2000 Blacks (University of Pittsburgh Press 2024) by Ajibola Tolase is a powerful poetry collection that has garnered significant recognition, winning the Gold Medal for Poetry in the 2025 Florida Book Awards as well as the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Tolase’s poetry is deeply evocative, blending personal history with broader cultural and political themes. The […]
“The Best That You Can Do” by Amina Gautier
March 21, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Amina Gautier’s The Best That You Can Do (Soft Skull, 2024) is a powerful, multi-award-winning collection of short stories centered on characters from the Puerto Rican and African diaspora. The book has received numerous accolades, including the Midwest MLA Book Award, the Florida Book Awards Silver Medal, and the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize. It […]
“Filling the Big Empty” by Rhonda Browning White
March 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment
It’s easy to understand why Rhonda Browning White’s debut novel, Filling the Big Empty (Redhawk Publications 2024) was shortlisted for the 2022 Neilson Prize. The novel is a tour-de-force, relentlessly examining environmental issues in Appalachia. While never losing focus on a young couple’s relationship, the story drops readers into the horrors of mountaintop removal to extract coal, the […]
“Beyond Buffalo” by Betsy Reeder
March 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Beyond Buffalo by Betsy Reeder takes readers beyond the deaths and physical destruction caused by the Buffalo Creek disaster to explore the long-term psychological impacts on survivors. The Buffalo Creek flood occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, on February 26, 1972, when three coal slurry impoundment dams fail during heavy rainfall, killing 125 and injuring 1,121. Over 4,000 were left homeless. But […]
Read of the Month: “Prodigal” by Phyllis Gobbell
February 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Fireworks, fireflies, and gunfire light up Phyllis Gobbell’s exquisite, poignant novel Prodigal (Histria Fiction 2024). This modern retelling of the prodigal son is, above all, a story of love and forgiveness in a Southern family. A Baptist preacher’s son, nineteen-year-old Connor Burdette flees from his hometown of Montpier, Tennessee, after a boy he is with […]