Category: Reviews & Criticism

Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, a debut novel by Ron A. Austin, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Avery Colt is a kid who could use a break. In addition to the everyday struggles of adolescence, he’s caught in the webs of poverty, masculine expectation, and systemic racism that are keeping him, his family, and his community down. Set in North St. Louis, Ron A. Austin’s debut novel (winner of the Nilsen Prize)…
Marcus Pactor on Brandi Homan’s New Novel Burn Fortune

Holden Caulfield still irritates me, though I have not read The Catcher in the Rye since before the century’s turn. Teenaged narrators made me crotchety when I was in my twenties. I have become much surlier since then. So maybe I am not the most naturally sympathetic reviewer of a coming-of-age novel like Brandi Homan’s…
Alexa T. Dodd Reviews No Finis; Triangle Testimonies, 1911, a poetry chapbook by Deborah Woodard

Deborah Woodard’s newest chapbook, No Finis, is a striking reimagining of the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire trial. Her poems reify the experiences of the victims and, in doing so, shed a timely light on issues of labor injustice, women’s rights, and immigration. Woodard imaginatively excises lines from the trial transcript and arranges them…
Eric Aldrich on John Englehardt’s New Novel Bloomland

John Englehardt’s new novel, Bloomland, challenges readers to live and relive a mass shooting at a fictional southern university from three perspectives. Readers follow Eddie, an adjunct composition instructor who loses his wife in the shooting, Rose, a young woman attending the college but not in the library during the violence, and Eli, the shooter…
Amy Long’s debut essay collection Codependence, reviewed by Sonya Lara

Compelling and scathingly introspective, Codependence electrifies readers’ eyes to see into the isolated, dark world that Amy Long reigns in. Long brazenly reveals herself and boldly disregards gentle introductions, with the line “I tell my mother that I’ve started taking opioids again.” With no respite, readers are immediately immersed into all that Long is—a voice…
Alexis David’s Review of Sun Cycle, a poetry collection by Anne Lesley Selcer

In Anne Lesley Selcer’s Sun Cycle, Selcer calls us to nouns, wraps them next to statements, uses them as verbs “her bible pinks heavy,” pastes them into litanies, makes us remember that words are sounds, are songs, are soft and subtle signifiers of other objects. Her use of nouns is revolutionary because a noun is…
Lunch Quest, Chris Kuzma’s epic fantasy graphic novel, reviewed by Trey Brown

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Lunch Quest by Chris Kuzma is a frolicking epic in graphic novel form, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously to have a ton of witty fun. The adventure begins with a blue bunny rabbit in a tailored suit. Already we have a protagonist that challenges the…
Chelsea Biondolillo’s essay collection The Skinned Bird, reviewed by Christen Kauffman

Song birds, or oscine Passeriformes, with fixed song repertoires learn to sing in four steps. The steps are studied, in part, because, many linguists believe that these same four steps describe human acquisition. In this essay collection collaged with photographs, migration lists, and ornithological instruction, Chelsea Biondolillo uses experimental form and scientific observation to dig…
Shane Jesse Christmass on Death Valley Superstars, Duke Haney’s occasionally fatal essay collection

For people … like myself … that take morbid delight in the machinery of Hollywood and its end product … movies – then this book is pure candy – a riotous … and virtuous sugar-hit … a thrill ride … of investigative essays somewhat in the vein of Kenneth Anger … or the more Tinsel…