In September 2020, Transit began publishing Undelivered Lectures,

a narrative nonfiction series featuring book-length essays in slim, handsome editions. “We want to provide an outlet for discursive prose of exceptional literary and cultural value that’s more lasting than a magazine piece but less substantial than a 300-page hardback,” said Transit publisher Adam Levy. “Undelivered Lectures is an opportunity to introduce readers to boundary-pushing works of narrative nonfiction.”

To date, the series includes: Lecture by Mary Cappello, a song for the forgotten art of the lecture, longlisted for The Believer Book Award; Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell, a collection of speculative essays on the contemporary mythology of the face, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver (tr. Julia Sanches), exploring language, memory, and migration in its many forms, winner of the PEN Translation Prize; and Aftermath by Preti Taneja, an anti-racist lyric essay written in the wake of the 2019 London Bridge killings, reckoning with the language of terror, trauma, and grief, and the systemic nature of atrocity.

Undelivered Lectures series design is by Anna Morrison.

Submissions

Our reading period is open from May 1–June 15. Read our full submission guidelines, if you’d like to propose an essay for the series.

AWARDS FOR UNDELIVERED LECTURES

PEN Translation Prize, Winner
Migratory Birds

National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist
Stranger Faces

Firecracker Award, Finalist
Migratory Birds, Stranger Faces, Lecture

Believer Book Award, Finalist
Stranger Faces

Believer Book Award, Longlist
Lecture

SELECT PRAISE

Aftermath

“Aftermath is a book of extraordinary heart and intellectual force that probes the power of trauma and interrogates the ideologically inflected meanings of terrorism. Its achievement lies in its generosity and intimacy.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

Migratory Birds

“Pondering revolutionary Cuba, the Berlin Wall, and the caves of Cappadocia, these essays explore themes of memory, war, movement, and home. Oliver probes words for their historical and emotional associations, comparing her task to that of women in the rubble of postwar Germany, sorting bricks to salvage what could be used. She sees liberation in language but does not dwell on her own reasons for wandering. Glimpses of her life emerge from beneath the surface, and, like the unexploded bomb in the Rhine that appears in one essay, are potent and mysterious.”—The New Yorker

Stranger Faces

"Wise, warm, witty and dizzyingly wide-ranging... Stranger faces refuse to signify or symbolize, which may be exactly why we try so hard to read them—and why it is so fun to read about them, at least when Serpell is doing the writing."—The New York Times

Lecture

“After reading this eloquent book, anyone will agree that the lecture is not archaic, but rather waiting for a vital new mode.”—Publishers Weekly