Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Wes Blake’s Novella-in-Flash Pineville Trace

In Pineville Trace, Wes Blake tells the story of Frank Russet, a former revival preacher who has escaped from a minimum-security prison in Kentucky, where he was being held as a con artist. As Frank and his feline companion named Buffalo journey west to freedom, Blake paints a triptych of the escapist—his newly forged existence…
Fiction Review: Aidan Loevlie Reads C.H. Hooks’ Second Novel Can’t Shake the Dust

With Can’t Shake the Dust, C.H. Hooks further demonstrates his dexterity with symbolism and paradox. His second novel examines fate and trauma through one family’s relationship to the dirt track. The story is narrated by 14-year-old “Little” Billy Lemon, his father “Wild” Bill, and his mother Nanny. From the first sentence, Little’s mind is on his…
Side A Fiction: “Stoneware” by Katie Coleman

Stoneware We were packing boxes in the kitchen after a nice day: chimichangas, supermarket beer, loving talk. I thought I might as well pack the lobster bowls with the bedding, because we’d be inviting teachers for dinner in Thailand. My boyfriend’s certain to make a good teaching assistant. That picture of him in his camp…
Sunday Comix: “Cosmos” by Gary Barwin

Gary Barwin is a writer, multimedia artist, and musician, the author of 33 books including, recently, the author of Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 (Assembly Press), Ovaryman (a play written with Tom Prime, published in Dead Code and other dramatic entertainments, Anti-Oedipus Press), and The Fabulous Op (with Gregory Betts,…
Comics Review: Jason Teal Reads Olivier Schrauwen’s Graphic Novel about His Cousin Thibault’s Sunday

How many Sundays did it take me to finally write about the new graphic novel from Olivier Schrauwen, Sunday? Get up ah. According to the calendar, this is my 21st Sunday with the book, and I think that in itself deserves some kind of award: like Olivier’s cousin Thibault I have not traveled very far…
Poetry for Side A: “Militia Lands Hunger” by Jonathan Memmert

Militia Lands Hunger they’re out there— they wait for the likes of youliberal likes they so dislikelikes so unlike them they meet train drill exercisein quasi synchronized precisionas onslaught takeover practices fantasize they dress in para uniform camouflage guisesbare tattooed ideology from under their skinstand sentry cocked and locked as white rise political voices sound…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “The Murder Portrait” by David Luntz

After I killed my best friend, I dreamt I’d “walked into” the painting he’d left for me in his will. It was in the style of some Dutch Master: a portrait of a young man reading a letter above a bowl of fruit. I snuck up behind him and read the letter. The letter told…
Poetry Review: Tiffany Troy Reads Daniel Lawless’ Collection I Tell You This Now

I Tell You This Now by Daniel Lawless invites us into an intimate viewing of family albums and photography from the Polio Ward in Louisville, Kentucky, 1943-47. As a lookback at when the dead were still living and the hurt that remains in the aftermath of domestic violence and sexual abuse, this viewing is necessary…
Fiction Review: Eric Z. Weintraub Reads Jordan A. Rothacker’s Novel The Shrieking of Nothing

Jordan A. Rothacker’s sixth novel, The Shrieking of Nothing, marks his first venture into sequel territory, returning us to the futuristic world of RESURGA (23rd-century Atlanta) and the detective duo Assistant Sacred Detective Edwina Casaubon and Sacred Detective Rabbi Jakob “Thinkowitz” Rabbinowitz, who first appeared in Rothacker’s 2020 novel, The Death of the Cyborg Oracle.…