William Trevor Penguin UK by Jesse Freedman The death of William Trevor in the fall of 2016 marked a significant moment in the history of contemporary literature. Best known for his short stories, Trevor developed a style that would bridge two generations of Commonwealth authors: those writing in the aftermath of World War II and […]
Tommy Pico Birds, LLC ($18) by Benjamin Voigt What do you do when the Muse doesn’t text back? This is the question of Tommy Pico’s IRL, one of the most compulsively readable poetry debuts of the past year. An ultra-contemporary epic, IRL keeps it real in a few different ways: it represents life as it’s […]
D. Foy Stalking Horse Press ($18.95) by Benjamin Woodard D. Foy’s second novel, Patricide, rumbles with violence, even when there’s none to be seen on the page. A dark, brave, complicated tale, it speaks to the rages that linger in men through generations, confronting the lashes provoked by cowardice, power, and addiction, and the crippled […]
Misha Pam Dick Essay Press ($15.95) by Jay Besemer Reading means taking into the body. That’s a description deriving from practice, not a dictionary definition. Everything we’ve ever read goes inside us, but it doesn’t necessarily stay. When it does, it becomes part of the self—or selves. This process is at the heart of Misha […]
Fiona Sampson Chatto & Windus / Random House UK ($18.95) by Kevin Holton In The Catch, Fiona Simpson displays the minutiae of suburbia with frenetic energy, so even the calmest acts, from standing on a ferry and watching the shore to listening to animals scurry about as the sun sets, become chaotic. The poems in […]
Editor's Note: Elisabeth Workman gave this presentation at the Asemic Translations event, sponsored by Rain Taxi and held at Minnesota Center for Book Arts on March 25, 2017. by Elisabeth Workman When Eric Lorberer said tonight’s theme was right up my alley I took him quite literally & want to begin tonight, as a way […]
Julio Cortázar translated by Stephen Kessler City Lights Books ($17) by John M. Bennett Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), the great Argentine novelist whose highly innovative and experimental fictions have had a lasting and influential impact on literature world-wide, was also an excellent and innovative poet, and his work in that genre deserves to be better known. […]
Jim Lynch Alfred A. Knopf ($26.95) by Daniel Picker Both the waters of Puget Sound and family figure prominently in Jim Lynch’s novel Before the Wind, as grown and nearly-grown children grapple with their parents to set their own independent courses. Lynch’s fictional family, the Johannssens, are a boat-building and sailboat-racing family. The family business […]
Dennis Cooley University of Alberta Press ($49.95) by Garin Cycholl In the post-factual Americas, we play roles in a lunatic’s epic, a demented history of spaces beyond or outside recall. Narrative’s plasticity disfigures personal and public boundaries. Distant and scrolled, the “news” strains credulity. Who owns the story? Who owns the portals, anchor, and cables? […]
Chandra Prasad Washington Square Press ($20.99) by Dennis Barone Some say a novel begins with the question “what if?” Chandra Prasad has a simple proposition for the creation of her 2007 novel On Borrowed Wings: What if the first woman to attend Yale University did so in the mid-1930s instead of decades later? Prasad’s novel […]