“A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen,” by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Reviewed by Donna Meredith One minute it soars. The next it dives. It drives tacks into your heart and then warms your feet like a cozy pair of socks. The language and imagery in Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poetry collection, A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen, is all that we expect from a […]

July Read of the Month: “The Archive of Alternative Endings,” by Lindsey Drager

Reviewed by Donna Meredith How to describe it? Exquisite. Literary. Experimental. Perfect in its own unique way, The Archive of Alternative Endings is unlike any other novel I’ve ever read. It’s different. Really different. It doesn’t have a plot, not in the usual sense. The characters don’t invite you to crawl into their skin, walk […]

“The Orphan of Pitigliano,” by Marina Brown

Reviewed by Donna Meredith  Marina Brown’s The Orphan of Pitigliano is a feast of Old World mystery and magic, betrayal and heartbreak, sin and redemption. Readers who enjoyed Helen Wecker’s best-selling novel, The Golem and the Jinni, will like Brown’s tale, which also blends Jewish myth into the historical novel. Brown paints her stunning story […]

Donna Meredith Interviews Marina Brown, Author of “The Orphan of Pitigliano”

DM: I have a theory that every great novel begins with one strong emotional scene or character or idea that ignites the author’s passion. What spark initiated your desire to write The Orphan of Pitigliano? MB: Honestly, I think it was a series of experiences I had had in Pitigliano over the years that coalesced […]

“The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes,” by Williams Rawlings

Reviewed by Donna Meredith The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, by William Rawlings, would be a great read if only because it presents a richly layered mystery and a wronged protagonist deserving of much more than the world has handed him. But the novel is so much more than that. Rawlings took the historic Savannah setting […]

“Rich crop of women’s anthologies published in 2019, the International Year of the Woman,” Essay by Donna Meredith

Essay by Donna Meredith  Maybe they arose from the Fourth Wave of feminism that took hold in 2013, a movement focused on female empowerment. Perhaps they were further nourished by the “Me Too” movement that arose in 2017. No matter the source of inspiration, two important new collections of works by women found their way […]