This collaboration with Theo Ellsworth is unique. Ellsworth’s style is reminiscent of R. Crumb, the underground comics pioneer whose iconic black-and-white cross-hatching and the exaggerated features of his character are instantly recognizable. Combined with Dara Horn’s erudition, the comic book style makes the ancient story seem somehow more relevant and more subversive.
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New giveaway!
We have a copy of The Heart is Meat: An 80s Memoir by Michael Backus to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of June from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
An interview with Joshua Vigil
The author of Bastardland talks about his latest book, his writing habits, the satisfaction of writing, social media, on unsettling a reader, the joys of publication, and more.
A review of A Prague Flâneur by Vítězslav Nezval
The streets, bridges, buildings, and cafés “where Prague lives” provide a wealth of stimuli to which Nezval responds with a catalogue of memories. His Prague is like the site of an archaeological dig whose layers expose various periods of personal history. It also is the site of shops whose windows display goods that take on hallucinatory appearances, and the setting for chance meetings with strange characters and events that touch on the uncanny.
A review of Informed by Alison Stone
The poems are raw and pull the curtains back to reveal intimate family dynamics and heartbreak. Death was real and claimed a young neighbor and she wonders about an afterlife and “starved myself to safety, transcendence”. With no real example of how to live, she had to “transcend”, “starve”, develop an eating disorder as a way to survive the death and destruction around her that was felt and yet hidden, unspoken, unacknowledged: “under tablecloths,/the makeup”, stashed in the “trunk of a new car”.
The Art of Connections: Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001) & Other Wedding Movies
Hemant has a groom’s procession, arriving on a horse; and, of course, the bride is beautiful. It rains, torrential rain (the monsoon that follows summer)—and a long-awaited young man arrives, Umang (Jas Arora), and exchanges glances with Ria. The rain further washes away formality and pretense. Everybody dances.
A review of The Ballad of Falling Rock by Jordan Dotson
The Ballad of Falling Rock is a stunning book that follows at least four generations of a family in the Appalachian region near Virginia and in tiny towns and forests. If you are a Hemingway fan, this one’s not for you. Or, if you are a Hemingway fan but maintain an open mind, you can read it and set yourself on a path thick with adjectives.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of Measure of Devotion by Nell Joslin to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of June from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
The Rhymes and Reasons of James Sale: A Review of DoorWay, Vol. 3 of the English Cantos
James Sale is not using “lazy rhyme;” he is deliberately, carefully stretching the boundaries of what is acceptable rhyming convention in English formal poetry. He uses his slant rhymes, half rhymes, near rhymes, assonant rhymes, consonant rhymes, light rhymes, and syllabic rhymes with abandon. With joy. With freedom. Lavishly. He is demonstrating that our language is a language that by default doesn’t always perfectly rhyme— but when you get close, it can be as beautiful, and powerful, and in many instances, more effective than a perfect rhyme can ever be.
An interview with Brian Jacobson
In this tongue-in-cheek interview, the author of Life Engineering and The Truth About the Moon and the Stars talks about his writing process, what he exclusively listens to, why he writes fiction, his ideal readers, what he does for fun, and more.