Author: Heavy Feather

The New Existence, a novel by Michael Collins, reviewed by Vincent James Perrone

Americans in their cars. Even in cities blessed with workable public transit, the car remains ubiquitous in the image of America. The highway sprawls, the careening suburban neighborhoods, the gridded urban avenues. And in our cars, we become singular, lone pod-people encapsulated and resolute in our isolation, only likely to make contact with others through…
New Prose Poem “Biscuits”: Sean Thomas Dougherty for Side A

Biscuits Sometimes when I look at the sky I see the clouds become figures seated at a big table. Look, my mother-in-law says, those clouds look like the Last Supper. But it is more like the last brunch, on any Sunday not Mother’s Day, at the Polish Falcons social club, and all the Bushas gossiping…
“Elle Nash’s Gag Reflex: An (All Too) Human Response to a Nietzschean Sickness,” a review by Charlene Elsby

The first time I saw Elle Nash actually in motion (as opposed to in the static images on social media), she was a presenter on a panel with Kerry St. Laurent, B.R. Yeager, and Burial Grid, hosted by Gallery A3 (on Zoom). The discussion was good, and they covered many significant things about interdisciplinary collaborations…
The Observant, Ravi Mangla’s second novel, reviewed by Shannon Nakai

In his second novel, The Observant, Ravi Mangla takes us into the trappings—both literally and figuratively—of a world fueled by luxury and power, but stripped of real agency. While filming in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, moderately reputed documentary filmmaker Vasant Rai is kidnapped and held captive in a stark prison on erroneous, underexplained charges…
Megan Merchant & Luke Johnson Lyric Epistolary Collaboration for Side A

What do we do when the black hole comes,—to L my son asks before the hours lighten. I know so much of this lifeis unreal, but yesterday I cut my lip and flooded my mouth with blood. I read about parents that chew food then mama-birdit into their babies’ mouths so they won’t choke. Haven’t…
New Flavor Town USA Fiction by Tyler Dillow: “Cherry Rum Flavor”

Deep red cherries in a bowl—I pit them, half them, soak them in rum. These are for later. Small treats take time. Even if only a little. When I make this, I think of countries stuck. Held in time. Always remembered for what they were and this is fine. Pour the cherry-infused rum over a…
Everything Is Totally Fine, a fiction collection by Zac Smith, reviewed by Michael G. Barilleaux

Everything Is Totally Fine by Zac Smith is a short fiction experience like few others in independent literature. What’s perhaps most engaging about Smith’s collection is not just that it proves its anxiety ridden title to be entirely ironic, but rather that it gives us a chance to reflect on the reality of this irony while…
“There Was Always Something More I Had to Know”: Marcus Pactor Interviews Gabriel Blackwell

Gabriel Blackwell never repeats himself. Each of his seven books offers a distinct approach to fiction, bending forms and genres to find new angles from which to capture the dark absurdities of modern American life. His new novel, Doom Town, is the confession of a man who has no faith in the power of confessions…
Exclusive Excerpt from And Yet, a book-length speculative essay by Jeff Alessandrelli

An innovative work of speculative fiction, Jeff Alessandrelli’s And Yet interrogates contemporary shyness, selfhood and sexual mores, drawing out the particulars of each through personal history, cultural commentary and the author’s own restless imagination. And Yet builds off the work of authors as disparate as Michel Leiris, Marguerite Duras and Kobo Abe, while quoting from and alluding to texts…