Category: Reviews & Criticism

Laura Eppinger Responds to Instances of Head-Switching, a short story collection by Teresa Milbrodt

The short stories in Instances of Head-Switching by Teresa Milbrodt report back from other worlds in sharp prose that is evocative but never flowery. Milbrodt fuses fairytale or mythological elements with the mundanities of adulthood, but there’s a lot more going on in every story. Strange settings are the background for characters to contend with…
“Necessary Reading for Troubled Times”: K, a novel by SFWP Author Ted O’Connell, reviewed by Amy Stonestrom

Ted O’Connell’s debut novel introduces us to Francis Kauffman, an American professor who finds himself in a Chinese prison cell with six inmates, one of which he and the others are ordered to execute. K weaves back and forth between Kauffman’s grim existence in Kun Chong Prison and his former life as a free man in…
Sleepovers, Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’ debut fiction collection, reviewed by Nicholas Rys

I first read Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’ work online a year or so ago. I was taken by the narrator, the kinds of characters she wrote about, by her obvious tender affinity for her characters as well as her razor sharp determination to stare truth in the eye, to refuse to blink. Phillips’ debut, Sleepovers, in…
Roundabout, an improvisational fiction novel by Phong Nguyen, reviewed by Noreen Hernandez

The plot of Roundabout, the novel by Phong Nguyen, begins by asking “is this all there is?” I settled in for a lazy river ride of a read, but I immediately wished I’d brought a safety jacket. Because after a few pages the story turned into a white water rafting adventure. Roundabout is a novel…
Esteban Rodríguez on The Trilogy, an Action Books poetry collection by Bruno K. Öijer

Horace Engdahl, the former Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, once said that the United States was too isolated from the literary world and didn’t translate enough to participate in larger literary conversations. The statement was not met without controversy, but considering the fact that less than 3% of books published in the United States…
Noreen Hernandez Reviews Carol Ann Davis’ essays on art, violence, and childhood: The Nail in the Tree from Tupelo Press

About twenty years ago, I felt buried under the usual family problems that most people face. I complained to my sister that while I didn’t expect anything miraculous, I would appreciate it if life would just get a little easier. Her short response was, “But life isn’t easy. And it’s not hard. It just is.”…
Portrait of Sebastian Khan, a 7.13 Books debut novel by Aatif Rashid, reviewed by Mahnoor Khan

Portrait of Sebastian Khan is a coming-of-age novel of great intrigue by Aatif Rashid. Sebastian, a mixed ethnicity Muslim, is a college senior who is troubled by the time remaining until his upcoming graduation. To complicate matters, he is also a free-spirited, womanizing soul when it comes to his commitments. The novel takes place in…
Catrachos, a Graywolf Press debut poetry collection by Roy G. Guzmán, reviewed by Esteban Rodríguez

Not too long ago, I described to a friend that the poetry of B.H. Fairchild was “muscular,” a word that I wasn’t too fond of—mainly because it felt a bit unnatural to assign bodily characteristics to poetry, not to mention that it implies a certain masculinity that might be unwarranted—but one that I used to…
Savage Pageant, a hybrid poetry debut by Jessica Q. Stark, reviewed by Rita Hynes

Jessica Q. Stark’s Savage Pageant is a cut and paste of celebrity biography, online comment threads, archival drawings, and Google maps. It is a collection of poems, memoir, trauma, and history. It is a scrapbook of American nostalgia. It is a circus. Savage Pageant is written in four acts and three intermissions, like show cards…