In this week's issue, we review Christopher Brean Murray's debut poetry collection, Black Observatory, winner of the 2021-22 Jake Adam York Prize--"its strikingly surreal imagery fashions situations by turns ridiculous and terrifying"; De'Shawn Charles Winslow takes readers back to West Mills in his "splendid" second novel, Decent People, a mystery in which "there's a lot more at stake than finding a murderer"; and Beth Lincoln's The Swifts, a "quippy and charming debut with beguiling illustrations" by Claire Powell. Plus so many more!
The Creative Life showcases a conversation between bestselling children's authors Grace Lin--winner of the 2022 Children's Literature Legacy Award--and Kate Messner, the illustration that inspired the seeds of a story, and the way their collaboration for Once Upon a Book unfolded.