Mary Odden’s Blog
Date: June 4, 2020
https://www.maryodden.com/neighborsblog
News & Reviews
News:
Lithub: Finding My Story in the Colonial Past of the Andaman Islands
Date: June 3, 2020
My new novel Glorious Boy began with a dream. On a tropical island during an emergency evacuation, a young girl was hiding in a dense rainforest with a small, mute white boy […]
Caroline Leavitt’s Blog Interview with Aimee Liu
Date: June 3, 2020
Aimee Liu talks about GLORIOUS BOY, the excruciating process of writing, creating a memorable silent character, her shapeshifter dad, and so much more.
Ms. Q&A: Authors Aimee Liu and Cai Emmons Talk Motherhood, Shame and Releasing Books Mid-Pandemic
Date: June 3, 2020
Some 30 years ago, an established nonfiction writer and a screenwriter decided to write their first novels. They met in a fiction writing class, and have been friends ever since, […]
NY Times: Percival Everett Has a Book or Three Coming Out
Date: June 3, 2020
Featured mentioning of Percival Everett’s Colonel Hap Thompson!
OutSmart: National Poetry Month 2020 Reading List
Date: June 3, 2020
Presented in five poetic sequences, the poems in Hold Me Tight by gay poet Jason Schneiderman focuses the reader’s attention on the subjects of anger, real and metaphorical wolves, the work of the late […]
Washington Independent Review of Books: An Interview with Donna Hemans
Date: June 3, 2020
At 15, Plum Valentine is banished from her Brooklyn home and sent back to Jamaica by parents nervous about the pernicious effects of the American lifestyle. Once there, her trust […]
Electric Lit: I Can Only Save My Grandparents’ Home by Preserving It in Fiction
Date: June 3, 2020
In the bedroom of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, there’s a mural depicting a well-dressed crowd at a cocktail party pasted to the wall. Spencer’s granddaughter, Shaun Spencer-Hester, points to […]
Amherst Bulletin: The price of protest: New novel looks at the consequences for two sisters caught up in the anti-war movement
Date: June 3, 2020
Family relations can be fraught in the best of times, even when people care deeply for one another. So what happens when you throw those family members into a situation […]
CrimeReads: Excerpt from Her Sister’s Tattoo
Date: June 3, 2020
It’s Detroit, 1968. Sisters Rosa and Esther march against the war in Vietnam with their best friend, Maggie. As they reached the rally site, double rows of blank-faced National Guard […]
Reviews:
William Archila’s CANICULA / DOG DAYS reviewed in West Trade Review!
Date: May 5, 2026
William Archila’s first two collections The Art of Exile (Bilingual Review Press, 2009) and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology (Red Hen Press, 2015), each, in their own way, translate the U.S. immigrant experience through […]
Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE reviewed by A Few More Words!
Date: April 28, 2026
As we continue to live through a 24-hour news cycle that moves at breakneck speed from one international conflict to the next, the Iraq War can feel like a distant […]
Khanh Ha’s THE AFTERLIFE OF A THREADBARE JESTER was awarded the five-starred Golden Quill Read from BookViral Reviews!
Date: April 15, 2026
Khanh Ha’s The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester is not a novel that seeks to comfort its reader. Instead, it draws you into a world stripped of illusion, where survival […]
Molly Fisk receives first review of WALKING WHEEL from West Trade Review!
Date: April 15, 2026
Molly Fisk takes up the challenge with, Walking Wheel, a narrative suite from the decorated California poet which functions as a novel-in-verse. Set in the frontier country of the California-Oregon […]
A Few More Words reviews Amy Pence’s latest novel, YELLOW!
Date: April 14, 2026
At the beginning of Amy Pence’s debut novel, Yellow (Red Hen Press; 232 pages), 12-year-old Eliza makes a strikingly topical observation about the Watergate scandal blowing up in the summer […]
Kill Dick by Luke Goebel Gets a Raving Review from The Oregonian!
Date: April 7, 2026
Luke Goebel’s novel “Kill Dick” is both playful and grotesque. The story revolves around a series of brutal murders in Los Angeles motel rooms, the bodies desecrated, with nipples glued to eyelids, […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Art in America!
Date: April 6, 2026
Ding dong, now Dick is dead. Imagine a novel written in the style of Vice magazine. That’s Kill Dick: every sentence strains to shock with its edginess or searing, cooler-than-you cultural critique. It […]
Yellow by Amy Pence is on SheReads Must-Read Speculative Feminist Books
Date: April 2, 2026
In this galaxy, but in a time and at a conference now somewhat far away, I saw a very long line of women holding books, their faces bright with anticipation. […]
YubaNet features essay by Molly Fisk!
Date: March 31, 2026
Molly Fisk is Inaugural Poet Laureate Emerita of Nevada County. Her historic novel-in-verse, Walking Wheel, comes out April 7th from Red Hen Press.
Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE reviewed in Publishers Weekly!
Date: March 25, 2026
Benedict (Wolf Season) unspools a harrowing story of an Iraqi refugee family’s attempts to fit into American society. During the Iraq War, Khalil served as an interpreter for the U.S. […]