Tag: Ben Segal

  • Fiction Review: Adam Janos Tunnels through Ben Segal’s New Novel

    Fiction Review: Adam Janos Tunnels through Ben Segal’s New Novel

    Stories, unlike real life, make sense. In a well-told story, choices have consequences: Pinocchio tells a lie, and so his nose gets longer. But our waking lives are shaped by countless forces, and so it’s impossible to figure out what’s causing what. Have I been fighting with my girlfriend because I hate my job? Or…

  • Refreshed Review: Pool Party Trap Loop, short stories by Ben Segal, reviewed by Carolyn DeCarlo

    Refreshed Review: Pool Party Trap Loop, short stories by Ben Segal, reviewed by Carolyn DeCarlo

    Pool Party Trap Loop is a palindrome and a nightmare. I have read Ben Segal’s explanation of the title, which involves a sweaty Victorian house party, a friend with a hankering for a cool slice of water to dive into, and a minor linguistic discovery, and while I appreciate his description I would have to…

  • “Interview”: Ben Segal Talks to WORKS Author Grant Maierhofer

    “Interview”: Ben Segal Talks to WORKS Author Grant Maierhofer

    Grant Maierhofer’s Works collects four separate books into a sprawling volume that functions simultaneously as a compendium and a bildungsroman, showing a range of work and the development of a singular writer through various stages of literary production. I initially planned a to write a conventional review the book, but I prefer conversation to critical…

  • Ben Segal: “Hungry Ghosts,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction

    Ben Segal: “Hungry Ghosts,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction

    Ghosts eat ghost hamburgers from ghost cows. You can’t kill a ghost though, so the ghost cows are eaten piece by piece, fog slabs sliced off their lowing bodies. Such practices of piecemeal slaughter flourished in the time before refrigeration and were banned as cruel by Kosher law. Ghosts are in this way heretical, or…

  • “Mouth Light,” a story by Ben Segal

    “Mouth Light,” a story by Ben Segal

    The shape of his teeth formed a border and strangers crowded gladly. It was nice but Eric’s jaw hurt. Then darkness, bowing, handshake lines. Eric’s smile was tight-lipped but real. He’d be off again before light. He traveled mostly to the boring parts, unloved towns and shacks in factory shadows, other exurban depression sinks. It…

  • “Slomo croaking frogs, snow-alone steeples, pits of shoveled salt.”: Contributors’ Corner

    “Slomo croaking frogs, snow-alone steeples, pits of shoveled salt.”: Contributors’ Corner

    Q: Can you share a moment that shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? What prompted your work in HFR? Katie Condon, Poetry Editor, Grist I played basketball in college. My senior year we won our conference and, appropriately, my roommates and I threw a party at our apartment for the team and anyone else…