Review by Tina Kelley I always felt, after reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting, that the sweet little book we’d used as a bible while gestating had left us all completely underprepared for parenthood. Now that I’ve gotten two…
Lara Lillibridge On Writing Mama, Mama, Only Mama Lara Lillibridge on her memoir, Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent—from Divorce and Dating to Cooking and Crafting, All While Raising the…
Squeaky Wheels: Travels with my Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk and Wheelchair by Suzanne Kamata Review by Lara Lillibridge Suzanne Kamata grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan. She went to Japan to teach English, fell in love,…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen A definitive theme in Margo Taft Stever’s new volume of poetry, Cracked Piano, is the mercurial role of mothers. That motherhood is both a terrifying and transcendent time in many women’s lives is not…
Review by Carole Mertz Maggie Nelson centered her Bluets around its “blue” theme and Inger Christensen around the alphabet. In her book Pansies, Carol Barrett shaped her vignettes around the personality and culture of an Apostolic Lutheran babysitter. Teenage babysitter…
Review by Lara Lillibridge “One word. One breathless syllable, as steady, as fragile, as a hinge. Try to say it softly. If… The sound lingers, the weight of the word hovers.” (75) Deborah Batterman’s novel, just like february, is filled…
Review by Barbara Lawhorn Two and a half years ago, I found myself questioning my identity in the face of a marital separation. Larger than the question of who I was beyond being a wife, was the deeper interrogation of…
Reviewed by Carole Mertz A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Manchester, and a nominee for Best of the Net, Patrice Boyer Claeys is also the recipient of a Certificate in Poetry from the Writer’s Studio…
Reviewed by Michelle Wilbert While reading Laura Grace Weldon’s latest collection of poetry, Blackbird, I found myself anchored to continuity of time, family, place, and human experience woven into pieces glowing with vivid, knowable imagery of the quotidian mysteries that…
Reviewed by Janet McCann Haibun is an unusual form, a short prose piece with one or more haiku attached or inserted. It became popular in 17th century Japan, and has a growing number of practitioners here and now. It provides…