Category: Reviews & Criticism

Fiction Review: Tara Van De Mark Reads Amy Stuber’s Collection Sad Grownups

At a time when many of us are feeling low, Amy Stuber’s debut story collection, Sad Grownups, accepts this truth and, in doing so, helps reorient us to something like a middle ground. The stories embrace the rawness of life, its trauma, failure, despondency, grief, how our hurt little kid selves never really leave us, and…
Fiction Review: Elizabeth H. Winkler Reads Jen Michalski’s Novel All This Can Be True

If you begin Jen Michalski’s All This Can Be True on the bus, you’ll almost certainly miss your stop. Written in alternating points of view, the book is as much a story of self discovery and queer coming-of-age as it is a story of love, and Michalski tells it well. Our protagonists are Lacie Johnson…
Poetry Review: Jen Schneider Reads Elizabeth Galoozis’ Collection Law of the Letter

What happens when you combine the literary prowess of a skillful and soulful poet-librarian like Elizabeth Galoozis with the space to reorder understanding, instill voice in silenced letters, expand contractions into new shapes, and infuse original meaning into common language? As Law of the Letter illustrates, there’s the possibility of magic—magic in the form of…
Fiction Review: Emily Hall Reads Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross’ Collection Don’t Take This the Wrong Way

In Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross’ short story collection Don’t Take This the Wrong Way characters teeter on the edge of an epiphany. But they stumble before they can access any greater understanding of their lives. Some stories feature parents who can’t connect to their children, refusing to see how their own behavior is alienating.…
“Inescapable Derivation”: Matt Martinson Reads Marguerite Young’s Angel in the Forest

Marguerite Young’s Angel in the Forest, the only work of nonfiction she would publish in her lifetime, was first published in 1945 by Scribners, re-released by Dalkey Archive in 1994, and was recently re-re-released as a Dalkey Archive Essential. Recently, Young’s Miss Macintosh, My Darling, has become a critical darling, a sort of lost classic.…
“INFERNO: Just Like Gold”: ES Sandberg on August Strindberg’s Autofictional Novel

A very wise person once posited that the historical provenance of Sweden’s sustainable mindset is attributed to the absence of substantial oil reserves. Wealth has never been on tap, so to speak, and as such the country implemented something more long-term, if not resilient by cultivating and expanding on renewable practices. Danes on the other…
Fiction Review: Arreshy Young Reads Joachim Glage’s Apocryphal Story Collection The Devil’s Library

There is an unraveling in the testamental helices of the AJPD which speaks: “A man is a scream, smothered by the avalanche.” And from that strand there breeds this gonadal fiqh: “the blood of those who submit to the squeeze—the breeders, the feeders, the readers corresponding to the serfs, the megalopolis and the monastery—evaporate communally.…
Poetry Review: Toni Hornes Sullivan Reads Liz Worth’s Collection Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea

Liz Worth’s Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea is a lovely book of poetry that’s sure to intrigue those who are interested in the natural world, the otherworldly, and the emotional realm. Across 80 plus pages, Worth writes us through an experiential landscape, hoping in and out of experiences, mixing them it with spiritualism and…
Poetry Review: Candice Louisa Daquin Reads Hilary King’s Collection Stitched on Me

I have heard it said, too often, that nobody wants to read about middle-aged-women. Political candidates in 2025 are still asking why women “past 50” are worried about abortion and why should they have an opinion on abortion because they can no longer get pregnant? Stitched on Me, by poet Hilary King, is a blistering…