Author: Heavy Feather

Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters, a story collection by Maya Sonenberg, reviewed by Sally Whitehill

In her new short story collection, Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters, Maya Sonenberg weaves anthropological texts and court documents (and a Barbie textbook) with the magical realism of fairy tales in a poetic and measured prose that twists and deepens our sense of the conscious world through the lens of what it means to be a…
“Memetic and Disoriented TV Dinners”: An Interview with Garth Miró by Claire Hopple

The Vacation is a beach read’s evil twin. But sort of a saintly one. Throw Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Aquinas, and Mike Judge in a boat headed for the jungle and you’ll be on the right track. Garth Miró torches the corporate wet blanket and sails for oblivion. Two tickets to paradise await you; you…
“I Want My Hand in the Fire”: An Interview with Jon Woodward by Zach Savich

Jon Woodward’s new chapbook, POOLGOER and SPELEOGRAPHER from The Economy Press, is composed of columns that streak down the page 1 or 2 letters at a time. The effect is immensely absorbing, pleasurable, enlivening; each page is rippled with columns. Concrete poetry that directly imitates shapes (e.g., a poem about a flower that looks like…
“No Dimensions”: Matthew Kinlin on Evan Isoline’s PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY

In For a New Novel, Alain Robbe-Grillet argues, “Each novel must invent its own form.” In PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY, Evan Isoline constructs nine distinct zones, or what he calls emotional geometries, for a nameless narrator to drift through like a shadow beneath an endless sky. The sense of space in PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY…
Flavor Town USA Fiction: “Sin Eaters LLC” by Will Musgrove

It was my first day. Inside the company vehicle, my trainer, Bob, read me the client’s file: sampling grocery store grapes, getting a little too tipsy on Sunday wine, several ticky-tacky sins, nothing a newbie like me couldn’t handle. Bob assured me the job was easy. All you had to do was eat the sin…
Side A Flash Fiction: “What Would You Say?” by Nicholas Claro

What Would You Say? I sent flowers. There was this card too, but I’ll get to that. My initial thought was roses. My next thought was too funeral-ish. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of bouquet. What do you think? I said to The Florist. We were on the phone. What’s the occasion? he…
Astrophil Press Novel Excerpt: WAITING FOR JONATHAN KOSHY by Murzban F. Shroff

From the author of Breathless in Bombay and Third Eye Rising comes an intensely engaging novel about life, family, friendship, and duty. In the heart of Pali Hill, the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, four friends await the arrival of Jonathan, a man “greatly appreciated for his wit, his effervescence, and his indignation,” a man exiled…
“And in a Heap Cam on Them with a Swack”: Notes by Peter Valente on a Few Passages in Gavin Douglas’ Aeneid with Examples of Its influence on Modernist Poetry

With new translations of Virgil’s Aeneid appearing last year, Shadi Bartsch’s translation of 2021 (only the second English translation from a woman; the first was by Sarah Ruden in 2009) and David Hadbawnik’s translation, which was published this past August, I thought it would be interesting to examine passages from the first English rendering of…
“I Drive, Therefore I Am”: Michael Quinn Reviews Today in the Taxi by Sean Singer

Born in Mexico in 1974, former New York City taxi driver Sean Singer recalls his time behind the wheel in his wryly humorous third poetry collection Today in the Taxi. Almost all of these prose poems begin “Today in the taxi” and follow the same structure: from the observational (who he’s driving) to the existential…