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: November 30, 2020
Maurya Simon’s The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems 1980-2016 (Red Hen Press 2018, 218 pages) represents a life of questioning and perception, whether the scene is a backyard or a street in […]
Date: November 18, 2020
Reading Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s Every Atom, a book of poems about her aging mother, reminds me of my grandmother’s history. Like Gracie, Hollowell was her mother’s youngest, born when her […]
Date: November 4, 2020
There are some books that become more than just reads, rather reading them becomes an experience. That is just how I felt with “Summer of the Cicadas”.
Date: October 28, 2020
Before delving into her own experience, however, Risher introduces the topic of wealth by depicting the expectations, gratitude, and worries that come with striking it rich. But hers is not […]
Date: October 28, 2020
What captivated me most of all was how Lara Ehrlich writes her characters. The stories feature women at different stages of life or different situations, and yet they feel familiar. […]
Date: October 22, 2020
UNDER NUSHAGAK BLUFF by Mia C. Heavener, SUBDUCTION by Kristen Millares Young, and SUMMER OF THE CICADAS by Chelsea Catherine were all featured on the newsletter World Wide Work: Books, […]
Date: October 19, 2020
“The poems in Rift Zone exist in a moment before rupture, an overhang of historic land fractured by histories revised and erased. Taylor magnifies these tensions when she recalls the instabilities of […]
Date: October 12, 2020
“Poetry is Joshua Rivkin’s art, but he approaches it with the keen observational powers of a scientist. Children learn to model themselves after their parents, but will often closely watch […]
Date: October 11, 2020
“Perhaps the sheer amount of time devoted to the work is part of the magic. McClanahan’s essays were written in the 2000s, most in and around 9/11, when she and her husband decided […]
Date: October 11, 2020
These deceptively simple poems enlarge with repeated readings; they unfold greater meaning each time and leave a reader with much to contemplate about identity, cultures, generational wisdom, and values… Click […]
