Three debut poetry collections highlight the originality of their authors’ visions
Tara M. Stringfellow’s Magic Enuff Tara M. Stringfellow’s Magic Enuff foregrounds the intimate experiences of Black Southern girls and women in nuanced, compassionate poems. As these women confront betrayal, loss,…
Small-town lovers grapple with an unexpected pregnancy in Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne’s Holding on to Nothing
…family, one that made all the mistakes families make when they are exhausted, broke, or unsure.” Jeptha suffers from the opposite problem: He can’t seem to get away from his…
Deviant Hollers pushes against reductive stereotypes about Appalachia’s future
…importance they deserve. “It’s Grandpa’s Land: Property, Heteropatriarchy, and Environmental Disasters,” written by editor Rebecca Scott, Kandice Grossman, and Aaron Padgett, addresses the subject of environmental activism in light of…
A lyrical, atmospheric new picture book celebrates author and environmentalist Wilma Dykeman
…Robert Morgan: “Water is always a sign of continuity of health, of renewal, in Dykeman’s fiction. It is almost a biblical symbol of life.” Next I read two books of…
Past and present mingle in collections by Loving, Shockley, and Underwood
…of the cows he held in special affection during childhood, each poem stretches taut between our perception of the material world around us and the ineffable, inescapable pull of a…
Nature bears the burden of memory in William Woolfitt’s Ring of Earth
…stories that engage the ways potent experiences come to be stored in nature, historical record, and small moments of personal exchange. Several stories pair intimate personal experiences with much larger…
