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 to 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.

Will Mountain Cox is from Portland, Oregon and lives in Paris, France. He is the author of the novel Roundabout and a study of the relationship between art and psychology, With Paris in Mind.