MER Bookshelf – March 2026
Date: March 19, 2026
In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and […]
News & Reviews
News:
Molly McCloy talks about her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES, on KJZZ Phoenix!
Date: March 17, 2026
Tucson storyteller Molly McCloy loves telling stories about hard things. She’s done it on stage and in print. Her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on […]
Maurya Simon interviewed by Sean Singer on his Substack, The Sharpener!
Date: March 17, 2026
Maurya Simon’s The Blue Bridge, her twelfth volume of poems, will appear in 2026 (Etruscan Press). Her earlier volume, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, received the 2019 Independent Booksellers […]
Amy Pence discusses her upcoming novel YELLOW in an interview with ArtsATL!
Date: March 12, 2026
During Hurricane Irma in 2017, a 90-foot oak tree split and fell into the middle of Amy Pence’s cottage in the old fishing village of Pine Lake, Georgia. A beam […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK featured in Our Culture Magazine’s list of most anticipated books of spring 2026
Date: March 11, 2026
It’s finally warming up here in Washington, DC, and earlier this month was the first instance I was able to comfortably sit on our roof and read. With a coffee […]
April Ossmann interviewed on the Derate the Hate podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
April Ossmann discusses poetry collection, WE with Derate the Hate podcast.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed on Bookstr!
Date: March 3, 2026
Yellow is a slow-bloom speculative novel and quietly cosmic. It’s a book about how long childhood wonders and wounds can linger, how the universe keeps whispering even when we stop […]
Molly McCloy interviewed on The ARTWIFE Podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
Molly McCloy discusses her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES: THE SPITEFUL ORIGINS OF THE HAPPIEST DYKE ON EARTH with Hannah Harlee.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed in Deep South Magazine!
Date: March 3, 2026
It’s 1973: summer of the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space when 12-year-old Z discovers an unclassified slime mold growing in her Louisiana backyard. Something compels her deep coherence […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK listed in the New York Post!
Date: February 24, 2026
This satirical literary thriller has shades of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. A 19-year-old NYU dropout returns home to Brentwood to laze about and enjoy popping prescription pills. But […]
Reviews:
UNDERNEATH reviewed in Midwest Book Review
Date: April 19, 2022
John Weir’s YOUR NOSTALGIA IS KILLING ME reviewed in Five South!
Date: April 19, 2022
John Weir’s linked stories explore sexuality and separation through platonic love, activism, art, and death — in a time when gender was confined to “girl, boy, or faggot” and AIDS […]
Carlos Allende’s COFFEE, SHOPPING, MURDER, LOVE reviewed in Kirkus Reviews!
Date: April 4, 2022
Elaborate scams and workplace murders abound in this bleakly comic novel.
Yuvi Zalkow’s I ONLY CRY WITH EMOTICONS reviewed in Kirkus Reviews!
Date: April 4, 2022
A socially awkward tech worker grapples with his impending divorce, his relationship with his young son, and his struggle to create human connections in a tech-driven world.
John Weir’s YOUR NOSTALGIA IS KILLING ME reviewed in Kirkus Reviews!
Date: March 17, 2022
Weir’s linked collection of bittersweet, often witty stories elucidates almost 50 years in the life of a gay White man in the U.S., from enduring school taunts in 1970s New […]
FROM THE CAVES reviewed in The Rupture!
Date: March 1, 2022
The cover art of Thea Prieto’s debut novella coupled with its title, From the Caves, invited this reviewer immediately to consider Plato’s famed Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s fire, however, […]
Frank Soos’ THE GETTING PLACE reviewed in Anchorage Daily News!
Date: February 22, 2022
Readers and writers in Alaska and beyond are grieving the loss of Frank Soos, a beloved emeritus professor from the University of Alaska and Alaska’s Writer Laureate from 2014-16, who […]
Sadie Hoagland’s STRANGE CHILDREN reviewed in the Harvard Review Online!
Date: February 15, 2022
In Sadie Hoagland’s debut novel, Strange Children, eight young narrators struggle to navigate two very different worlds. Some are exiled to the lurid, modern American city, with its microwave dinners, senseless […]
AMERICAN BASTARD by Jan Beatty reviewed in International Swans!
Date: February 3, 2022
We are taught that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are taught that a girl who ventures on a quest to find her lost parents […]
DEADHEADING AND OTHER STORIES by Beth Gilstrap reviewed in Necessary Fiction!
Date: February 1, 2022
Deadheading, the practice of pruning dead flower heads in order to preserve the plant, provides Beth Gilstrap with a rich metaphor around which to organize her new story collection. The […]