News

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

“[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

“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)

“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. "

—Kirkus Reviews

“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

“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

“In his beautiful and wide-ranging first collection of stories, The Summer We Ate Off the China, Devin Jacobsen, author of the novel Breath Like the Wind at Dawn, eschews a fashionable cool in favor of big language and deep feeling. Many of these stories wear their literary pedigrees openly…. [A]s Jacobsen shows in this wise collection, simply living your sort of shitty life requires its own kind of courage.”

—Jason K. Friedman, in Heavy Feather Review

In Cleaver Magazine, Hannah Kroonblawd on C.J. Spataro’s More Strange Than True:

“The novel reads like Spataro had fun writing it; humor and joy are apparent throughout…. This is the kind of book best read in the sunshine or a warm pool of lamplight, a book you might pick up to read in a single afternoon or evening. Spending a few hours with Jewell, Oberon, and Titania brought me back to my own encounters with Shakespeare’s faeries and reminded me of the way storytelling can infuse an ordinary existence with just a little bit of its own magic.”

—Hanna Kroonblawd, in Cleaver

Vick Mickunas on John Patrick Higgins’ Spine, in the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News:

“When I picked up a copy of Spine by John Patrick Higgins and quickly understood that this was a stream of consciousness memoir about his spinal injury and other agonies he has endured I really doubted I wanted to read it. Fortunately after a few pages I recognized the author has a warped somewhat gallows sense of humor…. [B]rutally hilarious….”

—Vick Mickunas, in the Dayton Daily News

“[Jacobsen’s] thirteen stories are a dance between comedy and tragedy, and as eclectic as I’ve read in an extraordinarily long time…. Ageism, racism, trauma, rape versus consent, the fallout of school shootings, corporate soul-selling, marital angst—the list goes on and on, and all this under two hundred pages. The Summer We Ate Off the China is Americana unfiltered, for better or worse. Keep your eye on Devin Jacobsen.”

—Dawn Major, in Southern Literary Review