On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel by Brenda Marie Davies
Reviewed by Anna Genevieve Winham | November 22, 2021Eerdmans, April 2021Hardcover, 232 pages, $22.00 On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel is the coming-of-age memoir of Brenda Davies, the former evangelical Christian behind the YouTube channel “God is Grey,” which has over one hundred thousand subscribers. The story snakes from the purity culture of […]
Dig Me Out by Amy Lee Lillard
Reviewed by Jennifer Marie Donahue | November 16, 2021Atelier26 Books, October 2021Paperback, 214 pages, $16.00 The ten stories within Amy Lee Lillard’s debut collection, Dig Me Out, thrum with the visceral energy of a well-curated playlist. Each story’s title draws from a diverse mix of feminist and punk rock musical influences. These musical origins serve […]
Cultivating Empathy through Mimetic Forms by Brenna Womer
Brenna Womer is an experimental prose writer, poet, and professor. She is the author of honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and two chapbooks, Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance (C&R Press, 2018) and cost of living (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Shenandoah and a contributing editor for Story Magazine.
Tree by Melina Sempill Watts
Reviewed by Melinda Backer | November 2, 2021Change the World Books, April 2017Paperback, 246 pages, $18.00 Tree, a novel written by Melina Sempill Watts, takes on the challenge of showcasing the world through the eyes of a California live oak in Topanga, California. The most challenging part of the text is also the most rewarding: in order to buy into the conceit […]
Dead Uncles by Ben Kline
Reviewed by Laura Rashley | October 26, 2021Driftwood Press, 2021Paperback, 37 pages, $7.99 In Ben Kline’s latest poetry chapbook, Dead Uncles: Poems, Folklore, Reverie, we’re cast into an environment that is both vast and incredibly specific, grounded yet otherworldly. Illusions are built into illusions, and reality becomes a question of perception and what we believe […]
Being Nobody, or How I Was Radicalized by Emily Dickinson | by M. Jamie Zuckerman
M Jaime Zuckerman is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Letters to Melville (Ghost Proposal, 2018) as well as poems in BOAAT, Diode, Fairy Tale Review, Hunger Mountain, Palette, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She serves as the associate editor for Sixth Finch and a senior reader for Ploughshares. She grew up in the woods but now lives and teaches in Boston, MA.
Kind by Gretchen Primack
Reviewed by Chloë Hanson | September 27, 2021Lantern Press, 2021Hardcover, 98 pages, $15.00 I first encountered Gretchen Primack’s work a few years ago, when a dear friend and colleague recommended the original publication of Kind to me in a poetry workshop. As a writer beginning to discuss nonhuman animals, their rights, and their lives in […]
On Place | by Sharon Fagan McDermott & When I Say Here | by M.C. Benner Dixon
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent collection of poetry, Life Without Furniture, published by Jacar Press (2018) wrestles with finding and feeling at home in the world and seeking sanctuary in an often challenging life. As National Book Award winning poet Terrance Hayes says about this new collection: “Sharon Fagan McDermott inhabits the spaces between the common and the uncommon…The whole world, visible and invisible, inhabits this wonderful new book.” Additionally, Fagan McDermott has published three chapbook collections, Voluptuous, Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, 2005), and Bitter Acoustic, which won the 2011 Jacar Press Chapbook competition.
M.C. Benner Dixon lives, writes, and grows things in Pittsburgh, PA. Working in both prose and poetry, her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review Online, Sampsonia Way, SLICE Magazine, Appalachian Review, Vastarien, HeartWood Literary Magazine, pacificREVIEW, Paperbark Literary Magazine, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and elsewhere.
There Is No Good Time for Bad News by Aruni Kashyap
Reviewed by Maggie Rue Hess | August 31, 2021Future Cycle Press, April 2021Paperback, 58 pages, $15.95 Reminding us that to turn your eyes away from suffering is to turn away from compassion, Aruni Kashyap wrote his unflinching collection of poems There is No Good Time for Bad News about the largely undocumented insurgency within Assam. […]
Dramatic Situation: On Listening for Story in Poetry | by A. Loudermilk
A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems can be found in publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smaritsh Pace, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Tin House, and his essays in The Writer’s Chronicle, PopMatters, Midwest Quarterly, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College and Maryland Institute College of Arts.