Author: Heavy Feather

“His Name Is Jonas”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Joshua Chaplinksy’s Novel Letters to the Purple Satin Killer

In November 2023, a BU Today opinion piece posed a pertinent question: “Why are we so obsessed with serial killers?” Three Boston University-affiliated experts weighed in on the topic, one that came into focus after police arrested Rex Heuermann, a man accused of killing three woman whose bodies were found on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach…
Side A Hybrid Piece: “Your Repayment Eternal (Two Necks)” by Andrew Zhou

Your Repayment Eternal (Two Necks) 1. The hangman arrived home two necks richer—one man sentenced for murder and the other for rustling—and heard a whistling in the air. It was the half-competent kind his father used to make in the mornings before the drunkard hollered at the wrong woman on the wrong porch and had…
Novella Review: Mark Crimmins Reads Ashley Honeysett’s Fictions

Rumors about the death of autofiction have been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, claims—in Publisher’s Weekly and elsewhere—that there is no such thing as an autofictional novel (or novella) are themselves less redolent of fact than of fiction. Ashley Honeysett’s genre-bending hybrid novella Fictions is a sign that, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, autofiction…
Nonfiction Review: Jen Schneider Reads Kat Meads’ These Particular Women

It’s a particular type of writer and a particular type of writing that illuminates (ten-fold over ten essays) as much as it informs. It’s also a particular type of writing and a particular type of writer that uncovers details (oh-so-delicious details) as much as it declares and reveals universal truths. These Particular Women, written by…
Haunted Passages: Six Poems from The Witch’s Flight by John Schertzer

The Witch’s Flight 1 I see you rounding the cornerwith your flag. You made it yourselffrom a table cloth, put some knobs on it, bright colorscalled yourself a beginningof something still undefined still nowhere to be foundand I am there beside youwaiting for it to happen. The Witch’s Flight 2 I saw you rounding the…
Original Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Sugar” by Gogol

You don’t like cutting anymore. You don’t like stitching too. You are broke, mostly a failure, and the only place where they will allow you to cut and stitch is in the hospital located at the outskirts of the sugarcane field. You stay in a room at the periphery of the hospital. The women yell,…
Poetry for Side A: “At My Grandmother’s Ninetieth Birthday, My Uncle Tells Me How He Came to Accept His Bipolar Diagnosis” by Amy Saul-Zerby

At My Grandmother’s Ninetieth Birthday, My Uncle Tells Me How He Came to Accept His Bipolar Diagnosis smiles and says he realizedthat it’s actually really simple: when he takes the pills, he’s fineand when he doesn’t, he’s not. If I had high blood pressure,I’d take medication for it, he says, and this isn’t any different.A…
Hybrid Piece from the Future: “Genetic Engineering Demonstration Gone Wrong” by Bethany Jarmul

No one believed umbrellas could be grown in fields, could open their faces to the firmament like foxgloves. But I raised the curtain and revealed—to gasps of delight—a wonderful waterproof leaf-canopy with sturdy vine-shaft and real root-handle. What luck! I held it over a child’s head just as the rain roused. The crowd cheered, applauded.…
Side A Fiction: “personal electric vehicle” by Jenkin Benson

personal electric vehicle nearly september kent wheeled.kent wheeled.kent wheeled. i met him in intro to excel spreadsheets. we were assigned together. group project. three of us. i don’t really remember the other guy. i think he was from wisconsin cause he wore a graphic t-shirt emblazoned with the punchline “milwaukee: the weak are killed and…