Review by W.J. Herbert Renunciation and Embrace in Maurya Simon’s La Sirena The mystical Pacific coupled with the saga of a young girl’s coming-of-age animate La Sirena, a novella in verse by the poet Maurya Simon. The collection, a…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by Anna Rollins Refraction: a review of Cat Pleska’s My Life in Water Cat Pleska’s gorgeous memoir, My Life in Water (Uncollected Press, 2024), begins with a near drowning: her own, at 6 months of age. Her…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger Dorinda Wegener’s debut poetry collection, Four Fields, is at once brave and vulnerable. She exposes all aspects of parent/child relationships, with the speaker’s mother, then father, in her richly written poetry. Although approachable, these…
Review by Meghan Sterling Contending with Ghosts: The Tapestry of Place and Loss in Abbie Kiefer’s Certain Shelter A few months ago, a fellow Maine poet reached out to me to ask if I would be willing to read…
Review by Sharon Tracey Canticle for Remnant Days is Jane C. Miller’s first full-length poetry collection and she has compressed a lifetime within its pages. The poems are a measuring, a looking back and then forward, marking the days,…
Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader Writer and engineer Tara Isabel Zambrano debuted with her flash and short story collection Death, Desire, and Other Destinations from OKAY Donkey Press in 2020. Her second collection Ruined a Little When We…
Review by Margaret Sáraco Genevieve Betts’ second poetry book, A New Kind of Tongue, follows her debut, An Unwalled City (Prolific Press). Betts, an assistant professor of English at Sante Fe Community College, also teaches creative writing for Arcadia…
Review by Diane Gottlieb No one would accuse Rachel Zimmerman of burying the lede. Here’s how she starts “Widow,” chapter one of her riveting memoir Us After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide: If…
Review by Janet McCann Theophany is an encounter with a deity that manifests in an observable and tangible form. These encounters are described in many religious texts and are part of the spiritual life. In this work, glimpses into…
Review by Emily Webber Jessica E. Johnson’s memoir, Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home, revisits her unique childhood during the 1970s and 1980s. Through her mother’s letters, written during Johnson’s childhood, Mettlework beautifully interweaves her mother’s journey with…