Author: Heavy Feather

Nonfiction Review: Daniel Barbiero Reads Évelyne Grossman’s Short Essay The Creativity of the Crisis

We often think of crisis and creativity as related states, as seemingly polar opposites that can reverse polarity at any time, transforming one into the other. Crisis can give rise to creativity just as creativity can provoke a crisis in the creator. Think, for example, of Giorgio de Chirico’s illness and state of depression as…
Fiction Review: Amelia Kingman Reads Bronwyn Fischer’s Novel The Adult

Being eighteen is, well, weird. You are treated as a grown-up, but also like a child. The responsibilities are crushing and new, and the world opens up in exciting, scary ways. No one teaches you how to make friends or how to pay taxes. People fall in and out of your life, and the need…
Fiction Review: Adam Camiolo Reads Percival Everett’s New Novel James

I am a man who is cognizant of his world, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related but self-written. With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. James, the titular character of Percival Everett’s twenty-fourth novel, writes these…
Three Emotive Essays by Sandra Simonds

Scientists Recognize 27 Emotions and One of Them Is… Confusion No one knows the difference between prose and poetry and if someone says they do, send them to my living room. I sat in Mary Ruefle and Michael Burkard’s living room. Mary handed me a glass of green tea, told a strange history. Once, she…
Fiction Review: Brianna Kale Reads Jacqueline Vogtman’s Collection Girl Country

In Jacqueline Vogtman’s beautiful, poignant, and haunting short story collection Girl Country, we are invited to explore the female experience in the modern era through the lens of magical realism and a sprinkling of historical fiction. The stories carry strong feminist themes and universal truths that effortlessly blend with nervy craft. Vogtman strikes the perfect balance…
“Some Kind of Monster”: Stephen Meisel Reads Dave Fitzgerald’s Novel Troll

The trashed halls of pop culture are littered with Slenderman copypastas taken to horrific conclusions and jokes turned into career-threatening scandals. Yes, it’s true. These days, we have a lot of trouble figuring out just how seriously we should take anything—anything at all. Enter Dave Fitzgerald’s Troll, an encyclopedia of cringe, the novel no one…
“Art is never just”: Peter Valente on Touching the Art, a memoir by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

In Touching the Art, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore examines her complex relationship with her grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore, and the ways in which she impacted her own ideas about what it meant to be an artist; in doing so, she examines the legacy of racism in Baltimore, her own coming out as a queer…
Side A Prose Poetry: “Another Pirate Story” by Brad Rose

Another Pirate Story At the pentagon, the holiday spirit is in full swing. Cannibalism tends to bring people together. Fortunately, I’m in touch with myself, although like opposable thumbs, I don’t take it personally. This year, Satan is doing my income taxes. He’s a likable enough guy, although he says he finds it too dark…
Flavor Town USA Short Story: “A Juicy Soul” by Coleman Bigelow

As I prepare to enter the icy river, my mind wanders to that slice of meat lovers I’ve left behind. I’m regretting my restraint. Not eating all of my “last supper” now seems like an unnecessary sacrifice. What’s the point of being born again if you don’t go out with a gulp? The first time…