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: July 24, 2025
Four stories merge into one in this tale of politics and greed set in the Indian Ocean. No one can trust anyone in this incendiary tale of murder, espionage, and […]
Date: June 30, 2025
Twelve years ago, Andrew Lam, a writer and journalist who left Vietnam as “a plane person” at the end of the Vietnam War at the age of eleven, published Birds of Paradise […]
Date: June 18, 2025
In Stories from the Edges of the Sea, Andrew Lam writes not from the center of trauma but from its quieter afterlives. These are not conventional Vietnamese refugee stories. They emerge […]
Date: June 17, 2025
The stories in The Sea Gives Up the Dead, Molly Olguín’s debut collection, are remarkable for the ways in which they skate between the weird and the mundane, the ordinary and […]
Date: June 12, 2025
In her second poetry collection, Didi Jackson shifts among lyrical strategies, sometimes earthy and elsewhere mystical. An assistant professor at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, she spends part of the year in […]
Date: May 27, 2025
The relationship between Ceto—a siren who left her sisters and the ocean behind—and her 15-year-old daughter, Naia, is tested when Sirenland, their seaside burlesque attraction, is threatened by the untimely […]
Date: May 22, 2025
In James, Percival Everett’s National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the character James writes, “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.” By doing […]
Date: April 23, 2025
MBR Bookwatch features a review of Kim Dower’s latest poetry collection, What She Wants, written by Mary Cowper. “Her word smithing, poetry based storytelling skills are truly impressive.”
Date: April 22, 2025
Scott Simon joins Nancy Kricorian for a conversation about her novel The Burning Heart of the World. Simon praised the book as “a wonderful novel … tough and moving”.
Date: April 22, 2025
Nancy Kricorian’s latest novel, The Burning Heart of the World, is a powerfully spare, poetic evocation of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War (1975−1990) and its long-term impact on one Armenian family living in Beirut. It’s the […]