Reversing Time by Charlotte R. Mendel
Reviewed by Jennifer Smith | February 15, 2022Guernica Edition/Microland Publishers, Fall 2021 Paperback, 314 pages, $21.95 Like many teenagers, Simon just wants to survive the school day. His daily complication: the bullies who follow him home. Every day he outwits and outruns them. That changes when they slow Simon down with a tripwire. Realizing he won’t […]
The Dark Pages: Updating Patterns of Rape in Fiction by Zoe Marzo
Zoe Marzo is a writer in Los Angeles. She has a B.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She’s a doctoral student in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Popshot Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, and other publications.
Chiasmus by Matthew Wimberley
Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Daniel Boone’s Window (LSU, 2020), selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poetry series, and All the Great Territories (SIU, 2020), winner of the 2018 Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book award, winner of the Weatherford Award. Winner of the 2015 William Matthews Prize from the Asheville Poetry Review, his work was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology and his writing has appeared most recently in the Poem-a-Day series from the Academy of American Poets. Wimberley received his MFA from NYU where he worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC.
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 […]