Alison Evans’s novel Ida has been shortlisted for the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for best young adult novel, and by all considerations it deserves
It is an honor to have Victoria Chang as the poetry judge for So to Speak’s annual contest issue, which is currently open for contest submissions,
Daniels’ Wedding Pulls is a collection rooted first and foremost in place, that place being New Orleans. Daniels uses place not only to ground her readers, but to present them with culture rich in tradition. Beginning with the proem “On St. Charles Ave.” Daniel’s sets the reader up for what to expect throughout the book: highly sonic, highly image driven poetry that explores not only New Orleans, but the institution of marriage and the traditions (i.e. wedding pulls) that surround it in New Orleans.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Water & Salt is one of the most gorgeous renderings of the Levant I’ve ever read. Tuffaha, an Arab-American poet of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian heritage, writes from a place of familial memory and nostalgia, a place of longing and loss, of displacement and deciphering home. Tuffaha’s poems are required reading material for any Arab-American literature list, and for all Americans whose knowledge of the Middle East ends at what the media reports.
Reviewed by Cloud Spurlock Dana Levin is an accomplished contemporary poet having published four books of poetry in under 20 years. In the Surgical Theatre
The title piece, “St. Trigger,” is constructed like shrapnel from a shotgun miraculously made into words flung upon the page. Each of the words is interconnected, originating from the same source, but disparate and dislocated and uncontrolled.
Scorched Altar is a hybrid master work. Kristina Maria Darling’s fractured bits lent themselves perfectly to “meta” moments. I beg her indulgence and yours, reader, in reviewing this work using Darling’s own phrases, reassembled
Zeina Hashem Beck’s 3arabi Song won the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize. Of which Rattle says, “This little book will break your heart then mend it.” You
