Black Earth Institue: Social Distancing
Date: June 4, 2020
In dreams I walk through crowds, brushing arms, knocking elbows. Skin to skin: hands are bare. Crocuses congregate in beds, along sidewalks. Unlatching city gates,
News & Reviews
News:
Poets.org: Aerial, Wild Pine
Date: June 4, 2020
A flare of russet,green fronds, surpriseof flush againstthe bare grey cypressin winter woods. Cardinal wild pine,quill-leaf airplantor dog-drink-water.Spikes of bright bloom–exotic plumage.
Arts At MIT: A Writer’s Voyage: Mia Heavener, MIT Course 1, 2000
Date: June 4, 2020
“Be stubborn and ultimately believe in your writing,” advises first-time novelist Mia Heavener ’00, “especially if you are having crappy writing days.” On April 13, Heavener visited Wyn Kelley’s literature […]
Lithub: Writing Place in a Time of Crisis
Date: June 4, 2020
Tess Taylor’s new poetry collection Rift Zone is published this month. She shares five books about writing place in a time of crisis.
Datebook: How Bay Area authors stay creative amid the coronavirus pandemic
Date: June 4, 2020
Poet Tess Taylor questioned what it means to be creative, when every day feels like a radical reinvention of life. “These days, helping myself and my family steer a way around sadness, […]
NY Times: We’re Doing What We Can to Keep Truckers on the Road
Date: June 4, 2020
LINCOLN, Neb. — My mother was born into a flu-stricken household at the height of the pandemic of 1918. Within minutes she was swaddled in a homemade quilt and placed […]
PSA: Francisco Aragón “1985”
Date: June 4, 2020
1985 Long and black, the streaksof gray, aflutter in the lightwind as she prepares to tell her story at the Federal Building:reaching into a tattered sackshe pulls out a doll […]
Chapter 16: The Skin of Meaning excerpt
Date: June 4, 2020
The Skin of Meaning He was late to the party and without directions,though his invitation was secure, and his instinctskeenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we arewaiting to […]
Daily Poetry: Ascension
Date: June 4, 2020
Ascension Didi Jackson The blue jays lay claimto the raspberry busharriving in groups of four or five:one holds a rubied berry in its beakand feeds it up in the white […]
Lithub: ‘Almost Animal’ A Poem by Didi Jackson
Date: June 4, 2020
after Käthe Kollwitz I heard they no longer sew eyelids of the dead shut.At the morgue, I busied myself countingthe lacerations on my husband’s neck and wrists.I wore sunglasses and […]
Reviews:
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. […]
Laura Kasischke’s THE LIFEGUARD got a Booklist review!
Date: March 24, 2026
Full review to come on April 1! “Wednesday, July 16, 1969. When all of America had its eyes on the moon, the Mannings inMission Hills, Michigan, suffered a wrenching personal […]