Translated from the German by Michael Hulse (New York, NY: New Directions, 2016) Talk of a wall and the ban regarding Muslim refugees is everywhere. Immigration has become one of the hot bed topics currently raging in America. On social … Continued
(Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009) “Even now it is an impossible idea, that we are all connected, all of us,” writes Eula Biss in Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, a provocative exploration of race in America. Biss is … Continued
(El Paso, TX: Veliz Books, 2017) To New York City, I’m an outsider. I’d never even visited until my mid-twenties, when my New Jersey grad-school friends and I piled into a car late one night. We drove through a tunnel … Continued
(New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) It may be best to begin by noting that I am not the audience for this debut novel, a collection of stories inspired by author Bethany Ball’s experiences living with her husband’s extended … Continued
Japanese Girl at the Siege of Changchun: How I Survived China’s Wartime Atrocity. Translated from the Chinese by Michael Brase. (Berkely, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2016) There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” … Continued
(Kirksville, MI: Truman State University Press, 2016) Myths survive in the world for a reason. Just when they seem to have taken on too much tarnish, too much dust, an artful hand can reach out and wipe their surfaces clean, … Continued
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016) A strip mall and a tornado, quirky products and people bothered by subterranean grievances, interoffice rivalries and politics, a Venn diagram approach to characters and events, and a town that is damned by the … Continued
(New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016) In his latest book, The Lost Time Accidents, John Wray exhibits an uncanny ability to make palatable scientific and mathematical theory, and weaves both into a complex storyline, set primarily in the … Continued
(Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016) I, like Laura Sims, have mulled over the various ways in which the world could end on many nights. She says it “is just a roundabout way of worrying about death, I suppose, though … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Howling Bird Press, 2016) At first, the story is familiar: a man walking his dog down the beach opens a bottle tossed up by the surf, releasing a grateful genie. But when promised any one thing his heart … Continued
Translated from the German by Tim Mohr (New York, NY: Europa Editions, 2011) What about me? That was the question my boyfriend’s ten-year-old brother, J., asked approximately three dozen times over the short weekend during which we saw him recently. … Continued
(New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) Built on an in-depth exploration of commonplace experiences, Michael Knight’s short story collection Eveningland explores the stages of a linear lifespan of its various fictional residents in Mobile Bay, Alabama. While guiding readers … Continued
(American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins, the Art & Science of the Violin. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge Press, 2016) In my first year of undergraduate work, I met a fellow arts student who was an extremely gifted sculptor and painter. As an unabashed … Continued
(Is It All in Your Head? True Stories of Imaginary Illness. New York, NY: Other Press, 2017) Justine had fibromyalgia – or so that’s what she told me. No matter how much she slept, she was always tired. Her joints hurt. … Continued
(Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry Press, 2016) “When you reach a certain age – say sixty or so, things start to haunt you. You are well into the second half of the roller coaster ride, and you are looking back at … Continued
(Las Vegas, NV: Zeitgeist Press, 2016) A couple years ago, I moved to Nevada from Washington state. I packed all my belongings into my car, and I drove. In my Subaru were my clothes, LPs, books, saxophones, and even my … Continued
(New York, NY: Black Cat, 2017) Toward the end of Euripides’s Medea, Jason (erstwhile Argonaut, theiver of the Golden Fleece) abandons his wife Medea to marry Glauce, the daughter of the king of Corinth. Hard to blame him quite – … Continued
(Rittenhouse Writers: Reflections on a Fiction Workshop. Philadelphia, PA: Paul Dry Books, 2016) I used to belong to a writing workshop in Philadelphia that was no joke. The instructor, James Rahn, played by standard workshop rules: no talking when your … Continued
(Montgomery, AL: New South Books, 2015) When I came across Andrew Glaze’s new poetry collection, Overheard in a Drugstore, I wasn’t sure what direction the book would take. Eager to learn what the content of the poems consisted of, I … Continued
Books Discussed: Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2010) Salvage by Kristy Bowen (New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2016) What Weaponry by Elizabeth J. Colen (New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2016) I was initially … Continued