Every AJB book has a community behind it.
Our annual Befriend a Book campaign invites AJB readers to join that community by making a gift that directly supports the creation of a forthcoming AJB book you're excited to read. From manuscript editing and book production to marketing and outreach, your contribution helps bring each collection to life and connect it with readers.
To Befriend a Book, first select the part of the book's journey you would like to support by choosing one of the tiles below. You'll then have the option to choose the specific book you'd like your gift to support.
As a thank you, every contribution to this year's campaign enters you for a chance to win a SIGNED copy of each book you helped support, with books mailed throughout the coming year.
The winner will be announced via email and social media on August 10, 2026.
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BOOKS YOU CAN SUPPORT:
🦷The House Has Teeth by Aldo Amparan - A queer Latinx southern gothic about bodies, borders, and trauma
🖼️ Behold by Shara McCallum - A bold new collection about what it means to be seen in art—and in the larger world
⏳ Future Tense by Kelly Grace Thomas - A searing memoir-in-verse about a woman’s fight to become a mother while losing her own
🌕 Lumina Station by Malena Morling - A reflection on impermanence, perception, and the inexplicable beauty of being
🌼 The Body Losing Its Borders by zakia henderson-brown - A debut collection written across the politically volatile years surrounding the poet’s brother’s cancer diagnosis
⭐️ The Laughing Barrel by DeeSoul Carson - A personal examination into the utility of laughter and humor in a country that has yet to shed its oppressive structures
🏛️ The Rediscovered Beauty Room by Jeffrey Thomson: A search for a human, nonreligious form of transcendence, inspired by the Spoleto Cathedral’s room of restored relics.
🐴 The Last Great Adventure is You by Rosebud Ben-Oni - Follow the Icelandic horse through a post-apocalyptic landscape where encounters with an extraterrestrial presence gradually reveal new possibilities for life on Earth
📸 Image + Likeness by Olatunde Osinaike - A formally inventive meditation on how Black life is seen, recorded, and distorted
💡Not sure? Leave the title field blank to apply your donation where it’s most needed!