Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Sharma Shields

Sharma Shields’s debut novel The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac (Henry Holt) was published in 2015—and we’re still not over it. “Imagine a mashup of Moby-Dick and Kafka’s Metamorphosis (with a hearty dash of Twin Peaks thrown in),” writes Kirkus Reviews, “and you’ll begin to get an idea of what Shields’ ambitious tale of disenchantment sets out to do.” The novel, which won…

Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy’s stunning work of flash fiction called “Revival” appeared in the seventh issue of Memorious. At the time, his second collection of short stories was due out, after his first outstanding collection, The Language of Elk. In the decade since, Percy’s gone on to publish three novels—The Wilding, Red Moon, and The Dead Lands—with a fourth…

Joanna Luloff’s Anticipated Books of 2017

At the end of this tumultuous year, it is tempting to want to move on and train our gaze onto the new. Like many of us, I imagine, I’ve been thinking about what reading and writing can do—politically, socially. To me, these seemingly solitary acts encourage empathy, curiosity, engagement, and self-scrutiny. I hope, too, that…

Sara A. Lewis’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Always Happy Hour, Mary Miller (Liveright, January) This book’s cover image is a woman in a bathtub eating Chinese takeout and drinking wine straight from the bottle. These are stories I can get behind. If all of them are even half as good as “Little Bear,” which was published earlier this year in the Mississippi Review,…

Natalie Mesnard’s Anticipated Books of 2017

In Full Velvet, Jenny Johnson (Sarabande, February) Sarabande’s Marketing and Publicity Director Ariel Lewiton recently gave me a sneak peek at some of their 2017 titles, and I admit to falling in love with the soft, sensual cover of Johnson’s forthcoming debut poetry collection. Inside, Johnson, a Whiting Award winner and the 2016-17 Hodder Fellow,…

Derrick Austin’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, Charif Shanahan (Southern Illinois UP, February) In a geographically sprawling collection—set in Morocco, The United States, and Europe—Shanahan writes of the bond between all three regions, bonds established by the brutal legacies of slavery, colonialism, colorism, and racism. He writes through global history as well as family history as…

Wendy Oleson’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Writing this list reminds me, at a time I so need it, that there’s much to look forward to—particularly emerging voices from small, independent presses. There are many talented writers who coming to us with urgent messages, and we are desperate to hear them. The Education of Margot Sanchez, Lilliam Rivera (Simon & Schuster, February)…

Barrett Bowlin’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Patty Yumi Cottrell, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney’s) When you see Cottrell’s work in so many literary mags and online ’zines, and when every sentence of hers stands out to you like a sutured line of poetry, you’re waiting for her work to get its proper introduction. And that’s hopefully what will happen when her debut…

Katy Didden’s Anticipated Books of 2017

When you say “2016,” it sounds benign, a choriamb of grinning “t” and “e” sounds. Looking back now, it seems clear that the rhythm signaled the start of a march. As it turns out, 2016’s most defining characteristic was being too easily divisible. We lost David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael, and we…

Poetry Spotlight: Contributor Carolina Ebeid

Carolina Ebeid’s debut poetry collection, You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior, continually draws the reader in, addressing her several times throughout the book and using luscious imagery to evoke a sense of intimacy and familiarity. There are the usual topics—love, death, God—but they exist in a world of violence that continually bursts out…