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:
PACIFIC LIGHT by David Mason featured in Review 31
Date: June 6, 2023
A strong poetic sensibility is combined with a successful conversational style in several insightful accounts of familiar situations, like seeing people in airports that one thinks one knows (‘Long Haul’), […]
The Seattle Times recommends Amber Flame’s APOCRIFA among ‘5 new books from LGBTQ+ authors to read this Pride month’!
Date: June 6, 2023
As we enter another Pride month, it feels as though 2023 has been one of the toughest legislative years for LGBTQ+ folks in a long time. As we witness and […]
Peninsula Clarion’s Off the Shelf recommends H Warren’s BINDED!
Date: June 6, 2023
I’ve always found poetry a bit intimidating. Sometimes I think I know where one is going, then out of nowhere I’m thrown for a loop and left puzzled with a […]
Kirkus Reviews features Laila Halaby’s THE WEIGHT OF GHOSTS!
Date: June 5, 2023
The illegitimate daughter of a white mother and a Jordanian father, Halaby, author of two novels and two collections of poetry, felt that she was a “fiction…squished between other people’s […]
Ann Poore reviews Katharine Coles’ GHOST APPLES for 15 Bytes!
Date: June 1, 2023
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by Katharine Coles – who might be a witch (IMHO) given the ready way she connects with animals (including her parrot Henri, pronounced […]
VerseCurious reviews Phuong T. Vuong’s A PLUCKED ZITHER!
Date: June 1, 2023
I review Phuong T. Vuong’s A Plucked Zither, from Red Hen Press (June 6, 2023). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/versecurious/donations
Francesca Bell’s WHAT SMALL SOUND receives a Starred Review from Shelf Awareness!
Date: May 23, 2023
Francesca Bell (Bright Stain) writes poems that chime like the bell of her own name: bright but resonant, sharp but still familiar, lush and likely to echo long after its […]
Lake County Examiner features Kim Dower’s collection, SLICE OF MOON!
Date: May 23, 2023
Did you read “Slice of Moon,” our poetry book for May? If you didn’t, I don’t blame you; many people shy away from poetry, and I am one of them. […]
Recovering Words features Francesca Bell’s WHAT SMALL SOUND!
Date: May 16, 2023
Manifest Image The man keeps telling me I am beautiful.I still look young. He says it like I’ve asked for it,but I don’t care. For him or beauty. I am […]
WHAT SMALL SOUND by Francesca Bell Reviewed in Caesura Literary!
Date: May 15, 2023
This collection immediately thrusts us into scenes of relative comfort and privilege that are all too often interrupted by the violent horrors plaguing this current time. Mind you, the terms […]