Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Review: Chris Muravez on Songs from a Mountain by Amanda Nadelberg

“Self portrait near / morning had time / to figure the intricate / rules of the sea, why / we’re here, a negation / of stars, idea without / weather or knowing / the train will stop, send / the world.”—Amanda Nadelberg, “Big Data” I was sitting on a train to Chicago, slightly hungover,…
Fiction Review: Eric Nguyen on Alexandra Naughton’s American Mary

In 2014, Sophie Katz wrote “We Don’t Have To Do Anything.” In it, Katz detailed a trip to New York as a young writer in the Alt Lit (Alternative Lit, an internet-based literary subculture that is often associated with progressive experimentalism) community and how she was sexually assaulted by an editor pseudonymously named “Stan.” Later,…
Essay: Zeke Jarvis’ “The Unintentional Dreads”

Not only do I remember the baby cats, but I remember how I heard about the baby cats. Actually, I remember that better than I remember the baby cats, which I didn’t see that much. It was the guy’s girlfriend that asked, “Don’t you think the baby cats are gross?” I stared at her until…
“They Killed Portland, You Know”: Culture Essay by Tabitha Blankenbiller

Three years ago, I met Chloe Caldwell for lunch. I was two weeks away from moving out of Oregon for my husband’s job transfer. I was reluctantly going along because that is what spouses do and what marriage is about and all that bullshit. Caldwell’s essay collection Legs Get Led Astray was a pivot point…
Phil Spotswood on Shadow of the Colossus by Nick Suttner

Boss Fight Books, created in 2013, is a publishing house for creative nonfiction books on video games from classics like Galaga to games with a more cult following like ZZT or Super Mario Bros. 2. In the past five or so years, it seems like the gaming world and the literary world have been slowly…
The Loss of All Lost Things, short stories by Amina Gautier, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Winner of the Elixir Press 2014 Fiction Award, Gautier’s collection The Loss of all Lost Things centers, not surprisingly, around loss. These stories are populated with characters navigating the losses accrued in their pasts and dealing with their echoing effects in the present. Gautier doesn’t waste her time on the small losses—keys, pocketbooks—but goes for…
Poetry Review: Jackson Nieuwland on Dalton Day’s Actual Cloud

Dalton Day is a cloud with whale feelings and bones made of knives. He tells us this in the opening pages of Actual Cloud, his first book of poems. He tells us he is growing a whale in his belly. That he is filled with sand but he is not a desert. He keeps his…
Fiction Review: Zachary Kocanda Reads Gwen Beatty’s Kill Us on the Way Home

We read fiction to be who we’re not, if only for a few pages. And we don’t only do this when we read fiction. We do this, for example, when we pretend to be pregnant to befriend our Mormon ex-boyfriend’s wife. Or this is what one character does in “The Most Important Part of Being…
“Rift: Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan Talk About Life Through Stories”: A Review by Gay Degani

Imagine a coffee shop, something independent, unique, not part of a chain, where the air is filled with a rich, dark aroma, where the tinkle of music is subtle, underlining real conversations about real things. Now imagine a solid wooden table, highly polished by hand, scarred by time, yet warm with love. Stitting across from…