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Review of The Physics of Imaginary Objects
As it often is with new voices, it all starts with a dull buzz, and the sense of serendipity. Something allows the title or the subject matter or the quality of the prose to break through the daily...
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Interview with Amelia Gray – 101 Prompts
The first time I met Amelia Gray was at the release party for Scorch Atlas (Featherproof) by Blake Butler, here in Chicago. Amelia read “Go For It and Raise Hell” and I knew immediately after her...
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Review of The Avian Gospels by Adam Novy
I’d heard a lot about The Avian Gospels (Short Flight / Long Drive Books) before ever reading it. I’d stared at those covers online, the red and gold, the abstract of birds in flight, and imagined...
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Review of Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter
Chuck Palahniuk said something about writing that echoed in my head while reading the debut collection of dysfunctional short stories in Daddy’s (Featherproof) by Lindsay Hunter. I paraphrase, but it...
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Review of It Came From Del Rio by Stephen Graham Jones
Once Stephen Graham Jones has you, once you’re invested, and want to see what’s going to happen next, that’s when he elevates his game. He’s one of those rare authors (like Brian Evenson, William Gay...
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Review of The Wilding by Benjamin Percy
The Wilding by Benjamin Percy is a powerful book packed with tension, unease, and life at the edge of the forest, where quite possibly man should stay. It is an intricate weaving of several different...
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A Conversation About The Orange Eats Creeps with Richard Thomas and Blake Butler
“Dislodged from family and self-knowledge and knowledge of your origins you become free in the most sinister way. Some call it having a restless soul. That’s a phrase usually reserved for ghosts, which...
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Review of Cut Through The Bone, by Ethel Rohan
In this slim volume of very short stories, Cut Through The Bone (Dark Sky Books) Ethel Rohan presents a series of confrontations, putting us in the middle of those awkward little moments: when your...
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Review of In The Mean Time by Paul Tremblay
When you enter the world of Paul Tremblay most anything can happen, and usually does. His recent collection, In The Mean Time (ChiZine Publications) defies expectations, the cover art a soft purple...
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Review of The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones
The Ones That Got Away (Prime Books) tiptoes into the darkness, luring us deep into the woods, up into crawlspaces, and to distant islands, where the people, the sacrifices, the losses are our own,...
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Review of Sarah Court by Craig Davidson
Heartbreaking stories grounded in a fractured reality, love and the strange things it makes us do, neighbors and the heavy weight of proximity, this is Sarah Court. A collection of connected,...
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Book review of You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers
Imagine what it must be like to be surrounded by strangers, never recognizing the face of your spouse, the face of your children, your co-workers and students, or even your own features when revealed...
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Review of Normally Special by xTx
“It is difficult to masturbate about your father, but not impossible, as it turns out.” “I am the Champion of Failure.” “What I do remember most though, are the fireflies and how she proved that they...
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Review of Volt by Alan Heathcock
Small town living is always the same, whether it’s in Arkansas, Idaho, or Missouri. Built on the backs of linked story collections like Winesboro, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and Knockemstiff by Donald...
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Review of The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I choose grief.” —William Faulkner I wasn’t prepared for this memoir, this baptism by fire that Lidia Yuknavitch pours out onto the pages of The Chronology...
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Review of Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City, by Michael Bible
One of the first things to get my attention as I held the slim chapbook Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City (Dark Sky Books) by Michael Bible in my hands was the blurb on the back from Barry Hannah. Why?...
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Review of Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau
A touching, funny, and unflinching look at a dysfunctional family, Drinking Closer to Home (Harper Perennial) by Jessica Anya Blau is a history that many of us may have lived. Hippie parents,...
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Book review of Zazen by Vanessa Veselka.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” —Karl Marx One of the first books released by Red Lemonade, the visionary new press brought to life by ex-Soft Skull patriarch...
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Review of Follow Me Down, by Kio Stark
“Sometimes what you want is to be somewhere you do not belong.” Kio Stark’s lyrical Follow Me Down (Red Lemonade) is a densely packed novella that wanders the projects of New York City capturing the...
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Review of The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollock
“Some people were born just so they could be buried…” If you’ve heard of Donald Ray Pollock, it was probably due to his collection of interlinked short stories, Knockemstiff published back in 2009,...
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Review of Short Bus, by Brian Allen Carr
When you wander around the desert looking for trouble, searching for an escape, sometimes you find it. In Brian Allen Carr’s powerful collection of short fiction, Short Bus, characters drift through...
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Review of Crimes in Southern Indiana, by Frank Bill
When you think of places where crime lurks, locations where you should keep the car rolling through stop signs, where you never stop to ask for directions, a few names may pop into your head. Maybe...
