Local author sharing family history through poetry
Date: January 2, 2024
A local author and Creative Writing professor at Fresno State is sharing her family history through poetry and written word. Click here to read more.
News & Reviews
News:
The 37 Best Books About Los Angeles Culture (and Beyond) Published In 2023
Date: January 2, 2024
Books change lives when they are read wholeheartedly and must be shared. This collection covers everything from L.A. noir to sci-fi to identity and poetry. Read, gift, and get inspired. […]
2023 Small Press Gift Guide
Date: December 12, 2023
BOMB looks back at the books from small and independent presses we featured in 2023 and helps you pair them with the idiosyncratic readers in your life. We’re grateful to […]
Francesca Bell Fearlessly Tackles the Unsettling in “What Small Sound” [INTERVIEW]
Date: December 12, 2023
Francesca Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She […]
The Best Books We Read in 2023
Date: December 12, 2023
My picks are different than yours. Different than Jaylynn’s, than Tucker’s, than Joelene’s, than Andrea’s, than the New York Times. I love that about books. We couldn’t possibly read them all, […]
FLOPPY by ALYSSA GRAYBEAL is one of Library Journal’s “Best Memoirs & Biographies” of 2023!
Date: December 5, 2023
Graybeal’s book focuses on how her rare genetic connective-tissue disorder affects her daily life. She spills her emotions on the page as she is forced to navigate through life with […]
SECRET HARVESTS by David Mas Masumoto (illustrated by Patricia Wakida) is a finalist for the GOLDEN POPPY AWARDS in Nonfiction!
Date: November 30, 2023
Thank you so much to the California Independent Booksellers Alliance and CALIBA bookstore members!
Coco Picard, author of THE HEALING CIRCLE, interviews Mandy-Suzanne Wong for Electric Literature!
Date: November 21, 2023
In this comic interview, Mandy-Suzanne Wong talks about finding inspiration for her novel from a mundane household object. Click here to read more.
The New Yorker highlights ELISE PASCHEN’S BESTIARY in the importance of “telling Osage stories!”
Date: November 21, 2023
At the end of Anthony Lane’s review of “Killers of the Flower Moon”—Martin Scorsese’s new film about murders that were committed in the Osage Nation in the early twentieth century, […]
Snap Judgement Podcast highlights “Seeking Shizuko” from DAVID MAS MASUMOTO’S book SECRET HARVESTS
Date: November 20, 2023
A young girl was lost to her family. Torn away from them during their time in the Japanese-American prison camps, she was institutionalized and thought to be gone. But now, […]
Reviews:
Dennis Must’s MACLEISH SQ. featured in Independent Book Review!
Date: July 6, 2023
Reality shifts and reforms in disquieting and disorientating ways in MacLeish Sq., the latest novel by Dennis Must, as the unlikely hero recognizes that he has reached the final phase of […]
Stunning review of Pamela Uschuk’s REFUGEE in terrain.org!
Date: June 28, 2023
n this time of acrimony and push-button polemics, it is a rare pleasure to discover a writer whose politically engaged poetry is vividly alive to the nuances evoked by incisive […]
Joanne Skerrett’s ISLAND MAN featured in Kirkus Reviews!
Date: June 22, 2023
A man revisits his unconventional relationship with his father. This book begins in the wake of loss as narrator Hector Peterson points out that he and his father, Winston Telemacque, […]
Francesca Bell’s WHAT SMALL SOUND reviewed by Colorado State University
Date: June 12, 2023
Many of the poems in Bell’s second full-length book explore suffering and sadness through a very personal lens: terrifying moments of objectification and sexual violation; the desolation and isolation that […]
Phuong T. Vuong’s A PLUCKED ZITHER featured in Soapberry Review
Date: June 6, 2023
In this work of poetry, Vuong unbinds what gets lost while carrying the aftermath from Vietnamese voices that have been longing to breathe after the disruption from wars, migration, and […]
PACIFIC LIGHT by David Mason featured in Review 31
Date: June 6, 2023
A strong poetic sensibility is combined with a successful conversational style in several insightful accounts of familiar situations, like seeing people in airports that one thinks one knows (‘Long Haul’), […]
The Seattle Times recommends Amber Flame’s APOCRIFA among ‘5 new books from LGBTQ+ authors to read this Pride month’!
Date: June 6, 2023
As we enter another Pride month, it feels as though 2023 has been one of the toughest legislative years for LGBTQ+ folks in a long time. As we witness and […]
Peninsula Clarion’s Off the Shelf recommends H Warren’s BINDED!
Date: June 6, 2023
I’ve always found poetry a bit intimidating. Sometimes I think I know where one is going, then out of nowhere I’m thrown for a loop and left puzzled with a […]
Kirkus Reviews features Laila Halaby’s THE WEIGHT OF GHOSTS!
Date: June 5, 2023
The illegitimate daughter of a white mother and a Jordanian father, Halaby, author of two novels and two collections of poetry, felt that she was a “fiction…squished between other people’s […]
Ann Poore reviews Katharine Coles’ GHOST APPLES for 15 Bytes!
Date: June 1, 2023
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by Katharine Coles – who might be a witch (IMHO) given the ready way she connects with animals (including her parrot Henri, pronounced […]