As a lover of the retelling of history to promote the female gaze and/or reshape a less sexist heroine, and of travel writing in general, I picked up Chandra Grace Johner’s debut collection Naked in Turkey (AOS Publishing).

Jon Hickey’s debut novel Big Chief (Simon & Schuster) tackles political corruption and family ruptures on the Passage Rouge reservation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where Mack Beck, a reservation president who looks the part with “that long hair, that immovable mountain mass, the beadwork medallions and satin ribbon shirts” (15-16), but is only a…

Serkan Görkemli’s debut short story collection Sweet Tooth and Other Stories follows the lives of queer characters whose paths intersect at various times and in various locales across the Turkish countryside.

Danilo John Thomas’s story collection, Ore Vein, (Veliz Press) reminds me of a lenticular—one of those weird grooved pictures that shifts images—and I’m a kid jumping from one side of the room to another, watching the flowers bloom then wilt, or the skeleton grow flesh.

The shared terrain, in place and theme, gave Toor and I a lot to talk about in a recent conversation that took place online, including the idea of representation in fiction, coming-of-age narratives, and more.

Claire Jiménez is the author of two full-length works of fiction, the short story collection Staten Island Stories (John Hopkins University Press, 2019), the novel What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central Publishing, 2023). Staten Island Stories features twelve short stories which follow the lives of Staten Islanders living in hostile environments and economically uncomfortable…

I had the pleasure of meeting Tayyba Kanwal almost two summers ago in an online workshop on poetic forms led by Jai Chakrabarti and hosted by A Public Space. When the class ended, several of us wanted to keep the energy going. We’ve continued to meet over Zoom from our separate corners of the United…

Nina Sudhakar’s debut short story collection Where to Carry the Sound, Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize from University of North Texas Press, defies categorization. Making use of charts, lists, myths, and ranging from fables to folktales to oral histories to realism, the nine stories in Sudhakar’s collection depict women who find themselves in…

Milo Todd‘s novel, The Lilac People (Counterpoint Press), a national best-seller, was named a Stonewall Honor Book and an American Library Association Notable Book. The Lilac People is the story of a trans man and his girlfriend who are ripped from their best lives by the ascent of Hitler, the Holocaust, and the subsequent liberation by the Allies…

If you’re a fan of short fiction and flash fiction, there’s a good chance you’ve read one of Yasmina Din Madden’s gorgeous, funny, harrowing stories. For years, I have been eagerly waiting for Yasmina’s debut collection You Know Nothing (Curbstone Press).  Yasmina and I first met at my first-ever AWP in Washington DC in 2017;…

There’s no requirement to read Nadia Staikos’s debut novel Until They Sleep (Guernica Editions) when you yourself are sleepless, but that’s what happened to me, opening the book in the middle of the night and instantly falling into its world. The writing is lush and lively, sending readers to a remote village in Greece full…

Miriam Gershow’s new novel, Closer (Regal House Publishing, June 2025) tracks the fallout from a racially charged incident at an Oregon high school. As students, teachers, counselors and families relate their experience of the consequences of racial intimidation, friendships and loyalties splinter and regroup, marriages fray, and more tragedy looms. The plot is fast paced…