It’s winter at Storyknife, a time for celebrating and snuggling up on the sofa to read a good book. And if you need some last minute gifts, might we suggest any of these amazing titles by Storyknife alums?
American Bastard: Jan Beatty’s lyrical inquiry into the experience of being a bastard in America, traveling across literal continents—and continents of desire as Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who’s won three Stanley Cups—and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh.
Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light by Kimberly Blaeser uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.
An Eye in Each Square by Lauren Camp is part social critique, part imaginative biography of enigmatic painter Agnes Martin, and part treatise on the multiplicities of the natural world.
Curating the House of Nostalgia: Kersten Christianson’s collection of poems grounded in far-flung northern settings that weave along stretches of pitted road, open spaces, and the interior landscapes of the unforeseen circumstances of bereavement and moving forward.
Rainbow, Rainbow by Lydi Conklin: In this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heart-rending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment.
Moon and the Mars by Kia Corthron: A young girl of African American and Irish descent navigates life in the impoverished yet ever-vibrant Five Points district of New York City, while the nation marches to Civil War.
Injustice, humor, and resilience collide in Stephanie Cotsirilos’ first novella, My Xanthi — when a Greek immigrant woman’s wartime secrets teach a criminal defense lawyer about love’s triumph over inhumanity.
Paradise is Jagged: In this extraordinary collection, Ann Fisher-Wirth looks levelly at mortality, grief, and memory, and reckons with what it is to be urgently alive, bringing her incisive nuance to subjects ranging from the loss of a beloved sister to Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary to our imperiled natural world to the comforts of marital love. – Catherine Pierce, Mississippi Poet Laureate
Best Be Prepared by Gwen Florio: A coastal town dispute over a tsunami-evacuation tower that could block lucrative new development has deadly consequences in this environmental thriller.
Ghost Forest: Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung weaves memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese Canadian “astronaut” family.
Autumn Song: Essays on Absence by Patrice Gopo invites readers into one Black woman’s experiences encountering absences, seeing beyond the empty spaces, and grasping at the glimmers of glory that remain.
Set in Hilo, Hawai’i, Jasmin Iolani Hakes’ Hula is a sweeping saga of tradition, culture, family, history, and connection that unfolds through the lives of three generations of women—a tale of mothers and daughters, dance and destiny.
Nocturne: Set in a technicolour world of dreams, ghosts, classical music, and Key West storms, Jodie Hollander’s compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist.
Where My Umbilical Is Buried: Amanda Galvan Huynh weaves a code-switching tapestry that unabashedly confronts, complicates, and celebrates the lineages and experiences. These are intricate poems that manifest healing and dreaming for the self and future ancestors. — Anthony Cody, author of Borderland Apocrypha
Slow Scrape by Tanya Lukin Linklater: Drawing on documentary poetics, concrete-based installations, event scores, and other texts, this book cites memory, Cree and Alutiiq languages, and embodiment as modes of relational being and knowing.
回 / Returnby Emily Lee Luan: Through the recurrence of memory, myth, and grief, 回 / Return captures the elusory language of sorrow and solitude that binds Taiwanese diasporic experience.
Ocean Mother: Using poetry to weave together striking narratives of family, environment, Indigenous identity, decolonial love, and her Chamoru culture, Arielle Taitano Lowe goes on a journey inward and overseas as she explores the relationships between culture and identity, colonialism and inherited trauma, sense of place and generational healing.
Love and Other Rituals: Selected Stories: At home in the Philippines, and abroad in the US and New Zealand, the characters of Monica Macansantos’s debut story collection search for a sense of belonging and understanding, and contemplate the tentative nature of home.
Five Reports of Fugitive Dust: In Mary Mercier’s debut full-length poetry collection, she merges her scientific background and poetic skills to share with us how she experiences nature—as a part of it, rather than a mere onlooker.
Brace for Impact is Gabe Montesanti’s memoir about joining an elite roller derby team, healing from family dysfunction, and embracing a queer identity.
Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry – Entries by Ruby Hansen Murray and Keetje Kuipers. Blending art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations.
In membery, Preeti Kaur Rajpal writes the memory of her family’s expulsion from their homeland during Historical India’s Partition, threaded with her experiences as a Sikh American woman during the post-9/11 era.
The Death of a Jaybird: Essays on Mothers and Daughters and the Things They Leave Behind, Jodi M. Savage’s deeply empathetic and often humorous collection of essays explores the author’s ever-changing relationships with her grandmother and mother, through sickness and health, as they experience the joys and challenges of Black American womanhood.
Artie and the Wolf Moon:Olivia Stephen’s middle-grade graphic novel follows 8th grader Artie Irvin as she uncovers her hidden werewolf heritage.
Storyknife Writers Retreat’s mission is to provide women with the time and space to devote to their writing. Thank you to all of the people who make Storyknife possible. We so appreciate our community and its dedication to the mission.
Storyknife Writers Retreat 
Agree with the title