INTERVIEWS:

Revisiting the Journey: An Interview with Craig Thompson
In this transcript of a talk given at the 2018 Autoptic Festival in Minneapolis, Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer speaks with graphic novelist Craig Thompson about the reissue of his 2004 book Carnet de Voyage.
Interviewed by Eric Lorberer

Flights of Rhetoric: An Interview with Jeff Bursey
Interviewed by W.D. Clarke
The reissue of Bursey’s first novel, Verbatim, is perfectly-timed, as it is presents a wickedly satirical "verbatim" record of the workings of a legislature in a fictional province in eastern Canada.

Think and the Mouth’s a Pore: An Interview with Jared Stanley
Interviewed by Eric Magrane
Poet Jared Stanley discusses the incantatory work from his book EARS and how it taps the “dis-ease” of living in a world of beauty and suffering.

FEATURES:

University Presses in a Turbulent World
By Brian Halley
This year, University Press Week runs from November 12-17, and with a very appropriate theme: #TurnItUP, which emphasizes the role UPs can play in amplifying underrepresented work and ideas.

COMICS REVIEWS:

Sabrina
Nick Drnaso
The first ever graphic novel nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Sabrina is a gripping story about the disappearance of a young girl, and the erasure of what we take for reality. Reviewed by Steve Matuszak

POETRY REVIEWS:

A Certain Plume
Henri Michaux
Plume is this prose poetry collection’s Chaplinesque main character, a self-portrait of the author perhaps, now rendered in an excellent, colloquial translation by Richard Sieburth. Reviewed by M. Kasper

Wings
Amir Or
Israeli poet Amir Or’s Wings weaves themes of the multiplicity of the self, religion, creation, nature, and the baselessness of time. Reviewed by Kenneth J. Pruitt

Negative Space
Luljeta Lleshanaku
Even written under the tyrannical rule of Enver Hoxha, Albanian poet Lleshanaku’s work sparkles with clarity and incisiveness. Reviewed by John Bradley

Electric Snakes
Adrian C. Louis
Louis fearlessly adopts the persona of a grouchy old man in between retirement and infirmity, and there are a lot of questions, regret, and sorrows in these poems, but they aren’t self-pitying. Reviewed by Warren Woessner

The New Nudity
Hadara Bar-Nadav
In focusing her poems on mundane objects, Bar-Nadav valorizes and illuminates the process of language. Reviewed by Denise Low

From the Files of the Immanent Foundation
Norman Finkelstein
Finkelstein’s poems create a seductive atmosphere of secrets always on the verge of divulgation, of total clarity always just out of reach. Reviewed by Alexander Dickow

Poet in Spain
Federico García Lorca
Sarah Arvio’s fresh translation of Lorca's Poet in Spain asserts a division between Lorca’s New York poems (which she pointedly does not include here) and those written in Spain, correcting the Americanization of Lorca’s work. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

A Certain Roughness in Their Syntax
Jorge Aulicino
Celebrated Argentinian poet Jorge Aulicino’s poems in this collection blend and distill the sentiments, impressions, and violent images of various Latin American independence struggles. Reviewed by M. Lock Swingen

FICTION REVIEWS

Tell the Machine Goodnight
Katie Williams
Set in the year 2035, Katie Williams’s Tell the Machine Goodnight envisions a dystopian future in which a machine makes recommendations to increase happiness. Reviewed by Greg Chase

Silver Girl
Leslie Pietrzyk
Set in the 1980s in Chicago during the Tylenol murders, Leslie Pietrzyk’s emotionally resonant and timely Silver Girl tells the story of a fraught relationship between an unnamed working-class narrator and her upper-class, best friend, Jess. Reviewed by Mary Lannon

Pure Hollywood
Christine Schutt
With the exacting grace of a water-skier, Christine Schutt takes us prickly places we don’t want to go in her latest story collection. Reviewed by Erin Lewenauer

The House of Nordquist
Eugene Garber
Rather than a novel of storytelling, this is a fiction of consciousness—an exploration of our own destructive and creative powers. Reviewed by Martin Nakell

Lost Empress
Sergio De La Pava
In his new playful novel, the fateful butterfly wings of an automobile accident and a woman’s bilked inheritance set into motion the intertwining of a motley cast of characters. Reviewed by Chris Via

Come West and See
Maxim Loskutoff
Loskutoff’s first short story collection offers a collage of motley characters, some of them survivalists, and many of whom have doubts about themselves and their relationships, despite a veneer of bravado. Reviewed by George Longenecker

Witchmark
C. L. Polk
In her debut novel, Polk sets out to show “good people striving to do good things for good reasons” and succeeds in this romantic supernatural murder mystery. Reviewed by Catherine Rockwood

The President’s Gardens
Muhsin Al-Ramli
Al-Ramli offers a unique view of a remote village in Iraq in this story of a multi-generational family experiencing the traumas of war and tyranny. Reviewed by Mark Gozonsky

NONFICTION REVIEWS

The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival
Robert Jay Lifton
Lifton returns as our chronicler of catastrophes with this book about the pending disaster of climate change. Reviewed by Robert Zaller

The Ruin of Kasch
Roberto Calasso
The first in Calasso’s magnum opus on the tradition of literature focuses on ritual and ancient sacrifice, revolution, and the origins of modernity. Reviewed by M. Lock Swingen

Journeying
Claudio Magris
These occasional pieces on the literature and culture of Middle Europe display the erudition and charm for which Magris is known. Reviewed by John Toren

Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil
Deborah Nelson
Nelson examines the work of six women who were known for their strong opinions and did not depend on any kind of sentimentality—even when their subjects were earthshakingly tragic. Reviewed by Esther Fishman

Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature
Gloria Fisk
Fisk offers a case study of the oeuvre and persona of Orhan Pamuk to expose literary critics’ pretensions to neutrality. Reviewed by Erik Noonan

On the Road & Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein:
My Years with the Exasperating Genius
Charlie Harmon
As Bernstein’s personal assistant for four years late in Bernstein’s life, Harmon offers unique insight into the demands of his stressful life.
Reviewed by Douglas Messerli

Fifty Playwrights on Their Craft
Caroline Jester and Caridad Svich
This structurally versatile collection of interviews offers an invaluable snapshot of the dramatic community writing in English today. Reviewed by Justin Maxwell

The People Vs. Democracy:
Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
Yascha Mounk
Mounk’s recent work really isn’t a book about saving democracy; rather, it’s a user-friendly autopsy of liberal democracy’s worldwide collapse. Reviewed by Spencer Dew