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 30, 2020
This is a powerful story of political activism, family betrayal, allegiance and love. When two sisters get arrested during a Vietnam War protest in 1968, they must decide where their […]
Date: June 30, 2020
Many readers of this review may or may not be aware of the rasa theory, but it is maintained that classic works of literature created within the boundaries of what is today […]
Date: June 26, 2020
I’ve never lived in New York City, though I’ve always loved it from afar. Visits to friends in Brooklyn, a few work jaunts into Manhattan, a research trip one summer […]
Date: June 5, 2020
Reading poet Elizabeth Bradfield’s latest collection, Toward Antarctica: An Exploration, may not be as dramatic as actually visiting the continent, but it will likely be as close as many of us will get. Thanks […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Mia Heavener, now living in Anchorage, grew up fishing in Bristol Bay, where she absorbed stories her mother and other women told between tides and over tea. Her lovely debut […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Seagulls swoop and dive, crying in the salty air. The waves of Nushagak Bay crash on sandbars and rocky shores. Machines rattle the warehouses on the cannery side of the […]
Date: June 4, 2020
A champion of contemporary Latinx poetry, Francisco Aragón returns with his third collection, After Rubén (Red Hen Press). A scholar, translator, and the son of Nicaraguan immigrants, Aragón draws inspiration from the life […]
Date: June 4, 2020
In her moving debut collection, poet Didi Jackson creates a poetics of grief to cope with the suicide of her husband. Moon Jar is a testament to resilience. Split into three […]
Date: June 3, 2020
1942: Clair and Shep Durant, along with their mute four-year-old son, Ty, wait for evacuation to India before the imminent Japanese invasion of the remote Andaman Islands. Shep, a doctor, […]
Date: June 3, 2020
Bound by ambition and a sense of adventure, Claire and Shep Durant journey to the Andaman Islands, a remote part of colonial India, in 1936. They dive deep into their […]
