Reading Jen Karetnick’s bio suggests that the woman is never without her computer and her scribbled notes, her peripatetic inquisitiveness driving her in a hundred directions at once. But this is not a scattered writer. Apparently when Jen Karetnick homes in on a topic, her views expressed as a critic, travel reviewer, appliance tester, cookbook […]
“The Devil’s Fools” by Mary Gilliland
April 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Award-winning poet Mary Gilliland has led writing retreats and found inspiration in sites in Greece and Scotland, and as we will see, in the most pedestrian of venues—her bowls on kitchen shelves, the farmer’s field, her mother’s weary body as it climbs into bed. Mary Gilliland’s bows to the smallest of creatures, the most ancient […]
November Read of the Month: “When Women Danced With Trees—35 Unexpected Stories,” by Marina Brown
November 3, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Versatile, talented Marina Brown once more has written a stunning gem of a book with her collection of short stories in When Women Danced with Trees—35 Unexpected Stories (Gilberte Press 2021). Here, the extraordinary and the unexpected collide with the ordinary and the everyday. With the occasional appearance of magical […]
September Read of the Month: “The Smuggler’s Daughter,” by Claire Hamner Matturro
September 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Marina Brown A really superb writer can gather all of the ravelings, the dozens of characters, the seemingly impossible happenstances of a novel and, in a few deftly written pages, offer us a revelatory and thoroughly satisfying denouement. And it’s not easy. Claire Matturro has, in The Smuggler’s Daughter, accomplished all of those, […]
Marina Brown
September 1, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Marina Brown is the author of two Gold-Medal-winning novels, Land Without Mirrors and Lizbeth, and a Silver-Medal-winning volume of poetry, The Leaf Does Not Believe It Will Fall, as well as other books. Currently, she writes for the Tallahassee Democrat and two national magazines. Brown is a former professional ballet dancer, an R.N., a cellist in a symphony orchestra, a tango […]
“The Orphan of Pitigliano,” by Marina Brown
June 18, 2020 by Leave a Comment
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 […]