Author: Heavy Feather
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Fiction from The Future: “Dog Days” by Michael Chin
From back before all the dogs were gone, I remember Waffles. The first time Waffles stole a waffle from Dad’s plate (the reason we renamed him from Rover). Waffles barking from the far side of the front door when I keyed into the house. The way Waffles smelled when he was wet—moist and mildew-y in…
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“Graphical Variations”: My Red Heaven by Lance Olsen, an historical experimental novel from Dzanc Books, reviewed by Daniel Green
In a career that now includes 14 novels and four collections of short fiction (as well as seven works of nonfiction), Lance Olsen has produced an admirable variety of experimental fictions, no one of which seems merely a repetition of any of the others. There are identifiable tendencies and gestures in his work, to be…
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The Fabulous Dead, Andriana Minou’s un-historical flash fictions from KERNPUNKT Press, reviewed by Christina Ghent
The iconic and celebrated historical composers, astronauts, actresses, philosophers, and authors among a host of others are brought back to life within Andriana Minou’s short story collection, The Fabulous Dead. Their lives are deconstructed in an often humorous manner that forces us to consider the possibilities that history might not have gotten it exactly right.…
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Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek, a very real story collection from Soft Skull Press, reviewed by Erin Flanagan
This slim collection of compact stories left me dumbfounded that we’re given the agency to run our own lives when it’s clear there are myriad ways we’re screwing them up. Disconnection, isolation, distraction, and desire are just a few of the ploys we dumb humans engage to safeguard against making connections that are too true,…
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The Ambrose and Vivian T. Seagrave Museum of 20th Century American Art, Matthew Kirkpatrick’s haunted exhibition catalog from Acre Books, reviewed by Joe Sacksteder
After spending a couple decades pretty bored with art museums, I’ve fallen in love with these spaces in the last couple years. I think the change occurred because my comprehensive exams at the University of Utah were focused on aesthetic theory and interdisciplinarity, and so I emerged from those intensive studies with a broadened view…
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Kara Dorris Reviews Adam Crittenden’s Poetry Collection Blood Eagle (Gold Wake Press)
In her poem “Spring,” Mary Oliver writes, “there is only one question: how to love this world.” And, at first glance, Adam Crittenden’s poetry collection, Blood Eagle, doesn’t seem to have an answer; yet, by dissembling illusions, by using irony and precision to cut away the dead flesh of our delusions, these poems take the…
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“Sixty-Four Opportunities in the Snap of a Finger”: Davis Schneiderman & Ruth Ozeki Discuss Her Novel A Tale for the Time Being
“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”—Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being Lake Forest Reads: Ragdale is a community reads program in partnership with the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest College, and the Friends…
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“Midwest Antique Mall, Financial Troubles, Kidnapping, Etc.”: Alex Higley Talks to Luke Geddes, Author of Heart of Junk
Luke Geddes and I first bonded on Twitter over our shared admiration for the little-loved novelist Wright Morris. Like much of Morris’s work, Geddes’s novel Heart of Junk, published by Simon & Schuster in January, follows an idiosyncratic assortment of distinctly Midwestern characters whose chief—or perhaps only—commonality is the place they live: Wichita, Kansas, or to…
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Bad Survivalist: “Hobby,” microfiction by Tyler Dempsey
I’m not even sure you’ll get this. They’ll convince you it’s from Earth, ancient. They (those in power). History’s changing. Eventually, no philosophy (maybe there already isn’t) suggesting we were a species of action. It was politics. Started in politics. Create emotion. Reactionary. Like a soccer game. Left, Right, hobbies. The home team. Candidate most-viral…
Heavy Feather Review 