| The leaves that fell in November |
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| Miriam Tlali once said ... |
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A good book – if it has the right message in it – it can change a whole human being into something he never thought he would be.
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| P Edmonds Young once said ... |
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You're walking through places that not only have stories to tell, but are doing so with the language the people who told them understood, not the one you were born with. We should all do the same. We might understand things better.
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| Melanie Brooks |
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| Upcoming Book Events |
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Melanie Brooks will take part in a conversation with Jennifer Dupree on 12/12 at 6 pm ET at Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham, ME.
Check out her full list of upcoming events here.
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| Buffy Sainte-Marie once said ... |
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Everybody's creative. We create our songs and our paintings, our families and our children. Every one of us is on the cutting edge of the future.
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| Alan Humm |
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| Recent Diary Entries |
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"No, novelists miss stuff. Poets over-write. They under-write. They (we) write poems that are nearly successful. In other words, we need all the help we can get." Read Alan Humm's latest posts here and here.
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| Apple Gidley |
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Taking Liberties
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"I do, though, believe that as historical novelists we owe our readers honesty in the facts as far as they can be proven – recorded events and dates, how people dressed, food eaten and so on, all gleaned from research.” Apple Gidley discusses historical fiction, her approach to the genre, and more for The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 Conference.
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| Roz Morris |
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What Makes a Great Story...
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"I’ve seen many manuscripts that begin in one register and then change, in a way that feels inconsistent. So they’ll focus on a character’s psychological and emotional turmoil, then abandon those kinds of observations in later scenes. The reader who enjoyed that level of connection will feel frustrated. What happened to the book they were enjoying?" Roz Morris provides tips for writers based on her recent experience with judging the Amazon Kindle Storyteller Award.
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| Tommy Orange once said ... |
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When you hear stories from other people like you, you feel less alone. When you feel less alone, and like you have a community of people behind you, alongside you, I believe you can live a better life.
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Isabell Serafin Krause was raised in Portland, Oregon. She graduated with a MFA in creative writing and is a PhD candidate in literature at the Transart Institute for Creative Research. Her fiction has been published in Fjords Review and PANK magazine. Isabell is based in Hamburg, Germany. OSTRACA is her first book.
Ostraca will be published in June 2025.
Joseph Hurka's memoir, FIELDS OF LIGHT, won the Pushcart Editors' Book Award; his short stories have been published in THE WOVEN TALE PRESS, PLOUGHSHARES, AGNI, and numerous other literary journals. He lives in the United States, in southern New Hampshire, and teaches at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
His memoir will be published in June 2025.
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Charlotte Stuart
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"What makes Raven’s Grave such a compelling mystery is the narration. It’s descriptive, to be sure, but it’s so much more. Every scene is detailed with cultural nuances and folklore, so the reader is immersed in the story. It’s also emotional and full of intrigue. Well written and had me reading late into the night." N. N. Light recently reviewed Charlotte Stuart's Raven's Grave for nnlightsbookheaven.com.
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Jennifer Lang
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"This memoir traces the journey to find an authentic self inside the layers of various identities—parenthood, loving relationships, loyalty to one’s origin—as improbable as that may seem, and the path that each of us embarks upon, crisscrossing a desert of unknowing to (hopefully) at last arrive in the Promised Land." Liz Chang recently reviewed Jennifer Lang's Places We Left Behind...for World Literature Today.
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Melanie Brooks
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"In many ways this book was brewing for close to 35 years. Even when I wasn’t allowed to speak about it, it was a story I desperately wanted to tell, and I think that’s because when we are suffering in silence, all we want is to be seen." Melanie Brooks discusses her recent book, A Hard Silence..., teaching, and more in a recent interview with Roz Morris.
Alison Manley also recently reviewed A Hard Silence... for The Miramichi Reader.
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Steve Zettler
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"Overall, the book feels perfect for a vacation: entertaining and not too heavy but will keep you guessing what will happen next. Anyone who picks up this novel will not want to put it down before finishing." Alex Ceko recently reviewed Steve Zettler's Two for the Money for Reader Views.
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| Fennel Hudson once said ... |
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December, being the last month of the year, cannot help but make us think of what is to come.
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| Check out our top-rated all-time bestsellers & other recommendations: |
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| by Dylan Thomas Doyle |
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Letter to the Shooting Stars Among Us
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Dear You,
Welcome to your love letter. A letter signed to the secrets and celebrations that brought you here. The found family, and the lost innocence, and the wanderlust, and the returning home again in ways you never thought possible. Not to mention the whiskey and the sobriety and the streetlights and the sweet sleepless nights you danced through on your way to this moment. Welcome to the love letter to your leaving and arriving again. Here.
Letter to the Shooting Stars Among Us is a concoction of music and poetry that pushes the boundaries of genre and expectation. Flowing from spoken word poetry and hip-hop roots, it’s a personal and powerful testament to the beauty and heartbreak of wising up and self-discovery. Examining everything from breakups, illness, crustaceans, immigration, supernovas, God, tomatoes, seedy motels, and all those other memories you locked up somewhere safe, this book is a reminder to love deeply, live boldly, and seek beauty in unconventional spaces.
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| by Sara Hosey |
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Dirty Suburbia
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The stories in Sara Hosey’s stunning collection, Dirty Suburbia, trace the lives of girls and women struggling to live with dignity in a world that often hates them.
Dirty suburbias are working-class neighborhoods in which girls who are left to fend for themselves sometimes become predators, as well as affluent communities in which women discover that money is no protection against sexism, both their own and others’.
One young woman sets up her abusive, cheating boyfriend, hoping he’ll get arrested so that she can rescue him and win him back. A teenager arranges to meet up with an older man she’s met online playing video games; she brings a knife with her, just in case. A middle-aged divorcee attempts to rekindle a romantic relationship with her high school English teacher, who happens to be a former nun. A struggling academic falls in love with a Henry David Thoreau impersonator, and a well-adjusted grad student goes home for Christmas only to be repulsed by her family’s casual cruelty.
Despite the ugliness and injustice, they face, as well as the failures of their families and communities, these characters often find relief in friendship and connection, and sometimes, even discover meaning and cause for hope.
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| by Catherine Shields |
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The Shape of Normal
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As a young suburban mother in the early 1980s, Cathy had a loving husband, a sweet toddler, and a vision of life laid out before her. Pregnant for the second time, with twins, she imagined creating the warm, affectionate home she’d craved as a child. Her family would flourish, and she would be the calm, unflappable mother at its center.
But the universe had other plans.
The Shape of Normal explores Cathy's intense denial and devotion as she struggles to face the challenges of raising a girl with cognitive disabilities. Convinced her diagnosis can be undone with just the right amount of single-mindedness, she turns it into a dark prophecy. But she'll have to overcome adversity and learn the lesson of acceptance before realizing her daughter was never broken.
Cathy was never on a hero’s journey to save her child. She needed to save herself.
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| by Elinora Westfall |
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Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre
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A woman’s soul is laid bare between these pages, eviscerated, sunk deep between ink and page. Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre is a meandering journey of a heart both scarred and lonely and fierce and wild as it seeks itself in each new incarnation. It is stitched and pieced together with the blades of grass and faded-yellow ribbons that string themselves through each poem, following the thread of love, through grief and trauma, suicide and rose-tinted memories while traversing the vague and uneven road to self-rediscovery.
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