Category: Reviews & Criticism

“linguist body still writing thoughts”: Edward J. Matthews Reads Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3

To state that Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3 is a compelling conceptual collaboration between Japanese glitch-cyberpunk author Kenji Siratori, the Canadian electro-acoustic duo Wormwood based in London, Ontario, and a coterie of academics, writers, artists, philosophers, and other members of The Ministry of Transrational Research into Anastrophic Manifolds, is…
Poetry Review: evelyn bauer Reads The Sky Broke More by Garth Graeper

The Sky Broke More turns ecopoetics to horror, a reminder that nature is incredibly vast and mysterious, and we are soft, small, and vulnerable in the face of it. A prescient topic, as the climate catastrophe kicks around in the back of my head, readjusting my relationship to nature with every natural disaster, every strange…
Fiction Review: Nicole Yurcaba Reads New Millennium Boyz by Alex Kazemi

In the United States, 1999 was a year riddled with huge headlines. Bill Clinton’s impeachment trials began. Yugoslav security forces killed Albanians in Racak, Kosovo. Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” released, becoming the artist’s third UK #1 hit; and music began its irrevocable relationship with the internet. On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold,…
Fiction Review: Elizabeth Shick Reads Jody Hobbs Hesler’s What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better

Jody Hobbs Hesler’s debut story collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better, explores the everyday hardships of American life with a tenderness and understanding that leaves open the possibility of hope. The characters that populate the 17 stories in this collection come from all walks of life: husbands and wives. Parents and…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald Reads K Hank Jost’s MadStone

There are a lot of different ways of being poor, and I have tried out several. I don’t want to oversell it. I’ve never lived on the street or anything. I’ve always had a safety net—parents who love me, and wouldn’t let me fall off the map without a fight—but there were definitely years when…
Fiction Review: Mary Lynn Reed on Ashley Cowger’s On the Plus Side

Life is a delicate balancing act. For every decision that must be faced, there are pros and cons to be weighed. Is that boyfriend in L.A. worth giving up a paid internship for? How much does the tally tip when you factor in his flea-ridden dog? Is buying yourself expensive bracelets for your birthday worse…
Poetry Review: Jeanne Griggs Reads Mildred Kiconco Barya’s The Animals of My Earth School

The Animals of My Earth School, by Mildred Kiconco Barya, is a collection of poems about animals, surveying a few of the characteristics that they share with people and calling our attention to what we might see if we try looking at the world from the eye level of other kinds of creatures. Barya, originally…
“Language as Collison and Fragment”: Edward Smallfield Reads Alexandra Mattraw’s Poetry Collection Raw Anyone

Raw Anyone is a title that asks us to ask what a title is. A title can locate (A Journal of the Plague Year) or gesture in a direction (The Wasteland). Raw Anyone feels like a fragment of language set free: uncooked, in a natural state, and in motion, searching, perhaps, to connect with an…
Fiction Review: Jack Quinn Reads The Return by James Terry

Watching French film professor Bernard Aoust vainly grasping at the sands of time makes for captivating reading. Set in the author’s alma mater—UC Berkeley—we feel we are visiting an old haunt; such is Terry’s vivid description of the place. There we find fuddy-duddy Aoust in the timorous autumn years of his career, bewildered by the…