Author: Heavy Feather
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“Monster Family Portraits” for Haunted Passages: 14 Ghost and Monster Movies that Inspired or Influenced Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey
My previous collection, Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, was specifically and self-consciously assembled around an idea of tracing the history of horror cinema through short stories inspired by films from different eras. Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales has no such underlying modus, but movies are a huge part of my mental vocabulary, and monster…
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“Life During Wartime”: Matthew Morgenstern on Matt Young’s Iraq War memoir Eat the Apple
In 1979’s “Life During Wartime” from the Talking Heads, David Byrne sings: The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,I’m getting used to it nowLived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto,I’ve lived all over this town Though New Wave doesn’t figure into Matt Young’s Eat the Apple, these detached, ostensibly all-encompassing lyrics characterize Young’s…
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“Rooms Echo Louder without Anything Inside of Them”: Hillary Leftwich Talks to Steven Dunn
Steven Dunn’s second novel, water & power, is published by Tarpaulin Sky and available to order now. Shortlisted for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, he is the author of Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016), which was co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and finalist for a Colorado Book Award. Dunn was…
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Fiction: “Men with Potential: A Guide to Getting Sober and Staying Sober” by Kate St. Germain
Schedule a date with a tall someone with salt-and-pepper hair who finds you online. He will play drums. He will be part of an art collective. This will be interesting to you. Order beer, he will order tequila. Get drunk. You will be turned on by the fact that he is almost a decade older…
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Haunted Passages: “Halloween Poem” by Lucas Mangum, author of the dark suspense novel Gods of the Dark Web
Halloween, six-years-old:Stephen King’s Silver Bullet,My brother and IChased by a mummy.The next year I dressedAs the Devil in red,And a Catholic friend said,I shouldn’t do that.Trick or treating broughtReese’s and 3 MuskiesAnd fun-sized Milky WayAnd candy corn I only sawOnce a year.Halloween is a dentist’s nightmare,But I’ve still got perfect teeth. Halloween of ’97,I lived…
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“The Good Folk” a Haunted Passages nonfiction essay by Carrie Laben
It was one of the most grueling scenes of my novel to write. A mother confronts the supernatural family horror that has possessed her child, driving it out with cries of “No! She’s my daughter! Not yours!” as the little girl’s sister looks on. It sounds heroic, doesn’t it? In most stories, it would be.…
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David James Keaton’s “Gasoline Dreams”: A Definitive, Last-word Inventory of Car-Chase Flicks for Haunted Passages
As I was poking around under the hood of my new collection, Our Pool Party Bus Forever Days: Road Stories, gathering up stories and realizing that a theme had miraculously begun to emerge, I also understood that, at some point, a reader might find the book’s supposed connection to the road a little … abstract…
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“My Day with the Donald,” a modern American tall tale by Jeff Cuffee
The dead visit me in dreams, and sometimes speak with me. People have said it’s because of my heritage, that I’m African American and Native American, and that has something to do with it. I’m not so sure. In fact, I believe that most of us dream of the dearly and not-so dearly departed and…
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“The Colossal Beast Strikes a Match in My Brain”: Lee Widener Introduces His Cosmic Horror Collection Under the Shanghai Tunnels to Haunted Passages
It all began for me on a Saturday night when I was eight years old. I had awakened thirsty and crept down the stairs to get a drink of water. As I tiptoed past the living room, careful not to make the slightest sound, since I wasn’t supposed to be up, I heard the most…
Heavy Feather Review 