Episode 38: Anna V. Q. Ross (Of Self-Portraits, Foxes, and Leaving For Good)
Date: January 2, 2024
Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere Click here to listen.
News & Reviews
News:
Best New Poetry Books
Date: January 2, 2024
Handpicked by our expert librarians and staff, the poetry books in this list, all published in 2022, include debut collections and new classics from established poets. Click here to read […]
‘Secret Harvests’ probes an unspeakable Japanese American family history
Date: January 2, 2024
David “Mas” Matsumoto, author of Epitaph for a Peach, Harvest Son, Changing Season, has yet another true story to share, this time a family secret so unspeakable that it remained buried for over […]
Valley author shares family secret in book about internment impact
Date: January 2, 2024
A farmer and author in the small Fresno County community of Del Rey is sharing a personal story with a universal message. Mas Masumoto published a book in the spring […]
Friday 5 at 5
Date: January 2, 2024
Join a Denver Public Library reader’s advisor extraordinaire for a flash book buzz featuring hot new and forthcoming titles that you just have to know about! Give us 15 minutes, […]
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.
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, […]
Reviews:
Review of Cai Emmons’s THE BELLS featured in Kirkus Reviews
Date: September 2, 2025
An immersive psychological portrait of one man’s battle with lifelong anger and guilt. A young man’s troubles follow him after he trades his spiritual calling for life as a teacher. […]
A Review of Lara Ehrlich’s BIND ME TIGHTER STILL featured in Booklist
Date: August 28, 2025
Ehrlich, the author of the story collection Animal Wife (2020) presents a short and disturbing novel. Ceto is the cruel taskmaster of the sirens, women who are the main attraction in Sirenland, […]
Don’t let your child get the “summer slide”: TREE SPIRITS by Louise Wannier Reviewed in She Scribes
Date: August 7, 2025
This is not a reading book, however, it does encourage children to use their imaginations and “think outside the box.” That skill will help them later in life with critical […]
CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO by Tom Lutz Featured in Publishers Weekly
Date: August 5, 2025
Troubled lives intersect in the Indian Ocean with explosive results in Lutz’s tantalizing follow-up to Born Slippy. Frank Baltimore worked in construction until one of his employees started laundering money and […]
Kirkus Reviews THE RE IN REFUGE by Adrianne Kalfopoulou
Date: August 4, 2025
A poignant and profoundly relevant examination of society’s safe places. In this essay collection, Kalfopoulou explores the notion of refuge in all its varied facets. “Embedded in the word refugee […]
CHAGOS ARCHIPELAGO by Tom Lutz Reviewed in Kirkus Reviews
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 […]
This Isle Is Full of Noises: World Literature Today On Andrew Lam’s STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA
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 […]
Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network Reviews STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA by Andrew Lam
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 […]
Necessary Fiction Remarks on the Interplay Between “the Weird and the Mundane” in Their Glowing Review of Molly Olguín’s Debut Collection THE SEA GIVES UP THE DEAD
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 […]
Didi Jackson’s MY INFINITY Featured in Seven Days’ Writeup On Vermont Books
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 […]