The Oregonian: Poems for the Pandemic
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, […]
News & Reviews
News:
KUER 90.1: To Be Alive — Is Power: Poetry For The Pandemic
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 […]
Ms. Magazine: A Word Person Thinks About Bodies
Date: June 4, 2020
It was recently brought to my attention that my characters are obsessed with bodies—their own and everyone else’s.
CBC: Milton’s Paradise Lost: a survival guide for a fractured world
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 […]
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,
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 […]
Reviews:
Zara Rabb Reviews COLD FIRE by David Mason
Date: June 23, 2026
Cold Fire often draws skillfully on imagery from the various places Mason knows through his travels, and in the best poems, he writes from a deep comprehension of both our 21st century […]
Khanh Ha’s AFTERLIFE OF A THREADBARE JESTER Named in List Of Top Historical Fiction Picks
Date: June 23, 2026
“The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester is definitely the most interesting.”
Library Journal Reviews WALKING WHEEL by Molly Fisk
Date: June 17, 2026
“With a narrative that immediately draws in readers, these poems are lovely, the story, irresistible.”
Australian Book Review Heralds David Mason’s COLD FIRE
Date: June 15, 2026
“Migration, travel, and home – geographic and metaphoric – are common subjects in this collection. ‘Listen well’, the speaker in “The Monuments’ urges, as he describes a violinist busking in […]
California Review of Books Praises TALKING TO THE WOLF by Rebecca Chace
Date: June 15, 2026
“Chace makes each woman complex in her urgency, in good part because of the strength of the writing that penetrates to their core.”
Jacobin Reviews Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK
Date: June 11, 2026
“Like a good actor, Kill Dick hits its marks, stays true to the script, controls its eyeline to avoid spiking the camera. Is it real? You look up from the page to […]
Institute of American Indian Arts praises William Archila’s CANÍCULA/DOG DAYS
Date: June 9, 2026
In this bilingual collection, much wisdom emerges from the struggle of living through a civil war and then migrating from El Salvador to Los Angeles. […]The history and knowledge that […]
Rebecca Chace’s TALKING TO THE WOLF reviewed by a few more words!
Date: June 2, 2026
In Rebecca Chace’s new novel, Talking to the Wolf (Red Hen Press; 208 pages), three friends in their mid-50s—Val, Sasha, and Lauren—prepare for their thirty-fifth high school reunion while mourning […]
Amy Pence’s YELLOW Lauded by Midwest Book Review
Date: June 2, 2026
“Amy Pence’s ability to weave poetic overtones of observation and dialogue into Z’s story permeates her life with a richness of language and realization uncommon in LGBTQ+ stories.”
Laura Kasischke’s THE LIFEGUARD is Heralded by Midwest Book Review
Date: June 2, 2026
“THE LIFEGUARD by Laura Kasischke is raised to an extraordinary level of literary excellence and is unreservedly recommended.”