Category: Reviews & Criticism

Playing with Dynamite, a memoir by Sharon Harrigan, reviewed by Robert Young

What hooks you about Sharon Harrigan’s potent memoir Playing with Dynamite is just how true the story is. The book is reminiscent of the quest narrative: a woman going on a journey into the forgotten, suppressed, and painful parts of her past to discover more about herself. Under the surface, the memoir marinates in the…
Glory Days, a novel in stories by Melissa Fraterrigo, reviewed by Asha Talib

Melissa Fraterrigo weaves together an intricate tale of loss, failure, greed, cruelty, hurt and comfort in her work Glory Days. At the heart of her story is the land of Ingleside, Nebraska, and the experiences it encounters through the tales of six individuals. The most notable story, of Luann and her father Teensy after losing…
“Master of the Concise”: Jesi Buell Reviews J. Bradley’s flash fiction collection Neil and Other Stories

Neil and Other Stories is a prepossessing examination of a parent’s influence on the internal life of their child. At first, the reader approaches what seems to be disparate scenes, but as the stories progress, a singular interlinking story begins to form. Neil and Other Stories is a predominantly a collection of flash fiction pieces that culminates…
Kiss Kiss, a flash fiction collection by Paul Beckman, reviewed by Brad Rose

Whenever I read Paul Beckman’s flash fiction, I feel like I’m benefitting from a humorous, avuncular neighbor who is comfortably narrating what are, by turns, realistic and surrealistic tales that highlight both the humor and sadness inherent in the human predicament. The brief, seemingly effortless, stories in Beckman’s newest collection, Kiss Kiss, explore a range…
Tenderling, a poetry collection by Emily Corwin, reviewed by Dameion Wagner

Before flipping through and selecting a single poem in Emily Corwin’s new Tenderling, readers are struck by the text’s cover, an array of sharply mottled, kaleidoscopic, but no less formed and fantastical images. Sarah Shields’ illustrations contrasted over a faux beige linen background are marked by deep, bright reds and touches of blacks in flowers…
“Flightpath to Eternity”: William Lessard Reviews Pamela Ryder’s Novel in Stories Paradise Field

Pamela Ryder uses the instruments of fiction to dismantle received notions of grief and aging. With the death of her father as her noetic object, she picks up where popular end-of-life philosophers like Atul Gwande and Paul Kalanithi leave off. The result is a book whose humor, imaginative élan, and relentless attention to detail fuse…
“Making Comics: My Graphic Novel Process,” a craft essay by Jess Smart Smiley

New Comic My name is Jess Smart Smiley and I make comics. My newest project is a square, interactive comic called Fantasy Quest, and it’s live on Kickstarter right now. (Oh, don’t worry—there are more plugs for Fantasy Quest to come—but let’s talk process first.) Hamburger Style The earliest comics I remember making were created…
Conjoining, a poetry collection by Heidi Czerwiec, reviewed by Matt Mauch

As with me seeing the coffiin-esque iron lung in the basement museum of the Nobles County Library, surrounded by photos of smiling polio victims inside various other iron lungs, and making sure I never went to the basement museum alone ever again, any gaggle of able-bodied and world-curious five-year-olds would no doubt concur, upon first…
Walking Backwards, a poetry collection by Lee Sharkey, reviewed by Toti O’Brien

On the cover of Lee Sharkey’s Walking Backwards, an anonymous oil painting—“Pogroms”, circa 1915. A long line of people crosses from left to right—their clothes the same color of the background, as if the landscape had already started absorbing them, soon to entirely obliterate them. Two of the men look vacuously forward—not far, as their…