Robert Boswell recommends A Gram of Mars, a first collection by Becky Hagenston: “Becky Hagenston writes with grace, conviction, and wit. The complex stories in this collection circle about the central question in our lives-coming to terms with our past, coming to terms with the present. The stories have the stuff of real life and…
Gary Soto recommends A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen, poems by Martín Espada: “Martín Espada is a courageous poet who champions with grace the working class, the disheveled, the outcast, the ignored, and the imprisoned-all without sentiment. He gets better with every collection.” (Norton)
Madeline DeFrees recommends Adam Chooses, poems by Michael Spence: “These spare, understated poems have the elegant design and the formal ease we’ve come to expect of Michael Spence’s work. The stance is reminiscent of James Wright’s Green Wall poems in their escape from ‘that vacant Paradise’ to the celebration of the here and now.” (Rose…
James Alan McPherson recommends All the Money in the World, a novel by Robert Anthony Siegel: “A heartfelt first novel by a gifted former student.” (Random)
Lloyd Schwartz recommends All-American Girl, poems by Robin Becker: “Unsparing and self-knowing, Robin Becker uses irony (as in her double- and triple-edged title) as if it were a form of directness. Painful, often devastating poems contend with crushing loss, the convolutions of sexuality and family politics, the struggle to accept the self. Yet they also…
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…
Ann Beattie recommends Quick-Eyed Love, a memoir by Susan Garrett: “Garrett’s remarkable Quick-Eyed Love is the story of her mother, a photographer of children from Main Line Philadelphia who was not so lucky and not so famous as her acquaintance Mr. Steiglitz or the unstoppable Margaret Bourke-White. Implying questions about how a woman alone can…
DeWitt Henry recommends Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be, a memoir by Jen Trynin: "This memoir should be required reading for wannabe Janis Joplins; for others it offers a view of the corporate music world worthy of Nathaniel West. The monologues of soulless hucksters are pitch-perfect, and Trynin’s dream of becoming a rock star carries…
Jane Hirshfield recommends Dancing in Odessa, poems by Ilya Kaminsky: ” Dancing in Odessa is not newly published, but it is new to me, and deserves to be recommended. This is an intricate, muscular, startlingly powerful collection, one that amazes by image and statement, by its shaped whole, and by the sheer scope of its…
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