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:
Amy Pence’s YELLOW reviewed by Kirkus Reviews
Date: February 11, 2026
Mysticism and science merge in the story of a Louisiana artist. Pence tells her story in language on the border between poetic and precious.
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Thirsty Caterpillar
Date: February 3, 2026
This week’s Thirst Quencher doesn’t tiptoe, it kicks the door in. Kill Dick by Luke Goebel is dark, unsettling, and unexpectedly funny, driven by characters and ideas that refuse to […]
Abi Pollokoff’s NIGHT MYTHSᐧᐧBEFORE THE BODY reviewed by West Trade Review
Date: February 3, 2026
Abi Pollokoff’s debut poetry collection night myths • • before the body, released this year from Red Hen Press with much advanced praise, is so deft in execution, so consistent […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Publishers Weekly
Date: February 3, 2026
The daughter of a pharmaceutical executive gets ensnared in criminal mischief in this ambitious blend of social satire and sunshine noir from Goebel (Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours). […]
THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE by Helen Benedict gets a raving review!
Date: January 27, 2026
Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE (2026) completes her Iraq war trilogy, that began with SAND QUEEN (2011) and was followed by WOLF SEASON (2017). But the new book is actually […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Kirkus Reviews
Date: January 27, 2026
“…Shot through with the sort of pseudo-profundity endemic to youthful privilege, Susie’s rambling, terminally jaundiced narrative paints a darkly surreal Lynch- and Kubrick-inspired portrait of LA.”
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Foreword Reviews
Date: January 21, 2026
Luke B. Goebel’s winking satirical novel Kill Dick parodies contemporary literary and cultural forms. Set against sun-bleached Los Angeles—a place marked by wealth, addiction, and apathy—the book accumulates exaggerations of […]
The Pickup from This Land Press reviews Elise Paschen’s BLOOD WOLF MOON
Date: January 20, 2026
How does one build an identity? It’s an ongoing venture of discerning and refining, discarding narratives as much as creating them. For a poet, especially one who writes autobiographically, that […]
Andrew Lam’s STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA reviewed in The Common
Date: December 17, 2025
…In his latest collection Stories from the Edge of the Sea, Andrew Lam delivers work far beyond that narrow definition of the form. The settings are complex. Even a five-page […]
Adela Najarro’s VARIATIONS IN BLUE reviewed in Escape Into Life
Date: December 17, 2025
…Dr. Adela Najarro’s fifth book of poetry, Variations in Blue, is bright blue, black and blue, with dark reaching light. This bicultural-bilingual author “stands on the edge of volcanoes” to […]