Save Us From Ourselves: Orders of Protection by Jenn Hollmeyer
Orders of Protection by Jenn Hollmeyer (University of North Texas Press, 2019). When Salamander first published Jenn Hollmeyer’s short story “Step Off at Ten” in the spring of…
Human Touch: Sex & Taipei City by Yu-Han Chao
Sex & Taipei City by Yu-Han Chao (Red Hen Press, 2019). The Taipei of Yu-Han Chao’s debut story collection Sex & Taipei City both bustles and glistens. It’s…
The Goodness That Must Abide: Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance by Fady Joudah and House of Fact, House of Ruin by Tom Sleigh
Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2018). House of Fact, House of Ruin by Tom Sleigh (Graywolf Press, 2018). Fady Joudah is the…
From Nim Chimpsky to George Clooney: Extravagant Rescues: Poems by Brett Foster
Extravagant Rescues: Poems by Brett Foster (Northwestern University Press, 2019). First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, Brett Foster was my classmate in the Graduate Creative…
Refuge Within: Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare by Lola Haskins
Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare by Lola Haskins (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). The word asylum, the title of Lola Haskins’ capacious, questing new book of poems, pivots on…
Still Here: Not Dead Yet and Other Stories by Hadley Moore
Not Dead Yet and Other Stories by Hadley Moore (Autumn House Press, 2019). When my husband and I are back in his hometown, we make a daily visit…
The Art of Seeing: The Arrangements by Kate Colby
The Arrangements by Kate Colby (Four Way Books, 2018). “Were we born with eyes / or when we saw ourselves // seeing?” Kate Colby asks in “The Beholder,”…
Take Me Home, Country Roads: Let Me Out Here: Stories by Emily W. Pease
Let Me Out Here: Stories by Emily W. Pease (Hub City Press, 2019). If the cover image of Emily W. Pease’s new short story collection—a stone-faced little girl…
No Other Way Out of Away: House is an Enigma by Emma Bolden
House is an Enigma by Emma Bolden (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2018). Emma Bolden’s House is an Enigma lives inside a continual unfolding, moving fluidly and fluently…
Stinging Nettles: Bad Harvest by Dzvinia Orlowsky
Bad Harvest by Dzvinia Orlowsky (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2018). The title of Dzvinia Orlowsky’s sixth book, Bad Harvest, evokes the Holodomor, the man-made famine that affected and killed…
Labyrinths and Cathedrals: Outside Is The Ocean by Matthew Lansburgh
Outside Is the Ocean by Matthew Lansburgh (University of Iowa Press, 2017). Winner of the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award, Matthew Lansburgh’s first collection possesses the satisfying reach…
The Forest and the Trees: Come West and See by Maxim Loskutoff
Come West and See by Maxim Loskutoff (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018). It is election season in America again, which affords the country another unsettling visual and numerical representation…