Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Chelsea Krieg, Everything Is Water, Texas Review Press, March 2026, poetry Everything Is Water is an open letter to caregivers as the speaker grapples with her partner’s life-threatening illness, pregnancy and new motherhood, and…
Browsing: Reviews
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Accidental Devotions is a wonder of a poetry collection, organized in four sections: Scrolling for God, Rebel Angels, Cathedral of Clouds, and Unmistakable Prayers. The final poem is called Necessary Prayer, and it is…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Most adults who grew up in the United States remember reading Highlights. Before the digital age, children around the country would peruse Highlights while waiting for a doctor or dentist appointment. The magazine is accessible…
Review by Emily Webber Susan Finch’s collection of loosely interconnected short stories, Dear Second Husband, is set entirely in Nashville. However, what stands out most are the characters—with relationships strained by grief, violence, dissatisfaction, and changing lives. Finch’s keen…
Reflections on At the Gate: Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 by Lucille Clifton by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Lucille Clifton always reminds me of things I need to remember. I’ve written often about how when I was a new mother a photo…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Sometimes an Island is a short but mighty novel-in-stories that opens with a prologue and brief history of pogroms against Jews in the Russian empire in the early 1900s. The escape of three young…
Review by Carla Panciera Jane Ward’s fourth book, Should Have Told You Sooner, is both a journey novel and an exercise in time travel. As one of the novel’s youngest characters wisely observes: “‘We tend to think of life…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Deborah Leipziger, Tell Me, Lily Poetry Review Books, February 2026, poetry Tell Me is a love letter to nature and to daughters, to the Beloved and to our future ancestors. These poems celebrate the…
Walking with Beth: Conversations with my hundred-year-old friend by Merilyn Simonds Review by Melanie McGehee Award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, writer of more than twenty books across genres, reached her seventieth birthday with a specific longing: she wanted a guide…
Unvarnished Animal: A Review of Shari Caplan’s Exhibitionist by Hannah Larrabee In her prize-winning collection, Shari Caplan opens with a poem invoking the incomparable Marina Abramović: Here is the gallery of my body. (…) You’re not supposed to chew…