When I first met Julia Dixon Evans, I was struck by her dedication and commitment to her craft. Having worked with her as both as a writer and an editor (for States of Terror Vol.1 and The Radvocate magazine, respectively), she is a rare combination of talent, persistence and creativity. She has organized vast efforts around writing and her community, which has led to some of her excellent work to be featured on countless websites and publications. She has helped […]
The Monsters of American History: A Review of Alma Katsu’s “The Hunger”
There are many moments in the history of the United States that deserve every drop of ink that has been used to write about them. From The Alamo to the narratives of early New York and from the fate of early explorers to the gold fever days of California, the country’s history is packed with fertile ground for historical fiction. That being said, perhaps there is no story more deserving of reimagination than that of the Donner Party. Well, enter […]
The New Old Noise: A Review, of Sorts, of “The Other Night At Quinn’s,” by Mike Faloon
Say we’re in Ithaca, New York. Or in a bookstore basement in Cleveland, folding metal chairs arranged in a loose semi-circle around an institutional podium. Or even a Chicago Sunday matinee, chairs this time arranged in gunmetal rows. The trappings remain the same. So does the reception, the usual reliable in each town, former zine contributors, people in bands, friends from school. The odd reader who found one of our books and came out.
Capturing the Silence: A Review of Chris Campanioni’s “Drift”
In one of the first stories of Chris Campanioni’s Drift, there is a photographer named Jared Garrett who repeats over and over again his desire to capture everything, going so far as to wonder – beneath a purple sky, listening to coyotes howl in the distance – if he could capture the silence within a moment. This character’s fervent aspirations reflect what the author seems to be attempting throughout the rest of the book: to capture the things we cannot […]
“Addiction Is A Hard Story to Tell”: On Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering”
1. When Leslie Jamison went before the university board to present her dissertation topic, a dissertation that would form the basis of her new memoir/critical study The Recovering, one of the faculty members gave her a hard time. Jamison’s thesis posited a link between sobriety and creativity, delving into the post-addiction work of alcoholic writers like Raymond Carver and Charles Jackson, to show that the myths of the booze-addled genius are, at the least, severely overstated. But, as the professor’s […]
Another Side of Brian Evenson: A Review of “Reports”
When I consider authors that have inspired me over the years, there is perhaps no fingerprint more pronounced than that of Brian Evenson’s. It was, after all, upon seeing Evenson read “The Polygamy of Language,” that brought me upon the path that I’m on today as a writer, precisely, a writer of fiction. Evenson’s work showed me, in a way I had not encountered previously, that narrative could grapple with metaphysics and language, and it was as if the chair […]
Eternal Angst: A Review of Troy James Weaver’s “Temporal”
I was fifteen, standing on a step ladder in my parent’s closet, holding my dad’s gun to my head. No, wait, maybe I was sixteen? Either way, there was me and this ladder and this nine-millimeter to my temple. The ladder was ‘cause Dad kept the gun on top of a large dresser. The gun was ‘cause I was done with the bullshit. What happened next doesn’t matter, because it didn’t end there – all the angst and inner turmoil, […]
A Tale of Revolution and Crime, Told With Poetry
I was in high school when the movie Payback came out. I watched it and immediately felt a connection with the main character, Porter, played by Mel Gibson. Sure, he was a bad guy, but the point of the movie was not that he was bad; it was that he wanted what was fair. It didn’t matter to me that the money was stolen, the point was that he deserved to get his cut. In any case, no other movie […]