“…the intimate representation of bipolar disease and addiction, the normalization of queer characters, and the nuanced depiction of aromantic male-female friendship make this an exciting read.”
The full review will be available on August 1, 2023.
News & Review Type: Review
Madeleine Nakamura’s CURSEBREAKERS reviewed by Booklist!
Richard & Sally Price review Juliana Lamy’s YOU WERE WATCHING FROM THE SAND for the New West Indian Guide!
You Were Watching from the Sand
The debut short story collection by Haitian-born, South Florida-raised, Harvard graduate Juliana Lamy, vividly portrays adolescent life and dreams in Miami’s Haitian community. Gritty, bizarre, and poetic, the stories speak from each narrator’s often-unexpected viewpoint, bringing to life what are usually grim, challenging personal situations. In one, boys steal from rich whitefolks’ homes. In another, after a girl molds a clay figure, they come alive and become her close friend. And in another a boy is kidnapped for ransom by other Haitians…. Throughout, we see a talented young writer beginning to strut her stuff and promising more to come.
Jade Shyback’s AQUEOUS featured in July issue of Midwest Book Review!
Synopsis: On the eve of Earth’s collapse, young Marisol Blaise is taken to live on an underwater ‘mersation’ known as Aqueous with parents not her own. There, she must compete in the trials, grueling tests designed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each trainee, hoping to be assigned to the all-male elite diving team known as the Cuviers.
Desperate to prove to herself, the residents, and all of her parents, dead and alive, that she is worthy of this prestigious placement, she works tirelessly to shatter misogynistic beliefs, only to discover that it was not only the men who constrained her — A much uglier untruth exists.
Critique: “Aqueous” by new novelist Jade Shyback is the first volume of her new and ground-breaking fantasy series.
Francesca Bell’s translation of WHOEVER DROWNED HERE receives starred review in Kirkus!
Translator Bell offers a long-overdue introduction of German poet Sessner to English-speaking readers…Over the course of this collection, Sessner’s inclination toward enjambment and sparse use of stanzas encourage readers to trust the speakers, and the poems always lead to a striking close. The stark form belies intricate layers of actuality and vision.
Anchorage Daily News recommends H. Warren’s BINDED!
This debut collection by Fairbanks poet and musician Warren presents the reality of living as a nonbinary person, with poems responding to childhood confusions, to societal pressures and cruelties, and to finding love and community. The book title and the poem “Binder” both relate not only to flattening one’s chest but to being constrained by the expectations and remarks of others.
Dennis Must’s MACLEISH SQ. featured in Independent Book Review!
Reality shifts and reforms in disquieting and disorientating ways in MacLeish Sq., the latest novel by Dennis Must, as the unlikely hero recognizes that he has reached the final phase of his life and reluctantly embarks on a metaphysical odyssey that leaves him questioning the nature of his current existence and reevaluating the sins of his past.
Aside from these mind-boggling elements, the major strengths of MacLeish Sq. are Must’s innovative stylistic approach and masterful use of language, both of which appear to be informed by a deep knowledge and appreciation of literature. He weaves a distinct air of mystery into the mundane activities and discussions of John and Eli, and his construction of memorable secondary characters is second to none. Moreover, the text of MacLeish Sq. is complemented by the inclusion of a number of vivid and unsettling illustrations by Russ Spitkovsky, which add to the unreal nature of the story.
Stunning review of Pamela Uschuk’s REFUGEE in terrain.org!
n this time of acrimony and push-button polemics, it is a rare pleasure to discover a writer whose politically engaged poetry is vividly alive to the nuances evoked by incisive imagery and evocative form, a writer whose work explores both the rhetoric of argument and the intimacies of psychic and emotional revelation—the domain of true poetry—to bring us news from the real world, “where the mountains are burning and we cannot sleep.” Pamela Uschuk’s Refugee is just such a book, brimming with poems that powerfully communicate the ache—and the grace—of true witness, poems that linger in the heart as well as the mind.
Joanne Skerrett’s ISLAND MAN featured in Kirkus Reviews!
A man revisits his unconventional relationship with his father.
