Fortune telling — through tarot cards, palm readings, or other means of divination — was a way of life for Miracelle and her mother, whose bond forms the heart of Karen Salyer McElmurray’s novel, Wanting Radiance. After years on her own, Miracelle sets her sights on the past, including her mother’s unsolved murder.
By delving into intimate moments of her characters’ lives, Johnson City writer Shuly Xóchitl Cawood taps a deep well of compassion in her story collection, A Small Thing to Want.
In Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, Alia Volz crafts a loving portrait of Sticky Fingers Brownies, the empire of pot-laced edibles that her mother built amid the tumultuous events that rocked San Francisco during 1970s and 80s.
Readers who love history for its grand, sweeping scale will find the premise of Katy Simpson Smith’s novel, The Everlasting, irresistible: a quartet of characters whose stories span almost 2,000 years and whose experiences delve into the chaotic, multilayered, enduring heart of Rome.
The poems in Tiana Clark’s debut collection, I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood, propel us into encounters with traumas ancient and immediate, blurring any distinctions of time.
As evidenced by the travels depicted her most recent memoir, Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith has embodied the nomadic spirit of the public troubadour for decades. Whether she’s performing riotous sets with her band or working side by side with literary lights, Smith has forged a role in our arts culture unlike any other.
