I’m a writer and editor and specialize in reviewing books written for adults and writing educational standards-based books and articles for kids and teens. My work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian, Publishers Weekly, and other publications.

Featured Author Interviews

‘When I Was White’: At 27, Sarah Valentine Found Out Her Biological Father Was Black. A Chat About Her New Memoir.

When Sarah Valentine was growing up in the mostly white, middle-class suburbs of Pittsburgh during the 1980s, she assumed her experience was just like that of her peers. She embraced the traditions of her Irish and Italian heritage, did well in sports and school, and hung out with her white friends at the mall. “I didn’t know much about race,” she writes of a childhood friendship with a … [Read More...]

Rosanne Parry Inks Three-Book, Six-Figure Deal

Author Rosanne Parry has been a bit busy these last few months. After her latest book, A Wolf Called Wander (Greenwillow), was published in May, it landed on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 17 weeks. Thanks in part to the middle grade novel’s success, Parry has just signed a six-figure deal with Greenwillow for three more books. But despite having five acclaimed novels and a picture book under her belt, her journey over the past few … [Read More...]

Featured Reviews: Short Stories

Two Provocative Debut Short Story Collections by Bay Area Authors

Over the past few years, the publishing industry has garnered much criticism for churning out books written about the white or white male experience. Thankfully, this myopic approach seems to be changing. This month, two richly layered debut short story collections by Bay Area authors give voice to the underrepresented. Mimi Lok’s Last of Her Name is a smorgasbord of powerful writing and angsty emotion wrapped into eight meditations on what it means to feel slightly out of place, either in your head or in your physical surroundings. Set in places as far flung as Hong Kong, the suburban United Kingdom and urban California, each narrative unspools on either side of a … [Read More...]

Featured Reviews: Fiction

AI Meets Gender Politics (and Sexbots) in Jeanette Winterson’s Smart and Witty ‘Frankissstein’

If there’s a familiar origin story in the great halls of literature, it’s the one about 19-year-old Mary Shelley in Lake Geneva, coming up with the idea for her masterpiece Frankenstein. But just because Jeanette Winterson uses that as the jumping-off point for her 11th novel doesn’t mean it’s predictable or old hat. Unsurprisingly, with talk of cryogenics, the future of AI and the downfall of humanity, transgender politics and, yes, sexbots, Frankissstein is thrillingly quite the opposite. The book is a mishmash of two distinct, yet interlinked, narratives that stand mostly apart, but often mirror or bounce off each other to amusing effect. The first, beginning in … [Read More...]