Mid-Year 2016: The Year’s Best Fiction (So Far)

Putting together this list of standout fiction published so far this year wasn’t an easy task, mostly because it could just as easily have been twice as long. It’s been a very good year for fiction, whether your tastes head more towards classical storytelling, or narrative innovation, or incisive societal observations. What follows is a list of some of the books published in the first half of 2016 that have impressed us the most. 

Continue Reading

A Year of Favorites: Duncan B. Barlow

Year end lists are always problematic for me. Sometimes the things that have the most impact on me, things that are new to me, can be a year or a century old. So, I find myself, pulling things off of my shelves and checking publication dates, cursing that they hadn’t been published within the year. I’ve attempted to force myself into the box of a year. Here is a brief list since I am presented continually with things that inspire […]

Continue Reading

A Year of Favorites: Nick Curley

I. THE RACCOON When I read lists of Bests and Favorites and What Assertively Was, I think of a line from William Blake, who did not release any new work in 2015. Of Jesus Christ, Blake proclaimed: “He is the only God. And so am I. And so are you.” Books don’t survive in the petri dish. They live in the context of where we are spatially and consciously. To read is to search: it seems an inherently hopeful act. […]

Continue Reading

A Year of Favorites: Margaret Eby

It was T.S. Eliot or maybe those dudes in Rent who brought up the idea of how you measure a year, and the question remains an open one. Sure, sure, measured out with coffee spoons, sure, sure, sunsets and laughter and strife, but the truth is that what you remember from a year isn’t the connective tissue of every day life. It’s those things that stick in your brain. It’s when you look at a photo of yourself a couple […]

Continue Reading