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,
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,
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.
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 […]
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.
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Ascension Didi Jackson The blue jays lay claimto the raspberry busharriving in groups of four or five:one holds a rubied berry in its beakand feeds it up in the white […]
Date: June 4, 2020
after Käthe Kollwitz I heard they no longer sew eyelids of the dead shut.At the morgue, I busied myself countingthe lacerations on my husband’s neck and wrists.I wore sunglasses and […]
Date: August 14, 2013
Brian Katcher from Forever Young Adult discusses the "unique" writing style in B.H. James' Parnucklian for Chocolate.- "If this book had been presented to me as a recently discovered, unpublished […]
Date: August 14, 2013
Courtney McDermott from NewPages comments on B.H. James' "inventive" first novel, Parnucklian for Chocolate.- "In stark, self-conscious language, the author navigates parenting, psychiatric facilities, and what it means to not […]
Date: August 1, 2013
Lee Gulyas from Contrary Magazine applauds Kelly Davio's use of "the lens and language of religion to question existence, family, and herself" in the poems of Burn This House.- "Don't […]
Date: July 25, 2013
Noah Cho from Hyphen Magazine applauds the stories of Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost.- "Each of the thirteen stories has a distinct tone and flavor….for Lam, that risk of […]
Date: July 25, 2013
Publishers Weekly comments on the remarkable story found in Mary Evelyn Greene's When Rain Hurts.– "With vivid language and strong imagery, [Greene] describes the harsh deprivations characteristic of Russia's orphanages, […]
Date: July 19, 2013
Check out the August issue of Kirkus to read their take on Mary Evelyn Greene's When Rain Hurts.- "A searingly candid chronicle of the heroic struggle of two adoptive parents […]
Date: July 11, 2013
Eric Nguyen applauds Birds of Paradise Lost, calling it short stories of "second chances."- “What is refreshing about Lam’s work is that it defies expectations of ‘immigrant story’…. Lam’s stories […]
Date: July 11, 2013
storySouth applauds Brendan Constantine's poetry in Calamity Joe.- “While the narratives of loss help hold this work together, it’s Constantine’s lyrical touch that keeps the poems engaging…their inventiveness is refreshing […]
Date: July 11, 2013
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram receives a great review from Rain Taxi.- Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise locates the human in a large context, vacillating between the cosmic and […]
Date: July 2, 2013
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise receives an excellent review from Late Night Library.- "Bertram is beyond fearless in her refusal to make reading simple…[her] work can […]