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:
Spill Magazine Recommends Peter Ulrich’s DRUMMING WITH DEAD CAN DANCE AND PARALLEL ADVENTURES!
Date: December 13, 2022
Dead Can Dance formed in their native Australia in 1981. The core of the band was (and is) Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. When they relocated to England and settled […]
IF I WERE THE OCEAN, I’D CARRY YOU HOME by Pete Hsu Reviewed on Patch!
Date: December 5, 2022
A refreshing book, I thought – a collection of short stories that this reviewer started from the beginning rather than picking and choosing which story to read next, based on […]
QUESTIONS FROM OUTER SPACE by Diane Thiel Reviewed in the Florida Review!
Date: November 30, 2022
Diane Thiel’s third collection of poetry, Questions from Outer Space, comes after an interlude during which the poet devoted her energies to a travel memoir (The White Horse) and the translation […]
Adam Kirsch’s THE DISCARDED LIFE reviewed in Literary Matters!
Date: November 30, 2022
The evolution of blank verse from Milton to Wordsworth, via Cowper, was not solely a change in diction and subject matter. Even as classical and biblical themes were displaced by […]
David Mason’s PACIFIC LIGHT Reviewed in LA Review of Books!
Date: November 21, 2022
A POET KNOWN for his narratives, like Ludlow, the acclaimed historical-novel-in-verse turned opera, David Mason curates the archipelago of intensely satisfying lyric poems in Pacific Light with the skill of a consummate storyteller. […]
The Friday Poem recommends Ron Koertge’s I DREAMED I WAS EMILY DICKINSON’S BOYFRIEND
Date: November 21, 2022
Koertge inhabits – and endows – his various subjects with insight and humour, dealing out poems in the voices of car crash dummies, Aphrodite, Mickey Mouse, Little Red Riding Hood, […]
David Mas Masumoto and Patricia Wakida’s SECRET HARVESTS Receives a Starred Kirkus Review!
Date: November 17, 2022
A simultaneously elegant and sharp-edged exploration of the hidden past. “I am haunted by gaps in family memories, nebulous responses and twisted behavior that must be examined within the context […]
Pamela Uschuk’s REFUGEE Earns a Kirkus Star!
Date: November 17, 2022
A mordantly tender triumph rich with natural imagery. Uschuk’s poetry collection calls out authoritarianism and social injustice. This moving set of poems offer messages of hope as it addresses timely […]
David Mas Masumoto and Patricia Wakida’s SECRET HARVESTS reviewed in Foreword Reviews!
Date: November 16, 2022
“Paired with artist Patricia Wakida’s haunting illustrations, the book’s rich, lyrical language evokes both cultural eloquence and California’s seasonal beauty. Poignant and reflective, Secret Harvests is a family saga of […]
PEN America Interviews John Weir, Author of YOUR NOSTALGIA IS KILLING ME!
Date: November 14, 2022
The title of your book Your Nostalgia is Killing Me, seems to be an ironic one. The protagonist’s nostalgia is seemingly running havoc on his own life. He can’t escape revisiting the past and […]