Ryan Masters is a writer and poet from Santa Cruz, CA. He spent a decade on staff at the Santa Cruz Sentinel and The Monterey County Weekly. He is a frequent contributor to The Surfer’s Journal and former poet-in-residence for the City of Pacific Grove, CA. The author of a chapbook, below the low-water mark, his work has also appeared in publications such as The Iowa Review, Catamaran Literary Reader and Unlikely Stories. Above an Abyss: Two Novellas (Radial Books, 2018) is his first collection of fiction.
A review of Broken Lines: The Art & Craft of Poetry by Judith Skillman
The author’s “personal take” is entirely approachable. Her style is conversational, colloquial, and elegant in the sense that the writing is easily understandable because the ideas and suggestions are stated clearly, logically, concisely with good sense and no clutter.
A review of Risk a Verse: A Year in Daily Sonnets By Libby Weber
Delightfully so, this turns out to have been an undertaking Libby Weber pulls off with grace and aplomb. The result of her bold experiment in poetry is a lovely, thick book of sonnets that vary in mood, topic, and with some variation in format.
A review of Two Natures by Jendi Reiter
Behind the profane – and sometimes mixed in and virtually indistinguishable – is the sacred, glimpsed in little experiential epiphanies, such as the unexpected response of a homeless man to the gift of a dead lover’s clothes: ‘Have a bleshed day, man.’ Sometimes the gift of happiness is hard to accept, as when Julian’s friend Peter looks love in the eye: ‘It feels like a mistake – this can’t be for me, it’s too good.’
A review of Someday Everything Will All Make Sense by Carol LaHines
As a backdrop, New York is portrayed not as a place to get lost, but to be found. In its ethnic bars and restaurants, he lets loose to enjoy himself and his mates in all their absurd glory, chanting medieval plainsong over heavy metal playing on the sound system. LaHines’ Someday Everything Will Make Sense is a comedy celebrating transformation that happens in its own due course.
A review of Visits and Other Passages by Carol Smallwood
Readers used to poetry collections or volumes where the prose knows if it is fiction or nonfiction might at first be perplexed by the way genre boundaries are transgressed or redrawn this time around. But my bet is that those who come with a spirit of adventure will be rewarded by the irreverence and innovation on almost every page. Visits and Other Passages provides enough threads of a motif that knits up a quest myth, patterns of loss and recovery, and the power of visitation.
A review of The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin
Coming in at just over 400 pages, the book moves at a quick pace despite being chock-full of details. The information is included to simply move the story along—Benjamin manages to keep the plot from becoming too heavy or dramatic. Overall, The Girls in the Picture is a fascinating read, recommended for both film and history buffs interested in the early 20thcentury.
A review of The Curse In The Candle Light Scarlet and Ivy by Sophie Cleverly
Through the changing of friendships and leaderships, Ebony soon calls all the shots and organises a party celebrating All Hallows Eve. At this party a truth is revealed and now Muriel has the upper hand, leading to a tight situation for the other girls. This situation involves breaking out of a cage, breaking a door and confronting enemies.
An interview with Jendi Reiter
Jendi Reiter, vice president of Winning Writers, talks about the spark that started the site, her newsletter, the annual humour contest, her own writings, and lots more.
A review of Quill of the Dove by Ian Thomas Shaw
Canadian author Ian Thomas Shaw’s new novel Quill of the Dove proves that a writer’s memory is powerful enough to move laterally and create a searing vision of the contemporary Middle East. Shaw’s evocation of Lebanon, during the Civil War in 1982, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2007, illuminates the tragic consequences of the curve and the asymptote of West and East, never intersecting.