Editor's Shelf

  • Babylon in a Jar by Andrew Hudgins

    Gary Soto recommends Babylon in a Jar, poems by Andrew Hudgins: “Hudgins can’t get over his Southern childhood, which he drags as lovely narrative poems into his adulthood in Cincinnati. Perhaps the South does have manners, as Flannery O’Connor once said, but Hudgins’s characters, mostly men, have such inconsistent manners: one moment they are brutes…

  • Crazy Woman by Kate Horsley

    Maura Stanton recommends Crazy Woman, a novel by Kate Horsley (Ballantine): “This first novel is an imaginative tour de force. By using the form of a ‘captivity narrative,’ Horsley incorporates surreal events successfully into a realistic narrative. The result is dazzling language and vivid characters.”

  • Believers by Charles Baxter

    Philip Levine recommends Believers, stories and a novella by Charles Baxter: “This is a superb collection; the stories are unusually daring and imaginative-‘Time Exposure’ and ‘The Lures for Love’ are two not to be forgotten. The novella ‘Believers’ demonstrates an extraordinary ability to deal with and invoke a past era and to show how sex,…

  • Once the Shore by Paul Yoon

    Don Lee recommends Once the Shore, stories by Paul Yoon: “These are lovely stories, rendered with a Chekhovian elegance. They span from post-World War II to the new millennium, with characters of different ethnicities, yet each story has a timelessness and relevance that’s haunting and unforgettable. Yoon is a sparkling new writer to welcome and…

  • Boy by Patrick Phillips

      Philip Levine recommends Boy, poems by Patrick Phillips. "For me this is a real discovery. In many of the poems—’Nathaniel’ or ‘Matinee’ or ‘Star Quilt’—the language is quiet and accurate, the details precise, and the emotions—though never insisted upon—are there, unquestionable and complex. Phillips never dawdles or repeats himself; he gets down what matters…