Author: Heavy Feather

Chapel of Inadvertent Joy, poetry by Jeffrey McDaniel, reviewed by Zachary Fishel

Jeffry McDaniel’s fifth book, Chapel of Inadvertent Joy, is an aptly titled collection of poems worth returning to again and again. The book is separated into three sections, each focusing on themes of love, middle-age, and how it feels to bite through life with wooden teeth. Which is fine for many writers, but McDaniel ups…
Collected Alex, a novella by A.T. Grant, reviewed by Matt Weinkam

IIn part one of A.T. Grant’s three-part novella Collected Alex (winner of the 2012 Caketrain Chapbook Competition) a boy named Alex receives a dead body from his parents for his eighth birthday. “My parents held each other and watched as I inspected it. They were so excited,” Alex tells us. “What am I supposed to…
Contributors’ Corner: Jane Liddle

Welcome to our new interview series, “Contributors’ Corner,” where we open the floor each week to one of our contributors to the journal. This week, we hear from Jane Liddle, whose story “The Last List” appears in 2.2. Jane Liddle waited at school bus stops in Newburgh, New York, learned to drive on the north…
“My Ex Boyfriend Came to Me in a Dream and Told Me Everything I Had Must Fit into a Shoe Rack Inside of His Car”: Tanner Hadfield in Conversation with Elizabeth Mikesch

Elizabeth Mikesch is a prose stylist to shout about. Her debut collection Niceties: Aural Ardor, Pardon Me (Calamari Press) is a breathtaking work of fire, of hips, of sound, of saying. When I approached her about an interview, she asked if I felt like experimenting. I consented, though I wasn’t sure what she had in mind. I…
In Pieces, short works by Marion Fayolle, reviewed by Nick Francis Potter

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Thirty-some-odd years ago, Will Eisner, in an effort to legitimize comics as a serious art form, pitched his collection, A Contract with God, as a “graphic novel.” Eisner didn’t coin the term, but he definitely popularized it, and while many comics scholars now recognize (rightly, by my estimation)…
Reckoning, a novel by Rusty Barnes, reviewed by Dan Townsend

Rusty Barnes’s first novel, Reckoning, is the story of Richard, a fourteen-year-old country boy, who finds a woman naked and left for dead in the woods. Through this woman, Misty, Richard accesses the dark side of the small farming town where he lives. Motivated by teenage curiosity, hormones, and a fragile sense of down-home morality,…
The Last Days of California, a novel by Mary Miller, reviewed by Sam Price

There’s a theory in neuroscience that brains “couple” when undergoing successful communication. The speaker’s brain will utilize its portions that are necessary for speech production while the listener, with a slight delay, uses the portions that are necessary for speech comprehension. If the brains aren’t “coupled,” there is little retained knowledge in the listener, even…
EarthBound, nonfiction by Ken Baumann, reviewed by Jeremy Behreandt

EarthBound—and I mean the videogame here, not the store—was released stateside for the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1995. On front of the packaging, an imposing gold Starman stood with its hands … or tentacles … planted on its hips against a psychedelic backdrop. Reflected in its visor was a small boy wearing a…
“Night Songs”: An Interview with Kristina Marie Darling by Sally Deskins

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of sixteen books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and a forthcoming hybrid genre collection called Fortress from Sundress Publications. Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the…