Samantha Claire Updegrave, writer for The Rumpus, recently gave a stellar review of Elissa Washuta's memoir, My Body Is a Book of Rules.
Updegrave commends the author's ability to make readers reflect on their own lives while being immersed in her troubled past. She also says that Elissa disproves the idea that young people cannot write reflective memoirs:
"In Body, Washuta shows why younger voices and voices outside the mainstream matter. They show us the immediate implications of our current culture on our psyches, bodies, and hearts. "
To read the rest of this amazing review, click here.
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Recently, Stephanie Glazier, writing for Lambda Literary, reviewed Amy Schutzer's new novel Spheres of Disturbance, singing its praises:
"I had a big reaction to this novel. I finished it in the house of a friend and wept openly in front of her basset hound at my feet— for the beauty of it, for the questions it raised in me: when I come to the end of my life, what will I relish, what will I regret, who will care for me? To have children or not to have children? This story disturbs our ideas about the end of our lives, about how death goes—it invites us to ask ourselves what we want, for our lives and our deaths."
Read the full review here.
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Barbara Lloyd McMichael of The Seattle Times recently reviewed Elissa Washuta's memoir, My Body Is a Book of Rules.
McMichael calls it "bitterly funny, fierce, sometimes crass and sometimes heartbreaking."
To read the full review, click here.
Elissa will be reading at University Book Store in Seattle on November 10th.
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In a recent review of If Not For This, BookNAround praises Pete Fromm's ability to capture life:
"The descriptions of the physical world, the rivers and the wilderness are simply gorgeous and these early descriptions contrast heartbreakingly with the later grim reality of a body trapped and living with this thief of a disease. Fromm has written a stunning book not just about living with MS but also about love and nature and who we are deep down to our very souls. It will touch your heart and tear you up in equal measure."
For the full review, click here!
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Waxwing Mag gives high praise to Elissa Washuta's My Body is a Book of Rules:
"My Body is a Book of Rules is a painful book to read, but true, often funny, and overall worthy of admiration."
Read the full review here!
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Tai Dietrich of Crossroads Literary Journal recently reviewed Elissa Washuta's debut memoir, and had this to say about it:
“In a way that is exceptionally frank, Washuta vividly describes to readers her journey through the ebbs and flows of sanity and insanity, self-esteem and self-hatred… The author’s prose and conversational writing style helps readers feel truly immersed in her story.”
Read the whole review here!
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K.T. Billey gave a great review of Jessica Piazza's Interrobang. She commends Piazza's ability to bring the traditional sonnet form into the modern world, and said:
“Every good book raises some questions, but Interrobang is itself a question, as well as an event: the chronicle of a speaker whose emotional awareness is matched only by a nearly incredible attention to language.”
For the full review, click here.
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Brian McGackin, writing for Lit Reactor, recently reviewed Ron Koertge's new flash fiction collection, Sex World, and had nothing but praise for the book:
"I've enjoyed a lot of books this year, but this is the first that I would blanket recommend to almost anyone. There's so much to get out of this collection, so many directions that the individual micro-stories take. Get in; get excited; get out: the perfect book. Read Sex World.”
To read the rest of the review, click here.
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Barbara Lloyd McMichael of The Bellingham Herald had great things to say about Pete Fromm's latest novel. She praised the strong, heroic characters that he wrote, and had this to say about the book:
“…funny, blunt and heartbreaking…And in this novel, as in life, it all goes by so fast. Get yourself a box of Kleenex and don’t be surprised to find yourself crying a river.”
Read the rest of the review here!
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In its May/June 2014 issue, the American Book review had some great things to say about Andrea Scarpino's new poetry collection, Once, Then.
"In the book, Scarpino investigates that liminal space between the normalcy of "once" and "then," the tear in the fabric of one's time when significant loss takes place. This is what readers will find if they reach for Once, Then in their own time of grief, as they attempt to make sense and make peace."
Bookczuk gave a great review of Ellen Meeropol's On Hurricane Island, which will be released next Spring. The reviewer applauds Ellen's ability to induce a reader's self-examination through the text:
"It encouraged me to once again, sit down and have a chat with my conscience and examine my beliefs: what is right, what is tolerable, what is wrong. What can I accept, what must I fight to change."
To read the entire review, click here.
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Kendra Bartell has given a wonderful review on Jessica Piazza's Interrobang in Monologging. She mentions how Jessica is able to use traditional poetic form and still be accessible to a modern audience:
"Many form driven poets grapple with the challenge of maintaining a contemporary style and voice that doesn’t transport readers back to Shakespeare’s time. Piazza, however, masterfully slips in rhyme schemes and measures of scenery that assert her voice and consciousness of the modern epoch of which she is a part."
To read the full review, click here.
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Nancy Powell from Shelf Awareness praises Ron Koertge's Sex World in a recent review:
"Sex World will simultaneously shock, tickle the funny bone, provoke grief and inspire hope with some clever asides and knowing winks to the reader. "Sex" may appear in the title, but the heart of the collection lies in uneasy alliances and human vices and vulnerabilities rendered poetic by a few choice words."
To read the full review, click here!
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Jo Deurbrouck, from the Missoula Independent, gives If Not For This a wonderful review. In the piece, she commends Fromm on his technique of showing the strength of his characters, as well as his ability to realisticly depict the lives of people with Multiple Sclerosis. Her succinct description of the book is as follows:
"A deeply intimate portrait of a heartless illness colliding with a big love.”
Read the rest of the review here!
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In a recent review from Monkeybicycle, Michelle Newby applauds Amy Schutzer's new novel and her ability to pull readers into the world she creates within the text:
"As for Spheres of Disturbance, the highest praise I can offer is this: I yearn to know these people, this community. I want them to exist in the physical plane, not just in Schutzer’s mind, and now my own. I would gladly join their world."
To read the rest of the review, click here.
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