Author: Heavy Feather

Haunted Passages Short Story: “Pileups” by Andrew Graham Martin

Talking himself into a heart attack, Moses found, was easier than bending a spoon with his mind, which he’d tried without success to do for months in his youth. His mom had bought him Uri Geller’s book on psychokinesis as a consolation prize for not receiving a letter to Hogwarts on his eleventh birthday, and…
“In Search of Lost Monsters”: Adam M. Rosen Reads Chelsea Sutton’s Novella Krackle’s Last Movie

Being a documentary filmmaker is a bit like trying to play God. They must embark on an agonizing process of creation, sifting endlessly through old interviews, letters, journals, and other raw archival bric-a-brac, cutting and reassembling the disparate bits and pieces until they merge into a single coherent narrative. The reward is that, under the…
Side A Poetry: “The Tick Before” by Nadia Kalman

The Tick Before Before you were a fat brown tickdarkening my doorstepYou were a sad girl in a braid, in a pictureLooking out the frame for someone who would helpBut no one came. Then you had me. Others might say you are being cruelBut mom, I doubt that even Others, even youcould have predicted what…
Fiction Review: Kymberli Roberson Reads Dana Diehl’s New Collection The Earth Room

Dana Diehl takes us on a journey very few undertake in life in her short story collection, The Earth Room. It’s one of feminist self-discovery, of magical realism, the inherent organic bond between mankind and nature regardless of age, and the human psyche. This journey challenges not only the characters populating the stories themselves, but…
Haunted Passages Prose: “Moreso, Series Four” by Peter Cherches

The supermodel had a taste for ugly men of a certain age. She didn’t care if they were rich or poor, as long as they were ugly. In public places this always caused stares, stares of amazement, stares of confusion, stares of disgust. Sometimes people would actually shout things at her and her date. This…
Fiction Review: Emily Hall Reads Kristina Ten’s Debut Collection Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine

Kristina Ten’s debut short-story collection, Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine, is filled with female protagonists who refuse to acquiesce. Delightfully defiant, and reminiscent of Dahlia de la Cerda’s riotous Reservoir Bitches, Ten’s characters shrug off taboos and aren’t afraid of using violence to ensure their autonomy. Across the twelve stories in Tell Me…
Fiction Review: Sarah Bowen Holloway Reads Diane Josefowicz’s Linked Story Collection Guardians & Saints

Connected stories make up much of this wonderfully gnarly collection, Josefowicz’s third book of fiction, yet each of the offerings stands (and sings) alone, too. Many of these eleven tales include a doctor—usually a psychiatrist—and characters who suffer mental or physical illness. Protagonists or important characters are articulate, relatable children who are bewildered and brave…
Side A Hybrid: “Riparian Way” by Marilyn McCabe

Riparian Way Rains have gone. Dry days settle. The stream: trick, trickle, murmur of a former self, whisper of a way half-borrowed from old courses, half-bullied with melts and storms, wrinkle of ancient bed of sea, ice-scoured, slopping buckets of boulders, scree, writes a history in erratic and rubble. Watching the stream and the river…
Fiction Review: Emily Webber Reads Laura Venita Green’s Debut Novel Sister Creatures

A character in Laura Venita Green’s debut novel tells her daughter, “You’ve got to keep the wilderness at bay somehow.” Sister Creatures follows four women from the same small town, Pinecreek, in Louisiana, as they. Green blends both realistic fiction, horror, and supernatural elements as the women try to escape past trauma and toxic relationships…