The Swamp
Date: June 4, 2020
It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and […]
Date: June 4, 2020
It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and […]
Date: June 4, 2020
With the cancellation of the Virginia Festival of the Book, and recommendations to practice social distancing, there’s never been a better time to pick up some extra reading material. While […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Kim Stafford’s days have a rhythm, a routine. Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, […]
Date: June 4, 2020
With all that’s going on right now, it may be more important than ever to remember to take a beat and appreciate something beautiful — even if that’s just a […]
Date: June 4, 2020
It was recently brought to my attention that my characters are obsessed with bodies—their own and everyone else’s.
Date: June 4, 2020
Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam considers Paradise Lost “the first refugee story.” “When I learned about it, as someone who had lost his homeland, it resonated, naturally, because Vietnam was everything to my […]
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,
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.
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 […]
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.
Date: February 3, 2021
One facet in poetry’s beauty is its urgency. Its collective need–which is beyond desire–to facilitate a process that weaves its spill and story. Urgency is one of the driving forces […]
Date: February 3, 2021
This could be called a book of odes, of praise songs, of quests punctuated with wry asides. Of poems saying not what the poet starts out to say, but what […]
Date: February 3, 2021
In Melanie Conroy-Goldman’s novel, The Likely World, Mel lets a drug called “cloud” spread over her mouth and wrap her in a state of forgetfulness. The story is told in a […]
Date: January 20, 2021
Plume has a number of talented editors, and given the extraordinary year the world faced, I thought asking them for some of their favorite books of 2020 made sense, as […]
Date: January 14, 2021
In Dariel Suarez’s debut novel, The Playwright’s House, to be released in June from Red Hen Press, the realities of living in Havana under a communist state are brought alive through […]
Date: January 13, 2021
When Jennifer Risher joined Microsoft in 1991, she met her husband, and with him became an extra-lucky beneficiary of the dot-com boom. By their early thirties, they had tens of […]
Date: January 13, 2021
A book of eerie, unnatural-nature events pushing one lone and lonely lesbian, returned to small-town West Virginia from a law-enforcement career, to deal with Life. After many years’ effort to […]
Date: January 13, 2021
“Rift Zone” by Tess Taylor, is a powerful, moving collection of poetry giving voice to the voiceless, and to those who express theirs in a whisper, a whimper, a growl, […]
Date: January 13, 2021
I went on this journey, to be sure, knowing where I was headed. The historical part wasn’t that historical to my frame of reference; the queer part contained my frame […]
Date: January 4, 2021
“But the one thing I know for sure, this is the one life you have and you have to make it work.” Some novels make the meat and bones of […]