'Foam' is American writer Kate Zambreno’s latest novel, published by Semiotext(e) in September 2026. The book begins in a hospital room where an encounter with another postpartum mother gives way to the narrator’s reminiscence of two hired “mother's helpers,” both named Eva, before folding into a novella-within-the-novel about the artist Eva Hesse. Evas abound. Like Zambreno’s recent novels Drifts and The Light Room, published by Riverhead in 2020 and 2023 respectively—and all their books, to an extent—Foam exposes its own construction. Each narrator expresses formal desires; in Drifts: “my fantasy of a memoir about nothing”; in The Light Room: “a notebook of seasons and exhaustions, a form I’ve termed ‘translucencies’”; in 'Foam': “a soft book, made out of ridiculous materials,” “an unfinished book.”

I had already learned so much from Rainer Diana Hamilton’s poetry before reading This Reasonable Habit. Co-written with Violet Spurlock and published February 2026 by Spunk Editions, the long poem begins with a bicoastal phone call and unfolds at an imaginary summit where 26 characters—A through Z—convene, over the course of three days, to answer questions like: “Is ‘shyness’ a moral failing?”, “What makes good sex?”, “What constitutes a good reason to dislike someone?” Ever searching for guidance on living, relating, and loving, I finished the book with a rush of gratitude for the sheer abundance of thinking it opened up, meaning I wept. This investigative impulse is seen across Hamilton’s work, and, as they say in our conversation, the idea is to “find the form that can represent a thought you otherwise couldn’t represent.” Near the end of This Reasonable Habit, Violet says over the phone to Rainer: “Haven’t I loved you in loving to wonder alongside you about the nature of that love?” Friendship is a form, too—Hamilton’s work reminds us of this fact.