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: April 25, 2013
Charlie Bondhus from Lambda Literary praises Dan Vera's use of language in Speaking Wiri Wiri.- "…there is no gibberish to be found in Vera’s Letras Latinas-winning poetry collection. Rather, there […]
Date: April 25, 2013
Dan O'Brien applauds B.H. James' ability to write "a very American story" in Parnucklian for Chocolate.- "This story has the chaotic rumble of human beings in a jarring sequence of […]
Date: April 25, 2013
Julie Swarstad Johnson praises Nicole Stellon O'Donnell's Steam Laundry for it's poems that "soar with rich figurative language and inventive description".- "This unique debut collection presents not only images worth […]
Date: April 24, 2013
Joshua Mensch calls the sonnets of Hilbert's All of You on the Good Earth "gorgeously constructed and brilliantly executed" and perhaps most importantly "great poetry." You'll want to read this […]
Date: April 17, 2013
Iris Law from TAB praises Brynn Saito's "luminous collection", The Palace of Contemplating Departure.- "At times transparent and vulnerable, at others, sinuous with history and the breath of the supernatural, […]
Date: April 17, 2013
Lindajoy Fenley from Chico Sol applauds Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost.- "As I read Lam's stories, I wished I could meet people he had created. Each one was a […]
Date: April 10, 2013
Rebecca Kuensting from Tottenville Review applauds Nicole Stellon O'Donnell's Steam Laundry.- "As captured by O’Donnell, Sarah has pluck and grace, and an undeniable stubborn streak that resonates, even as her […]
Date: March 28, 2013
Karen J. Weyant from The Scrapper Poet chooses Kelly Davio's Burn This House as her "March Poetry Pick".- "Indeed, if anything, these poems are questions — questions about both our […]
Date: March 22, 2013
Thuy Dinh from Shelf Awareness praises Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost.- “The 13 stories in Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost soar like birds in mid-flight, bridging the space […]
Date: March 13, 2013
Nina Sankovitch from Huffington Post applauds Andrew Lam's "supple and daring imagination" in Birds of Paradise Lost.- "Lam crystallizes the tension of immigration—the pull between wanting to hold onto the […]