Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Matt Martinson Reads GauZ’s Novel Comrade Papa

“Everything here needs to be invented, beginning with ourselves,” so says a European colonizer on the Ivory coast early in Comrade Papa, but he may as well be describing every character in this, the second book by GauZ’ to be translated into English. Here two characters, generations apart, narrate their respective experiences of coming of…
“where we sharpen ourselves on the scoliotic spine of Death’s scythe”: A Haunted Passages Poem by Panika M. C. Dillon

we hide in the belly of a beast who would burn Troy & hollow out a home in the rubble of Rome. Zaporizhzhia: a power station, a cage of swords paved in prayer cards you sent by the truckload. we’re bound for hell with gongs tied to our galoshes. not you though. you can keep…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “A Gentle Creature” by Madeline Vosch

I lie awake at night. Around me, in all directions, a few feet away, there are other bodies. The walls between us are thin. Other bodies lying down, wrapped in blankets, asleep. Other bodies next to other bodies, sharing the same bed. I can almost hear them, the way they turn, how their breath shifts…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Hexed” by Chelsea Catherine

I sprinkle a hex over six dead mice and bury them under the oak behind my rental. “Sick, sick,” I say, sprinkling bay leaves over the mounds. “Remember what congestion tastes like.” Normally, I would never, but the townspeople here have done me dirty for too long—my coworkers, neighbors, even people at the supermarket. Markle…
“Embodied Psychologies”: Meghan Lamb Talks to Robert Kloss, author of The Genocide House

Four years ago, if you’d told me that one day, I’d be interviewing Robert Kloss in my own living room, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told me that I would also be the editor of his ambitious fifth novel—The Genocide House—and his wife, I probably would have thought you were insane. As someone…
Poetry for Haunted Passages: “Doxology (Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen)” by Amanda Roth

My ghosts and I have it backwards—I do all the haunting and they want to be left alone. Can’t I have what I’ve been promised? Amen and amen and so forth? I just wanted the hem of your robe. If not, closure. My nerves never tangled into the sound of your voice. I could stay…
Original Haunted Passages Short Story: “Come Out” by Andrew Plimpton

In the hallway of the gym at our school, far past the changing rooms and the water fountain, there was a room where the door was always locked. You could, however, always see inside. There was a window in the door, a window the janitors kept very clean. In this room, there was nothing but…
“Onward, Sabine”: Nicole Yurcaba Reviews Ella Baxter’s Novel Woo Woo

Ella Baxter first wowed us with her debut novel New Animal, a darkly humorous exploration of grief’s deepest nooks and crannies and a young woman’s adventures into the BDSM scene. In 2024, Baxter returns to the literary scene with yet another thrilling, eccentric novel—Woo Woo. Woo Woo follows Sabine, an uninhibited and unconventional artist whose…
Poetry Review: Carole Mertz Reads Zilka Joseph’s Collection Sweet Malida

Zilka Joseph’s Sweet Malida focuses on a fascinating and little-known segment of Jewish history. Her topic is the Jewish community of her ancestors and of her immediate family. To learn of a group of travelers having survived as an intact sect within the vast populace of so vast a subcontinent as India, was, to me,…