MER Bookshelf – August 2026 Sarah Jefferis, Lucky to Have You, Finishing Line Press, May 2026, poetry Lucky to Have You is a collection of narrative lyric poems that meditate on romantic loss and love. Loss and luck are…
Browsing: Reviews
Review by Tessara Dudley Before I know the names of every tree and birdsong along the saltmarsh, I will hold my daughter. And I will finally understand that it is possible to be both the doe standing in the clearing…
Review by Rebecca Jane The Presence of One Word reawakens a reader’s senses, inviting quiet charms to bloom with meaning. This collection shares deep inner peace that the poet has discovered on her journeys—to a grandmother’s house in Greece,…
Review by Katy E. Ellis Joanna Streetly is a prize-winning Canadian poet and non-fiction writer who emigrated from Trinidad and has lived on the unceded territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht on Vancouver Island for the past thirty years. The poems…
Shasta Grant on When We Were Feral Interviewed by Tyler Wetherall Shasta Grant’s haunting debut novel is a coming-of-age story that doesn’t shy away from the brutalities of girlhood. Set in 1990s rural New Hampshire, it follows 13-year-old Maggie…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Pooja Ugrani, My Home is Dissent, Poetrywala, February 2026, poetry My Home is Dissent is a luminous poetry collection that moves fluidly between the everyday and the elemental, where the domestic becomes a site…
Review by Tessara Dudley Singing from the Deep End is a powerful book of poetry about motherhood and life cycles. It is divided into three sections, each focused on the author’s relationships with the four people to whom the…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason Sometimes it takes near-death experiences for people to really start living. In Sharon White’s latest novel, Minato Sketches, Gigi, the protagonist, suffers a stroke and leaves her husband and grown sons behind when she moves…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Maria Lisella, At the Hour of Now, Bordighera Press, April 2026, poetry Maria Lisella’s newest collection At the Hour of Now tells the unflinchingly honest story of a blended family that raises urgent questions,…
Review by A. Anupama In this collection, Catherine Esposito Prescott’s poems trace the loss of her teenage son Austen to a rare, pediatric brain cancer. I read this collection in the time between Mother’s Day and my daughter’s high…