Author: Heavy Feather

Sleepovers, Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’ debut fiction collection, reviewed by Nicholas Rys

I first read Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’ work online a year or so ago. I was taken by the narrator, the kinds of characters she wrote about, by her obvious tender affinity for her characters as well as her razor sharp determination to stare truth in the eye, to refuse to blink. Phillips’ debut, Sleepovers, in…
Haunted Passages: “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” a short story by Dan Stintzi

After college, Michelle had difficulty sleeping. The problem started when she was a freshman sharing a room with a girl from the coast named Miranda. One night, at a party, Michelle drank several cups of a fruity drink served out of a bucket placed in a bathtub. There were chunks of mushed, pulpy fruit floating…
Short Story: “the lies the silence tells” by Carolina Meurkens

These days your arms are covered in tiny red scratches. You can’t seem to get any work done without Jonah anchoring her claws into you. It hurts but you let her. Until it starts to feel good, that point right before she punctures your skin. You’re beginning to enjoy this pain of being needed. Which…
Roundabout, an improvisational fiction novel by Phong Nguyen, reviewed by Noreen Hernandez

The plot of Roundabout, the novel by Phong Nguyen, begins by asking “is this all there is?” I settled in for a lazy river ride of a read, but I immediately wished I’d brought a safety jacket. Because after a few pages the story turned into a white water rafting adventure. Roundabout is a novel…
Flash Nonfiction: “Cancer is missing” by L Scully

I You meet them when they get off the metro. You can’t tell who they are because you’ve only seen photos of them online, but the one with the mullet and 80s windbreaker comes up to you easily enough. They look better online. They’re standing with a man and speaking in your not-quite second language…
Esteban Rodríguez on The Trilogy, an Action Books poetry collection by Bruno K. Öijer

Horace Engdahl, the former Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, once said that the United States was too isolated from the literary world and didn’t translate enough to participate in larger literary conversations. The statement was not met without controversy, but considering the fact that less than 3% of books published in the United States…
Noreen Hernandez Reviews Carol Ann Davis’ essays on art, violence, and childhood: The Nail in the Tree from Tupelo Press

About twenty years ago, I felt buried under the usual family problems that most people face. I complained to my sister that while I didn’t expect anything miraculous, I would appreciate it if life would just get a little easier. Her short response was, “But life isn’t easy. And it’s not hard. It just is.”…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Common Tragedy” by Sylvan Lebrun

It wasn’t their fault, the fire. The last time the sheriff’s department spoke to the newspapers, they said the investigation was still ongoing, nothing conclusive. So it could have been anyone or anything—bad weather patterns or a rancher burning their trash. Even if it could be traced it back to Nora and Chloe, they still…
Haunted Passages: “Jolichanga’s Fury,” a short story by Miranda Forman

Father died s high that not even ravens could bury him. I don’t remember this. I wasn’t there. When, instead of Father, Uncle returned home at the end of the summer, Mother tightened her jaw and her lips and her soul. I was three years old when her smooth brown face weathered to leather. Her…