Author: Heavy Feather

United States of Japan, a novel by Peter Tieryas, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

We owe Philip K. Dick a lot. With every sentence he wrote, Dick helped many writers and readers break through the doors of imagination and ask “what if?” He made us think, and he sparked a new generation of writers to jump high, write fast, and explain things later. Dick, in many ways, has influenced…
Nothing but the Dead and Dying, stories by Ryan W. Bradley, reviewed by Leland Cheuk

The title of Ryan W. Bradley’s eighth book, Nothing but the Dead and Dying, pulls no punches. Set in Alaska, these two-dozen stories are about a dead and dying part of the world, thanks to climate change, and the dead and dying white working class men that have become a media talking point in this…
Fiction: Michael Sheehan’s “I Love You Like This Because I Don’t Know Any Other Way to Love”

The TV said the bombing was claimed by the Taliban, who’d convinced the informant—a man, a doctor, a father—to kill himself for the greater good of killing high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials who believed he was on their side, a Taliban supporter turned CIA aide, though in truth he was a triple agent, as the TV…
Fiction Review: Stephanie Marker on Emily Capettini’s Thistle: Ghosts, Memories, & Ashes

Within the language of Emily Capettini’s work, there exists a subtle sense of gentle quiet that allows the reader to sink into it, to ruminate over the delicate nature of each sentence as it works to connect one moment to the next. There is a calmness, even in anger, even in chaos, that seeps tenderly…
“It Was Getting Dark Outside but I Didn’t Want to Stop Reading to Turn the Light On”: A Short Interview with Story Prize Judge Joanna Ruocco

Joanna Ruocco holds an MFA from Brown and a PhD from the University of Denver. She is the author of The Mothering Coven (Ellipses Press, 2009), Man’s Companions (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010), A Compendium of Domestic Incidents (which won the 2009 Noemi Press Fiction Chapbook Contest; judged by Rikki Ducornet), Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych (which won the FC2 Catherine…
Nonfiction Review: Amy Long Reads Pretentiousness: Why It Matters by Dan Fox

In a recent think piece on the Vice-owned music site Noisey, music journalist Dan Ozzi asks “Is the Album Review Dead?” In it, music journalist Dan Ozzi argues that, as print media has declined in prominence and even taste-making websites like Pitchfork have lost their gatekeeper status, screaming “amateurs” on Twitter have replaced the professional…
Fiction: Randolph Pfaff’s “Day Trip with David”

Open with the narrator speaking to a statue, conveying the sadness of New Jersey. Describing the taste of ocean air outside a Walmart, the incongruity of homeless men a block off the boardwalk. It’s the end of an endless car trip in summer, credits already rolling through late afternoon sky. The statue points out the…
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,…