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Road Tripping Gone Bad
It started with a bisexual, nymphomaniac girlfriend and went downhill from there. I know it sounds like fun—it’s the ultimate fantasy, a girl with powerful appetites. She not only liked to masturbate...
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Review of The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, by Shannon Cain
Shannon Cain’s The Necessity of Certain Behaviors was the winner of the Drue Heinz Literary Prize for 2011, showcasing a collection of short stories that speaks to us about love, need, and irreversible...
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Review of Green Girl, by Kate Zambreno
In Kate Zambreno’s hallucinatory and disjointed Green Girl (Emergency Press), we are lured into the world of Ruth, a young American girl lost and damaged in London. Following this ingénue into her dark...
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Review of NowTrends, by Karl Taro Greenfeld
Karl Taro Greenfeld’s NowTrends (Short Flight/Long Drive Books) is worth reading simply for the exotic locations and unique settings, but there is much more going on in this collection. A layered...
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Review of Damascus, by Joshua Mohr
Damascus (Two Dollar Radio) is a depressing, raw, and touching novel, the latest tale of lost misfits and depraved losers from Joshua Mohr. Here we find Owen, the owner of the bar Damascus, who...
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Review of Ampersand, Mass., by William Walsh
Strange things are happening in Ampersand, Mass. (Keyhole Press). In this collection of short stories by William Walsh, there is pornography, amnesia, obsession, a real life muse, a cross-eyed teddy...
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Review of THREATS by Amelia Gray
“I WILL CROSS- STITCH AN IMAGE OF YOUR FUTURE HOME BURNING. I WILL HANG THIS IMAGE OVER YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP.” The debut novel by Amelia Gray, entitled THREATS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is an...
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Review of Wild, by Cheryl Strayed.
What do you do when your mother dies and you feel lost in the world, angry and hell-bent on self-destruction? You take a 1,000-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Or at least, that’s what Cheryl...
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Review of Cataclysm Baby, by Matt Bell
The apocalypse comes in many forms. Oh sure, there is acid rain and there is drought, the crops dry up and the world moves on, but what happens when you’re alone with your wife or husband? Nature takes...
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Review of My Only Wife by Jac Jemc
There is a sense of chaos involved in the act of falling in love, a lack of control, and quite possibly a hint of something tragic, a chance to be hurt. This applies to the slim but haunting novel My...
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Review of Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, by Paul Tremblay
Paul Tremblay’s Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye (ChiZine Publications) is a contemporary version of Animal Farm amped up on bitterness, future technology and sad realizations that things are not going to end...
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Review of Little Sinners and Other Stories, by Karen Brown
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Little Sinners and Other Stories (University of Nebraska Press) by Karen Brown is a collection of tales set primarily in the supposed domestic...
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Review of Nine Months, by Paula Bomer
Don’t let the egg on the cover fool you—it’s riddled with cracks. Nine Months (Soho Press) by Paula Bomer is the opposite of every clichéd story about mothers, birth, children, marriage and identity....
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Review of May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks
As its title suggests, May We Shed These Human Bodies (Curbside Splendor) by Amber Sparks is a collection of stories that is grounded in reality, but often has a hint of the surreal, the supernatural,...
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Review of At-risk, by Amina Gautier
Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, At-risk (University of Georgia Press) by Amina Gautier is a heartbreaking, eye opening, and endearing collection of stories that focus on...
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Review of Battleborn, by Claire Vaye Watkins
There is something equally freeing and unsettling about the wide-open desert—the horizon stretching out forever is both unattainable and inspiring. In Battleborn, a collection of stories by Claire...
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Review of Vampire Conditions by Brian Allen Carr
In order for a collection of short stories to work, the reader must be pulled into the narratives and settings as quickly and thoroughly as possible. In Vampire Conditions, a slim volume of grotesque...
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Review of The Next Time You See Me, by Holly Goddard Jones
In a small town it’s normal for everyone to get in your business—for the community to know about the women that run around, the men that abuse, the spoiled kids with their sense of entitlement, and...
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Review of Donnybrook, by Frank Bill
If your best chance of securing a future is to fight in a “Donnybrook,” a three day fighting match where ponying up $1,000 gets you in, and your chances of getting out in one piece are slim, then...
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Review of Red Moon, by Benjamin Percy
Red Moon is not merely about the werewolf, that familiar history and archetype—no, Red Moon (Grand Central) by Benjamin Percy is a brilliant blend of genre horror and literary poetics that reveals the...
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Review of Don’t Kiss Me, by Lindsay Hunter
Lindsay Hunter owes as much to Denis Johnson as she does to Mary Gaitskill. Her short stories, collected in Don’t Kiss Me (FSG Originals) do not hesitate to descend into the primal urges and dark,...
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Review of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, by Matt...
In Matt Bell’s debut novel, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (Soho Press), we are lured into familiar territory—the world of fables and tall tales, where our expectations of...
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