This book is a rebellion against machine-made art.

At a moment when artificial intelligence challenges writers in every facet of artistic production, the Relegation Reader celebrates writing in its rawest, most evocative form. Each story is an emerging star in a constellation of new poetry and prose that illuminates our shared world.

In The Relegation Reader, edited by Paris-based author Will Mountain Cox (Roundabout and With Paris in Mind: Talking with Artists of This Generation), 26 contemporary writers in the U.S., U.K., and Europe offer a fresh, unfiltered view of identity, technology, memory, and place.

These voices--which include a poet shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, a recipient of the 2021 Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature; three writers mentored by the publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano, who lived and worked in New York, and then Rome and Naples; and many other remarkable talents--pull you through portals into cultural landscapes you've likely romanticized only via screen.

From Berlin to Baltimore, from a mountaintop to the subway, the Reader holds up a 360-degree mirror to our hyper-networked society, connecting unexpected emotional harmonies to reveal that the heart of who we are lies not in the answers, but in the asking.