by Rachel Lyon
FICTION | NONFICTION | POETRY
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by Rachel Lyon
by Robb Todd
Please take a moment to consider and appreciate how the Department of Motor Vehicles has influenced contemporary poetry.
by Zack Graham
You don’t read Ben Lerner’s writing. You read Ben Lerner’s mind. His immense, contorted, self-effacing, hilarious intellect propels his narratives. Sure, his novels have characters, plots, themes. But those elements aren’t why Lerner is one of America’s best young fiction writers. Lerner is brilliant, and his novels resemble doctored and polished transcripts of his mind’s inner workings.
by Siena Oristalgio
As I watched small flitting creatures
appear again and again in the poems,
I was struck with a sudden desire to witness
some such small creatures in person.
by Tess Crain
Certain writers assault you with their intelligence, not as, or only as, a performance, but rather out of necessity: they simply cannot stop thinking. Humor has long been the balm of metacognition, laughter a scaffolding over the abyss.
by Robb Todd
Flash fiction is not fiction as a white horse is not a horse.
Fiction, the god of the outermost circle, is so powerful that those who strictly write facts are defined in opposition to it: nonfiction.
Categorization is tyranny, even if it is useful to customers who might care to know what they are buying without having to think too much about it.
An original poem by Tom Paine.
by Zack Graham
Rivka Galchen has never published the same kind of book.
Dorothy Spears (illustration by Kendra Allenby)
by Tess Crain
What is the meaning of an imaginary friend? Appearing mainly to children but at times lasting into adulthood, invented companions can signal madness, creativity, both, or neither. Sometimes, they simply serve as company. A writer I know used to have an unreal pal named Zee—“he had a kind of sarcastic jauntiness”—who resembled a wisp of smoke and wore a monocle, like an ephemeral Mr. Peanut: “he was my only real friend for a while.” My roommate had a tiny, bald, blue man who sat on her shoulder and scouted for danger. A college friend once had multiple miniature dragons. In most cases, these familiars erupt from the collision between psyche and environment: reading a fantasy series, watching performance art, loneliness.
by Robb Todd
Black Light is a rare book. Kimberly King Parsons has delivered a work of truth and beauty that will transcend generations. If that sounds too effusive, it is not. This is also the rare book that bears promotional blurbs indistinguishable from critical reviews…
by Zack Graham
You probably haven’t heard of Nick Antosca, but you will soon. He wrote on one of the most psychologically nuanced and visually arresting television series ever in “Hannibal.” In late 2017, Guillermo del Toro signed on to produce Antosca’s feature-length script Antlers. At 36, Antosca is well on his way to becoming a modern master of horror, on par with a Robert Eggers, an Ari Aster, or a Jordan Peele.
by Siena Oristaglio
What are snakes afraid of?
by Tess Crain
Everyone in Oslo has a parquet floor. This is what I’ve gathered, anyway, from reading the crime fiction of Jo Nesbø. While Nesbø has written standalone novels (like the excellent Headhunters and The Son), parquetry is general throughout his Harry Hole (“whoule” in Norwegian; how it looks in English) series, about the brilliant but polarizing Oslo Police detective, distinguished by his alcoholism and hail-mary competence. Two sentences into The Devil’s Star, water leaves “a wet streak over the oak parquet” of an apartment. In Nemesis, a thief’s shoes click loudly on the parquet flooring of a bank. A doctor in The Redbreast gazes sadly at “the worn parquet floor” of his office.
by Harris Lahti
As I drive, the country highway’s pattern of overgrown campgrounds, boarded-up motels, and stretches of impenetrably dark woods begin to resemble a series of horror movie sets, at last punctuated by a white-steepled church illuminated with halogen lights. I pull into the parking lot the church shares with an enormous prefab building of black corrugated steel. Skate Time.
by Robb Todd
An anonymous person posted some writing on a website and asked: "First page of my book. What do you think?"
by Zack Graham
One of the most talented American novelists of his generation, Colson Whitehead’s nine books constitute about as diverse a body of work as any living writer’s. His settings include a post-apocalyptic zombie attack, an American slave plantation in the 1700s, the mid-’80s Hampton’s, and the modern World Poker Tour. He is the recipient of nearly every serious literary award and/or honor known to mankind, and his essays and stories have appeared in every leading English-language newspaper and magazine. The man is a national treasure.
