The author of Catch-42 talks about the main elements that inspired his book, his themes, on travelling the world, how everyone can participate in future decision making, and lots more.
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New giveaway!
We have a copy of Catch 42 by Felix Holzapfel to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of March from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Fireworks by Oliver Smuhar
The book is beautifully presented, with hand drawn illustrations, photographs, quotations, and facts about the different animals in the book and the events that inspired them, particularly the 2019/20 Australian bushfires, which were particularly devastating in Smuhar’s Blue Mountains hometown and which had some an intense impact on Australian flora and fauna (for example, some 60,000 koalas were negatively impacted by the fires). Smuhar’s goal with this book is not only to raise funds, but to entertain and educate.
A review of Closer to Fine by Jodi S. Rosenfeld
Dr. Rosenfeld’s novel is informative and interesting on the subjects of Judaism, Psychology, and same sex relationships. I was charmed by Rachel’s envisioning of God as a woman angel whose patchwork wings are made up of one’s glimpses of the divine. Another excellent idea is presented in the novel – that after a break-up, a woman should buy herself a ring to symbolize her commitment to herself as her own best friend.
An interview with Paolina Milana
The author of Committed talks about she was has been able to write about such heartbreaking and often frightening moments from her past in her two memoirs, on writing about mental illness, on the epistolary memoir, differences in the writing of her two books, on writing in different genres, advice for aspiring writers, and lots more.
A review of The Truth about Our American Births by Judith Skillman
Skillman employs many references to transportation – trains, mostly, but other kinds too. In the introductory poem we get our first train reference, when the grandmother is counting beats for her own personal waltz: “Always the counting beneath the whistles of trains/ running westward from the town of no money.” (from My Grandmother’s Waltz, p. 18). The train here is ghost-like. It brings a nagging fear of having to escape poverty.
A review of One Hundred Letters Home by Adam Aitken
Between the images, the recollections, the references, the correspondences and the longing, a new kind of story emerges – one that allows the the gaps in the narrative to remain unknown. Aitken doesn’t find the “key to a past the will grant…a thousand and one narratives” (“Stolen Valour”). Instead he finds questions that become Koans, a pathway to a greater truth.
A review of Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young
Throughout the collection, Young depicts the demimonde of women in the midst of affairs of the heart, neither fish nor fowl, but mostly foul; at least, fraught with emotional turmoil. This is captured so succinctly in “Postcards from the Floating World,” a series of four haiku that all begin similarly: “I cry out. His words”; “I cry out. His eyes”; “I cry out. His lips”; “I cry out. His hands / claw fierce, wild, deeper than pain / cradling my face.” The balance between pleasure and pain is a constant seesaw.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of Committed: A Memoir of Madness in the Family by Paolina Milana to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of May from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Letters in Language by Harold Legaspi
Letters in Language is a powerful collection: vibrant, sexy, sad, and very smart. The poems are dense, but also full of play, open space for reader interpretation, and steeped in cultural and literary references. As with all memoir, it is the exploration of a life, but is also an exploration of poetry, the way in which language itself creates reality and history, and very nature of the literary form.