This loose affiliation of 19 of Philadelphia’s most talented women writers was in full ascendency when the COVID-19 crisis descended. How great, then, that when we retreated into our bunkers, we did so with new, powerful works by Kiley Reid and Carmen Maria Machado and Liz Moore and Emma Copley Eisenberg. Even better: We have so many more to look forward to. Read More »
This 38-year-old Northeast native's debut work, a memoir called The Removers, is dark and bleak and funny and utterly Philly. The down-on-his-luck narrator joins his sad dad, a disgraced former La Salle prof, in the business of making house calls to pick up corpses for local funeral homes. Between encounters with the dead and those they leave behind, he meanders in and out of love affairs, observes the dissolution of his parents' marriage, and ponders why he can't seem to gain any traction. A tour de force that should be the hands-down choice for the next One Book, One Philadelphia campaign. Read More »