INTERVIEWS:

Rock Stars, Secret Agents, and American Myths:
A Conversation Between Constance Squires and Kurt Baumeister
From unreliable narrators to rock ’n’ roll novels, two writers converse about their recent works.

Boatsman on a Wasted Shore: An Interview with Peter Mishler
Mishler provides insight into the genesis of Fludde, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, including his formative, real-life experience as a performer in the opera that is at the center of this collection.
Interviewed by Michelle Lewis

Splitting the Adam: An Interview with Amy P. Knight
Interviewed by Erin Lewenauer
Amy P. Knight puts her degrees in Cognitive Science, English, Law, and Creative Writing to the test with her engaging new novel, Lost, Almost.

Poetics in These Here End Times: An Interview with Paula Cisewski
Interviewed by William Stobb
Poet, memoirist, arts activist, and tarot enthusiast, Paula Cisewski’s been turning the Queen of Cups upright for the Twin Cities literary scene since the 1990s.

The City Whispered in Her Ear: Interview with Cristina García
Interviewed by Allan Vorda
Cuban author Cristina García discusses her seventh novel, which expands on her recurring themes of politics, cultural memory, and how identity can be constructed from multiple viewpoints.

FICTION / COMICS REVIEWS:

Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures
Yvan Alagbé
In woodcut-like calligraphic brushwork, this legend of French comics addresses how to speak of courage or cowardice in the context of colonialism. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Mrs. Fletcher: A Novel
Tom Perrotta
Many of the characters in Mrs. Fletcher are caught in a uniquely American dilemma, a type of restlessness that will not be satisfied by physical motion. Reviewed by Esther Fishman

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Andrea Lawlor
Both fable-like bildungsroman and exhilarating ode to mid-’90s queer culture, Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel tells the story of Paul Polydoris, a gay man in his early twenties with the uncanny abilities of a shapeshifter. Reviewed by Jeremiah Moriarty

The Canyons
Ben Kostival
Kostival creates remarkably convincing characters in this novel about the Coal Strike days near the turn of the last century. Reviewed by Paul Buhle

POETRY REVIEWS:

Orlando by Sandra Simonds
Yeah No by Jane Gregory
Lecture Notes by Deborah Meadows
What is being written by women in books of poetry in 2018? Three marvelous collections contribute to feminist goals with fruitful potency and move the female voice into uniquely individual spaces. Reviewed by Greg Bem

Critical Assembly: Poems of the Manhattan Project
John Canaday
Canaday takes the ghazal form to new levels with this collection of forty-six characters delivering poems that reveal the internal friction at the Manhattan Project. Reviewed by John Bradley

pray me stay eager
Ellen Doré Watson
Watson’s latest poetry collection is a meditation on the myriad ways the passage of time can be humorous, engaging, and devastating. Reviewed by Teresa Castellitto

Deep Calls to Deep
Jane Medved
In her debut poetry collection, Jane Medved immerses her readers in a world of contradiction as evoked by Jerusalem, the city she calls home. Reviewed by Gwen Ackerman

Radioapocrypha
BK Fischer
Radioapocrypha has much to say about how teenage girls in 1989 were caught in a kind of trickle-down feminism, or (more aptly) a lack thereof. Reviewed by Kimberly Burwick

The Ghosts of Monticello: A Recitatif
Carmen Gillespie
Begun as a libretto for an opera, Gillespie’s new collection highlights the tensions between Jefferson’s dead wife Martha and his slave-mistress Sally Hemings. Reviewed by Sean Pears

NONFICTION REVIEWS:

Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo van Hoe and the Art of Resistance
Will Aitken
Part travel journal, collage interview, and theoretical musing, this book chronicles the production of Anne Carson’s Antigonick in Luxembourg.
Reviewed by W. C. Bamberger

Three on Nietzsche:
What a Philosopher Is: Becoming Nietzsche by Laurence Lampert
Nietzsche’s Final Teaching by Michael Allen Gillespie
Nietzsche’s Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings
by Keith Ansell-Pearson
Despite Nietzsche suffering periodic rounds of disparagement, we are right now amidst a spate of new monographs that bring sober and thorough attention to bear on Nietzsche’s project. Reviewed by Scott F. Parker

States of the Art: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Other Prose, 1975–2014
Charles North
Poet North’s stance is that of a calm questioning of the usual premises, the supposed givens of poetry and visual art, especially what others have written about them. Reviewed by W. C. Bamberger

Pontus Hultén and Moderna Museet: The Formative Years
Edited by Anna Tellgren
This collection of scholarly appreciations follows Hultén’s work directing some of the biggest art institutions in the world. Reviewed by Richard Kostelanetz