We have a copy of Out Front the Following Sea by Lea Angstman to give away!
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In Bock’s alternate universe, the reader is immersed in a carnival ride that questions and interprets how our current reality could easily follow a much darker timeline. In this world of monsters and chaos, happening “after the extinction of whales”, in which trees as nourishers become murderous “flame trees”, the reader is instantly and viscerally reminded of the fires that have ravaged Australia, the Amazon, and much of the western United States.
The author of A Plan to Save the World talks about how she started writing, her debut novel and its inspiration, her (self-) publishing journey, and lots more.
Luikart’s short stories are like glimpses of reality television episodes of the down-and-out and downtrodden. Each excerpt gives the reader a video clip in the mind, briefly immersing in the stories of bad parents, drug addicts, prostitutes, the suicidal, the desperately lonely, the neglected, the abandoned, the mentally ill, the grieving, and many more lost and despondent types. His writing puts one right into the desperate situations and into the brains of his characters.
Some of the poems in The Crumbling Mansion are reprinted from Dining at the Edge, but in this new context the work picks up on the theme, highlighting the entropy that is always undoing: mansions crumble, trees fall, makeup runs, love dissolves, animals become extinct, and great poets and playwrights die, leaving us bereft and struggling for meaning. What The Crumbling Mansion shows is is how beautiful the struggle is.
There are two things I appreciate most about this brave novel by Dalgarno. The first is that it explores so candidly the inner world of the narrator—Chris – who is painted with such pathos, to provoke tenderness and vulnerability in the reader and cast toxic masculinity under scrutiny. Secondly, I appreciate how it aroused in me important conversations on love and ethics, coloured by story.
The poem, “Let’s leave” is even more of a departure from conventional verse-on-the-page, with words literally overlapping other text (unfortunately, this cannot be reproduced here), presumably suggesting emotional complexity/density, but also for sheer aesthetic effect. “Solace by earl” is another example, and, significantly, this poem highlights another of Allen’s themes, the reverence with which she regards her female elders, womanhood in general.
We have a copy of Jack and the Fantastic Circus by Ariel and Michael Tyson 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 November from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
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 November from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
For the conscientious writer, many experiences of loss and pain can be conveyed only by using a special language, one that stretches somewhat beyond the norm. To accomplish this, Dafoe chooses the method of writing her story as fantasy; she never strays from her course: that of allowing her characters to come to terms with their devastating losses and helping them promote their dream of peace to others.
We have a copy of All Things That Deserve to Perish by Dana Mack 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 November from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!