The Imagination Is Free: And So Is this Lecture
Date: June 4, 2020
David Mason gives a hypothetical “last lecture”!
News & Reviews
News:
The Swamp
Date: June 4, 2020
It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and […]
C-Ville: Taking covers: Your social distancing reading list
Date: June 4, 2020
With the cancellation of the Virginia Festival of the Book, and recommendations to practice social distancing, there’s never been a better time to pick up some extra reading material. While […]
The Oregonian: Poems for the Pandemic
Date: June 4, 2020
Kim Stafford’s days have a rhythm, a routine. Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, […]
KUER 90.1: To Be Alive — Is Power: Poetry For The Pandemic
Date: June 4, 2020
With all that’s going on right now, it may be more important than ever to remember to take a beat and appreciate something beautiful — even if that’s just a […]
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.
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 […]
Reviews:
Didi Jackson’s MY INFINITY Featured in Seven Days’ Writeup On Vermont Books
Date: June 12, 2025
In her second poetry collection, Didi Jackson shifts among lyrical strategies, sometimes earthy and elsewhere mystical. An assistant professor at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University, she spends part of the year in […]
Kirkus Reviews and Lara Ehrlich’s BIND ME TIGHTER STILL
Date: May 27, 2025
The relationship between Ceto—a siren who left her sisters and the ocean behind—and her 15-year-old daughter, Naia, is tested when Sirenland, their seaside burlesque attraction, is threatened by the untimely […]
Chapter House Journal Reviews Blood Wolf Moon by Elise Paschen
Date: May 22, 2025
In James, Percival Everett’s National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the character James writes, “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.” By doing […]
Midwest Book Review highlights WHAT SHE WANTS by Kim Dower
Date: April 23, 2025
MBR Bookwatch features a review of Kim Dower’s latest poetry collection, What She Wants, written by Mary Cowper. “Her word smithing, poetry based storytelling skills are truly impressive.”
NPR Host Scott Simon talks about THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD with its author Nancy Kricorian
Date: April 22, 2025
Scott Simon joins Nancy Kricorian for a conversation about her novel The Burning Heart of the World. Simon praised the book as “a wonderful novel … tough and moving”.
The Burning Heart of the World Follows an Armenian Family in Exile
Date: April 22, 2025
Nancy Kricorian’s latest novel, The Burning Heart of the World, is a powerfully spare, poetic evocation of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War (1975−1990) and its long-term impact on one Armenian family living in Beirut. It’s the […]
Booklist features a starred review of Elisa Paschen’s BLOOD WOLF MOON
Date: April 22, 2025
“In this graceful, assured, and incandescent collection, Paschen explores her relationship with her mother, the trailblazing Osage prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, and her mother’s life and family, while also delving into Osage […]
Nancy Kricorian’s novels tell the stories of the Armenian diaspora, exiled but always seeking community
Date: April 17, 2025
“Nancy Kricorian grew up in Watertown in a two-family house where her grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, lived in the apartment upstairs. The community was rich in Armenian […]
Book review: Celebrate Poetry Month with new work by veteran Fairbanks poet, Peggy Shumaker
Date: April 15, 2025
Peggy Shumaker, a stalwart supporter of Alaska writers and the larger arts community, is a professor emerita from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a former Alaska writer laureate. Author […]
War, Literature & the Arts Journal reviews INSTEAD, IT IS DARK by Cynthia Hogue
Date: April 9, 2025
Cynthia Hogue’s poetry collection instead, it is dark is reviewed by Hugh Martin in War, Literature & the Arts Journal. Martin praises the book as one that “probes this darkness […]