What this collection confirms is that Ondaatje is, beyond all, a master storyteller, largely through his ability to capture character with the same precision he chooses words. Each personality presented here, be it a blurred face in a photo or a close friend or lover, draws us in.
Author:
A review of Identifying the Pathogen: An Inquiry by Jennifer Militello
Militello weaves different perspectives into the collection, sometimes stepping away from the point-of-view of the main persona and drawing parallels with her own life and of women today. She looks at the persona from the angle of both subject and object, introducing what it feels like to undergo surgery and calling it an autopsy report.
A review of But Where’s Home: A Novella and Stories by Toni Ann Johnson
Johnson’s writing–her vivid detail, sharp dialogue and insightful, deftly witty scenes–reveal a family of distinct, complicated individuals grappling with the internal and external impact of our society’s stereotypes, but also asks us to look more closely at our own relationships.
A review of Loving my Enemies and Other Outlandish Pursuits by Angie Wright
Angie Wright’s memoir Loving My Enemies and Other Outlandish Pursuits highlights the cultural and ideological diversity of the American South and illuminates the long history of dedicated and courageous work on many fronts for social justice. Even more so, the book shares how Angie learns through time that becoming more effective in her life’s work is intertwined with and inextricable from her personal growth and healing.
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Habits & Mysteries: A Conversation with Patricia Henley and Rob Davidson
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Patricia Henley’s fifth collection of stories Apple & Palm is forthcoming in March 2026 from Cornerstone Press. She is the author of three novels, five collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Rob Davidson is the author of six books, including Welcome Back to the World: A Novella and Stories, winner of the 2025 National Indie Excellence Award in Short Stories. This conversation is a wide ranging chat between these two authors about writing and their work, persistence, curiosity, the mysterious creative process, creating a regular writing practice (under duress), writing about place, diversity, their writing obsessions, and lots more.
A review of Radegonde and the First Crusade by Lauren Small
Radegonde and the First Crusade spans four years from the time Radegonde leaves home to the bloody conclusion of the novel. Lauren Small vividly brings the time to life while spinning a tale of one young woman’s struggle with faith. At the Council of Clermont at the end of 1095, Pope Urban II issued a call to arms that would result in the first crusade – the People’s Crusade – and the capture of Jerusalem, liberating the holy city from Muslim control. Related in the present tense by an omniscient third-person narrator, the story focuses on Radegonde, both her interior struggles with faith and sin, forgiveness and love, and the outward challenges she faces.
A review of No One Knows Us There by Jessica Bebenek
Brilliantly and realistically, Bebenek narrates no turning point, reaches no culminating moment, offers no conclusions. The final poem sends the reader back to the beginning and the inescapability of death. Rooted in concrete images, the poems resist both pious moralizing and maudlin regret by honestly depicting an embodied self, enmeshed in the empirical world. With economy and specificity, Bebenek’s lines embrace the totality of experience.
A review of Shakespair: Sonnet Replies to the 154 Sonnets of William Shakespeare by Martin Bigney
The Sonnets have been quite popular for several centuries now and have given rise to countless interpretations from Shakespeare being bisexual, homosexual, slave to love to the author being Queen Elizabeth to Edward De Vere. There is a library of interpretations and commentaries on the sonnets.
A review of The Cross Thieves by Alan Fyfe
The book is full of beautiful, funny, often tragic contradictions that are so well woven into the fast-paced plot that at times you have to force yourself to slow down to appreciate them. The Cross Thieves is a terrific book, full of gritty violence and desperate characters, but also infused with a tenderness that borders on transformative.