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Wild Shrew Literary Review
Wild Shrew Literary Review (WSLR) publishes online book reviews. While WSLR is book-focused, we are open to accepting reviews of other media such as films, art exhibits, and author Q&As. Reviews should be about 400-700 words if on a single book, 1,300-1,500 words if on 3-5 books, 1,200-1,500 words if it’s a book excerpt, and up to 2,000 words if it’s an author Q&A. Please contact the WSLR editor, Chloe Berger (chloe at sinisterwisdom dot org) if you would like to write a review or if you have any questions.
You can view this book review template to get a sense of what you should include in the review.
Please refer to the Sinister Snapshot Style Manual, as the WSLR style is similar.
Reviews by Genre:
Latest Reviews:
Courtney Heidorn Reviews Age Brings Them Home to Me by windflower
“windflower uses the perspective from Mother Earth to see everything life offers: family, love, self-actualization, and justice.”
Judith Katz Reviews Grace Period by Elisabeth Nonas
“Nonas has created an affable first-person narrator with Hannah. She spends the bulk of her grieving (and this novel) trying to figure out who she is and what she is meant to do now that Grace is gone.”
Pelaya Arapakis Reviews The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich by Julie Weiss
“The Jolt is a dazzling poetic collection that revels in the majesty and resilience of lesbian love.”
Sisel Gelman Reviews unalone by Jessica Jacobs
“This poetry collection insists there is something powerful and elevated in the spiritual realm, and through study and reflection, we might attain a fraction of it. This fraction will guide and heal us.”
Kali Herbst Minino and Darla Tejada Review My Withered Legs and Other Essays by Sandra Gail Lambert
“Artfully covering topics of independence, the writing process, aging, and familial and romantic relationships, the collection of essays is about much more than the title suggests—her legs.”
Sarah Parsons Reviews Love the World or Get Killed Trying by Alvina Chamberland
“Readers who enjoy journeys of self-discovery and adventure will find themselves drawn into the wonderful world of Alvina Chamberland.”
Catherine Horowitz Reviews City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter
“It is hard to truly pull off a sweeping epic like this one, but Fruchter’s debut novel is continuously riveting, insightful, and poignant, leaving readers all at once satisfied and curious about what the future holds.”
Henri Bensussen Reviews The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization that Transformed America by Katherine Turk
“Read this fascinating book to learn about the controversies that NOW became known for, how they were settled, the history of the women who directed it, and how they did it.”
Ella Stern Interviews Penny Mickelbury
“We not only want to hear from you, we need to hear from you. Most of us don’t have children and grandchildren. Unless we teach, we have no idea what you all are thinking, or what you’re feeling, or what you’re reading, or what you think about what we write.”
Mikayla Hamilton Interviews Ben Negin (Benadryl) of Boone Barbies
“I am driven to perform because it serves as an outlet for creativity, expression, activism, and emotions.”
Courtney Heidorn Reviews Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volume II by Julie Weiss
“Breath Ablaze is imbued with subtle storytelling, powdered sugar longing, and a thread of timelessness that delivers Weiss’s poems straight to the heart of any sapphic reader, young or old.”
Henri Bensussen Reviews Poor Things Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
“In this film, Emma Stone becomes Bella, portraying so naturally her behavior and emotions that I felt like I was there, pondering the oddness of this child, watching her grow into a young woman.”
Judith Katz Reviews Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston
“Archangels of Funk is the most hopeful book about a coming dystopia this reader could ever imagine.”
Courtney Heidorn Reviews American Queers: Poems by Jesse Marvo Diamond
“Jesse Mavro Diamond creates a guiltless queer kingdom of historiography and reclamation.”
Emily L. Quint Freeman Reviews “Nelly & Nadine” Directed by Magnus Gertten
“It was one of those films that stays with you, makes you think, makes you remember, makes you well up with tears.”
Courtney Heidorn Reviews The Weight of Survival by Tina Biello
“The collection is primarily, and poignantly, a love letter to Biello's ancestry, her mother country, and her childhood home of British Columbia.”
Yeva Johnson Reviews Floating Bones by Rae Diamond
“Rae Diamond’s Floating Bones is a magnificent multisensory experience fitting for this hybrid book of poetry, art, and essays. I invite any reader to enjoy it as I did from the first touch to the last page.”
Yeva Johnson Reviews The Price of a Small Hot Fire by E.F. Schraeder
“It was an act of bravery for me to dive into Schraeder’s poetic world without rules, where no topic was off limits. Luckily, my bravery was handsomely rewarded.”
Yeva Johnson Reviews Next Time You Come Home by Lisa Dordal and Milly Dordal
“Next Time You Come Home is a beautiful collection that transforms a mother and daughter’s correspondence into a lyrical tour de force on grief and connection while spotlighting big and tender moments of the last part of the twentieth century.”
Masthead
"Empowerment comes from ideas."
― Charlene Carruthers
"Your silence will not protect you."
— Tourmaline
"Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught."
— Leila Raven