an armistice between my dead folks and my delusions
I am a body
of ghost—
haint-kin cloaked
in earthen flesh
an armistice between my dead folks and my delusions
I am a body
of ghost—
haint-kin cloaked
in earthen flesh
Alyssa Graybeal has written this frank memoir about her life with the rare genetic connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and its effects on her body, her queerness, her aging, her work, her emotions and her humanity.
“17 Small Press Books from 2022 that You Might Have Missed” includes Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love by Carlos Allende. “Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love plays with the tropes of crime fiction by way of two memorable narrators, Charlie and Jignesh. Their connection—at first on an unsuccessful date—is rekindled later, when Charlie is selling a freezer…and Jignesh has accidentally killed a coworker and is trying to cover it up. Allende’s novel has just what the title promises: a lot of fun and a lot of dark humor.”
Black music—funk, soul, disco—from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, coupled with the love shared by his parents, set the rhythm and inspiration for this collection, Douglas Manuel’s second after Testify, itself a Benjamin Franklin Award winner.
What draws us to the outdoors? Marybeth Holleman is an Alaskan writer who’s new book of poetry, titled tender gravity, expresses many reasons. Marybeth is a long time Alaskan whose works include The Heart of the Sound and Among Wolves. Her collection of poems are accessible and cover everything from moss to comets and from her garden to the Brooks Range. In her interview with host Paul Twardock she discusses how loss, exploration, activism and day to day life intertwine with her poetry to create this deep and lovely collection.
Cai Emmons, novelist and playwright, was furiously busy in the months leading up to her death Monday at age 71. But she might well be best remembered for a blog she maintained after she was diagnosed with bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on Feb. 4, 2021.
David Mason grew up in Bellingham, Washington, and has lived in many parts of the world, including Greece and Colorado, where he served as Colorado Poet Laureate for four years. He is the author of eight books of poetry including including The Country I Remember, Sea Salt, Davey McGravy, The Sound, Pacific Light (Red Hen Press) and Ludlow, which won the Colorado Book Award and was featured on the PBS NewsHour. He has also written a memoir and four collections of essays, of which the most recent are Voices, Places and Incarnation and Metamorphosis: Can Literature Change Us? (forthcoming in 2023). His poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, and The Hudson Review. Also an opera librettist, Mason lives with his wife Chrissy (poet Cally Conan-Davies) on the Australian island of Tasmania, near the Southern Ocean.
Following her recent Vincent Scully Prize win, the architect and urban historian spoke with Metropolis about the infrastructure of care, material feminists, and aviation poetry.
Art surrounds us especially at this time of year. The colors, the sounds, the aromas, the lights, the music, the images — it’s the season of art that is woven into our daily lives and helps elevate our thinking and our moods.
My anger is a burnt match on a blanket of snow. My anger
resembles the songsmith shredding his songs. I don’t get it
why conquest is another word for foreign policy, why this
prism tongue, unbreakable & tethered, is a colonizer’s tongue.
The first line of Pamela Uschuk’s extraordinary new book Refugee throws down the gauntlet to all who are guilty of less than full attention to the blood-drenched, war-torn contemporary world: “So you think you can live remote…”
As an Asian American writer in literary fiction, there’s been a lot of really great stories told about the immigrant experience. That’s been one of our our go-to subjects. And I love those stories. Those were what made gave Asian American fiction a foothold, and it grew from there. It’s still a very rich subject to mine for storytelling, but it’s not necessarily the story that I gravitate towards as a writer.
Diane Thiel is the author of twelve books of poetry and nonfiction.
Diane Thiel with SoFloPoJo’s Elisa Albo for Miami Book Fair 2022.
John Weir’s short story collection Your Nostalgia is Killing Me is featured in North of Oxford’s “Most Read Reviews” of this year. Charles Rammelkamp writes “Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me is entertaining and heartbreaking by turns, always a gripping read.”