Date: June 3, 2020
At 15, Plum Valentine is banished from her Brooklyn home and sent back to Jamaica by parents nervous about the pernicious effects of the American lifestyle. Once there, her trust […]
Date: June 3, 2020
In the bedroom of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, there’s a mural depicting a well-dressed crowd at a cocktail party pasted to the wall. Spencer’s granddaughter, Shaun Spencer-Hester, points to […]
Date: June 3, 2020
Family relations can be fraught in the best of times, even when people care deeply for one another. So what happens when you throw those family members into a situation […]
Date: June 3, 2020
It’s Detroit, 1968. Sisters Rosa and Esther march against the war in Vietnam with their best friend, Maggie. As they reached the rally site, double rows of blank-faced National Guard […]
Date: June 3, 2020
On this episode of Rekindled, Andrew Altschul is in conversation with Ellen Meeropol. Andrew Altschul’s third novel, The Gringa, was published the day before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis […]
Date: June 3, 2020
Kathryn interviews Creative Writing and Literature teacher at Antioch University, Los Angeles Deborah Lott, author of “Don’t Go Crazy Without Me.” More than just the tragicomic coming-of-age story of a […]
Date: June 3, 2020
The meaning of the intriguing title of Lott’s courageous and endearing memoir snaps into sharp focus. “My father and I were not ordinary,” she writes. “Oh no, we had formed […]
Date: June 3, 2020
This spring the formidable Deborah A. Lott—author, editor and college instructor—will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop. She’ll be offering us an inside view of the creative process behind writing […]
Date: June 3, 2020
It’s hard not to read every throat tickle and stuffy nose as a possible foreshadowing of COVID-19, but a recovering hypochondriac helps to walk us back and separate true symptoms, […]
Date: June 3, 2020
Two weeks ago, when restaurants were still open, I watched a friend at lunch repeatedly spritz his hands with hand sanitizer. It seemed more compulsion than prudent protective measure. If […]
Date: February 24, 2021
Keith Flynn might be the love child of William Blake and Etta James. In his latest collection, The Skin of Meaning, he moves easily from whisper to croon to full-throated growl. […]
Date: February 17, 2021
A Slow Burn Everything about Jessica “Jess” is a slow burn. From the way she yearns for Natasha to the lingering scent of death that she can’t escape. Jess smolders […]
Date: February 17, 2021
Rae considers the intersection of history and modernity in the American South in her provocative debut. “The South will birth a new kind of haunting in your black girl-ness,” she […]
Date: February 3, 2021
One facet in poetry’s beauty is its urgency. Its collective need–which is beyond desire–to facilitate a process that weaves its spill and story. Urgency is one of the driving forces […]
Date: February 3, 2021
This could be called a book of odes, of praise songs, of quests punctuated with wry asides. Of poems saying not what the poet starts out to say, but what […]
Date: February 3, 2021
In Melanie Conroy-Goldman’s novel, The Likely World, Mel lets a drug called “cloud” spread over her mouth and wrap her in a state of forgetfulness. The story is told in a […]
Date: January 20, 2021
Plume has a number of talented editors, and given the extraordinary year the world faced, I thought asking them for some of their favorite books of 2020 made sense, as […]
Date: January 14, 2021
In Dariel Suarez’s debut novel, The Playwright’s House, to be released in June from Red Hen Press, the realities of living in Havana under a communist state are brought alive through […]
Date: January 13, 2021
When Jennifer Risher joined Microsoft in 1991, she met her husband, and with him became an extra-lucky beneficiary of the dot-com boom. By their early thirties, they had tens of […]
Date: January 13, 2021
A book of eerie, unnatural-nature events pushing one lone and lonely lesbian, returned to small-town West Virginia from a law-enforcement career, to deal with Life. After many years’ effort to […]
