Category: Reviews & Criticism

“A Sensitive and Insightful Reflection on a Life Well Lived”: Atlanta Tsiaoukkas Reads Fancy Feast’s Essay Collection Naked

Naked: On Sex, Work, and Other Burlesques is an essay collection and memoir by veteran burlesque performer Fancy Feast, and draws on her broad and rich experiences to create a thoughtful narrative that carries valuable insights for both the burlesque virgins and stalwarts of the profession. The sheer breadth of anecdotes Feast is able to…
Poetry Review: Matt Martinson Reads Ann Jäderlund’s Collection Lonespeech

Have you heard that a fallout between two philosophers can make national, frontpage news in France? That writing quality poetry could earn you a place of political power in Ancient China? That Vaclav Havel’s absurdist plays helped land him the role of president when Yugoslavia emerged from the Soviet Union’s shadow? Well, here’s one more…
“Put Me in (the Annals of History and Then Some), Coach”: Nicole Yurcaba Reviews Charles Holdefer’s Story Collection Ivan the Terrible Goes on a Family Picnic

Before the Russians were known for Vladimir Putin, Kremlin propaganda, and an imperialistic streak that has in the last century made many raise an eyebrow, they were—perhaps—the creators of the sport that would become known as “America’s pastime.” And who knew Babe Ruth and Gertrude Stein were such good friends—so much so that they switched…
Nonfiction Review: Hollay Ghadery Reads Pamela Mulloy’s Essay Collection Off the Tracks

There are a handful of books I’ve read that truly enchanted me. Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel by Pamela Mulloy is one of them. Even now, weeks after finishing the book, I can recall the momentum: the sway between drugged calm and startled curiosity I experienced…
Fiction Review: Matt Martinson Reads Emily Greenberg’s Collection of Alternative Facts

Midway through Emily Greenberg’s breakout collection, Alternative Facts, is a story titled “Lost in the Desert of the Real,” which begins with theorist Jean Baudrillard’s description of how images are degraded from being reflections of profound reality to simulacrums of themselves, self-referentiality with no external connection. It is a common enough danger of our media-infested…
Fiction Review: S. D. Stewart Reads Ansgar Allen’s Novel The Faces of Pluto

Imagine the vast number of words written over the past 5,000 years, since the invention of writing and beginning of recorded human history. Many were written in attempts to explain the world in which the writers lived at the time. Now think about how many of these interpretations have since been labeled as incorrect—whether due…
Graphic Novel Review: Jesi Bender Reads Jon Macy’s Biography Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes

Why aren’t the women in Jon Macy’s graphic novel, Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes, more famous? Almost every female character in this visual biography was someone who I had never heard of or had only heard of in passing. I can guarantee the majority of Americans wouldn’t know their names. Why have we…
“Ma’am, This Is a Wendy’s”: Brittany Micka-Foos on the Everyday and the Existential in Katie Berta’s Poetry Collection Retribution Forthcoming

In Katie Berta’s debut poetry collection, Retribution Forthcoming, nothing is sacred—and everything is. This earnest, probing collection interweaves the everyday with the metaphysical. From skincare to smartphone-scrolling to microwave entrees, Berta interrogates the mundane and the minute to expose the existential crisis simmering underneath. The result is a blurring of boundaries: a confluence of animal…
Poetry Review: Jesi Bender Reads Ae Hee Lee’s Collection Asterism

A gift of a dozen blue eggs. My father cracks one over the pan and provokes its yolk with a fork. Come and see—it doesn’t tear. I mutter a prayer: may my life be as tenacious. Asterism is the 2024 Dorset Prize winner, which is given to a full-length poetry manuscript each year by Tupelo Press. The…