Date: October 12, 2022
THROUGHOUT HER LENGTHY writing career, Cai Emmons has returned again and again to the topic of catastrophe. Three of her most recent novels, including her 2022 groundbreaker Unleashed, have wrestled with […]
Date: October 10, 2022
Married heterosexual motherhood in America, especially in the past two years, is a game no one wins. During the height of the pandemic, my mom-friend group chats roiled: I’m going to scream, typed […]
Date: October 6, 2022
Diane Thiel’s Questions from Outer Space explores fresh and often humorous perspectives that capture the surreal quality of our swiftly changing lives on this planet. The poems travel through questions […]
Date: October 5, 2022
This debut collection follows a slew of children and young adults as they move through the quotidian patterns of life—celebrating birthdays, enjoying beach parties, attending church events—while also being thrust […]
Date: October 5, 2022
Good Morning America’s list of 15 October books to make you think and feel includes Pete Hsu’s new book out October 12, saying “Pete Hsu’s debut story collection chronicles scenes […]
Date: October 3, 2022
An aloe plant called Madame Blavatsky sits on the ledge of a window in the Wellness Center outside of Munich, Germany in my debut novel, THE HEALING CIRCLE. The plant […]
Date: October 3, 2022
Consider the personal effects one leaves behind, the way those objects, once laid out, recall the idiosyncratic logic of a life—is there more compelling inspiration for a novel? Authors Coco […]
Date: October 3, 2022
Where you live inevitably affects your life experience: our mental maps of reality depend on our space, and what one sees as possible or allowed depends on that space as […]
Date: September 28, 2022
HBL Note: Cai Emmons, who I first featured when she published Sinking Islands, has not one but two books coming out in September! Cai was diagnosed with bulbar onset ALS […]
Date: September 26, 2022
When my mother and I used to ride the New York City subway together, she would look at the men sitting across from us with their legs splayed and launch […]
Date: April 4, 2022
A socially awkward tech worker grapples with his impending divorce, his relationship with his young son, and his struggle to create human connections in a tech-driven world.
Date: March 17, 2022
Weir’s linked collection of bittersweet, often witty stories elucidates almost 50 years in the life of a gay White man in the U.S., from enduring school taunts in 1970s New […]
Date: March 1, 2022
The cover art of Thea Prieto’s debut novella coupled with its title, From the Caves, invited this reviewer immediately to consider Plato’s famed Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s fire, however, […]
Date: February 22, 2022
Readers and writers in Alaska and beyond are grieving the loss of Frank Soos, a beloved emeritus professor from the University of Alaska and Alaska’s Writer Laureate from 2014-16, who […]
Date: February 15, 2022
In Sadie Hoagland’s debut novel, Strange Children, eight young narrators struggle to navigate two very different worlds. Some are exiled to the lurid, modern American city, with its microwave dinners, senseless […]
Date: February 3, 2022
We are taught that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are taught that a girl who ventures on a quest to find her lost parents […]
Date: February 1, 2022
Deadheading, the practice of pruning dead flower heads in order to preserve the plant, provides Beth Gilstrap with a rich metaphor around which to organize her new story collection. The […]
Date: January 24, 2022
DIANE THIEL’S WORK has always asked fundamental and human questions. Janet Holmes, reviewing Thiel’s first book, Echolocations, notes that Thiel’s work deals with “silences, evasions, loss, and omissions.” This third […]
Date: January 18, 2022
In a word, wow! We know how it ends and yet we still find it mesmerizing. We know she kills all four of her children but we read on to […]
Date: January 11, 2022
Weir (The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket) returns with a searing collection of stories about death from the perspective of a gay man who survived the AIDS epidemic. The unnamed […]
