Groceries by Nora Claire Miller spills into the hybrid terrain to challenge expectations of mixed-genre. It opens a narrative sentence and bulldozes parts of speech to reach its own truest conclusion. It forces its audience to re-learn how to read.
Book Reviews
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Book Review: ‘Burnt Mountain’ by Emily Wilson
The most prominent, consistent feature of these poems are the heady — even baroque, indulgent — descriptions of the natural world. (I wrote “descriptive” three separate times in my notes.) […]
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Book Review: ‘Midwest Futures: Poems & Micro-Stories From Tomorrow’s Heartland’ edited by Randy Brown
Midwest Futures (Middle West Press) is a short, albeit stout collection of poems, short essays and stories that encapsulate the Midwest across time and various corners of our region. The […]
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Book Review: ‘13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire’ by Anna Barker
For several years, University of Iowa literature professor Anna Barker has produced a steady blizzard of commentary on classic French literature: Hugo, Stendahl, Dumas, Balzac. In her debut book, 13 […]
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Book Review: ‘The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain’
Toni Morrison once said, “For me the history of the place of Black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful.” I read the influence of Mother Morrison’s […]
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Book Review: ‘Malleable and True: A Hybrid Craft Anthology from BRINK Literary Journal’
I have read many craft books, taken gobs of writing classes and read all manner of literature. In my personal time, I tend toward writing that challenges me as a reader […]
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Book Review: ‘More Hell: Stories, Tilled and Driftless’ by Adam Al-Sirgany
The book oozes with palpable Midwest dread, as I like to call it, with nods to Iowa City and the Quad Cities tossed in. It also helped me reflect on my own Midwestern background.
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Book Review: ‘The People are Kind: A Religious History of Iowa’ by Bill R. Douglas
As a student of history, political activist and an award-winning freelance historian, Bill R. Douglas brings his diverse, rich background to bear on a question that tugged at his soul: […]
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Book Review: ‘The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling’ by Rachel Corbett
All through college, and for several years after, I was a self-professed true crime girlie. I suspect my interest sprung from watching CSI with my parents growing, nestled up in […]
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Book Review: ‘Fashion Activist: My Life as a Designer, Dreamer, and Disrupter’ by Andre Wright
This past May, I had the pleasure of attending Beyond Fashion Fest in Iowa City. Launched by Iowa native Andre Wright, it was a weekend of fashion, comedy and fun. […]
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Book Review: ‘The Mean Ones’ by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s sophomore novel The Mean Ones (Creature Publishing) sounds relatively straightforward from the summary: a young girl survives a ritual sacrifice in the woods at summer camp, from which […]
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‘Goethe’s Oak: A Holocaust Story’ by John T. Price
There’s this Andrea Gibson quote you may have come across in light of the poet’s passing this summer: “When nothing softens the grief, may grief soften me.” In a sense, […]