This book begins in the wake of loss as narrator Hector Peterson points out that he and his father, Winston Telemacque, are visiting the island of Dominica almost one year after the death of Hector’s mother. That’s not the only grounds for concern, however: It’s 2017, and Hector and Winston are on the island during devastating Hurricane Maria. As the storm worsens, Hector looks back on his life and wonders whether this will be the end.
Francesca Bell’s WHAT SMALL SOUND reviewed by Colorado State University
Many of the poems in Bell’s second full-length book explore suffering and sadness through a very personal lens: terrifying moments of objectification and sexual violation; the desolation and isolation that accompanies hearing loss; and the immutable terror of watching one’s child lose her will to live. Bell’s book feels unique, however, in the extent to which she stresses just how fortunate we are to experience those kinds of suffering: how our world could be ended in one catastrophic moment, our opportunity to suffer—and then move past the suffering—taken away by a gun or a forest fire.
Phuong T. Vuong’s A PLUCKED ZITHER featured in Soapberry Review
In this work of poetry, Vuong unbinds what gets lost while carrying the aftermath from Vietnamese voices that have been longing to breathe after the disruption from wars, migration, and silence. In other words, through the trajectory of these poems, Vuong’s speaker processes and dwells on the migrant’s emotional experience.
PACIFIC LIGHT by David Mason featured in Review 31
A strong poetic sensibility is combined with a successful conversational style in several insightful accounts of familiar situations, like seeing people in airports that one thinks one knows (‘Long Haul’), the art of learning ‘to do almost nothing’ after an incapacitation (‘Letter to my Right Foot’), and the way a holiday can open one’s eyes to the relative stressfulness of one’s everyday life (‘Barra de Potosi’).
The Seattle Times recommends Amber Flame’s APOCRIFA among ‘5 new books from LGBTQ+ authors to read this Pride month’!
As we enter another Pride month, it feels as though 2023 has been one of the toughest legislative years for LGBTQ+ folks in a long time. As we witness and experience our rights being stripped in cruel and politically charged ways in many states across the country, it can be easy to despair. But one thing has always been clear, since before Stonewall and the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and every crisis and victory and mundane day since the history of time: queer and trans and gender-expansive people have always been here, will always be here, and our lives are important and beautiful. In the spirit of Pride — which is the spirit of queer joy and queer rage together — let’s celebrate this month and every month with, among other things, some great new books in a variety of genres by LGBTQ+ authors.
Peninsula Clarion’s Off the Shelf recommends H Warren’s BINDED!
I’ve always found poetry a bit intimidating. Sometimes I think I know where one is going, then out of nowhere I’m thrown for a loop and left puzzled with a ring of SAT prep words circling my head like cartoon birds. Some are confusing from the get-go.
I was determined this week, however, to dive into “Binded,” a collection of poetry by Fairbanks poet and musician H Warren, that arrived in the Clarion’s mailbox earlier this year. An insert from the publishing company that caught my eye teased a debut collection that interrogates “the courage it takes to heal and exist in the world today” as a nonbinary person living in rural Alaska.
“Binded” was exactly as advertised.
Across roughly 75 pages, Warren presents 50 poems that vary in length and focus. There are many that outline the various emotions and experiences of being nonbinary, some that directly nod to things happening in Alaska, and others that offer a tender look into the author’s life.
Kirkus Reviews features Laila Halaby’s THE WEIGHT OF GHOSTS!
The illegitimate daughter of a white mother and a Jordanian father, Halaby, author of two novels and two collections of poetry, felt that she was a “fiction…squished between other people’s tall tales.” Many years later, when her son Raad was killed in a car accident, the author was forced to redefine the true and singular nature of her “borders” with the world.
Ann Poore reviews Katharine Coles’ GHOST APPLES for 15 Bytes!
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by Katharine Coles – who might be a witch (IMHO) given the ready way she connects with animals (including her parrot Henri, pronounced in the American fashion) and who surely has a magical way with words and their readers – kept me sitting in a hot car for more than two hours devouring the very-well-composed new work. (Right beside the monster air-conditioning unit that, maddeningly, kept switching on and off. But I kept reading.)
The book’s cover art, “Ivory-billed Woodpeckers” by Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, designed by Jessica Perkins, had me absorbed for entirely too long, given the heat. A trio of woodpeckers, two of them perched in a well-pecked tree limb, is spooky and endearing, too.