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:
Poetic Paschen
Date: March 16, 2020
“The Chicago poet has spread the good wordings via book, CD, and subway.”
The Literary Review raves about Gary Dop’s “Father, Child, Water!”
Date: March 16, 2020
Timothy Lindner of The Literary Review gave a great review for Gary Dop’s Father, Child, Water! Lindner spotlights and relates to how Dop focuses on paternal relationships and their ability to shape our […]
Review: Cynthia Hogue’s ‘Or Consequence'” in Fogged Clarity”
Date: March 16, 2020
Scott Hightower reviews Cynthia Hogue’s Or Consequence in the arts review, Fogged Clarity (April 2011). According to Hightower, Hogue is “a poet of extreme precision and no histrionics.”
From the Antioch Review
Date: March 16, 2020
What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison by Camille T. Dungy. Red Hen Press, 88 pp., $15.95 (paper). Dungy’s powerful first collection recognizes language–“A stranger’s voice echoing […]
The Los Angeles Times praises A Wild Surmise
Date: March 16, 2020
Hector Tobar from the LA Times applauds Eloise Klein Healy’s treatment of the city of Los Angeles, and comments on “what an inspired choice she was” for the first poet […]
The Neglected Art… John Cotter reviews Lamp of the Body
Date: March 16, 2020
John Cotter A Gringo Like Me by Jennifer L. Knox Soft Skull Press, 2005, 95p, $13.95 Lamp of the Body by Maggie Smith Red Hen Press, 2005, 69p, $12.95 Some Mountains Removed by […]
Three reviews praising Celeste Gainey’s the GAFFER!” “
Date: March 16, 2020
Kristofer Collins, from Pittsburgh Magazine, calls Gainey’s the Gaffer a “treasure trove of backstage stories” refering to her 35 years as chief lighting technician in Hollywood. Collins had this to say: “Gaineys work […]
Poet Savard pulls off resounding collection
Date: March 16, 2020
Reading the poet Jeannine Savard’s latest collection My Hand upon Your Name (Red Hen Press, $12.95) is like entering a dream world. The poems are full of fantastical images, strange […]
The Rumpus reviews WATER & SALT
Date: March 16, 2020
The Rumpus conducted a stunning review of Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s WATER & SALT, her debut collection of moving and powerful poetry. “Tuffaha harnesses the legerdemain of lyric to link love […]
Once
Date: March 16, 2020
Philip Gross, winner of the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize, reviewed Andrea Scarpino’s Once, Then for the UK journal, The North. Gross discusses the poetry saying that “the subject sounds depressing, the effect […]