Author: Heavy Feather

Haunted Passages Poem: “Tangerine Dream” by Michael Sikkema

Michael Sikkema is a poet. He has a book forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press, a book forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press, and a chapbook of sound poems and collages fresh out from Low Frequency Press. He enjoys correspondence about owl communication, sound studies, and raising pleasantly feral children at Michael.Sikkema@gmail.com. Image: healthclubnu.nl
Corrupted Vessels, a swallow::tale press novella by Briar Ripley Page, reviewed by June Martin

Briar Ripley Page’s novella, Corrupted Vessels, from swallow::tale press, is unconcerned with the truth. Not in the unreliable narrator sense, where we have reason to doubt the story which is relayed to us—indeed, none of the four narrators are afforded the chance to mislead us any more than they, themselves, are misled or misinformed about…
“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

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

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

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

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

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

*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…