Review by Mindy Kronenberg What is it about the pressures of forgiveness that plagues and propels us? We live our lives in pursuit of knowledge, happiness, and love, and despite any accolades and earnest gestures toward fortifying our own…
Review by Barbara Lawhorn In Laura Bernstein-Machlay’s gorgeous debut collection of essays, Travelers, readers journey with an extraordinarily honest author who inquires deeply into place, past, the people who inform us, and how these glimmering threads knot within our…
Review by Cammy Thomas Alison Stone has written three chapbooks, and six full-length collections of poetry, including Masterplan, a collaboration with Erik Greinke, and They Sing At Midnight, winner of the 2003 Many Mountains Moving award. Widely published, she…
Review by Laura Dennis Back in graduate school, I discovered prose poet Francis Ponge, who famously said, “Another way of approaching the thing is to consider it unnamed, unnamable.” I was fascinated by his way of looking at the…
Review by Emily Webber Lisa A. Sturm’s debut novel, Echoed in My Bones, does not avoid the hard and complicated aspects of adoption, the foster care system, and dealing with past trauma. However, Sturm also manages to pull a thread…
Review by Tasslyn Magnusson The Book of Kells, by Barbara Crooker, opens with the evocative line, “Night opens its woven basket,” (3) from the poem “Samhain.” This was unexpected and delightful. Unexpected as when the “Introduction” describes the Book…
Review by Jennifer Martelli In her poem, “Hurricane Necklace,” Rebecca Hart Olander writes Remember how you made those block cities, and my boyfriend knocked them down for you with a strand of Mardi Gras beads, shiny purple…
Review by Kimberly Bowcutt A Daughter’s Work is Heartless by Nature, by Caledonia Kearns, elucidates the godlike wisdom and mortal labor required to forge a relationship between a mother and a daughter. Kearns crafts the language and symbolism in…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor In this unique debut collection of prose poems, Callista Buchen, the author of two chapbooks of poetry. examines the darker side of pregnancy and motherhood. From the imperfect act of mothering to the loss…
Review by Sherre Vernon Shirley Camia is a Filipina-Canadian poet and the author of four poetry collections: Mercy; Children Shouldn’t Use Knives; The Significance of Moths; and Calliope. Her collection Children Shouldn’t Use Knives won the The Manuela Dias Book…