Author: Heavy Feather

Temper CA, a novella by Paul Skenazy, reviewed by Hayley Neiling

With the death of her grandfather, Joy Temper returns to the small mining town of Temper, CA. Temper is the town where she spent her childhood in the 1970s, and it is the town that her family founded during the days of the California gold rush and has gained local fame for doing so. In…
“Out Goes the Blot,” new poetry for Bad Survivalist by David Kruger

I sit at the free clinic like a tailor stitchinga hidden nest in a jacket. After the hat wagafter the chromatichandkerchief I pukeas rainbowafter the scruff of white under-fuzzto rabbit a glove,the doves get out. I imagine my veins as birds in the rafters.I imagine my veins as after-magic,akimbo, still sparkling but unattended. Somewhere a…
“How Hazel Tried to Kill the One Good Thing,” an excerpt from the novel Hazel by David Huddle

“What do you think the movie of your life would be?” asks Ms. Hazel Hicks, a proud, articulate woman without vanity. Her nephew, John Roberts, captivated by the mystery of such a uniquely serious person, sets about making the metaphorical movie of her life. What emerges, through found documents, photographs, interviews, and a sequence of…
Survival House, a story collection by Wendell Mayo, reviewed by Eric Aldrich

Survival House, a new collection of short fiction by Wendell Mayo, invites readers to experience the ironic fetishization of the Cold War in America. The collection blends compelling characters with borderline absurd imaginings of the Nuclear Age ethos. Mutually assured destruction hovers in the background as atomic diction is repurposed into dad jokes with a…
Not Everyone Is Special, Josh Denslow’s debut fiction collection, reviewed by Michael A. Ferro

If there’s one resounding message to be found in Josh Denslow’s debut collection of stories, Not Everyone Is Special, it’s just that: Not everyone is special, but enough people are and Denslow has created a world filled with winners, losers, and everyone in-between—each with their own engrossing stories and each told with the care and…
Sunsphere, a new story collection by Andrew Farkas, reviewed by Paul Albano

Sunsphere, Andrew Farkas’ second collection of experimental short stories (after his brilliant, and brilliantly named, Self-Titled Debut) is set in, around, and underneath Knoxville, TN. But not the Knoxville that exists in the collective hunch we recognize as reality. Instead, this is a surrealist rendering of the city—the Knoxville of our dreams and nightmares and…
“The Manufacture of Biomechanical Slime-Horrors Sets a Bad Example for the High School Science Club,” a Haunted Passages story excerpt from the conspiracy horror anthology Freaky Tales from the Force: Season One

Elected as county sheriff on a paranormal defense and anti-goblinry platform, Sheriff Cecil Kotto has defended the citizens of his Rust Belt community from secret societies, malignant aliens, blood-stealing nonprofit organizations, and more. To document his war against the paranormal, Kotto stars in Freaky Tales from the Force, a local documentary-style public access television show…
“The Spark Became Flame”: Nettie Farris Interviews Wade Stevenson

Wade Stevenson’s prior poetry collection, But Darling I Love You!, was published in bilingual edition by Trilce Editions, Barcelona, 1968. John Ashbery also accepted a folio of poems for publication in his review, Art and Literature. This lead to the publication of Ice Cream Parlors in Asia by Tibor de Nagy Editions in New York,…
Mannequin in the Nude, a poetry collection by Logan February, reviewed by Barton Smock

… My story was much too long, soI cut it to bits. —from Portrait of The Mannequin as my Brother … Forinstance, homoerotic. For instance, a boy who eats glass. —from Boy Lolita … When I died, I stopped trembling. Imagine a mechanicalboy being powered down. —from Ars Moriendi ~ With a lyric that pushes…