Reviews

Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality

Is immortality pleasant? Certainly not for some of the Chinese mythological creatures in Lindsay Wong’s new collection of 13 short stories, including the diao si gui (Red-Tongued Ghosts) who face ghost hunters and psychics after ... Read More »

March 1, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews

Some Unfinished Business

By Antanas Sileika

Reading two novels set in Soviet Europe in tandem, recurrent questions echo between two distinct fictional worlds. Must the past be understood in order to move forward? And in what ways does it define our ... Read More »

February 15, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark

By Jonathan Garfinkel

February 15, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Chrysalis

By Anuja Varghese

Anuja Varghese’s debut collection, Chrysalis, offers 15 shapeshifting stories that transport us to sex clubs, food courts, small towns, and haunted motels where women reclaim their lives. The opening story, “Bhupati,” tells of a new ... Read More »

February 8, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Strange Loops

By Liz Harmer

In the opening pages of Liz Harmer’s smart, sharp, and magnetic novel Strange Loops, Francine revisits the past. Deeply, frantically restless (whether in her role as wife, mother, graduate student, or coffee shop proprietor), Francine shows up ... Read More »

February 1, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Reasonable Cause to Suspect: A Mother’s Ordeal to Free Her Son from a Kurdish Prison

By Sally Lane

In the fall of 2014, Sally Lane’s son called to tell her he was in Syria. Eighteen years old at the time, Jack Letts was a recent convert to Islam and, according to Lane, idealistic ... Read More »

January 25, 2023 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs

Carrying It Forward: Essays from Kistahpinânihk

By John Brady McDonald

In this new collection of essays, readers will find personal observations, commentaries, and essays by a Nêhiyaw (Cree) and Métis warrior, Knowledge Carrier, and Otacimow (storyteller) who, as a child, was given the same moniker ... Read More »

January 18, 2023 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Indigenous Peoples, Memoir & Biography

Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart

By Jen Sookfong Lee

Pop culture is powerful. Our shared experiences can foster a sense of collective belonging, while just as quickly isolate and traumatize. Consider the divisive social and political issues exposed by some of 2022’s biggest cultural ... Read More »

January 11, 2023 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture, Criticism & Essays, Memoir & Biography

A Friend Sails in on a Poem: Essays on Friendship, Freedom and Poetic Form

By Molly Peacock

Friendship, for poets, has long been grist for the mill. Anyone studying poetry is likely to stumble upon literary friendships – William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge come instantly to mind, but also Charlotte Bronte ... Read More »

December 14, 2022 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Memoir & Biography, Poetry