Winter 2020-2021

INTERVIEWS

A Landscape Of Dignity: A Conversation With Ai Weiwei And Ian Boyden
We’re so proud to publish “A Landscape of Dignity,” a conversation with Ai Weiwei and Ian Boyden discussing art, poetry, and cross-cultural collaboration. Interview by Stephanie Elliott Prieto

Oceans of Memory: An interview with Chris Wiewiora
Wiewiora discusses his travelogue memoir, The Distance Is More Than an Ocean, a gateway into the many ages of self and the many ways water tracks his journey through life.
Interviewed by Ashley Inguanta

Moving Minds and Manners: A Conversation with Steven Dunn
Steven Dunn’s measured and practical sensibility is carried deeply into his writing, from his acclaimed novels to a project on the hip hop artist Nas.
Interviewed by Zack Kopp

The Human Journey: An Interview with Micheline Aharonian Marcom
Novelist Micheline Aharonian Marcom here discusses her latest book, The New American, which follows the epic story of a Guatemalan-American college student who attempts to return to California following his banal, but brutal, deportation.
Interviewed By Benjamin P. Davis

Words are the enemy of Writers: An Interview with Richard Kalich
Award-winning novelist Richard Kalich discusses his desire to fuse fiction and life in the accreting oeuvre of his work, including his latest novel, The Assisted Living Facility Library.
Interviewed by Brian Evenson

FEATURES

A Furnace Fed on Stars: Deborah Digges and the Double-Edged Poetics of Loss
Searingly luminous, intensely lyrical, and often oracular, the poetry of Deborah Digges is paradoxically both rooted in the modern world and somehow timeless.
Essay by Timothy Walsh

Pandemic Reflections on Beyond Your Doorstep by Hal Borland
As the pandemic forced everyone indoors last spring, one reader found himself drawn to earthy prose that offered an effective counterweight to the daily death tolls and global anxieties.
By John Toren

MIXED GENRE REVIEWS

The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel
Lawrence Fixel
edited and with an introduction by Gerald Fleming
An early practitioner of the prose poem, Lawrence Fixel created a body of work that resonates with humor, wonder, and paradox. Reviewed by John Bradley

Wanting Everything: The Collected Works
Gladys Hindmarch
edited by Deanna Fong & Karis Shearer
This collection of published and unpublished works, interviews, and oral histories provides a remarkable testament to Hindmarch’s life and rootedness in the literary community of Vancouver British Columbia. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

FICTION REVIEWS

The Bangtail Ghost
Keith McCafferty
Once you’ve read a Keith McCafferty mystery you’ll recognize the style, a rapidly rising drama that turns into a whopping good whodunit—or in The Bangtail Ghost, a what-dunit. Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt

Burnt Tongues Anthology
Edited by Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Thomas, and Dennis Widmyer
An anthology of transgressive fiction, Burnt Tongues offers twenty stories by authors who frequented Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult website. Reviewed by Ben Arzate

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
Bette Howland
Howland, the child of a working-class Jewish family in Chicago, writes brilliantly about daily life without belittling it as a subject. Reviewed by Daniel Byronson

We Ride Upon Sticks
Quan Barry
In her new novel, Quan Barry seamlessly fuses two topics that seemingly couldn’t be further apart: witchcraft and women’s field hockey. Reviewed by Jaime Miller

The Girl from Widow Hills
Megan Miranda
Megan Miranda’s fourth novel for adults is another insightful, literary, and suspenseful mystery, inspired by the story of “Baby Jessica,” who survived falling down a well in 1987. Reviewed by Erin Lewenauer

POETRY REVIEWS

The Selected Poems Of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated
Tu Fu, translated by David Hinton
New translations of one of China’s greatest poets is a cause for celebration, as well as a chance to revisit the eternal debate about the reliability of translations. Reviewed by John Bradley

I walk around gathering up my garden for the night
Marie Lundquist
Newly translated into English, Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s 1992 debut poetry collection offers humor, horror, and feminist incising in a constrained form. Reviewed by Greg Bem

Middle Distance: Poems
Stanley Plumly
Plumly’s final book, completed two months before his death in 2019, is a coda of sorts to the poet’s vast and creative career. Reviewed by Walter Holland

Prairie Architecture
Monica Barron
The first collection from a seasoned poet of place, Monica Barron’s Prairie Architecture embodies the rural Missouri college town where she teaches. Reviewed by Andy Harper

Stranger by Night
Edward Hirsch
In his tenth volume of poems, the 70-year-old Hirsch navigates a personal history, recalling forebears, friends, and lovers, as well as the ever-present reminder of mortality. Reviewed by Bhisham Bherwani

NONFICTION REVIEWS

Ezra Pound, Italy, and The Cantos
Massimo Bacigalupo
This scholarly yet conversational study unveils an intimate portrait of both poet and poem as Pound relocated to Rapallo, Italy. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls
Nina Renata Aron
In a gutsy and searing memoir, Nina Renata Aron explores the harshness and monstrosity of loving an addict. Reviewed by Erin Lewenauer

Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best
Neal Bascomb
A tribute to the power of stories and remembering, Faster argues for the symbolic importance of the underdogs beating their Nazi-backed competitors in the 1938 Pau Grand Prix. Reviewed by Samir Knego

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Weaving Baldwin’s story with his own, Glaude has constructed a narrative of psychic anguish and the heroic resistance of the heart, issuing a piercing call to the American conscience. Reviewed by Mike Dillon