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☞ Luke Kennard on Guillermo Stitch's The Coast of Everything
“The fact that there is a writer like Guillermo Stitch defiantly working at these depths when so much feels so shallow turns me around whenever I’m at the point of despair. It’s the only kind of antic disposition committed enough to pierce through. I’ve been lost in The Coast of Everything for months and I’m not sure I’ll ever get out or if I even want to.”
—Luke Kennard, author of The Book of Jonah
☞ Anna Rollins on John Patrick Higgins' Teeth in American Book Review
“Finally, the pandemic gave John Patrick Higgins something to smile about. With a mask, he could grin without fearing the grimaces of others. In Teeth: An Oral History, Higgins provides a history of the mouth (his own and a handful of famous others) and invites the reader on a series of dental appointments to improve the quality and aesthetics of his own teeth. As he frames the beginning of the text: ‘Teeth, more than eyes, are the window to the soul.’ … [Higgins] deflects much of his own vulnerability through jokes or puns. At his first dental appointment to have seven bad teeth pulled, he names each tooth in the manner of Snow White’s seven dwarfs: ‘Achey, Splintery, Barely-Therey, Chippy, Stainy, Ghastly and Grizzled-Battle-Scarred-Castle-Collapsing-Into-theSeay.’ Despite his light tone, he is speaking about a serious subject—body shame…. But the beauty of Higgins’s biting wit is that he’s aware of it.”
—Anna Rollins, in American Book Review
☞ Guillermo Stitch's The Coast of Everything in the Gnome Appreciation Society
“Stitch takes the reader deeper into a book than any author has ever done before … [exploring] the boundaries between when one story ends and the next one begins and how they overlap…. [The nested stories] are separate entities but at the same time they are one … more a collective than a collection…. I very much doubt you will be disappointed by the experience of this adventurous book.”
—Jason Denness, in The Gnome Appreciation Society
☞ Annabelle Gurwitch on Lee Upton's Tabitha, Get Up
“Lee Upton’s Tabitha, Get Up is an alchemy of a novel. Uptons offers up poetry and narrative, but narrative where you expect poetry and poetry in place of narrative. Reading Tabitha, Get Up is dizzying and disorienting in the best way possible. How can you resist a novel in which ‘It’s true that the basis for the word nostalgia is pain’ is a laugh line? I have taken to keeping this book by the side of the bed and opening to a page at random when a giggle or courage or both are required and Upton’s Tabitha, Get Up has never let me down.”
—Annabelle Gurwitch, author of The End of My Life is Killing Me
☞ Kat Meads' While Visiting Babette in Heavy Feather
While Visiting Babette is a pleasure to read…. Sentences surprise; images shine; observations ring with odd truth…. a masterful piece of writing.”
—Patrick Parks, in Heavy Feather
☞ Devin Jacobsen's The Summer We Ate Off the China in PopMatters
“[E]very reader will find their favorites here while gaining a broad and complex view of how much humanity one region can hold and how much of it one writer can depict.”
–John Loonam, in Pop Matters
☞ Greg Bem on Thomas Walton's Unsavory Thoughts in Rain Taxi
“Thomas Walton’s latest book is his most uncomfortable, and perhaps his best. Unsavory Thoughts compiles musings and meditations, by turns sarcastic and serious. With this genre-defying author, nothing is definitive except the reliable quality of his elegant, entertaining, and approachable prose…. Unsavory Thoughts is yet another step in the author’s journey to find harmony between the grotesque and the humorous while flirting with the deadpan, scholarly headspace of the literati. Walton, through his writing, continues to remind us that there is no other voice quite like his, no other philosophical perspective on writing quite like his, and we are all better off after reading the collection.”
—Greg Bem, in Rain Taxi, Winter 2025 (No. 120)
☞ Kurt Luchs' Tributaries in Kirkus Reviews
“Luchs writes with a tone that is both pedagogical and inviting, balancing humility with the learned wit of a scholar. The author’s enthusiasm for the poets he discusses recalls a warm teacher eager to share an infectious passion for the subject…. [A]nyone who has tried to emulate the greats will find something deeply resonant in the author’s own creations…. A generous, witty guide for readers and writers alike that opens personal pathways to great poets. "
☞ Kat Meads' While Visiting Babette in The Sundress Blog
“Meads’s storytelling is enchanting due to its brilliant technique of feeding the reader just enough input to be tantalizing, a delicate balance in the space between repetitive and perplexing….While Visiting Babette is a book readers will think about days after they’ve finished reading it, reflecting on its nuances and happily accepting Kat Meads’s invitation to wonder about her characters, their mystical world, and the untethered facility tinged with darkness.”
—Tassneem Abdulwahab, in The Sundress Blog
☞ Lee Upton's Wrongful in Gnome Appreciation Society
“The writing is witty, the scene well set and like any good detective show it was addictive…. Give her a read if you aint done so already.”
—Jason Denness, in Gnome Appreciation Society