Author: Heavy Feather

Geoff Graser and K.E. Semmel Discuss His Novel The Book of Losman

The Book of Losman is the debut novel by K.E. Semmel, a writer and translator who lives in Scottsville, New York. Semmel tells the story of Daniel Losman, an American literary translator who has emigrated to Denmark. Losman is trying to discover the cause of his Tourette syndrome, and is willing to go to great…
New Haunted Passages Poem by Rachel Mallalieu: “If My Son Had Stayed Dead”

If my son had stayed dead,I would not have written the poemwhere my husband wailed my nameand I ran outside, to find him holding our baby whose skin was as blueas his eyes, as blue as the sky, as blue asthe shirt he wore that day. The poemwhere I grabbed my son and laid him…
Fiction Review: Vanessa Saunders Reads Annell López’s Collection I’ll Give You a Reason

Annell López’s first book, I’ll Give You A Reason, is masterclass in writing about people on the margins. The winner of the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize from Feminist Press, this short-story collection delves into themes of exclusion on the grounds of citizenship, race, and mental illness. Set in New Jersey, a haunting sense…
Two Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Newly Translated by Jefferey Samoray

Translator’s note: the originals of both poems were first published in the Apollinaire collection Le Guetteur mélancolique (The Melancholic Watchman). To the best of my knowledge, my translations represent their first appearance in English. Tristesse de l’Automne Vous êtes le soldat de toutes les bontésA vous voir la douleur tremble fuit et s’étonneVoyez votre départ…
Fiction Review: Hantian Zhang Reads Yuxin Zhao’s Novel The Moons

On the first page of The Moon: Fire Rooster to Earth Dog, Yuxin Zhao states her aesthetic outright: she values fragments more than structure, digression more than destination. The book can be read as a compilation of diary entries, scattered tiny life episodes ordered chronologically and grouped by zodiac signs. Together, in the space outlined…
Fiction for Side A: “Lazarus Goat” by Jacob Austin

Lazarus Goat The goats dawdle in the field. They show no remorse for yesterday’s incident. I had been all set to go home. Nothing to do but call the goats in, count them, and lock the gate. Mopface and Lamby, the pair of massive komondors, were lying on either side of the entrance, their lion…
“Binging an Untitled Original Series Set on Multiple Continents”: Shane Joaquin Jimenez Reads Rupert Taylor’s Novel Please Let Me Destroy You

Reading Rupert Taylor’s riotous, polyphonic debut novel Please Let Me Destroy You is like watching light reflect off a disco ball, spinning radiant, ever-shifting constellations across your mind’s eye. At turns absurdist and psychedelic, the book is an often funny, often tragic, breathless litany of (in no particular order): panic attacks, heartbreaks, humiliations, betrayals, globetrotting…
Fiction Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Jillian Danback-McGhan’s Collection Midwatch

One of the stories in Jillian Danback-McGhan’s collection of short fiction, Midwatch, is set in the Gulf of Aden, where American troops are boarding fishing vessels, trying to catch pirates by searching for weapons and other evidence of illicit activity. Did you know the U.S. Navy did that? Any military veteran could casually talk about…
The Future Has Poetry: “How I Tell You I Love You When All Hope Is Lost” by Jeneva Stone

Displaced air arrives by force as the metro rushes the station. Your hand pressed to the small of my back and dim lights up my spine brighten north. Greens tied with a pink ribbon. Narrative hallway with endless doors without a knob or dial. Breath visible and there! grace notes ensue. greens tied with a…