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: September 20, 2023
Krueger offers a memoir about caring for a sick child in poetry form. Krueger explores connections between flora, motherhood, and illness in this poetry collection. The title refers to the way […]
Date: September 13, 2023
Acclaimed novelist and poet Laila Halaby’s memoir, The Weight of Ghosts, documents her struggle to bear up after the devastating loss after her first-born son, Raad, 21, was killed on the […]
Date: September 6, 2023
What does it mean to heal your inner child? To overcome past trauma? To find the puzzle piece that had been lost years ago, or in another life? In a […]
Date: September 6, 2023
Many American Jews are unaffiliated with Judaism. Some do not observe Jewish rituals in any regular way; others might not worship at all. And yet Jewishness still pervades their lives: […]
Date: September 5, 2023
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by University of Utah distinguished professor Katharine Coles, offers not only nature-based poems that stir and satiate hunger, but also serrated verse that […]
Date: September 5, 2023
“My story has never been mine to tell,” says novelist, poet, and creative writing teacher Laila Halaby in her memoir, The Weight of Ghosts. “It is squished between other people’s tall […]
Date: August 29, 2023
Author Madeleine Nakamura’s science fiction thriller “Cursebreakers,” embarks on a “mind bending” battle between magicians, witches, medical professionals and the military in the year 3016. All of the drama in this […]
Date: August 17, 2023
A Plucked Zither is Phuong T. Vuong’s sophomore poetry collection. Vuong’s poems draw upon her experience as a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American raised in Oakland, California, and echo the familiar themes […]
Date: August 15, 2023
CURSEBREAKERS by Madeleine Nakamura is a novel as electric as the lightning-bolt magic its protagonist wields, filled with curses, destruction, and piercing heartache. Sometimes vicious and violent; all times spectacular […]
Date: August 10, 2023
“Poems like these are as two-sided as Vuong’s title instrument: a zither plucked and plucked, played upon and snatched away. For every touch of warmth and musicality, she admits something […]
