Baker Swann, Julia. The Moon is Always Whole. Telford, PA: DreamSeeker Books, 2020.
Baker Swann is a Mennonite writer whom I have gotten to know via several Mennonite writing events over the past few years. I am very excited that her first poetry collection has just been published.
Smith, Zadie. Intimations: Six Essays. New York: Penguin Books, 2020.
I picked up this slim (97 pages) volume while doing some brief in-person holiday shopping at my local bookshop. I am obsessed with literature being written and published about the pandemic during the pandemic (there is definitely a book of literary criticism there if I can ever find the time and energy to write it, haha), so the first line of the book’s blurb–“Written during the early months of lockdown”–had me hooked. Smith is donating all of her royalties from the book to antiracist and pandemic relief organizations. I appreciate that she has chosen to extend the book’s activism in this way.
Daniel Shank Cruz 