Author: Heavy Feather

Backchannel, poems by Emily Skillings, reviewed by Meagan Wilson

Read carefully each word in Backchannel, for you are warned: “Every word in this poem is a dead body.” Doughnuts and young vegetables, couches and tables, heavy artillery, cobblestones, vibrators, swans, semiotics, cash registers, vegan vitamins, male desire, cosmic tulle. Read them, conscientious of their placement next to one another, noting nods of your head,…
All Talk, Rich Smith’s debut book of poetry, reviewed by Jacob Collins-Wilson

Rich Smith’s first book of poetry, All Talk, from Poor Claudia, is over a hundred pages filled with play: form, sound, repetition, meta-poetry, character, setting, image and language are all put into the hands of a poet looking to have fun. The first poem, “The King of the Babies”, is a poem that introduces us…
“Dr. Mario or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ascension of Video Games into a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry That Will Consume Us All,” an essay by Salvatore Pane

I I convinced my parents to buy me a subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1997. I was thirteen years old and had just saved up to buy the original PlayStation, a console so futuristic with its built-in CD player that I moved my yellowed Super Nintendo and collection of Japanese role-playing games to my grandmother’s basement…
Moonhead and the Music Machine, a graphic novel by Andrew Rae, reviewed by David Rawson

The story itself of Andrew Rae’s Moonhead and the Music Machine is pretty straightforward: a boy with his head in the clouds feels like he doesn’t fit in, and by being confident, he does become a little popular, but then realizes his art and friendships are more important than trying to fit in. The conflicts,…
“We Push Up Against Change and Resist It, Sometimes Violently So”: An Interview with Peter Grandbois by Cameron Contois

I was very excited to interview author Peter Grandbois. Grandbois, who has authored six books, did not disappoint with his compelling and thought-provoking insights. His novel, The Gravedigger, was picked for the “Discover Great New Writers” program by Barnes & Noble. His hybrid memoir, The Arsenic Lobster, has also received high acclaim. More recently, Grandbois…
The Deep Zoo, short essays by Rikki Ducornet, reviewed by Allegra Hyde

“It is the work of the writer to move beyond the simple definitions or descriptions of things,” states Rikki Ducornet in her new essay collection The Deep Zoo. To her, the unmapped world is of greater interest, as it presents an opportunity “to bring a dream to life through the alchemy of language; to move…
“The Tension between Order and Chaos”: An Interview with Kristina Marie Darling by Shin Yu Pai

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of twenty books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and Scorched Altar: Selected Poems and Stories 2007-2014 (BlazeVOX Books, 2014). Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as…
The Year of Perfect Happiness, stories by Becky Adnot-Haynes, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

In this collection, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, Adnot-Haynes mines the iffy world of early adulthood, where the players are constantly looking over their shoulders, about to be found out as imposters. The things they’re supposed to want—babies, mortgages, and stable, healthy relationships—aren’t what they really want at all, and…
Poetry Review: AK Afferez on Paper, Cotton, Leather by Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Consider this: happy endings, when they do happen, are usually found near the end of the story. We are left to imagine a world of pure unadulterated bliss following marriage and the trials that led to it. Obviously this trend is being subverted by writers and artists who, increasingly, want to look at the aftermath…