Category: Reviews & Criticism

“A Trek through Working-Class Pennsylvania”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Scott Dimovitz’s Novel The Joy Divisions

In Scott Dimovitz’s novel The Joy Divisions, Allentown, Pennsylvania, is not merely a geographic location or the novel’s setting. Yes, it is a place, but in Dimovitz’s book, Allentown is a living breathing entity, a character with a life and experiences entirely its own. The Joy Divisions draws on Allentown’s rich history as Pennsylvania’s third…
Nonfiction Review: Alex Gurtis Reads Mike Nagel’s Post-Capitalist Americana Memoir Culdesac

Mike Nagel made waves in indie lit circles in 2022 when he published his popular debut Duplex with Autofocus Books, a book about alcoholism, the pandemic, and life within the walls of his Texas duplex complete with photographs. Two years later, his follow-up, Culdesac, promises more of the same: dark humor, witty takes, photographs of…
Poetry Review: Lauren Scharhag Reads Scott Ferry & Daniel McGinn’s Call-and-Response Fill Me with Birds

In some ways, Scott Ferry & Daniel McGinn’s Fill Me with Birds sneaks up on you. Ferry’s poems are usually brief, less than a page, with spare lines that eschew such trifles as capitalization and punctuation. McGinn’s work can be longer, but his straightforward, matter-of-fact style lulls you into a false sense of security. Make…
Chapbook Review: olga mikolaivna Reads Aditi Kini’s Notes, Jokes, and Queries Oriental Cyborg

Aditi Kini’s debut chapbook and winner of the 2021 Essay Press Chapbook Prize, Oriental Cyborg, is material but also imaginary—as in, image based, as in, an invention. As in, an invention with material repercussions. Under cyborg operatics the body is an invention for labor and to toll away: specifically a body coded in, and of,…
Fiction Review: Josh Massey Reads Daniel Beauregard’s Anti-Novel Lord of Chaos

The title Lord of Chaos sounds like an entry from the metal canon, and then Daniel Beauregard’s online persona, which you can get glimpses of on X, does hint at a kind of metal aesthetic—perhaps that’s the scene in the author’s current home of Buenos Aires? The city sounds like a South American literature mecca,…
Fiction Review: Matt Martinson Reads M.J. Nicholls’ Collection Violent Solutions to Popular Problems

Remember learning about the so-called death of the author, that brief moment where, in the world of literature, authorial biography—to say nothing of intent—did not matter in the least? If I’m being honest, I sometimes find myself missing the playfulness of the postmodern old guard, which feels as if it has been entirely replaced with…
“the witness moves the wind through herself”: Michael Collins Reads Joy Manesiotis’ Poetry Collection Revoke

Beginning Revoke, the third collection from Joy Manesiotis, we quickly realize that this book’s making is an integral, considered part of our experience. Two veil-like pages demarcate our entry and exit from the space of lyric ritual into which we are invited. Within, several poems are set in white letters on black pages, seemingly in…
“A Novel for a New America”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Daniel Lefferts’ Novel Ways and Means

In 2016, Alistair McCabe’s dreams of a fantasy banking job have fizzled. His paramours, an older gay couple named Mark and Elijah, are facing a breakup due to financial and emotional fizzles. America—rife with Donald Trump’s fiery, and at many times nonsensical, rantings—teeters toward a breaking point. Meanwhile, Alistair finds himself running for his life…
Fiction Review: Dave Karp Reads Stacey Levine’s Novel Mice 1961

Stacey Levine has always been the bard of the marginal, the writer with the genius to destabilize a story with askew language and events. Her novels are also wince-inducingly funny, and Mice 1961, her first since Frances Johnson, is no exception. The new novel is set in an odd, artificial 1960s Florida, a confection made…