For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In celebration of National Poetry Month, we have initiated a new regular series to highlight poets and what they are reading. For this first list, we asked some of our favorite poets to offer a brief commentary about a recent collection they thought deserved more recognition. This is the literary-equivalent of Sophie’s Choice, yet, naturally, … Read more
[ad_1] A list of Patricia Smith’s achievements in poetry could take up much of this interview. A poet, playwright, essayist, educator and mentor, she’s deservedly won nearly every accolade and award, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, and earlier this year she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. … Read more
[ad_1] Already a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, as well as a co-host of The Poet Salon podcast, it’s hard to believe that Judas Goat is Gabrielle Bates’s debut collection. The two-score poems within display a sensitive and assured voice and a candid exploration of human relationships and the … Read more
[ad_1] Year-end features typically focus on “bests,” a consideration that I shy away from, perhaps a scarred memory of always being picked last for dodgeball. Because many hundreds of books are published each year, most are only very briefly in the spotlight. That always feels so inherently unfair, like having one shot at getting a … Read more
[ad_1] We often pigeonhole people and their abilities: you’re a writer or an editor, a poet or a novelist, creative or strategic. My (admittedly anecdotal) experience suggests that such binaries are a fallacy, and Jill Bialosky is a distinctive example of how one can successfully juggle “all of the above.” As Executive Editor of W.W. … Read more
[ad_1] It’s that time of year again, and in a painfully unsettled world, I’m especially thankful for the people I get to work with at Chicago Review of Books and our partner, StoryStudio Chicago. Some are new friends and others I’ve known since I was lucky enough to join the organization. Most of them are in Chicago, of … Read more
[ad_1] Ross Gay’s eloquence as a poet is matched by his fluency as an essayist, and over the last half dozen years his focus on the human condition has resulted in a number of justly praised books, including Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, The Book of Delights and Be Holding. The newest addition to that rich … Read more
[ad_1] Mostly written during the last several years, the poems in Normal Distance, Elisa Gabbert’s highly-anticipated new collection, speak to the disjunctive nature of our times. Yet the juxtaposition of the philosophical and quotidian, often playfully rendered, belies the dexterity involved in crafting these striking poems. Also a well-regarded critic and essayist, Gabbert’s charming, inquisitive mind … Read more
[ad_1] Middle children often don’t get their due and that’s frequently the case for short fiction as well, wedged between poetry, flash and full-length novels. Yet in the hands of those with a talent for shaping entire worlds in brief pages, they are as powerful as the most economical poem and the weightiest novel. In … Read more
[ad_1] With striking, poetic prose, Taylor Brorby’s Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land reveals a hidden life in the wide open spaces of the Midwest. The complexities of queerness in places where it can be lonely at best and dangerous at worst, and Brorby’s quest to find a space where he … Read more