Christine Simon’s delightful debut novel, The Patron Saint of Second Chances, is a story of survival. Welcome to the southern Italian town of Prometto, a “going nowhere place.” The population is dwindling, there is little to no tax revenue coming…
I’m writing this post about revision from inside a lion, because that’s what revision feels like–being eaten by a lion–and it’s rather dark in here. Hear me out: for months my 6-year-old has refused any and all bedtime reading that…
At some point in the past few weeks I started hearing the word “revision” in my head to the tune of “Tradition!” – the song that opens “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Revisiiiooooon! REVISION!” (Sorry.) Honestly it had more to do…
Annie Hartnett’s second novel, UNLIKELY ANIMALS, is the story of Emma, a med school dropout returning to her small New Hampshire hometown to take care of her father who is suffering from dementia. This funny and intricate novel weaves together…
In Rachel Barenbaum’s sweeping time-travel novel, ATOMIC ANNA, three generations of women must work across time and continents to change their lives and the history of the world. This is a gorgeous story of family, science, love, and an abiding…
Stephanianna Lozito used fiction to process the complex emotions of her real-life family tragedy: her sister’s 2009 suicide. The resulting novel, We Turn to Face the Sun, debuted earlier this year and examines the dynamics of a close-knit Italian-American family…