Emily Choate | writer

I know so many natural-world-obsessed readers who’ll get hooked on Katy Simpson Smith’s new novel, The Weeds, the way I did. This book brings together two unnamed women botanists, living a century apart, tasked with naming every species growing among the stones of Rome’s Colosseum. Writing about The Weeds for Chapter 16 was such a pleasure. My review’s up today.

I was knocked out by poet Anna Laura Reeve’s luminous debut collection, Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility, which finds moving, startling ways of entwining motherhood with the natural world. It was such a pleasure to write about this book for Chapter 16. My review is up today.

Anthologies are always challenging to review, but in this case, the puzzle was how to choose from such abundance. What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, edited by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones, is a landmark anthology of labor writing. It gathers well over a hundred poems and essays from a broad cross-section of communities—and not one dud. That’s a serious feat. My review’s up today at Chapter 16.

I was delighted to write a round-up review of three memorable, recently published poetry collections by Tennessean poets, including Darius Stewart’s Intimacies in Borrowed Light, Katherine Smith’s Secret City, and Tyler Friend’s Him or Her or Whatever. The review’s up now at Chapter 16.

I’m delighted to share my Q&A with Knoxville writer Charles Dodd White, up today at Chapter 16. His writing’s dark lyrical voice, closely attuned to the natural world, enters terrain that remains crucial for southern lit to confront. You can read the Q&A here.

For my latest review at Chapter 16, I was lucky to get the chance to dive into Jamila Minnicks’ debut novel, Moonrise Over New Jessup, with its wonderful protagonist and fascinating story set in an all-Black Alabama town during the early years of the Civil Rights era, when the fight over desegregation was escalating. You can read my review here.

Writing about Sara Moore Wagner’s new collection, Hillbilly Madonna, for Chapter 16 was such a pleasure. Wagner’s poems speak in moving, feminist ways about her Appalachian origins and family trauma. She highlights experiences that have often remained hidden in the discourse about Appalachia and opioid addiction. As she puts it, “This book gives a face and a voice to the addict mother, one who is struggling to find a way out.” My review is up today at Chapter 16.

I’m thrilled to share that a short CNF piece of mine has been chosen as a Notable Finalist for Longridge Review’s Barnhill Prize. I like this journal’s mission—essays that evoke and respect the mysteries of childhood. Thanks to Longridge and judge Sonya Livingston! You can read my gal, “Field Day, 1990,” in their lovely new issue.

I fell in love with Ada Calhoun’s memoir, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me. Not only does it provide the lit history dishing you may crave, but it also illuminates the super hella entangled ways in which so many of us in the arts tend to live, whether we’re based in the East Village or in the smallest of podunks. My review’s up today at Chapter 16.

I loved Casey Parks’ Diary of a Misfit: a Memoir and a Mystery. Not only is this book moving and insightful—it’s also impossible to put down. Parks’ debut memoir will appeal to a broad range of readers who enjoy complex stories about growing up in small places, so I plan to push it on all kinds of folks. My review’s up today at Chapter 16.