(New York: Sonder Press, 2019) In its fifth year, The Best Small Fictions anthology is more robust than ever, representing authors across twenty-six nations and six continents. The volume – featuring over one-hundred flash fiction pieces – highlights ten stories … Continued
(Frankfort, KY: Broadstone Books, 2019) After thirteen years living in Portland, Oregon, my husband and I returned to New Jersey, our home state, so I could continue my career in clinical research at New York University. In three months, we … Continued
(Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020) Flourish, Dora Malech’s fourth collection of poetry, is divided into four sections, each introduced by a line of poetry by four different poets (Rita Dove, Saeed Jones, Carolyn Kizer, and Kay Ryan) that … Continued
WORKS DISCUSSED: Actress (New York, W.W. Norton, 2020) The Forgotten Waltz (New York, W.W. Norton, 2011) The Green Road (New York, W.W. Norton, 2016) The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (New York, Grove Atlantic, 2002) What Are You Like (New York, … Continued
(South Bend, IN: Wolfson Press, 2020) When writing her slim novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers explained to her husband in a letter her obsessive focus on revision: the novel was “one of those works that the least … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2019) Joan Fiset’s newest collection, How It Was with Scotland (2019, Ravenna Press), is a startling, vivid chapbook comprised of fragmentary poems and surreal images. Each poem is paired with visual art by Noah Saterstrom, and … Continued
Translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Storrs, CT: World Poetry Books, 2019) My Mountain Country, a collection of poems from three of her books in the original Chinese, tempts the Western reader to identify a bucolic romanticism in her work … Continued
After being poked & blood tested by the specialist who spoke Hmmm In several dialects including an obscure amputee sign language I eavesdropped On her conferring with beleaguered foreign colleagues by the soda machine, Whispering vowel-heavy polysyllabic antiseptic gibberish; apparently, … Continued
(New York: World Editions, 2019) Full disclosure: if you’re an MFA grad, like me, whose novelist credentials involve the unfortunate words self-published, you have to be demure, especially in certain artsy epicenters — Austin, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Reykjavik — if … Continued
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel (New York: Other Press, 2020) During the Holocaust, Denmark was the only European country that rallied around its Jewish population to save nearly every Danish Jew. Almost overnight, the resistance organized a rescue mission. … Continued
Because of the number and severity of the stab wounds and the disorder of his room, which indicated a violent struggle, the death of Horton Smith Juaire Jr. was at first listed as a homicide. It was not until after … Continued
(Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2019) Deep Vellum — known for publishing award-winning translations out of its eponymous bookstore in the historically neglected neighborhood of Deep Ellum in Dallas, Texas — has come out with its first ever chapbooks of … Continued
“Redwoods,” Hammond said, “hold this earth together. They never lose the dirt.” He stomped. “Roots this wide—” He did a full arm wingspan from where he sat in the center of the living room in his big easy, meaning to … Continued
translated from French and Arabic by Susanna Lang and Kay Keikkinen A woman walks by hands in her pockets once she has passed out of sight I’ll forget your last words I no longer know if … Continued
(Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books, 2019) There’s rarely a time when one can write about a novel dealing with a mass shooting in the United States without one or more real-life incidents freshly in the news. The media narrative starts … Continued
He isn’t giving me any answers. His book of scripture is open on the floor. If I lean in close, with my lips next to his ear, He whispers back verse after verse. It’s no use … Continued
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it … Continued
(Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2019) Kelly Cherry writes with a cosmic consciousness in her newest poetry collection, Observing the Invisible (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). Divided into four sections, these poems explore space, nature, science, philosophy, music, … Continued
When we first started talking about this issue’s theme, I compiled in my mind a cluster of associations and ideas that emerged from granary: plenitude, agriculture, resources, food, slow steady movement. A series of images: red barns, tall silos, highways … Continued
Translated from Armenian by Peter Balakian and Aram Arkun (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018) In the late eighties, I was teaching at the Uskudar Girls School in Istanbul, and I went on a trip with my partner at … Continued
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) If fiction exposes truth through the imaginary, Garth Greenwell’s novel Cleanness is a reimagining that splays open his characters’ secret selves, denudes them of pretense to tell hard, beautiful, human truths. … Continued
Ruth Danon (Word Has It) and Cassandra Cleghorn (Four Weathercocks) interviewed one another about their books, slow writing, visceral abstractions, outfoxing oneself, bird-ing and word-ing, and finding home in the “claw and scramble” of making a poem. In the process … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2019) With a quill dipped in satire and tongue lodged in his cheek, Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy in the early 17th century. Ostensibly a medical text, he instead opined on the philosophies … Continued
my lingerie I’d accidentally sent her a photo of myself in the new black cling-wrap meant for my lover my thumbs go loose after 2 a.m. … Continued
Translated from German by Michael Hofman (New York: Other Press, 2020) The minimal-inducing fiction of Swiss author Peter Stamm, winner of the Hölderlin Prize and short-listed for the Man Booker, has been garnering attention from English readers since his first … Continued
We live underground. More or less all the time. We eat roots, berries, tubers and insects. Occasionally rodents. Naked mole rats if we’re lucky enough to find a colony. Then we party. We even cook them if … Continued
(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2019) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s website is chock-a-block with opioid overdose statistics. From 1999-2017, nearly 400,000 people have died from an overdose involving opioids. There is a tendency (among … Continued
(Intuit House, 2019) Robert Nazarene is a poet on a mission. He established MARGIE, a well-respected journal, years ago to address his concern that poets are often relegated to the back seat in literary reviews. In an interview with “Winning … Continued
Ivan Medvedich was washing his silvery mustache after eating a slice of dark bread with honey when a whistle cut through the air, deepened in frequency, and sank into an explosion that shook … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2018) Deborah Woodard has written a little masterpiece. No Finis; Triangle Testimonies, 1911 transported me back in time to an event that had somehow, until now, eluded me: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York … Continued