Author: Heavy Feather

Travel Notes, an episodic novel by Stanley Crawford, reviewed by Dan Townsend

I. On the surface, Travel Notes by Stanley Crawford is glib satire, in line with Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Slapstick. The novel is episodic, owing to the tradition of the farcical travelogue. Promotional materials compare the story to a “fever dream”. I’m not sure what that means, fortunate as I’ve been never to have had a fever…
Contributors’ Corner: Justin Hamm

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 Justin Hamm, whose three stories appear in HFR 3.3. Justin Hamm is the founding editor of the museum of americana and the author of the chapbooks Illinois, My Apologies…
[Sic], a Dead/Book plagiarism by Davis Schneiderman, reviewed by Paul Albano

Davis Schneiderman’s writing is typically propelled by a kind of palpable kinetic energy—an explosive proliferation of images, concepts, ideas, and well … words that collide and intersect in the strangest of ways. This is most evident in his 2010 novel Drain, set in the desiccated basin of what used to be Lake Michigan, amidst a…
Nick Kocz on Nine Rabbits, an autobiographical novel by Virginia Zaharieva (trans. Angela Rodel)

Manda, Virginia Zaharieva’s fictional alter-ego in her intensely autobiographical first novel, Nine Rabbits, leads the kind of wild, globe-trotting life that would make most people envious. A successful poet, magazine publisher, television and radio personality, mother, and psychoanalyst, she’s dogged throughout her life by the abuse she suffered as a young girl at the hands…
Hill William, a new novel by Scott McClanahan, reviewed by Thomas Baughman

Scott McClanahan is one of the rising stars of the Indie Lit World. He has published several story collections and his novel-in-stories, Crapalachia: A Biography of Place has received considerable praise from reviewers. Now he has published his second novel, which is also a novel-in-stories, which I was excited to read and am now proud…
Contributors’ Corner: Luke Wiget

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 Luke Wiget, whose story “An Instrument” appears in HFR 3.3. Luke Wiget is a writer and musician born and raised in Santa Cruz, California who lives in Brooklyn, New York.…
Crystal Eaters, a new novel by Shane Jones, reviewed by Michael Goroff

A few personal notes before I dive full-tilt into this review of Shane Jones’ new novel, Crystal Eaters, that will, hopefully, over the course of the review, become apparently non-self-serving and more edifying about the nature of this book: 1. The day I started reading Crystal Eaters, my cat was in the hospital with kidney…
Gabino Iglesias on The Number of Missing, a novel by Adam Berlin

September 11 is a date that will forever live in the memories of those who were alive when the Twin Towers crumbled. The devastation was felt around the world, but it touched New Yorkers in ways that only they can understand, especially if the tragedy affected them directly via the loss of a loved one.…
Contributors’ Corner: Britt Melewski

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 Britt Melewski, whose story/poem “Scharky” appears in HFR 3.3. Britt Melewski grew up in New Jersey and Puerto Rico. His poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, The Philadelphia Review of…