Brian Azzarello’s story is top-notch and is written with a street dialogue that even Elmore Leonard might envy. Eduardo Risso’s artwork is evocative and vivid. He can paint a bleak cityscape of housing projects and basketball courts, move from the…
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Interview with Chris Stella of Void Magazine
Void Magazine’s Executive Editor talks about his involvement in Void, his exciting ambitions for the Magazine (“I want to see our writers with contracts”), why poetry doesn’t sell as well as it should, the ongoing role of magazines like Void, his own literary project, why he wishes everyone would put down Foer for a month and read Don Quixote, what he loves best about Void Magazine, and much more.
A review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
The latest Harry Potter book is over 650 pages but it gets interesting right from the first page, and flies by. You’ll be sad when it’s finished, not only because sad things happen, but because you won’t want to leave…
A review of Last Night by James Salter
James Salter is an extraordinary writer and I envy those who are coming to him for the first time. His stories could be said to “explore character”, but that would be too pat and too simple; rather, they reveal soul.…
A review of This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Jelloun’s prose is vivid and alive, whether he is describing the stench of death (“Death has a smell. A mixture of brackish water, vinegar, and pus. It’s sharp, harsh.”) or the shock of seeing your own face in a mirror…
A review of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
The relationship between the opening of the novel and the ending of it are interwoven powerfully. The theme of what makes a person unique, the relationship between human identity, language, the cultural versus the personal memory, and even the relationship…
A review of Tracings by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
These are ordinary days, and ordinary recollections, make extraordinary by the power of Howard-Johnson’s observation and the tension between sensation and hindsight. Peppered with imagery that is heady and evocative, this is poetry both historical and psychological. Reviewed by Magdalena…
A review of River Cafe Two Easy by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers
When recipes depend so heavily on the quality of one or two main ingredients, the ingredient must be perfect. Anything less than 70% chocolate (forget about compounds) will render your Chocolate vanilla truffles decidedly inedible, as will using lentils which…
A review of The Fall of Rome by Martha Southgate
Although not an unusual narrative strategy, it demands much of an author and it is a pleasure here to see how Southgate rises beautifully to the occasion. Southgate goes beyond this to the extreme virtuosity of a narrative for the…
Interview with Martha Southgate
Martha Southgate is a very aware and gifted writer with a background in writing that includes journalism as well as novels. With an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College she has herself been a teacher. Her novel The Fall of Rome won the American Library Association’s Alex Award.