As someone who grew up in the south, I am often annoyed by “southern literature” in the same way I am often annoyed by “southern” accents in movies. Books about unplanned pregnancies also often annoy me,
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Year: 2014
Podcast Episode 014: Trevor Dodge
In his new collection of flash fictions titled The Laws of Average, it’s been said that Trevor Dodge “has managed to pull realistic fiction back from the brink of destruction.” In this episode of the
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Interview: Julie Doxsee
Interview by Edward J. Rathke Edward J. Rathke: The Next Monsters is a visceral and sometimes gruesome collection. What is
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Youth in Its Splendor
The old woman once looked outside, through the high windows of her foyer, and saw that it was raining little rocks. She could hear them clattering. She saw people pressing their gray faces to kitchen window
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Obit: Clementine Baxter
Obituary: After an acutely depressing and unfulfilling life, Clementine Baxter overdosed on diet pills before slitting her wrists and leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge to her demise. Clementine was a receptionist for 20 years at Butters, Bean & Tapioca law firm in West Covina, California.
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Book Review: The Committee on Town Happiness by Alan Michael Parker
Alan Michael Parker’s The Committee on Town Happiness is made of ninety-nine stories written from the perspective of the titular Committee, an official body charged, apparently, with promoting the happiness of an unnamed town.
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The Snow Baby
On a lone mountain, the snow baby melts in its mother’s arms.
The snow baby has no gender, no face; its body is three snow balls.
The mother weeps. She is covered in sheets of ice, her poor, melted snow baby.
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Podcast Episode 013: Nathan Deuel
Nathan Deuel’s new collection of essays, Friday Was the Bomb, is at once a meditation on fatherhood, an unusual memoir of a war correspondent’s spouse, and a first-hand account from the front lines of the most distorted events of recent days: the Arab Spring, the end of the Iraq war,
Continue readingBook Review: Harlequin’s Millions by Bohumil Hrabal
Like the orchestral music blaring through the speakers during the entirety of Bohumil Hrabal’s Harlequin’s Millions, the story is expertly wound together in a bittersweet melody. Maryska, a character who appears in previous Hrabal works
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