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: April 28, 2026
As we continue to live through a 24-hour news cycle that moves at breakneck speed from one international conflict to the next, the Iraq War can feel like a distant […]
Date: April 15, 2026
Khanh Ha’s The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester is not a novel that seeks to comfort its reader. Instead, it draws you into a world stripped of illusion, where survival […]
Date: April 15, 2026
Molly Fisk takes up the challenge with, Walking Wheel, a narrative suite from the decorated California poet which functions as a novel-in-verse. Set in the frontier country of the California-Oregon […]
Date: April 14, 2026
At the beginning of Amy Pence’s debut novel, Yellow (Red Hen Press; 232 pages), 12-year-old Eliza makes a strikingly topical observation about the Watergate scandal blowing up in the summer […]
Date: April 7, 2026
Luke Goebel’s novel “Kill Dick” is both playful and grotesque. The story revolves around a series of brutal murders in Los Angeles motel rooms, the bodies desecrated, with nipples glued to eyelids, […]
Date: April 6, 2026
Ding dong, now Dick is dead. Imagine a novel written in the style of Vice magazine. That’s Kill Dick: every sentence strains to shock with its edginess or searing, cooler-than-you cultural critique. It […]
Date: April 2, 2026
In this galaxy, but in a time and at a conference now somewhat far away, I saw a very long line of women holding books, their faces bright with anticipation. […]
Date: March 31, 2026
Molly Fisk is Inaugural Poet Laureate Emerita of Nevada County. Her historic novel-in-verse, Walking Wheel, comes out April 7th from Red Hen Press.
Date: March 25, 2026
Benedict (Wolf Season) unspools a harrowing story of an Iraqi refugee family’s attempts to fit into American society. During the Iraq War, Khalil served as an interpreter for the U.S. […]
Date: March 24, 2026
Full review to come on April 1! “Wednesday, July 16, 1969. When all of America had its eyes on the moon, the Mannings inMission Hills, Michigan, suffered a wrenching personal […]