Instagram story viewer> @autofocusbooks> Posts

Autofocus Books

@autofocusbooks

2.8K

followers

503

following

Publisher of artful autobiographical writing.

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

Now available for preorder! And introducing our new design for Autofocus poetry titles! Our backlist poetry books will get redressed/reissued over time, but RISK TOLERANCE is ready to go and leading the way. Out on March 23, 2027. Claim your copy of this incredible book now! More soon 🪹

autofocusbooks.com by @autofocusbooks

230

29

20 days ago

Finally, FAILURE IS THE ONLY SUBJECT by David Shields is now available for preorder! Here is the cover, designed by Amy Wheaton, and some further info about the book.

Preorder: autofocusbooks.com
[or wherever you buy books]

ARC requests: publicity@autofocusbooks.com
[reviewers, interviewers, excerpters, podcasters, Substackers, bookers, etc]

More to come. by @autofocusbooks

107

2

a month ago

Now available for PREORDER! 📫

ABOUT THE BOOK
“Writers only know how to begin,” Laura Childs Gill declares in one of her many attempts to trace the origin of the desires that upended her comfortable life. Did it begin when she asked B. to get a beer? Or was the impulse inherited along her paternal side, a lineage of writers who’d also fallen in love outside of marriage — who’d also always been leaving?

In What a House Can Hold, Gill’s meditative essays take form around her inability to neatly narrativize her domestic and creative crises. Visiting the houses of Dickinson, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, driving through the Florida Keys with her father, the Mojave Desert with her mother, and the American South alone, Gill searches for answers to her questions about how one leaves, and builds, a home. At once about the loss of a previous self and the acceptance of a new one, What a House Can Hold contends with, and exemplifies, what happens when the structures designed to contain us—marriages, homes, habits, self-mythologies—no longer can.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Childs Gill is an author and teacher living in Miami, Florida. Her essays have been published in AGNI, The Los Angeles Review, West Branch, Washington Square Review, and Electric Literature, amongst others.

Claim a copy now and we’ll get it to you before the official release in October! 🍂

autofocusbooks.com by @autofocusbooks

162

35

4 months ago

This Thursday! Come celebrate two debut essay collections with us at @penandpencilphilly 🎉 by @autofocusbooks

32

0

8 days ago

Happy fall! DISENCHANTED, the debut essay collection from Kaycie Hall, is officially out.

🥀🥀🥀

autofocusbooks.com
[or wherever you buy them] by @autofocusbooks

114

14

22 days ago

Join us to celebrate the newest essay collections from Autofocus Books, both debuts, by Laura Childs Gill and Kaycie Hall.

The event features readings & conversations between the authors and their editor/publisher, Michael Wheaton, about the process—from drafting to publication to promotion—of writing one’s own life. Plus time to party! by @autofocusbooks

46

2

a month ago

A MEMOIR THAT PIECES A DECEASED PARENT BACK TOGETHER (AND THE AUTHOR, TOO)

Join us in conversation with Erin Slaughter @erin_slaughter23 , author of four books, including THE DEAD DAD DIARIES (@autofocusbooks 2025), our September Book Club Pick!

🗓️ October 1 at 6:30-7:30pm ET - RSVP link in bio. It’s free for subscribers to Memoiring on Substack (incl. the free tier)

📖 Read it with us: Link in bio for the memoir

Bring your content and craft questions for our collective Q+A!

Swipe through to see what makes this indie memoir a must-read + add your thoughts or questions for me or the author, below, in the comments! 👇

BTW: AI WAS NOT USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS POST! by @autofocusbooks

3

10

a month ago

For all my jumping for the joy of (and for the many thanks I owe to so many of you for the support of) launch week for THE FATHER OF THE MAN: THE LAST AUTHOR PORTRAIT SITTING WITH CORMAC McCARTHY, I’m grateful and excited to sit down tomorrow with the wonderful Jenna Blum as her guest on A Mighty Blaze’s Friday Frontier to talk about the book, about art, family, and community. You are invited to join us LIVE at 4 PM ET tomorrow, September 4, on Facebook or YouTube. All of us are storytellers. Thank you for chance to share mine with Cormac.
https://www.facebook.com/amightyblaze/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Lh_YSTYwLcjv7-gxRprzQ
#thefatheroftheman
@autofocusbooks
#cormacmccarthy
#nocountryforoldmen
#theroad
@jenna_blum
@amightyblaze
#murderyourdarlings by @autofocusbooks

61

4

a month ago

THE FATHER OF THE MAN is now officially available and already flying out of the warehouse and onto/off of shelves. We’ve nearly sold out of the first print run!

Thanks to this book’s distinguished blurbers for their words and attention [swipe to read]:
Salmon Rushdie
Marlon James
Matthew Quick
Dr. Stacey Peebles
Tracy Daugherty
Phil Klay
Adam Haslett
Platon

Get it at:
autofocusbooks.com
[or wherever you buy books] by @autofocusbooks

72

6

a month ago

book launch 🫦💋💗 by @autofocusbooks

84

11

a month ago

@beowulfsheehan was the last photographer to make pictures of legendary American author Cormac McCarthy. He remembers this session in a new book called THE FATHER OF THE MAN: THE LAST PORTRAIT SITTING WITH CORMAC MCCARTHY, available on September 1, 2026 from @autofocusbooks. A fascinating, at times moving conversation about photography, portraiture, fathers and sons, and the reasons why we make art. Don’t miss it.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

ABOUT THE BOOK
 On a hot August day, Beowulf Sheehan and his assistant Chika arrive at the Santa Fe Institute to meet and photograph Cormac McCarthy, writer of masterpieces such as Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, auteur of the Southern Gothic, and figure renowned for avoiding the public eye. Their day together takes them from the light of Santa Fe to the shadows of Cormac’s home, exploring his art and life as they go, making what would become Cormac’s author portrait for his novels The Passenger and Stella Maris and, less than one year after they are published, the image used to announce the global news of his passing. The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy is a recounting of that great day, a photo essay (including many pictures published for the first time), an homage to Cormac and his art, and a reflection of Cormac’s work to serve as a lens through which Beowulf Sheehan better sees, understands, and loves his own father.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Beowulf Sheehan is a photographer of figures in the arts and humanities. To date, he's photographed better than 1,000 writers from more than 60 countries. His work has been published in the likes of Elle, Esquire, L’Uomo Vogue, The New Yorker, People, Time, Vanity Fair, and Vogue and has been exhibited at institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dostoevsky Museum, International Center of Photography, Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and The Witliff Collections. by @autofocusbooks

44

1

2 months ago