Category: Reviews & Criticism

Fiction Review: Bruce Overby Reads Ellen Birkett Morris’ Novel Beware the Tall Grass

In her wonderful debut story collection Lost Girls, EllenBirkett Morris delivered 17 stories that explore in heartrending prose both the vulnerability and the power of the feminine. In her debut novel, Beware the Tall Grass, Birkett Morris maintains her focus on the feminine in the person of her protagonist, Eve Sloan, a new mother deeply…
Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Wes Blake’s Novella-in-Flash Pineville Trace

In Pineville Trace, Wes Blake tells the story of Frank Russet, a former revival preacher who has escaped from a minimum-security prison in Kentucky, where he was being held as a con artist. As Frank and his feline companion named Buffalo journey west to freedom, Blake paints a triptych of the escapist—his newly forged existence…
Fiction Review: Aidan Loevlie Reads C.H. Hooks’ Second Novel Can’t Shake the Dust

With Can’t Shake the Dust, C.H. Hooks further demonstrates his dexterity with symbolism and paradox. His second novel examines fate and trauma through one family’s relationship to the dirt track. The story is narrated by 14-year-old “Little” Billy Lemon, his father “Wild” Bill, and his mother Nanny. From the first sentence, Little’s mind is on his…
Comics Review: Jason Teal Reads Olivier Schrauwen’s Graphic Novel about His Cousin Thibault’s Sunday

How many Sundays did it take me to finally write about the new graphic novel from Olivier Schrauwen, Sunday? Get up ah. According to the calendar, this is my 21st Sunday with the book, and I think that in itself deserves some kind of award: like Olivier’s cousin Thibault I have not traveled very far…
Poetry Review: Tiffany Troy Reads Daniel Lawless’ Collection I Tell You This Now

I Tell You This Now by Daniel Lawless invites us into an intimate viewing of family albums and photography from the Polio Ward in Louisville, Kentucky, 1943-47. As a lookback at when the dead were still living and the hurt that remains in the aftermath of domestic violence and sexual abuse, this viewing is necessary…
Fiction Review: Eric Z. Weintraub Reads Jordan A. Rothacker’s Novel The Shrieking of Nothing

Jordan A. Rothacker’s sixth novel, The Shrieking of Nothing, marks his first venture into sequel territory, returning us to the futuristic world of RESURGA (23rd-century Atlanta) and the detective duo Assistant Sacred Detective Edwina Casaubon and Sacred Detective Rabbi Jakob “Thinkowitz” Rabbinowitz, who first appeared in Rothacker’s 2020 novel, The Death of the Cyborg Oracle.…
Comics Review: Sarah Shermyen Reads Xiang Yata’s Graphic Novel Optometry

“Graphic novel” or “graphic narrative” have become the terms used to describe comic books with a literary bent. I’ve always insisted on calling them comics, but Optometry really is a graphic novel, narrative, because it is a story of images and visuals. This book is not so much light on words as it largely functions…
“Cheers to the Weirdos! Trinity”: Jesi Bender Presents a Heavy Feather Favorites List for 2024

Here we go again! Putting together this year brings me such joy and I hope you find something beautiful here, too. Sometimes, it can seem as if no one reads anymore but making this list reassures me that there are a lot of us out there, still trying to learn, still trying to create, still…
Poetry Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Aditi Machado’s Collection Material Witness

You should read Aditi Machado. You should read everything she writes—I am on that path myself, but I’m only two books in, so we can race each other if you start now. Her new collection, Material Witness, is short. It contains six poems, two of which take up more pages than their word count might…