Ms. Magazine: A Word Person Thinks About Bodies
Date: June 4, 2020
It was recently brought to my attention that my characters are obsessed with bodies—their own and everyone else’s.
News & Reviews
News:
CBC: Milton’s Paradise Lost: a survival guide for a fractured world
Date: June 4, 2020
Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam considers Paradise Lost “the first refugee story.” “When I learned about it, as someone who had lost his homeland, it resonated, naturally, because Vietnam was everything to my […]
Black Earth Institue: Social Distancing
Date: June 4, 2020
In dreams I walk through crowds, brushing arms, knocking elbows. Skin to skin: hands are bare. Crocuses congregate in beds, along sidewalks. Unlatching city gates,
Poets.org: Aerial, Wild Pine
Date: June 4, 2020
A flare of russet,green fronds, surpriseof flush againstthe bare grey cypressin winter woods. Cardinal wild pine,quill-leaf airplantor dog-drink-water.Spikes of bright bloom–exotic plumage.
Arts At MIT: A Writer’s Voyage: Mia Heavener, MIT Course 1, 2000
Date: June 4, 2020
“Be stubborn and ultimately believe in your writing,” advises first-time novelist Mia Heavener ’00, “especially if you are having crappy writing days.” On April 13, Heavener visited Wyn Kelley’s literature […]
Lithub: Writing Place in a Time of Crisis
Date: June 4, 2020
Tess Taylor’s new poetry collection Rift Zone is published this month. She shares five books about writing place in a time of crisis.
Datebook: How Bay Area authors stay creative amid the coronavirus pandemic
Date: June 4, 2020
Poet Tess Taylor questioned what it means to be creative, when every day feels like a radical reinvention of life. “These days, helping myself and my family steer a way around sadness, […]
NY Times: We’re Doing What We Can to Keep Truckers on the Road
Date: June 4, 2020
LINCOLN, Neb. — My mother was born into a flu-stricken household at the height of the pandemic of 1918. Within minutes she was swaddled in a homemade quilt and placed […]
PSA: Francisco Aragón “1985”
Date: June 4, 2020
1985 Long and black, the streaksof gray, aflutter in the lightwind as she prepares to tell her story at the Federal Building:reaching into a tattered sackshe pulls out a doll […]
Chapter 16: The Skin of Meaning excerpt
Date: June 4, 2020
The Skin of Meaning He was late to the party and without directions,though his invitation was secure, and his instinctskeenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we arewaiting to […]
Reviews:
David Mason’s COLD FIRE receives early praise in Poetry Corner!
Date: March 3, 2026
Each line is a steady and reassuring four beats in length, filled with words that help move the story along.
Helen Benedict’s upcoming novel, THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE, reviewed by Booklist!
Date: February 18, 2026
Full review to come March 1! “The characters’ journeys are candid and vulnerable, rendering a pertinent, rich portrait of displaced lives reshaped by conflict and its enduring consequences.” —Booklist
Amy Pence’s YELLOW reviewed by Kirkus Reviews
Date: February 11, 2026
Mysticism and science merge in the story of a Louisiana artist. Pence tells her story in language on the border between poetic and precious.
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Thirsty Caterpillar
Date: February 3, 2026
This week’s Thirst Quencher doesn’t tiptoe, it kicks the door in. Kill Dick by Luke Goebel is dark, unsettling, and unexpectedly funny, driven by characters and ideas that refuse to […]
Abi Pollokoff’s NIGHT MYTHSᐧᐧBEFORE THE BODY reviewed by West Trade Review
Date: February 3, 2026
Abi Pollokoff’s debut poetry collection night myths • • before the body, released this year from Red Hen Press with much advanced praise, is so deft in execution, so consistent […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Publishers Weekly
Date: February 3, 2026
The daughter of a pharmaceutical executive gets ensnared in criminal mischief in this ambitious blend of social satire and sunshine noir from Goebel (Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours). […]
THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE by Helen Benedict gets a raving review!
Date: January 27, 2026
Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE (2026) completes her Iraq war trilogy, that began with SAND QUEEN (2011) and was followed by WOLF SEASON (2017). But the new book is actually […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Kirkus Reviews
Date: January 27, 2026
“…Shot through with the sort of pseudo-profundity endemic to youthful privilege, Susie’s rambling, terminally jaundiced narrative paints a darkly surreal Lynch- and Kubrick-inspired portrait of LA.”
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK reviewed by Foreword Reviews
Date: January 21, 2026
Luke B. Goebel’s winking satirical novel Kill Dick parodies contemporary literary and cultural forms. Set against sun-bleached Los Angeles—a place marked by wealth, addiction, and apathy—the book accumulates exaggerations of […]
The Pickup from This Land Press reviews Elise Paschen’s BLOOD WOLF MOON
Date: January 20, 2026
How does one build an identity? It’s an ongoing venture of discerning and refining, discarding narratives as much as creating them. For a poet, especially one who writes autobiographically, that […]