In Review: The Week of December 16th

On the Blog

~ Poet Lisa Baird reads selections from her collection Winter’s Cold Girls (Caitlin Press), exploring themes of trauma and recovery, and everyday violence and queerness: “Gwen Benaway said [of Lisa Baird], “her dazzling, precise lines reveal a vital poetics that grows out of ordinary landscapes to transform the text into a balm for insight, healing, and articulation.”~ We chatted with Robin Richardson about her new book Try Not to Get Too Attached (Book*hug Press), her surreal artistic style, translating the sublime and representation for women in the arts: “When I write and when I draw, I work from a space of unknowing, a bewildered exploration of that feeling of euphoria and dread, that open expanse of being that can’t be understood or defined.”~ We (re)gifted two tasty cookie recipes from Barry C. Parsons’s Rock Recipes Cookies (Breakwater Books) for you to try this holiday season.~ The 2020 Pantone Colour of the Year – Classic Blue – was the inspo for this roundup of covers that *ahem* blue us away.

Around the Web

~ To inscribe or not to inscribe? In time for the holidays, here’s an etiquette guide for gifting books.~ Another books-as-objects outrage storms the internet and it involves Gwyneth Paltrow (but of course). 

via GIPHY

ICYMI (last week)

If your holiday modus operandi is escapist— cue #HallmarkChristmas flicks— we’ve got three charming literary follow-ups to crack open when you’re all Christmased out.