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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Date: March 3, 2026
April Ossmann discusses poetry collection, WE with Derate the Hate podcast.
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 […]
Date: March 3, 2026
Molly McCloy discusses her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES: THE SPITEFUL ORIGINS OF THE HAPPIEST DYKE ON EARTH with Hannah Harlee.
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 […]
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 […]
Date: January 2, 2014
The Bulletin of Overseas Brats praises Steve Basset's memoir Golden Ghetto. "This book has the benefit of a very gifted writer because the more interested and fascinated he becomes, the […]
Date: December 13, 2013
Lisa Barrow from Alibi calls Steve Basset's style in Golden Ghetto: How the Americans & French Fell In & Out of Love During the Cold War "enthusiastic." "Bassetts old-school journalistic […]
Date: December 12, 2013
Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, author of Amorcito Maricón names Verónica Reyes's Chopper! Chopper! Poetry From Bordered Lives in his top three favorite LGBT books of 2013. "Chopper! Chopper! Poetry from […]
Date: October 30, 2013
Brian McGackin from LitReactor calls Ron Koertge's The Ogre's Wife "the book that's going to get you back into poetry." "Koertge isn't trying to be smart; he is smart. He […]
Date: October 30, 2013
LitBridge's Analicia Sotelo discusses the very "personal" feel of the poems of Brynn Saito's The Palace of Contemplating Departure. "Saito writes about departure with a meditative restlessness that asks if […]
Date: October 30, 2013
Morgan Harlow from Verse Wisconsin discusses the strengths of Ron Carlson's Room Service. "Ron Carlsons Room Service: Poems, Meditations, Outcries & Remarks…is genuinely engaging….Throughout this collection, the key to humor […]
Date: October 11, 2013
Wren from hazel & wren loves Eloise Klein Healy's A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings. "Regardless of the subject, all of her poems drip with wisdom and […]
Date: October 10, 2013
Michael Caylo-Baradi from NewPages has much to say about Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost. "Lam's single story, in this collection, is the immigrant story; the pursuit of the American […]
Date: October 10, 2013
Dave Lucas from Cleveland Plain-Dealer calls Tess Taylor's The Forage House a "haunting first book." "Taylor's archaeological eye is also her most astonishing poetic gift: to render what we call […]
Date: October 9, 2013
Emily May Anderson from NewPages promises that Eloise Klein Healy's A Wild Surmise is "well worth adding to this falls reading list." "Whether a reader is already familiar with Healys […]