Paul Gruchow's Journal of a Prairie Year and Seth Kantner's Shopping for Porcupine were both reviewed recently by Cerise Press.

Shopping for Porcupine: "The job of a memoirist, a good memoirist, is to take a literary snapshot of a particular time or significant experience from their life, package and present it in a way that makes the writer’s true story an analogy to the reader’s, which then reveals a universal truth about humanity, and if possible, about the whole world. . . . I felt after reading his memoir, I could reasonably say, “I am this Seth Kanter, and Seth Kanter is me.” I am this person, and this person is me. Even if I was reading this person’s story about their life in Kotzebue, Alaska while sprawled across my couch in Brooklyn, New York."

Read the full Shopping for Porcupine review here.

Journal of a Prairie Year: "As much as Journal of a Prairie Year is about the magnificence of the Midwest grasslands, Gruchow’s book is also an invitation to learn about the self and how we, as individuals, fit into a much larger schematic of the world."

Read the full Journal of a Prairie Year review here.