Author: Heavy Feather

  • “Catalog of Nameless Girls,” a short story by Madeline Vosch for Haunted Passages

    “Catalog of Nameless Girls,” a short story by Madeline Vosch for Haunted Passages

    I have been sleeping with a married man for the past few months. I know, I know. But hear me out: I have been lonely. Joe is barely married. Separated. Almost divorced. When I met him, his wife had already moved out, already taken their daughter to a new house on the other side of…

  • A Review of Aimee Parkison’s Sister Séance by Stephen Daly

    A Review of Aimee Parkison’s Sister Séance by Stephen Daly

    Set in Massachusetts c. 1865, Aimee Parkison’s novel Sister Séance presents the haunted world of a family with many dark secrets, and how those secrets can rise unexpectedly and wreak havoc on the living. We are introduced to a family of four sisters—the Hayden girls—who, each very different from each other, carry the memories of a troubled…

  • Deadheading and Other Stories, an award-winning short-story collection by Beth Gilstrap, reviewed by Drew Belle Elsey

    Deadheading and Other Stories, an award-winning short-story collection by Beth Gilstrap, reviewed by Drew Belle Elsey

    I was born 700 miles away from the Carolinas, on the other side of the Mississippi, away from mountain peaks, cabins in the woods and piers jutting into the ocean. But as I was reading Beth Gilstrap’s award-winning Deadheading, I could smell the chicken sizzling in full-fat butter and okra crisping in cornmeal on my…

  • Those Fantastic Lives, strange stories by Bradley Sides, reviewed by Philip Clapper

    Those Fantastic Lives, strange stories by Bradley Sides, reviewed by Philip Clapper

    When we read stories that contain both the beauty of the world and its gloom, we can see our reality for what it truly is. Bradley Sides’ new collection Those Fantastic Lives contains compelling pieces of fiction that use the speculative lens to terrify, delight, and aid us in pondering the true reality around us,…

  • “Spending Time with the Beast”: Maxwell Malone Interviews Darrin Doyle

    “Spending Time with the Beast”: Maxwell Malone Interviews Darrin Doyle

    Darrin Doyle is an author and English professor at Central Michigan University whose fiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol, The Long Story, Cottonwood, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other publications. He has written two novels, Revenge of the Teachers Pet: A Love Story and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo, and has published three short story…

  • You’re Pretty Gay, a short story collection by Drew Pisarra, reviewed by Jarrod Campbell

    You’re Pretty Gay, a short story collection by Drew Pisarra, reviewed by Jarrod Campbell

    The ease with which queer lives can, in the blink of an eye, turn from something mundane into a moment of incredulous absurdity becomes commonplace the moment a person accepts that truth about themselves. Many components add together and create complex formulae necessary for any concoction: childhood longing and distress, adolescent anxiety, adult damages, to…

  • Side A: “The Borg EP,” a comic by Rachel Busnardo

    Side A: “The Borg EP,” a comic by Rachel Busnardo

    *Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. The Borg EP Mini-interview with Rachel Busnardo HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? RB: There are lots of moments that have shaped me as a writer, some big, but many were very, very small little pin pricks…

  • “Defiance and Dilemmas”: An Interview with Michael J. Seidlinger by Hillary Leftwich

    “Defiance and Dilemmas”: An Interview with Michael J. Seidlinger by Hillary Leftwich

    Is writing an act of defiance itself? Or do the dilemmas we face as writers push us into acts of defiance? Michael J. Seidlinger and I got comfy and chatted back and forth via email over a week’s timespan and sunk our literary teeth into the emotions involved with writing—more importantly, the defiance that often…

  • Two Poems for Flavor Town USA by Avery Gregurich

    Two Poems for Flavor Town USA by Avery Gregurich

    I Keep Guzzling Bug Juice, Thirsty As I Am I can never leave the Casey’s convenience store without myBug Juice. I just gotta have that sport cap thrill. It’s always gotthe Vitamin C I’ll need, and less sugar than apple juice. There’seven a Straw’ Nana flavor to boot! Some like it hot. Others drinkonly Whistl’…