MER Bookshelf – March 2026
Date: March 19, 2026
In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and […]
News & Reviews
News:
Molly McCloy talks about her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES, on KJZZ Phoenix!
Date: March 17, 2026
Tucson storyteller Molly McCloy loves telling stories about hard things. She’s done it on stage and in print. Her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on […]
Maurya Simon interviewed by Sean Singer on his Substack, The Sharpener!
Date: March 17, 2026
Maurya Simon’s The Blue Bridge, her twelfth volume of poems, will appear in 2026 (Etruscan Press). Her earlier volume, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, received the 2019 Independent Booksellers […]
Amy Pence discusses her upcoming novel YELLOW in an interview with ArtsATL!
Date: March 12, 2026
During Hurricane Irma in 2017, a 90-foot oak tree split and fell into the middle of Amy Pence’s cottage in the old fishing village of Pine Lake, Georgia. A beam […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK featured in Our Culture Magazine’s list of most anticipated books of spring 2026
Date: March 11, 2026
It’s finally warming up here in Washington, DC, and earlier this month was the first instance I was able to comfortably sit on our roof and read. With a coffee […]
April Ossmann interviewed on the Derate the Hate podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
April Ossmann discusses poetry collection, WE with Derate the Hate podcast.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed on Bookstr!
Date: March 3, 2026
Yellow is a slow-bloom speculative novel and quietly cosmic. It’s a book about how long childhood wonders and wounds can linger, how the universe keeps whispering even when we stop […]
Molly McCloy interviewed on The ARTWIFE Podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
Molly McCloy discusses her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES: THE SPITEFUL ORIGINS OF THE HAPPIEST DYKE ON EARTH with Hannah Harlee.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed in Deep South Magazine!
Date: March 3, 2026
It’s 1973: summer of the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space when 12-year-old Z discovers an unclassified slime mold growing in her Louisiana backyard. Something compels her deep coherence […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK listed in the New York Post!
Date: February 24, 2026
This satirical literary thriller has shades of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. A 19-year-old NYU dropout returns home to Brentwood to laze about and enjoy popping prescription pills. But […]
Reviews:
Khanh Ha’s THE AFTERLIFE OF A THREADBARE JESTER got a starred Kirkus review!
Date: March 16, 2026
In Ha’s historical novel, a former intelligence officer’s imprisonment in a communist reeducation camp serves as a lens for examining the Vietnam War and its lasting impact. It’s 1978, and […]
Laing Rikkers’ MORNING LEAVES: CULTIVATING A LIFE OF BEAUTY, MEANING, AND JOY reviewed by Kirkus!
Date: March 12, 2026
The author lost her sister at the end of 2019; soon after, the world went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, compounding Rikkers’ already overwhelming loss with a sense […]
Adrianne Kalfopoulou THE RE IN REFUGE, reviewed in World Literature Today!
Date: March 12, 2026
At the heart of Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s The re in refuge is the experience of crossing borders—primarily international, cultural, and linguistic but also erotic, psychological, and intellectual, among others. A Greek […]
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 […]