“Poverty stands fully revealed, naked, a striking, repulsive sight to a stranger until all feeling of condemnation melts into an all-absorbing compassion,“ wrote Ana’s Nin while visiting Cuba in 1922. Deeply attuned to many of the... Read More

Shakers mourn. The pointer covers mourners’ heads with white bands and whispers passwords in their ears. With crosses and candles in hand, mourners prepare for ecstatic spiritual journeys. The pointer repeats the password to them so... Read More

In the new literary genre of New Age or Spiritual Fiction, anything can happen. In this story, the world of today has ended. One of the main characters is “the Goddess [who] was at once all Love and all Truth.” Hearing Her guidance... Read More

“Bear with me for singing their song / They are not here to sing / They did not want to sing.” So begins the effort—of speaking in different voices, of traversing landscapes and generations, of trying to give words to what others... Read More

“I don’t feel like a dragon at all,” says Ignis. This young dragon is the fastest runner and highest flier in Dragonland, but he can’t breathe fire. While his peers light the stars in the night sky and play games like Fling a... Read More

Few seventeen-year-olds have the chance to stand at the cusp of history, but the author belongs to this select group. Knowlton brings a youthful eye-tempered by maturity-to this memoir of traveling through China in the summer of 1948, a... Read More

In the all—American sport of baseball, a “dead ball” is a ball that is out of play; while the ball is dead, no runners can advance, no player may be put out, and no runs may score. In this novel, past racism and murder threaten to... Read More

Writing about storytelling is itself a form of storytelling. Acknowledging this, and granting that “anyone who writes about revising stories must be acutely conscious that the story she is telling is one of many possible versions,”... Read More