Bronwyn Averett

  • Review: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora

    Afia Atakora’s debut novel, set in the rural South, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, is a complex exploration of the deeply held tensions and continual trials that infuse a small, isolated community of former slaves. The story centres around Rue, who has inherited the position of midwife and healer from her mother, Read more

  • Review: Lakewood by Megan Giddings

    When Lena Johnson is invited to participate in a research study that will pay all her bills and provide for a future that is beyond comfortable, it is an impossible offer to pass up. A college student whose grandmother passed away leaving a pile of medical bills, and whose mother, Deziree, suffers from a mysterious Read more

  • Some Notes on The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris

    This year Santa sent a beautiful book to our family,* and I had to stop and write a few words about it because it has become a favorite evening ritual, and reading it aloud to our sons has made me stop and think about things like why we read aloud and how verbalizing certain things Read more

  • What I’ve Been Reading Lately

    Hello there! Hope you are all enjoying a warm and wonderful holiday time, sharing good food and good stories with dear ones, baiting Santa Claus with sugar cookies, and maybe cracking the spine of that novel that’s been sitting on your shelf for the last six months… As for my household, we are delightfully non-mobile Read more

  • Reading Notes: Why Love Hurts by Eva Illouz

    I’ve been slowly progressing through this remarkable book over the last couple of years. As an academic work that spans several fields–sociology, economic theory, culture studies, and literary theory (with a smattering of psychoanalysis)–it is fairly dense. So I’ve been picking it up here and there, reading a chapter and then letting it sit for Read more

  • Edward Clug’s Carmina Burana

    Hi, how are you, I recently discovered that dance criticism has been dead since 2015 and I’m real sad about it. How did I discover this very under-the-radar tragedy? I went to see Edward Clug’s Carmina Burana the other night–produced by Montreal’s Grands Ballets, along with another Clug piece, Stabat Mater on the program–and when Read more