Author: Heavy Feather

Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All, an anthropomorphic crime novel by Christopher Irvin, reviewed by Robert Young

Going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. I wasn’t familiar with the author’s other works, so what attracted me to this book was the premise alone: a feral twist on crime fiction, as the book’s back blurb informed me. I was intrigued. My interests were thoroughly piqued. I read onward. A…
Warewolff!, an archive by Gary J. Shipley, reviewed by Sean Oscar

I had to read Warewolff! in bursts. I found that sitting down with it for too long left me feeling hollowed out. Shipley is a skillful engineer of abominations, and there is certainly something rewarding in following the paths he sets before the reader, but be warned—this is an intense and difficult book which will…
“Genuine and True”: An Interview with Melissa Fraterrigo by Erin Flanagan

Melissa Fraterrigo’s first novel in stories, Glory Days, captures the desperation and beauty of living in the hardscrabble Midwest. Populated by fathers and daughters, lovers and enemies, the living and the dead, these characters struggle to figure out what they want and how to get it, along with the complicated order of what they need…
Future Home of the Living God, a novel by Louise Erdrich, reviewed by Sarah Elsasser

I was surprised to hear that Louise Erdrich has a forthcoming novel and was even more surprised when I was handed the book; the image chosen for the cover a grainy, technologically cold image of an ultrasound with the overlaid title: Future Home of the Living God. A prolific writer—this is Erdrich’s twenty-first novel, in…
Three Poems by b.g. thomas

big black wall a black woman must not ever assume that a smile means anything other than/ she is being sized up by the other/ to see where she stands/ how strong she might be/ what her heart might be made of/ that’s only if the other is accepting that black people are indeed…
“You Never Know What You’ll See”: A Conversation with B.J. Hollars by Ashely Adams

“Once upon a time there lived a bird and then that bird stopped living.” The straight-forward narrative of the Ivory billed woodpecker is the first line B.J. Hollars’ Flock Together: A Love Affair with Extinct Birds, but this is more than a book about a bird. Hollars leads us through museum collections, Christmas Bird Counts,…
The Walmart Book of the Dead, a spellbook by Lucy Biederman, reviewed by James Ardis

When I turned sixteen, I started working as a stocker and cart pusher at my mother’s Walmart Neighborhood Market. She joined Walmart when I was twelve years old, a single mother trying to keep up with the skyrocketing rent in our Texas suburb. On morning shifts, my mom and I even worked together, scanning in…
This Is a Dream, a one act sci-fi screenplay by Success Akpojotor

CLOSE ON: A book is received by a black hand, and ensconces on the decorated table. INSERT. COVER PAGE TIME PILL BY DAVID OYEWOLE BACK TO SCENE The black hand opens the novel’s verso page and inscribes a legible and beautiful autograph across it; and returns it, to the Yoruba woman, in her mid-thirties, who…
Three Poems by David Welper

Reversals When I was a kid, my sister helped me button my shirts. We’d stand in front of a full-length mirror and I’d try to figure it out. Try to figure out mirror images. That’s really what she was teaching me. To look at myself. “What you see in the mirror is kinda the reverse…