Review by Sharon Tracey Laura Cresté’s first full-length poetry collection, In the Good Years, opens with dead horses and ancestors, garden slugs and chipmunks, and two feisty and devoted mothers. There’s an immediacy and honesty as the poet writes of the angst of growing up—mood swings, depression, sisterhood, a shifting sense of roots. Then she equally turns her attention to the larger world in an expansive rendering of the personal, political, and environmental, rich in the details of daily life but cognizant of how the self is a small part of the world and needs to find connections…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Diane Botnick writes in the prologue of her novel, Becoming Sarah, that a midwife at Auschwitz delivered 3000 babies and most were brutally murdered as soon as they were born. Only 30 survived. She imagines what became of these babies and uses this premise to craft a sweeping story that spans 100 years into the past, present, and future. Through the fictional Sarah Vogel, Botnick explores questions that are not typical of Holocaust novels, namely what happens to survivors who are too young to remember the Holocaust and can a nurturing environment help them overcome…
Review by Melissa Kutsche The events of Susan Buttenwieser’s debut novel, Junction of Earth and Sky, are set into motion by World War II, but this is not a typical World War II novel. Instead of epic battles, Buttenwieser lays bare the conflict and warfare of domesticity. In lieu of heroes forged from bravery, there are complete, flawed characters navigating everyday life, figuring out how to love and be loved. Readers of Kristin Hannah’s novels might enjoy this literary historical fiction and its multidimensional characters, Alice and her granddaughter, Marnie. After the war upends teenage Alice’s life in coastal…
Review by Rebecca Jane The Seeds empowers fresh perception, until perception become synonymous with ecological compassion. These poems stir thought, wisdom, and sensitivity to notice “the immeasurable / heartbreaks of the field” (3) so that we may embrace our “obligation to listen and mourn our lost fields and meadows” (69). Here, a window that will not open turns into a life lesson. The blooms, shadows, fruits, and breezes that the tree branches bear offer messages, if we cultivate sensitivity to them. Cecily Parks is the author of Field Folly Snow, known for its passionate interiority, and O’Nights, a collection…
Review by Emily Webber Jennifer Eli Bowen’s memoir in essays, The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There, covers twenty years, exploring topics such as marriage, motherhood, the transformative power of writing, and different kinds of communities—when they succeed and when they fail us. Whether Bowen is analyzing her own personal experiences, like her disintegrating marriage, or examining how prison systems operate, she shows the reader how people learn to care for each other and how sometimes we fall short. In the opening essay, Bowen recounts being at her father’s funeral, a man who chose to stay…
MER Bookshelf – December 2025 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley New or forthcoming books of note (in order of date of publication). Bonnie Naradzay, Invited to the Feast, Slant Books, October 2025, poetry Bonnie Naradzay’s journey—as mother, professional, teacher, and longtime volunteer, leading poetry sessions in prisons, a retirement community, and among the homeless—has gathered much of both the lost and found, culminating in the publication of Invited to the Feast, a collection of poems and literary debut coming in her eightieth year. Subhaga Crystal Bacon, A Brief History of My Sex Life, Lily Poetry Review Books, January 2026,…
Short Call for Submissions: Revised Dates: Open for submissions until Dec. 7, 2025 Due to an overwhelming response, we are ending submissions on 12/7/25. Thanks for your understanding. The (Re)Birthing Room MER Online Folio Curated by Karolina Zapal For an MER Online Folio, “The (Re)Birthing Room,” seeks poetry and hybrid works exploring pregnancy, birth, and rebirth—the physical, emotional, and metaphorical spaces where new life, new selves, new worlds emerge. More info at https://merliterary.com/submit
Laura Johanna Braverman FULL MOON AND GALLOWAYS The farmer shows me a hollowing-in by the iliac crest, skin taut from the weight of the calf. ‘Soon –’ she says, ‘Next week is Vollmond.’ She brings out a box: puncher to tag the new little ear, braided-rope bracelets with ties, ‘Just in case.’ One of three cows has never labored before. During their confinement in the barn, I bring red apples from nearby trees, the ground, and the market shelf. I hold out the fruit in my palm. Between squares of teeth, the first bite makes a resonant crack –…
Allison Blevins, Author of Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down? Interviewed by Melissa Joplin Higley MJH – When and why did you first start writing poems? AB – I started writing poems after reading Teen Magazine as a girl (not a teen). The magazine had a poetry page in the back, and I loved the drama. My mother bought me a journal, and I filled and filled the pages. I still write much of my work in the same way now. MJH – Who are your main poetic influences? AB – I worked with…
Review by Mary Makofske From the title poem, “At the Redemption Center,” where the prosaic recycling of bottles and cans slides into “hope…for the redemption of us all,” Anne Sandor demonstrates her skill at turning words and situations over to examine their various facets. Moving easily through family relationships, gender norms, and the inner lives of children and adults, this debut poetry collection also brings precise language and empathy to examine public events. Sandor, more a poet of the “eye” than the “I,” prefers to fade into the background as she lets images, metaphors, and events speak for themselves.…