Review by Lara Lillibridge DeMisty D. Bellinger’s short story collection, All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere, just released by University of Nebraska Press, won the Barbara DiBernard Award, an annual prize for a book published by Zero Street and named for Dr. DiBernard who is professor emeritus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a pioneer in LGBTQIA+ studies. Bellinger also wrote the novel, New to Liberty and two collections of poetry, Peculiar Heritage and Rubbing Elbows. Bellinger teaches creative writing in central Massachusetts. She has a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, an MFA from Southampton College, and a PhD from the University of…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Celia Jeffries This is the first book I have read that opens with a Content Warning. I should not have been surprised; we live in a world where the evening news should come with a content warning. That Christy Tending chose to open her memoir with one is testament to how tenderly she cares for herself, her family, her readers, and our world. “How do we meet the feeling that the world as we know it is ending? How do we maintain compassion for ourselves in the midst of grief and chaos? How do we inspire ourselves…
Review by Sarah Walker Caron I never considered myself a feminist. Even as I parented outside the confines of what mother is “supposed” to look like, I didn’t apply feminism to what I was doing. That all changed when I became a single mother in my 30s, starting over with my children in a new state and eventually obtaining a divorce. That experience of rediscovery and redefining myself is what drew me to Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria Bailey. This academic book of essays on feminist…
Glenis Redmond Setting the Table Mama hands me fork, spoon and knife as she circles the table I follow her lead. Learn what comes around goes around. She demonstrates how to fold the napkins and where the drinking glasses go. I never ask her how she knows how to set a table I just accept this as one of my many chores: learning place and how everything has one. I note how the table sits in the center of our home, the place where mama’s voice is the loudest. Dressed with each and every season Her table boasts Royal…
MER Quarterly Online – September, 2024 Poetry Folio “Of Lupine Flower and Alpha Star’ – Poems on Astrology, Astronomy, Divination, and Lore, Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach Mixed Genre Folio, “Medical Motherhood” Edited by Sarah Dalton MER Writers and Artists: Ana C.H.Silva interviewing Katherine Vaz and Madalena Pequito
MER Bookshelf – September 2024 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Jennifer Lang, Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses, Vine Leaves Press, October 2024, creative nonfiction (memoir) American-born Jennifer traces her journey—both on and off the yoga mat—reckoning with her adopted country (Israel), midlife hormones (merciless), cross-cultural marriage (to a Frenchman) and their imminent empty nest (a mixed blessing), eventually realizing the words her yoga teachers had been offering for the past twenty-three years: root down into the ground and stay true to yourself. Finally, she understands that home is more about who you are than where you…
Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader Hollay Ghadery is the author of a memoir, Fuse, recipient of a Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir; a collection of poetry, Rebellion Box; and, most recently, a short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill Press, September 2024). In eighty-three pages, and with a gorgeous cover, the latter contains more than thirty stories of female fantasizing as a response and release to the frustration and rage at existing in a world of suppression. In fewer than three pages, the first story sets the tone, accommodating anger with humor and pathos. The unnamed first-person narrator is a…
Dorsía Smith Silva My daughter is the wolf of me moonhowls my four-legged desires into rivers of lupine flower & alpha star hunts down fears nesting in hunter sniffs lumps of green to thirst caribou bloats on stars’ colostrum like extra moonlight marvel at her wilderness unwhittled which mirrors my own same anthem combing through trees same trots of desire unbending to night’s stubby clouds rain whisks us to den darkness circled into tree trunks slow-downed blood gets a season we curve to a lick Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), poetry editor of The Hopper, and Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She…
Dianne Silvestri For My Son About to Become a Father One birthday before you stood taller than I, I gave you a telescope, fawn legs hinged, black nose and an eye, assembly instructions folded in the box. Twice we coaxed it out to the driveway, aimed the barrel skyward, twisted the eyepiece, squinted, gasped at Mars, Venus, orbs so shy they flew from view. Today that dusty derrick on stilts bows in your old bedroom, a gift you never begged for. I longed for you to probe the heavens, find the universe amazing. Now I hope you will carry…
Gianna Russo Locket & Altar The moon is waxing or waning— whatever. It’s been seven years, the bare kitchen table set to remember. She’s in the dog star, ++++++she’s with the great bear. Some nights she’s waiting behind a door. She’s a girl with a thirties smile. She’s phlox in a crystal vase. The prayer candle, Mother and Child, ++++++silver forks, Thanksgiving plates. She’s the wrist watch with its black bonnet. A filigree of ashes ++++++sealed in my locket. Gianna Russo is the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa. She is the author of All I See…