MER Bookshelf – March 2026
Date: March 19, 2026
In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and […]
News & Reviews
News:
Molly McCloy talks about her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES, on KJZZ Phoenix!
Date: March 17, 2026
Tucson storyteller Molly McCloy loves telling stories about hard things. She’s done it on stage and in print. Her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on […]
Maurya Simon interviewed by Sean Singer on his Substack, The Sharpener!
Date: March 17, 2026
Maurya Simon’s The Blue Bridge, her twelfth volume of poems, will appear in 2026 (Etruscan Press). Her earlier volume, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, received the 2019 Independent Booksellers […]
Amy Pence discusses her upcoming novel YELLOW in an interview with ArtsATL!
Date: March 12, 2026
During Hurricane Irma in 2017, a 90-foot oak tree split and fell into the middle of Amy Pence’s cottage in the old fishing village of Pine Lake, Georgia. A beam […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK featured in Our Culture Magazine’s list of most anticipated books of spring 2026
Date: March 11, 2026
It’s finally warming up here in Washington, DC, and earlier this month was the first instance I was able to comfortably sit on our roof and read. With a coffee […]
April Ossmann interviewed on the Derate the Hate podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
April Ossmann discusses poetry collection, WE with Derate the Hate podcast.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed on Bookstr!
Date: March 3, 2026
Yellow is a slow-bloom speculative novel and quietly cosmic. It’s a book about how long childhood wonders and wounds can linger, how the universe keeps whispering even when we stop […]
Molly McCloy interviewed on The ARTWIFE Podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
Molly McCloy discusses her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES: THE SPITEFUL ORIGINS OF THE HAPPIEST DYKE ON EARTH with Hannah Harlee.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed in Deep South Magazine!
Date: March 3, 2026
It’s 1973: summer of the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space when 12-year-old Z discovers an unclassified slime mold growing in her Louisiana backyard. Something compels her deep coherence […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK listed in the New York Post!
Date: February 24, 2026
This satirical literary thriller has shades of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. A 19-year-old NYU dropout returns home to Brentwood to laze about and enjoy popping prescription pills. But […]
Reviews:
Reconciling Life’s Pain & Love: A Review of WHAT SMALL SOUND by Francesca Bell
Date: October 26, 2023
How can we exist within, and navigate our way through, a world where the deepest beauty is inextricably linked to the darkest ugliness? Francesca Bell’s unflinching second collection of poetry, […]
MAPPING THE SURREAL: A CONVERSATION WITH SUSAN RICH
Date: October 19, 2023
Susan Rich’s eighth book, Blue Atlas, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press (April 2, 2024). Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry) and Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews for […]
Episode 116: The Gathered Congregation
Date: October 17, 2023
Poets Jason Schneiderman, Cate Marvin, R. A. Villanueva, Lynn Xu and Rachel Zucker consider the pleasures, challenges, eccentricities and value of live, in-person poetry readings. These musings are followed by […]
Review of Kim Dower’s I WORE THIS DRESS TODAY FOR YOU, MOM featured in Jewish Book Council!
Date: October 11, 2023
Many American Jews are unaffiliated with Judaism. Some do not observe Jewish rituals in any regular way; others might not worship at all. And yet Jewishness still pervades their lives: […]
“tender gravity”–a gem of a book by Marybeth Holleman
Date: October 10, 2023
Marybeth Holleman’s book tender gravity was my companion on a recent hike in Avalanche Canyon in Grand Teton National Park, and what fine company it was, contributing to the feeling of well-being […]
23 Must-Read Books that Will Transform How You Think about Food and the World
Date: October 10, 2023
This fall, Food Tank is recommending 23 books that can broaden and deepen everyone’s understanding of food systems and the power of storytelling. Books like Taras Grescoe’s The Lost Supper, Sarah Lohman’s Endangered Eating, […]
Jaya Savige at Times Literary Supplement calls PACIFIC LIGHT by David Mason “a home-seeking voice, lured by the Pacific”
Date: September 25, 2023
In Pacific Light, David Mason’s eighth collection of poems, we find the former Poet Laureate of Colorado newly settled in Tasmania, weighing the “titanic volumes of air” between “here and Patagonia” […]
Vivian Wagner reviews Francesca Bell’s WHAT SMALL SOUND for Pedestal Magazine!
Date: September 20, 2023
What Small Sound, a new poetry collection by Francesca Bell, is an exploration of life, death, and love, and of the myriad ways these essential elements of human existence intersect and […]
Juliana Lamy’s debut short-story collection YOU WERE WATCHING FROM THE SAND featured in Daily Kos!
Date: September 20, 2023
The Bookgirl Community in the Daily Kos highlights key takeaways from Juliana Lamy’s first short-story collection, You Were Watching from the Sand, published by Red Hen Press this September! Read […]
Kirkus Reviews calls Lisa C. Krueger’s FLORIOGRAPHY CHILD “a poignant and bittersweet poetry collection about a mother’s devotion.”
Date: September 20, 2023
Krueger offers a memoir about caring for a sick child in poetry form. Krueger explores connections between flora, motherhood, and illness in this poetry collection. The title refers to the way […]