Best Small Fictions is the first-ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. The Series Editor is Nathan Leslie, who is my guest on BookNotes this month.

Five centuries before cat videos took over the Internet felines were gracing the margins of medieval manuscripts, and an exhibition called Paws on Parchment is currently on display in the Medieval Gallery at The Walters Arts Museum. It’s been curated by Lynley Anne Herbert, the Robert and Nancy Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, … Continue reading “Pawprints on BookNotes”

“I want to combine narrative and image, language and paint. I want them together.” And that is what happens in Deborah Brown English‘s debut illustrated novel, Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in words and Pictures.

Dan Fesperman, former foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun turned author of intrigue and suspense, is coming out with his thirteenth novel this month. It’s called Pariah, and it was a pleasure to speak to Dan about it.

You know Claire McCardell through ballet flats, mix-and-match separates, pockets, zippers, leggings, and more, yet she remains the most influential fashion designer you’ve never heard of. Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson has set out to change that with her book, Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free. … Continue reading “The visionary designer Claire McCardell on BookNotes”

The Opposite of Cruelty, newly released by Blair Publishing, is the second poetry collection from Steven Leyva. It was an enormous pleasure to catch up with an old MFA alum.

Annie Fullard, Director of Chamber Music at Peabody Conservatory and founding member of the Cavani String Quartet, along with Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, who is on the faculty at Saybrook University and consults in the areas of team collaboration and music education, have published a book called The Art of Collaboration: Chamber Music Rehearsal Techniques and Team Building, … Continue reading “BookNo

Hiram Larew, who generously underwrites BookNotes through his Cynipid Fund, is out with his seventh poetry collection, This Much Very, published by Alien Buddha Press. I spoke with Hiram by phone.

Amy L. Bernstein—novelist, journalist, speechwriter, playwright, poet, and writing coach—has written a book about that insidious feeling that plagues all creatives: Doubt. I talked to her about wrangling the monster.

Fiction and travel writer Eric D. Goodman is out with his first poetry collection: Faraway Tables. He’s my first guest on BookNotes for 2025.