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: 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 […]
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’), […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Date: June 1, 2023
I review Phuong T. Vuong’s A Plucked Zither, from Red Hen Press (June 6, 2023). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/versecurious/donations
Date: May 23, 2023
Francesca Bell (Bright Stain) writes poems that chime like the bell of her own name: bright but resonant, sharp but still familiar, lush and likely to echo long after its […]
Date: May 23, 2023
Did you read “Slice of Moon,” our poetry book for May? If you didn’t, I don’t blame you; many people shy away from poetry, and I am one of them. […]
Date: May 16, 2023
Manifest Image The man keeps telling me I am beautiful.I still look young. He says it like I’ve asked for it,but I don’t care. For him or beauty. I am […]
