Review by Cameron Walker As I read Samina Najmi’s moving essay collection, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, I was reminded of a game we played as children in our school library. We’d gather around the globe and set it spinning. Then, one by one, we’d set out fingers down and imagine the lives we’d make wherever the globe had stopped. The globe spins and stops and spins again throughout this collection: here on the grandparents in India; there on Najmi’s childhood in Karachi; now London, then back again to Pakistan. These essays follow…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Emily Webber The characters in Suzanne Kamata’s short stories in River of Dolls are often caught between cultures, wishing for things they don’t have, and in transit to their next job, relationship, or new home. Big things happen quietly as they navigate everything from small disappointments to major life changes. Good intentions often don’t produce the desired results. Kamata, the author of another short story collection and several novels and nonfiction books, has spent half her life in Japan. Most of the stories in River of Dolls are set there, focusing on women and girls, where ordinary…
MER Bookshelf Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Preeti Vangani, Fifty Mothers, River River Books, February 2026, poetry Preeti Vangani’s Fifty Mothers weaves narrative and elegy around the figure of a mother, the poems unfolding in the speaker’s Bombay home. Pierced with joy, with music and sweat, traffic and smoke, the collection layers family dynamics, gender roles, and the pain and pleasure of the speaker’s body, while drawing a living, lyric line between the “gone mother” and daughter. These poems are the fiercely loving, grieving, sexual, and always-processing songs for the grown children of mothers living in a world that…
This year, MER is examining the ins and outs of mothers with families, both online and in our forthcoming print issues. Often mothers are the nuclei of families—of the legacies, obligations, and stories that orbit around us. Family of heritage, family of birth, family of choice, our greater human family: our families can be sources of support, of exhaustion, of love, of pain. Our families can pass down to us lore or trauma. We are exploring creative writing and art that addresses our role as mother in these unwieldy units, how we embroider with and untangle these familial threads that…
Zoraida Haibi Mother and Daughter Zoraida Haibi was born and raised in New York City, NY and moved to Miami, FL where she grew up and currently lives. Haibi’s work encompasses the dynamics of relationships with the figures by infusing symbolic imagery and mixed media objects. These images are “quilted” together to compose an allegorical composition.
Jerrice J. Baptiste Two Images Top, “Pregnant Mother and Daughter in Enchanted Garden” Bottom, “Pregnant Mother and Son on Exotic Beach at Sunset” Jerrice J Baptiste is an artist, poet, author of nine books. Her watercolor drawings on paper have been accepted in Las Laguna Art Gallery exhibit in California, MER, Spirit Fire Review, Jerry Jazz Musician Magazine, Synchronized Chaos. Jerrice has been featured in August- September 2025 as a solo artist at The Mountain Top Library in Tannersville NY and will exhibit again on January 2026, also at The Duck Pond Gallery Port Ewen, NY, March 2026.
Sally Stanton Family Tree Sally Stanton holds an MFA from Pine Manor College and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been shown in exhibitions around New England including the Portland Museum of Art, Waterfall Arts, Harlow Center for the Arts, New Hampshire Art Association Biennial, select galleries, and public libraries. Her abstract figurative narratives reflect dreams, memories, and the human stories that filter in from the unquiet world. She lives in Northport, Maine.
Narmin Kassam Beautiful Voice Narmin Kassam is a Canadian mixed-media artist whose layered collage works on wood panels explore women’s empowerment, cultural identity, and intergenerational memory. Using handmade paper and paint, her practice merges personal narrative with themes of resilience and belonging. Kassam has exhibited across Canada and internationally, with solo exhibitions and public murals in major cities. Her work has been widely published, and she was a finalist for the 2025 Women United Art Prize (Fibre & Collage).
Juan Sebastian “Zeb” Restrepo How We Learn Juan Sebastian “Zeb” Restrepo is a visual artist whose work explores care, power, and vulnerability through painting and drawing. His practice often focuses on intimate, domestic scenes that examine how bodies learn safety, control, and connection. Through simple forms and quiet tension, Restrepo reflects on teaching, observation, and the emotional weight of everyday gestures.
Helen Imogen Field Miscarriage to Birth: Horny and Healing Helen Imogen Field (nee Williams) was serious about art in her teens but was deflected into science. She entered evening classes for oil portraiture at the Art Student’s League of New York. John Williams, her uncle, taught old masters methods, which helped with tonality, backgrounds and observation, creating works of all kinds and sizes. Late in life she attended the Leith School of Art (Contemporary, Figures) then the Royal School of Drawing in 2025.