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:
Abi Pollokoff’s NIGHT MYTHSᐧᐧBEFORE THE BODY reviewed by West Trade Review
Date: February 3, 2026
Abi Pollokoff’s debut poetry collection night myths • • before the body, released this year from Red Hen Press with much advanced praise, is so deft in execution, so consistent […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Publishers Weekly
Date: February 3, 2026
The daughter of a pharmaceutical executive gets ensnared in criminal mischief in this ambitious blend of social satire and sunshine noir from Goebel (Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours). […]
THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE by Helen Benedict gets a raving review!
Date: January 27, 2026
Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE (2026) completes her Iraq war trilogy, that began with SAND QUEEN (2011) and was followed by WOLF SEASON (2017). But the new book is actually […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Kirkus Reviews
Date: January 27, 2026
“…Shot through with the sort of pseudo-profundity endemic to youthful privilege, Susie’s rambling, terminally jaundiced narrative paints a darkly surreal Lynch- and Kubrick-inspired portrait of LA.”
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Foreword Reviews
Date: January 21, 2026
Luke B. Goebel’s winking satirical novel Kill Dick parodies contemporary literary and cultural forms. Set against sun-bleached Los Angeles—a place marked by wealth, addiction, and apathy—the book accumulates exaggerations of […]
The Pickup from This Land Press reviews Elise Paschen’s BLOOD WOLF MOON
Date: January 20, 2026
How does one build an identity? It’s an ongoing venture of discerning and refining, discarding narratives as much as creating them. For a poet, especially one who writes autobiographically, that […]
Andrew Lam’s STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA reviewed in The Common
Date: December 17, 2025
…In his latest collection Stories from the Edge of the Sea, Andrew Lam delivers work far beyond that narrow definition of the form. The settings are complex. Even a five-page […]
Adela Najarro’s VARIATIONS IN BLUE reviewed in Escape Into Life
Date: December 17, 2025
…Dr. Adela Najarro’s fifth book of poetry, Variations in Blue, is bright blue, black and blue, with dark reaching light. This bicultural-bilingual author “stands on the edge of volcanoes” to […]
Louise Wannier’s TREE SPIRITS AROUND THE WORLD reviewed in She Scribes
Date: November 4, 2025
This book encourages children to use their imagination. Throughout the book there are photos that encourage readers to really examine and appreciate. Just like cloud watching, you’ll eventually see something […]
TREE SPIRITS AROUND THE WORLD by Louise Wannier reviewed in Crafty Moms Share
Date: October 14, 2025
This book is so interesting. After meeting Tilly, Tilly travels around the world and shares trees from around the world. With each tree there is Tilly in a boat with […]