A Black Lives Matter Reading List

I’ll keep this short: the United States is a hot mess right now, and it isn’t because of the protesters. There are a ton of reading lists currently out there, but I also wanted to contribute my own to the mix. This list could’ve easily been four times as long. I intentionally left out some

Faves of 2017: Fiction

I’m usually set to go with my year in review posts on January 1, but I have been BUSY lately. I’m trying my hardest to finish a king-sized quilt in time to enter it into my first ever quilt show (and of course I’m doing everything at the last minute…though in my defense, this thing

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward has been publishing regularly ever since winning the 2011 National Book Award — Men We Reaped in 2013 and an anthology of edited works, The Fire This Time, in 2016 — but Sing, Unburied, Sing is her first novel since Salvage the Bones. As with her previous works, Ward again returns to Mississippi

Faves of 2016: Nonfiction

I read a lot of really great nonfiction books in 2016! I actually think I had better luck with nonfiction than fiction. The first three listed are my top three favorites; everything is listed in alphabetical order. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016) When Breath Becomes Air focuses on Kalinithi’s a career as

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race

In 1963, James Baldwin published The Fire Next Time, a book about race in America. More than half a century later, Jesmyn Ward soberly reflects in her introduction, “It is as if we have reentered the past and are living in a second Nadir: It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of