Cai Emmons on fear, drugs, and her fatal diagnosis
Date: September 14, 2022
It suddenly occurred to me: I had taken a risk, invited an experience I was scared of, and I’d survived it. I could—and would—take such a risk again. And it […]
Date: September 14, 2022
It suddenly occurred to me: I had taken a risk, invited an experience I was scared of, and I’d survived it. I could—and would—take such a risk again. And it […]
Date: September 14, 2022
I imagine most people, like me, receive a fatal diagnosis with surprise. We all know intellectually that we will die, but no one really feels death as a certainty. We […]
Date: September 12, 2022
First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, […]
Date: September 12, 2022
“The question looms large: How does one assert oneself as a person, a woman, without a speaking voice, without sound waves commandeering attention?”
Date: September 12, 2022
Steamboat Bill, Jr.,aka Buster Keaton, 1928 It’s good to see him young again,back from the booze, divorces, talkies,bit parts, and that sponging relative,age. He’s home again, in the cyclonescene, headed into […]
Date: September 12, 2022
My Instagram feed is currently riddled with mushroom advertisements. A mushroom beverage exceeds coffee for focus and health benefits! Mushroom face serums provide youthful, plump-celled, and small-pored complexions! Another mushroom […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Marybeth Holleman’s first book of poetry, “tender gravity,” came out this month, and we’re excited to host an in person reading on Sept. 8 so she can share it with you. We […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Marybeth Holleman didn’t start out to be a poet, but she found her voice through the medium and is now celebrating her first collection of works called “tender gravity.” I […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Charles Harper Webb is a Professor of English at California State University, former psychotherapist, poet, and author. His recent book, Ursula Lake, is a dark and thrilling story about a […]
Date: September 7, 2022
At eight years old I began writing poetry. I loved the sounds of words, and I loved stringing them together, often nonsensically. I liked the solitude of writing, the secrecy, […]
Date: June 25, 2026
I appreciate it when a book in some way replicates something I’ve experienced in real life in a way that no other book has, and this one replicates my experiences […]
Date: June 23, 2026
Cold Fire often draws skillfully on imagery from the various places Mason knows through his travels, and in the best poems, he writes from a deep comprehension of both our 21st century […]
Date: June 23, 2026
“The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester is definitely the most interesting.”
Date: June 17, 2026
“With a narrative that immediately draws in readers, these poems are lovely, the story, irresistible.”
Date: June 15, 2026
“Migration, travel, and home – geographic and metaphoric – are common subjects in this collection. ‘Listen well’, the speaker in “The Monuments’ urges, as he describes a violinist busking in […]
Date: June 15, 2026
“Chace makes each woman complex in her urgency, in good part because of the strength of the writing that penetrates to their core.”
Date: June 11, 2026
“Like a good actor, Kill Dick hits its marks, stays true to the script, controls its eyeline to avoid spiking the camera. Is it real? You look up from the page to […]
Date: June 9, 2026
In this bilingual collection, much wisdom emerges from the struggle of living through a civil war and then migrating from El Salvador to Los Angeles. […]The history and knowledge that […]
Date: June 2, 2026
In Rebecca Chace’s new novel, Talking to the Wolf (Red Hen Press; 208 pages), three friends in their mid-50s—Val, Sasha, and Lauren—prepare for their thirty-fifth high school reunion while mourning […]
Date: June 2, 2026
“Amy Pence’s ability to weave poetic overtones of observation and dialogue into Z’s story permeates her life with a richness of language and realization uncommon in LGBTQ+ stories.”