What People Are Saying

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…the speaker (Melissa Studdard in Dear Selection Committee) revels in her largesse…All of this immensity, this grand unburying, is squeezed into the prosaic corseting structure of a job application, intensifying the split between tame and wild…Indeed, these poems are so desirous and animated that they spilled over the edges of the page and into my thirsty soul.

Elegant, clear-eyed, and restless, Suzanne Frischkorn’s poems seek and illuminate the frayed hyphens fastening us to family, to the world. Her searching is psychologically rich, transformative: an iridescent interiority spirals outward to touch what sustains it, what divides it. Structurally brilliant, alive with lyrical thinking and observations, Fixed Star is ample proof of Frischkorn’s poetic gifts. In her hands, language is light.

Pluck some characters out of Thomas Pynchon, Robert Penn Warren, Sonny Boy Williamson II, the Bible, and Wes Anderson movies. Place them in torrential rains and a flood. Hand them over to a genius storyteller. Mix well. Here's what you get in David Wesley Williams's riotous novel Everybody Knows. I love this wild ride.

While highlighting relatable themes of grief, loss, and belonging, Garza interweaves poignant excerpts pulled from other literary works. At its core, The Field is both an insightful and comforting read in which Garza expertly illustrates that grief never truly ends but just takes on different forms. 

- Katie Tamola