel & Grau, 2025, $30
Forest Euphoria is a genre-defying debut that blends memoir, science writing, and queer ecological theory into a luminous meditation on belonging. Raised in the swamps and culverts of the Hudson Valley, Kaishian—now curator of mycology at the New York State Museum and faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative—found kinship in the overlooked and the in-between: fungi with thousands of mating types, intersex slugs exchanging “love darts,” and glass eels whose sex remains undetermined until their final year of life. Her lyrical prose invites readers to see queerness not as anomaly but as a fundamental expression of life’s diversity. This book is a gift to anyone who’s ever felt out of place, and a reminder that nature itself resists binaries. A must-read from one of our region’s most original voices.
The Lost Voice
Greta Morgan
HarperOne, 2025, $28.99
A longtime touring musician—known for her work with Vampire Weekend, Jenny Lewis, and her own projects—Greta Morgan’s world unraveled in 2020 when Covid led to a diagnosis of spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that silenced her singing voice. What follows is not just a story of loss, but of radical reinvention. From backstage green rooms to the red canyons of Utah, Morgan’s journey is both physical and spiritual, as she learns to listen anew—to the world, to others, and to herself. Written with poetic clarity and emotional honesty, this debut is a luminous, soul-baring memoir that charts the collapse and reconstruction of an artist’s identity. Morgan now lives in Woodstock, where she continues to create, teach, and listen.
Home Inside the Globe: Embracing Our Human Family
Gail Straub
Greenleaf Book Group, 2025, $28.95
Straub’s Home Inside the Globe is a sweeping memoir of movement and meaning, tracing her decades of work in global women’s empowerment alongside a deeply personal search for connection. From the sands of the Sahara with Tuareg nomads to refugee camps in Jordan, Straub’s story is one of radical empathy and cross-cultural encounter. Her prose moves between the political and the poetic, driven by a belief that our differences are less significant than our shared human longing to belong. Part travelogue, part spiritual reflection, Home Inside the Globe offers a hard-won optimism forged in the world’s most tender and turbulent places. A powerful offering from a Woodstock-based writer with a global reach.
This article appears in June 2025.
