Call Me Zebra is “at its heart a novel about the powerful role of literature in self-discovery,” writes the literary blog, praising Van der Vliet Oloomi’s to pull the reader into her character’s mind.

Salon calls the memoir a “poetic and empathetic work whose message — the border is built on an imaginary line, but its impact on the people who cross it, or can't, is real — feels more urgent this year than ever.”

For ESPNW, Glock writes an ode to the Olympic women who inspired her in her youth and continue to inspire her today.

"What Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts did for gender and sexuality,” the Review writes, "Call Me Zebra does for the experience of exile." The review also praises Van der Vliet Oloomi’s "quietly devastating moments" in her novel about the power of language and literature.

"Where did he get the balls? He didn't know there were balls required,” Sullivan writes, reflecting on the life of young rapper Lil Peep, who recently died of an accidental drug overdose. “There aren't," Sullivan concludes. "Something else is."

Halliday’s debut novel, a store from New York City to Kurdistan and back again, is “a deep rumination on the relation of art to life and death,” writes Booklist.

In a new poem for TriQuarterly, the Poet Laureate reflects on distance both literal and figurative, and asks “ The days/Are bright but cold. Our shadow/Spreads like ash across each road./ How much more will we bury/ In the earth?”

Keene reveals how translation is like being a fiction writer and why the ability to write - 10 pages, a poem a day, or even just a few sentences - is "astonishing." 

Williams, a Chicago native, talks about that way his birthplace influences work, and why he’s cautious about literary criticism: "I wish for poets to qualify the work we share without emptily commodifying it."