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: January 3, 2023
Mason is a poet defined by place, if it is Southeast Asia on the Pacific Rim or Northwest America, his poems breathe life of the people around him as well […]
Date: December 13, 2022
Dead Can Dance formed in their native Australia in 1981. The core of the band was (and is) Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. When they relocated to England and settled […]
Date: December 5, 2022
A refreshing book, I thought – a collection of short stories that this reviewer started from the beginning rather than picking and choosing which story to read next, based on […]
Date: November 30, 2022
Diane Thiel’s third collection of poetry, Questions from Outer Space, comes after an interlude during which the poet devoted her energies to a travel memoir (The White Horse) and the translation […]
Date: November 30, 2022
The evolution of blank verse from Milton to Wordsworth, via Cowper, was not solely a change in diction and subject matter. Even as classical and biblical themes were displaced by […]
Date: November 21, 2022
A POET KNOWN for his narratives, like Ludlow, the acclaimed historical-novel-in-verse turned opera, David Mason curates the archipelago of intensely satisfying lyric poems in Pacific Light with the skill of a consummate storyteller. […]
Date: November 21, 2022
Koertge inhabits – and endows – his various subjects with insight and humour, dealing out poems in the voices of car crash dummies, Aphrodite, Mickey Mouse, Little Red Riding Hood, […]
Date: November 17, 2022
A simultaneously elegant and sharp-edged exploration of the hidden past. “I am haunted by gaps in family memories, nebulous responses and twisted behavior that must be examined within the context […]
Date: November 17, 2022
A mordantly tender triumph rich with natural imagery. Uschuk’s poetry collection calls out authoritarianism and social injustice. This moving set of poems offer messages of hope as it addresses timely […]
Date: November 16, 2022
“Paired with artist Patricia Wakida’s haunting illustrations, the book’s rich, lyrical language evokes both cultural eloquence and California’s seasonal beauty. Poignant and reflective, Secret Harvests is a family saga of […]
