Childhood Reclaimed: On Hilary Mantel’s "Learning to Talk"
You remember a fragment of childhood horror. You’re on the day camp bus, and your seatmate decides to punch you, hard, in the thigh.
Kaleidoscopic Structures: On Ling Ma's "Bliss Montage"
Ma takes these mundane episodes and turns them into dreamscapes of subtly fractured logic and absurd literalism.
"Feminine" Passions: On Aoko Matsuda's "Where the Wild Ladies Are"
Before bedtime, in their two-room apartment on the outskirts of postwar Tokyo, my great-grandfather would tell my obāchan and her siblings ghost stories, like those retold in Aoko Matsuda’s short story collection, Where the Wild Ladies Are.
(Be)Longing in the Midwest: On Jackson Bliss' "Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments"
A common critique of experimental short fiction is that it may fail to balance its brainier, genre-bending tricks with true intuition and care for its characters and the reader.
The Enormous Scope of Male Desperation: On Cameron MacKenzie's "River Weather"
…I will be here when America is nothing but a place of ruins.
What Rapture, What Agony: On Heinrich von Kleist & "Anecdotes"
On October 1, 1810, about a week before his 33rd birthday, the author and playwright Heinrich von Kleist published the first issue of the world’s very first daily newspaper.
The Places Within Us All: On Gwen Goodkin's "A Place Remote"
Growing up, especially in a small town, means deciding whether to leave home or stay.
The Gore of Emotion: On Whitney Collins' "Big Bad"
In her debut short story collection Big Bad, Whitney Collins showcases the emotion involved in making the most brutal of human decisions.
