Modern culture has some ’splaining to do. Climbing out of the Renaissance/Elizabethan age through to the late eighteenth century, an increasingly enlightened society emerged into the industrial wonders of the nineteenth century and... Read More

Nine previous books of poetry and a memoir of gender transition does not a life make, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. Dr. Joy Ladin, take that National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and Fulbright Scholarship to the rocker on the back... Read More

July Westhale’s poetry seems accompanied with a tuning fork’s pitch, a heightened, pressing, weaponized immediacy. Whatever she faced to earn that ability would have killed a lesser mortal, we can be sure. A creative writing,... Read More

With gut truths and gin-clear imagery, Trista Mateer reminds us of all those places left unexplored by language. The wonders and especially the heartbreaks of love occupy much of her attention, and also best demonstrate her uncanny... Read More

Mama never said there’d be debuts like these, presenting new poets who arrive with unforeseen, indescribable gifts. Over the mountains of Tijuana at age five, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s journey included an MFA at the University of... Read More

A Houston poet’s tool box doesn’t normally include fluency in Arabic and an internal medicine practice—indeed, Dr. Joudah’s scholastic accomplishments and life experience raise our expectations. And, in turn, we find his work on... Read More

Poetry is marvelous transportation. Africa beckons—you want some of me?—and the poet takes pains, takes pens to the stuff of his life, so that we can experience the Zimbabwe in the man. An Oberlin College creative writing assistant... Read More

Ooooh, baby, the gloves are off. In "Radioapocrypha", BK Fischer has done imagined Jesus Christ as a buff chemistry teacher in Maryland in 1989. Does she not fear bolts of lightning? The author of two other superb collections, Mutiny... Read More