"The landscape in A Grave is Given a Supper recalls the tones of Frank Stanford, steeped with our phantasmagoric Texan borderlands. Soto offers up each poem like a votive candle, wreath of roses, or weapon, to lay on the altar of the outlaw Jesus Malverde, announcing the arrival of a new literary voice." —Fernando A. Flores
"Los Tigres del Norte warn, in a classic narcocorrido that I can imagine sputtering over the static of a sun-bleached radio in the border town where this collection is set, Sin talento no busques grandeza. In A Grave Is Given Supper, a debut as hauntingly moving as a dog's three-legged waltz, Soto displays a talent that achieves that greatness, lyrically guiding us through the desperation, dehumanization, and senseless tragedies born of our war on drugs." —David Shook
“Mike Soto’s inaugural collection, A Grave is a Given Supper, is forceful and varied, shedding unflinching light on the intricate paths of two protagonists, Topito and Consuelo. These two dynamic speakers find themselves embroiled in the ‘glitter and grit’ of El Sumidero, an imagined US-Mexico border town ravaged by the drug war. Throughout the collection, Soto employs dark imagery, invocations of narco-saints, and folk spirituality to ultimately obscure the certainty of destiny, especially in a world with various forces vying for the opportunity to play God.”— Nathan John (Michigan Quarterly Review)