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 and inspires me to try new things. I love hybrid work, which is disinterested in being placed solidly within a single genre. As such, I […]
Book reviews
Posted inBook Reviews
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.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
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: Why hasn’t anyone written a comprehensive history of Iowa’s religions? He decided to answer it himself with The People Are Kind: A Religious History of […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
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 the secure monotony of Midwest farmland while learning about decomposition and blood splatter. In my mid-20s, several provoking pieces about survivorhood and a handful of […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
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. As a Black woman, witnessing a brother move in his own creative lane was inspirational. I walked away from the festivities thinking, “How did he […]
Posted inBook Reviews
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 she suffers intense PTSD, and upon finding herself in the woods as an adult she’s faced with familiar horrors. In reading the book, though, the […]
Posted inBook Reviews
‘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, the task that author John T. Price takes up in his new piece of hybrid literature published by Ice Cube Press, Goethe’s Oak: A Holocaust […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Fully Booked at DMPL: Haunted houses, haunting reads
Halloween is just around the corner, when larger-than-life skeletons adorn front yards and glowing pumpkins sit on every doorstep. These spooky season staples aren’t always indicative of thrills and chills behind the front door — but if you’re a horror reader like me, you can’t help but wonder what terrors may lurk inside. One of […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Fully Booked at ICPL: Horror classics for young readers
October is upon us, and the veil grows thin, which means it’s time to put aside our beach reads and turn towards some darker books. As a child, I loved being read to by my mom, and our go-to for a long time was Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural, a collection of 19th and early-20th […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Every Day, I’m Brave’ by Renee Zukin
I had been at a crossroads in my life the first time I met Renee Zukin. She was working as a brilliant educator in Coralville while my decade-long career as a program manager was going nowhere slowly. It was this dead-end gig that landed me in Zukin’s classroom one afternoon in 2017. It was a lively […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mindy Mejia’s Iowa Mysteries series continues with ‘The Whisper Place.’ Refresh on all the action before you crack it open
Midwest thrillers are few and far between, but every time one crops up it scratches a special itch in my heart. There is something rich and powerful at having scenes from your childhood play out with hints of something absolutely foreign. Mindy Mejia is helping build the Midwest mystery genre with the third installment of her “Iowa Mysteries” series…
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fully Booked at DMPL: Tantalizing Time-Benders
The prequel to the TV show Outlander, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, premiered recently, so I must talk about time slip novels. In these novels, the characters accidentally stumble through time, without any knowledge of how they got there. Alone and desperate, they must navigate a world unknown. Will they find love? Will they meet […]
