Author: Heavy Feather

“The Uncomfortably Ugly, the Stupidly Human, and the Beauty of the Mundane”: Troy James Weaver Reviews Robert Vaughan’s Addicts & Basements

Robert Vaughan’s Addicts & Basements is a slim volume of flash fiction and poetry coming in at just under one hundred fifty pages. I’m not going to lie, that knowledge alone led me into some kind of garnered skepticism, as usually these types of collections are relegated to the I-have-all-this-shit-lying-around-might-as-well-make-a-book-of-it category. That’s not the case with…
“Prone to Marauding Poems”: An Interview with Lisa Gluskin-Stonestreet by Jane Huffman

Lisa Gluskin-Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse (Bull City Press, 2014), selected by David Baker for the Frost Place Poetry Chapbook Prize. Tulips, Water, Ash was selected by Jean Valentine for the Morse Poetry Prize and published by University Press of New England in 2009. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, At Length, Blackbird, The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, 32 Poems, Quarterly…
“One Time I Met a Swaggering Expat in a Japanese Convenience Store Who Gave Me a Lecture on His Theory of Novels”: An Interview with Tote Hughes by David Rawson

In reading Tote Hughes’ novella Fountain (Miami University Press), I was taken by the quirky, beautiful timelessness of the prose and characters. As Amber Sparks, author of May We Shed These Human Bodies, has said, “Tote Hughes’ Fountain is one of the strangest books I’ve come across in years, and I mean that as an…
Poetry Review: Brian Alan Ellis on Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero

Noah Cicero had a nervous breakdown. Following an Adderall bender and the unraveling of a cross-continental romance, the angry young man who authored critically acclaimed existentialistic novels like The Human War, Bad Behavior, and The Insurgent, completely and nervously broke down. Then he got himself together. Bipolar Cowboy, this collection of confessional poems and poem-like…
Get in Trouble, stories by Kelly Link, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Kelly Link’s fiction follows the same kind of logic that lets you coast through a dream where your partner is played by your tenth-grade math teacher and you’re wearing roller skates, yet there doesn’t seem anything weird about it. In Link’s stories, mermaids are an invasive species, the job of superhero sidekick includes a lot…
Nonfiction Review: Sam Price on Thrown by Kerry Howley

“Does not every human story open midscene?” The majority of narratives offered to us about athletes are constructed with an absolute disregard for complexity or nuance and are, rather, woven neatly together in ways that simplify and obscure reality. Information is instead dispersed, largely, in the form of amazing yet incoherent SportsCenter clips or articles…
Do Not Rise, poetry by Beth Bachmann, reviewed by Emily Paige Wilson

Beth Bachmann’s poetry is morning light sliced by blinds, fragmented and illuminating. It doesn’t burn when it settles on your skin, but its warmth unnerves. Its brightness momentarily blurs all sight. This warm unnerving, this brightened blurriness draws readers from sleep into a realm of sensation and forces us to pay attention. It awakens us.…
“None of Them Are Interested in Leaving a Cloud Unnamed”: An Interview with Mike Young of Magic Helicopter Press by Jane Wong

This past AWP, Magic Helicopter Press released its newest collection, Jordan Stempleman’s Wallop, on “a dirty Southwestern blanket that a spider fell out of.” MHP is a small press full of exploding spider energy that focuses on print books, eBooks, chapbooks, multimedia poetry, and reading tours (also check out NOO Journal). I had the pleasure of talking…
Jillian, a novel by Halle Butler, reviewed by Jack Kaulfus

Just know that when you enter a staring contest with Halle Butler’s first novel Jillian, you will not win. You will need to acknowledge your defeat quietly, then find a quiet place to recoup. Butler’s workplace premise is familiar. Jillian and Megan work in the same gastroenterologist’s office. Megan, a miserable twenty-four-year-old, spends her days…