Author: Heavy Feather
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Fiction Review: Gwen Werner Reads Fat Girl, SKinny by Amye Archer
The first time a boy called me fat, I was at the public pool in fifth grade. I’d chosen a one-piece tie-dye number from JCPenney and Emily, my oldest friend, had a two-piece blue suit of which I was endlessly jealous. That summer we spent every summer day together, in and out of the pool,…
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Fiction Review: Paul Albano Reads James Tadd Adcox’s Repetition
James Tadd Adcox’s novella Repetition is a hypnotic, deeply funny, yet strangely affecting journey through sadness, archaic conflict resolution, Kierkegaard, and hosting an academic conference. It’s an exploration of repetition and dreams and the ill-fated, inexplicable childlike ambitions forever-incubating inside us. It’s really good, is what I’m trying to say. The protagonist (also our unnamed…
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Poetry Review: Justin Carter Reads Requiem for Used Ignition Cap by J. Scott Brownlee
In Requiem for Used Ignition Cap, poet J. Scott Brownlee’s debut collection from Orison Books, place and religious faith combine to create a vivid portrait of the Texas Hill Country and Brownlee’s hometown of Llano, a portrait that dips below the outer layer of small town life and into the violent and often problematic underbelly.…
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“It ain’t the middle of life / but I’m still / caught in the woods”: Leonard Kress Reviews Anselm Hollo’s Poetry Collection The Tortoise of History
I first encountered Anselm Hollo at one of the legendary poetry readings held at Dr. Generosity’s Pub in Manhattan in the early 1970s. He had recently arrived from his native Finland (after a long stint working for the BBC in London.) Hollo cut an imposing figure—tall, bearded, wild-haired, his teeth chipped, his pleasingly accented voice…
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Book Review: Vivian Wagner on Chloe Caldwell’s Essay Collection I’ll Tell You in Person
In her new book of essays, I’ll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell has the voice of a best girlfriend confiding all of her deepest, darkest secrets—about acne and drugs, sex and binge eating. Caldwell makes it seem easy to speak with such a lively and intimate voice, but that’s only because she’s a masterful…
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“To Mark the Infinite Language of the Body”: An Interview with Sara Deniz Akant by Ally Harris
Reading Sara Deniz Akant’s Babette is like stepping into an alien bog, where matter is composed in language that looks vaguely Earthlike, vaguely English, but is actually largely foreign, partially invented, but familiar enough to tether the reader to the world. Babette, frankly, is an amazingly odd book. Reading it feels like decoding a puzzle…
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Review: Nick Sweeney on Of This New World by Allegra Hyde
All writers want to create new worlds. Good writers want to explore new worlds. Great writers want to expose new worlds. In Of This New World, the readers are exposed to twelve beautiful worlds and the inhabitants who survive in them. Allegra Hyde has her fingers on the pulse of today and the particular patterns…
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“How a Shark Encouraged Blake Lively to Finish Medical School,” a Haunted Passages essay about grief by Tasha Coryell
Someone is dead or someone is dying before the shark even arrives. Sharks can smell blood in the water, even if this blood is only a metaphor. In The Shallows, the shark has ostensibly been attracted to the beach by the floating whale carcass. In actuality, the shark was attracted by Nancy Adams’ grief. I…
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Book Review: Paul Albano on Julian Tepper’s New Novel Ark
Julian Tepper’s second novel, Ark, chronicles a once wealthy, currently inept, New York family, the (sort of) titular Arkins, on their strange, funny, and fraught slide down the socioeconomic ladder, undone by greed, bad luck, and a vexing proclivity for suing each other. Ark is a primarily New York-set novel—not the Gershwin-scored New York of…
Heavy Feather Review 