Author: Heavy Feather

“Authenticity and Alienation”: Dennis B. Ledden on Jim Daniels’ Birth Marks

Although the title of this new superb collection by Jim Daniels, the award-winning author of thirteen previous books of poetry, may very well be a reference to the poems themselves, we may also speculate that his title refers to the nature of his experiences while growing up in 1960s/70s Detroit and to the alienation that…
Kelsie Hahn Reviews Twilight of the Wolves, a novel by edward j rathke

edward j rathke’s novel Twilight of the Wolves opens with a boy digging graves. He is alone. Everyone he knows is dead, consumed by a war that will engulf cities, peoples, a continent. It has already consumed his heart. Or so it appears: By the first nightfall, he no longer cried. By morning his lips…
Contributors’ Corner: Ryder Collins

Welcome to “Contributors’ Corner,” where each week we open the floor to one of our contributors to the journal. This week, we hear from Ryder Collins, whose chapbook The way the sky was now appears in 3.1. Ryder Collins has a novel, Homegirl! Her chapbook, The way the sky was now, recently won Heavy Feather Review’s first fiction…
Theories of Forgetting, a novel by Lance Olsen, reviewed by Joe Sacksteder

It’s cliché for reviewers to use the phrase “a _______ experience like no other.” When the experience is a reading experience, what the reviewer usually means is that the plot/characters/setting/language are particularly compelling/unique/distinctive/bold. In other words—if you read good books—an experience like quite a lot of others. But Lance Olsen’s novel Theories of Forgetting reminds…
The Static Herd, a novel by Beth Steidle, reviewed by Allegra Hyde

How do we write about death? Explain the inexplicable without sounding overwrought, cliché, false? Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we avoid it, dance around it, mask it in metaphor until any real substance is lost. If this is the case, we might take direction from Beth Steidle, whose recent novel, The Static Herd, addresses the paradox…
Contributors’ Corner: Katy Gunn

Welcome to “Contributors’ Corner,” where each week we open the floor to one of our contributors to the journal. This week, we hear from Katy Gunn, whose selection from Turnspit appears in 3.1. Katy Gunn hula hoops. Her first book, Textile School, is forthcoming from The Lit Pub in the fall of 2014, and a free…
Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, poetry by Bianca Stone, reviewed by m. forajter

Bianca Stone’s Someone Else’s Wedding Vows is a beautiful book. Published by the new partnership between Tin House and Octopus Books, Stone’s first full length collection of poetry explores the self from a distance in order to construct a clearer view of its movements and position within the larger world. Stone’s often passive reflections seem…
“Because Every Day Brings a New Jumble of Knives”: An Interview with Douglas Watson by Joseph Scapellato

When I read Douglas Watson’s debut story collection, The Era of Not Quite, I was awash with a rare and nourishing feeling: that what I was reading was exactly what I needed to be reading at that time exactly. Each of his stories deals a dark and witty blow. The collection is alive with a…
Together, Apart, fiction by Ben Hoffman, reviewed by Gavin Tomson

“The Great Deschmutzing,” the first story in Ben Hoffman’s chapbook collection, Together, Apart, begins with a gut-punch: “The first thing I want you to know is that none of us miss you.” The narrator, here, is speaking to her recently deceased father, in her heart and mind a failure. The same day he died, her…