An enduring collection straddling time, language, and genre to explore Indigenous futures that await on and off the page.
A collection of more than 20 Indigenous writers carving out space in the literary canon.
“We are many and diverse cultures, histories, and present-day realities…There’s incredible beauty in this, our variety,” the editors write in their introduction. Featuring Indigenous writers of poetry and prose, including women, two-spirit people, and people of marginalized genders, the collection places particular emphasis on emerging writers: “We hold the door open behind us and encourage others to do the same.” Rooted in the past, present, and futures (both real and imagined), Indigenous language, culture, resilience, sorrow, hope, and traditions are fully realized in this collection. In A.J. Eversole’s engaging “Dilasulo Walks,” Little Dilasulo, a pair of moccasins that yearns to be worn, finds sentience after 177 years. Little Dilasulo fears that Indigenous people’s art, like themself, will forever be trapped within museums as “the aftermath of our apocalypse.” Imbued with science fiction and horror elements, Moniquill Blackgoose’s “Sky Woman Rising: A Memoir” and Denetsosie’s “No Wrong Roads Home” notably explore the apocalypse as a way back to humanity and the Earth (“All Natives have lived in a dystopia since colonization,” Denetsosie writes). Poetry standouts include Ayling Dominguez’s “Alfabetízate Otro Mundo: Reverse Abecedarian Broke Open” (“The path to liberation gets wider the more of us tread it”); Ha’åni Lucia Falo San Nicolas’ “Kahilinā’i” (“our shared being as / women of the Pacific. I knew / you long before I learned your // name…”); Arielle Twist’s “In the beginning, it’s just you and me against the world” (“My haunting will be one of longing / to love something as you have loved me”); and Amelia Vigil’s “Splice of Genetic Material” (“these bones / these bones // are on loan”). Though the collection’s organization can feel jarring at times, the interconnectedness of the writing and the writers—as Indigenous people, stewards of the land, and keepers of history—serves as the anthology’s beating heart.
An enduring collection straddling time, language, and genre to explore Indigenous futures that await on and off the page.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798890920300
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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