Literary Reflections

This month’s Essential Reading focuses on books for children, including a science and nature picture book, a classic medieval tale, the story of a middle-school social experiment, and a boistorous…

That sentence I wrote, to announce the end, said it all. Yes, it was surrounded by other words–accomplishments, family lineage, hobbies–but that one sentence was truest. I’d never written anything…

We love reading memoirs for their ‘up close and personal’ look into other people’s lives. This month, we share three of our favorite celebrity memoirs with you.

During the two-and-a-half years before I began exploring Franklin’s life and work, I’d been focusing on loss—loss of sleep, loss of autonomy, and, above all, loss of identity. Franklin suddenly…

In honor of Black History Month, we are celebrating the words of Black female writers. Delve into Black womanhood, slavery, and identity—all framed by poetry with our staff recommendations.

I’d read all the pregnancy books, humorous and practical alike, but none of them really prepared me for that moment. Instead, it was the desolate landscapes of Cormac McCarthy’s fiction—which…

If you’re a writer looking to hone your craft, this month’s Essential Reading post includes four reading recommendation that will help you on your way.

There’s nothing like a festive tale to get you in the Christmas mood and this month’s Essential Reading recommendations include a modern spin on a classic holiday story. Check that…

Parenting a child with early Alzheimer’s-like symptoms leaves little energy for anything else, I discovered, so I shifted my priority from recreating what had been, to nurturing what could be.…

My plays are colored by motherhood. My poetry, a fairly recent undertaking, comes back to themes of mothering again and again. My two girls were with me throughout the entirety…

Sometimes a story is so big it can’t be contained in one volume but needs a whole series to allow the plot to unwind. This month we recommend four series…