Interview: Sarah Leipciger, Coming Up for Air

[cm_page_title title=”Sarah Leipciger, Coming Up for Air” subtitle=” Interview”] In her sophomore novel, Sarah Leipciger channels the voices of three disparate individuals connected through time and space: a heartbroken young woman takes a final breath before plunging into the River Seine in 1890s Paris; a toymaker channels his grief into invention in 1950s Norway; and, […]

Interview: Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot

[cm_page_title title=”Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot” subtitle=” Interview”] Godshot was your debut, tell me a little about the writing process. CB: I wrote the book over the span of about six years, and during that time I had two children and was teaching full time as an adjunct. A lot of the process is a […]

The Unplanned Literary Adventure.

Small Press Reviews: Orange Hat Publishing By Julia Gimbel About five years ago, I found a 60-page handwritten journal my late father wrote about his experiences in the South Pacific during World War II.  During the ensuing months, I found myself looking into the topics Dad raised in the journal. My curiosity about WWII became […]

Check Out What’s On Our Shelf

Nobody loves books more than us. We’re a team of readers with broad interests and strong feelings about the books on our shelves.  The Odditoriumby Melissa Pritchard  In each of these eight genre-bending tales, Melissa Pritchard overturns the conventions of mysteries, westerns, gothic horror, and historical fiction to capture surprising and often shocking aspects of […]

Book Review: Many People Die Like You

Her Characters’ Plights Are Familiar to Those We All Deal With Wolff’s stories are not as morbid as the title might lead you to believe. Some of them are about real death, but some are about emotional death. And with some of these characters who died, there also comes rebirth, or life in others. Each […]

Book Review: Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs

Murnane Reveals Himself in These Thoughtful Essay Lilacs is a collection of essays Murnane published over 20 years ago. In Lilacs Murnane reveals his interest in personal libraries and that he reads voraciously, keeping records of what he reads and when he reads them. He fondly mentions his father, who owned a racehorse, and notes […]

Behind the Scenes: Short Answers with Short Storysmiths.

One editor and three authors spoke with Shelf Unbound about the appeal of the short story format and give deeper insight into their most recent collections!  Alysia Constantine Editor of the forthcoming Short Stuff anthology, Duet Books, available June 2020 “Editing this great collection of stories, all of which feature queer characters, gave me hope that […]

Fit Lit: New Year, New Attitude.

Body, Mind and Quill What masters of prevarication people are—if not with others, then often with themselves. And so we have come, once more, to that time of year when we promise ourselves we’ll “do better.”  We vow to hit goalposts that seem to retreat farther and farther from us as if pushed by unseen […]

Book Mom: Reading to Your Kids.

A little bit of everything from a scatter-brained, book-loving Mom.  Doesn’t have to ALWAYS be children’s books  There is a lot of research out there that shows the importance of how many words your young child hears per day. By just talking to your kid, you help them develop obviously their vocabulary, but also their […]

Book Review: Stream System: The Collected Short Fiction of Gerald Murnane

These Stories Paint a Picture of the Australia Murnane Grew Up In  Gerald Murnane’s characters and their experiences bear a striking resemblance to the author himself and to his own experiences. In these fiction stories, Murnane paints a picture of places in Southeastern Australia where he himself grew up. His characters lives among the yellow-brown […]