Literature on female sports has started to gain traction lately, and it's so satisfying to see this field discussed, finally! Female sports have been the afterthought to the glorified male athletics since the beginning of time, and even though we've made a lot of progress in other areas of inequality, it seems to me that sports are behind in that regard.

This memoir was such a raw and honest account. It was not at all the linear skating story I imagined and instead became a nonlinear read of many interesting essays on Pacific’s eventful life.

“I Cheerfully Refuse” is a beautifully crafted dystopian story taking us on protagonist Rainy’s journey as he sails the Great Lakes when life as he knows it doesn't fit an ever changing world any longer.

Joe Pete”, published post mortem and written by Ian McCulloch, flew into my life to manifest itself as a truly beautiful work of indigenous literary fiction.

Thank you Ian McCulloch for this story. Its depth and all it invokes. Its love and its grace. Its unflinching, refreshing authenticity. Thank you.

“The Road to the Salt Sea” by Samuel Kóláwole is an impressive new work of contemporary fiction, taking us on one man's migratory journey from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. It is a story of classism, of racism, of the exploitative nature of humanity in a corruptive environment, and then some.

“My name is Patric Gagne and I am a sociopath.”

Gagne feels basic emotions like happiness and anger, while more complex emotions like guilt, empathy, remorse, and even love, are foreign to her. She describes the stress of not having natural access to these feelings as the cause of her compulsive acts of violence and destructive behavior such as stalking, stealing, hurting people and even animals.

Published in the Beakful Litblog.

If you had to talk about the lives of the indigenous peoples that inhabited California before and during the arrival of whites, would you have much to say? Do we really know much at all?

Do you put family above all else? What would it take to change that for you?

In “Invisible Tears”, Iram Gilani tells us about her awful journey of abuse throughout many years of her life, all of it condemned by her family. Gilani deals with abandonment, molestation, forced marriage, and even being shot, leading to irreversible wounds and pain.

Can doctors be blamed for the opioid crisis?

What if a doctor prescribes narcotics to a patient who then dies a few days later from an overdose? Would you hold the doctor accountable?

What if said doctor established a clinic prescribing opioids with the sole goal of making money? What if these prescriptions were for insubordinate amounts of pills per person, in some cases for 600-800 pills per month?

If you were tasked with the creation of a story that combines the genres of dystopia, magical realism, and even some mystery, how would you go about it?

Téa Obreht manages this feat wonderfully in "The Morningside" by taking the reader into a world changed forever due to climate change.

This memoir truly stands out for me. For one, I can't think of another book that talks about Rastafarianism and the cult-like oppression it can bring about in the form of family abuse.

The author describes the exodus of the black community moving away from the Jim Crow South between 1915 and 1970. Slavery had been abolished, but life remained eerily similar with maximally enforced segregation, lack of education, lynchings, and the same old back breaking plantation work.

Caster tells the harrowing story of the discrimination she went through as a world-class 800m runner and Olympic gold medalist. To some members of the athletic community, she appeared male, which resulted in undisclosed, unannounced, and incredibly invasive gender verification exams while she was still a teenager.