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Volume 31, Number 3, Fall 2026 (#123)

To purchase issue #123 using Paypal, click here.
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250 Years of American Literature

Introductory Note | by Eric Lorberer
The New Life | by Gary Sullivan
Those Nations of Poets: On Jerome Rothenberg’s Shaking the Pumpkin:
Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas | by John Bradley
A Fragmentary History of the U. S. Comic Book Trade | by Chris Barsanti
A Remarkable Collection of Angels: A History of the 6 Gallery Reading | David S. Wills
| by Zack Kopp

INTERVIEWS

Mark Nowak: Seasonal Work | Interviewed by Eric Lorberer
Sara Levine: When the Story Crumbles | Interviewed by Rachel Robbins

PLUS: Cover art by: Marlena Myles

FICTION REVIEWS

NONFICTION REVIEWS

Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson | Leo Damrosch
and A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson | Camille Peri
| by Mike Dillon
Nowhere Near | Miko Revereza | by Amanda L. Andrei
Socially Wired: How Culture Shapes Our Brains | Matthew W. Schelke | by Douglac C. MacLeod, Jr.
My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond | Hugh Ryan | by Claude Peck
Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema | Steven C. Smith | by Nell Beram
Criticism Without Authority: Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Queer Practices | Jennifer Sichel | by Lauren R. Fulton
Little Apocalypses: Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World
| Kaitlyn Teer | by Jo Ann Zimmerman

POETRY REVIEWS

OTHER FEATURES:

From the Backlist: Living! Go and Dream | Julien Poirer | by Richard Kostelanetz
The Satrapi Moment: In Memoriam Marjane Satrapi 1969–2026 | by Paul Buhle

To purchase issue #123 using Paypal, click here.
To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.

Marlena Myles

Uŋčí Makhá's Shawl (Grandmother Earth's Shawl)

Marlena Myles, a self-taught Spirit Lake Dakota artist in St. Paul, Minnesota, brings Indigenous history, language, and traditions into modern contexts through children’s books, augmented reality, murals, and more. Her notable works include augmented reality public art installations such as the Dakota Spirit Walk, Sacred Hoop Walk and Wodakota Walk. She has exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and other prestigious galleries, created a Google Doodle, and launched Wíyouŋkihipi Productions to promote Dakota culture. In 2023, she won the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, Joyce Award, and created her first documentary, "Realms of Resilience". Learn more about this artist here.

Volume 31, Number 2, Summer 2026 (#122)

To purchase issue #122 using Paypal, click here.
To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.

INTERVIEWS

Lindsay Stuart Hill: Clearer Than Mirrors | Interviewed by Brianna Flavin
Sara Maurer: Dispatch from the Rural North | Interviewed by Amber Ruth Paulen
Shavaun Scott: The Wounded Healer | Interviewed by Emma Ramos

FEATURES

250 Years of American Literature: Second in a Four-Part Series

Introductory Note | by Eric Lorberer
The New Life | by Gary Sullivan
A Fragmentary History of the U. S. Book Trade | by Chris Barsanti
Is American Literature a “National Literature”? | by Patrick James Dunagan
Set in Minnesota: The Case for Place in a Decade’s Worth of “Best Books” | by Anesa Miller

PLUS: Cover art by: Erik Krenz

FICTION REVIEWS

NONFICTION / ART REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

COMICS REVIEW

The Once and Future Riot | Joe Sacco | by Paul Buhle

ESSAY

Sweet-Talked by AI | by Peg Guilfoyle

To purchase issue #122 using Paypal, click here.
To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.

Erik Krenz

Erik Krenz is a wild life and pop culture artist who paints exclusively with acrylic paints. Visit him at erikkrenzprints.squarespace.com.

Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2026 (#121)

To purchase issue #121 using Paypal, click here .
To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.

INTERVIEWS

Shangyang Fang: Words for Lost Music | Interviewed by Mathew Weitman
Jeremy M. Davies: The House Always Wins | Interviewed by Michael Ward

FEATURES

250 Years of American Literature: First in a Four-Part Series

Introductory Note | by Eric Lorberer
The New Life | by Gary Sullivan
An American Book(ish) Miscellany | compiled by Chris Barsanti
Would I Burn Palaces? The Poetry of Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt | by Stephanie Burt
Photographic Memory: William Henry Jackson and the American West | Bill Griffith | by Paul Buhle

PLUS: Cover art by Jamie Kalakaru-Mava

POETRY REVIEWS

FROM THE BACKLIST

The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez | John Rechy | by Erwin Kamuene

NONFICTION REVIEWS

FICTION REVIEWS

To purchase issue #121 using Paypal, click here.
To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.

Analog Cave at Northern Spark 2013

EXTRAORDINARYa brief recap of ANALOG CAVE

I love the word “extraordinary.” We all know it means “beyond the ordinary,” but I like how it sneaks in the notion that simply having more of the ordinary could lead to something wondrous. This is what happened at the ANALOG CAVE project that we at Rain Taxi created with our pals at mnartists.org for the third annual Northern Spark festival, in which scores of art projects large and small took place from dusk to dawn.

Hosted in the heart of Northern Spark at Bedlam Theater, ANALOG CAVE was a two-part construction: in one enclosed “room” decked out with funky retro care, we invited the public to enter and use our writing prompts and tools (a manual typewriter, a wooden desk with stationary for letter writing, a turntable with a notepad for responses, and an erasure station piled with old books). The author placed their words through a mail slot in the wall; on the receiving end, editors read (and sometimes revised) the work. Next, a team of artists transformed the writing into a visual work at various stations of their own (a cartooning desk, an overhead projector, an easel, a chalkboard)—all on view to the public through Bedlam’s giant street-facing window.

Our goals in this project were manifold: we wanted to honor the spontaneity and energy of artistic creation, the universal impulse toward self-expression through language, and the more specific stylistic drive toward quality and transformation. That we had lines half the night to get in was a testament to the spirit we hoped to provoke with this “crowd-sourcing” project, and that some of the work—on both sides of the mail slot—was so damn good was thrilling. FYI, each art piece (and some of the original and edited texts!) is being photographed and posted to mnartists.org’s tumblr, MNMADE—an extension of the project that not only celebrates the unique artistry of ANALOG CAVE but one that we hope shows the creativity of the documentary impulse too.

I want to thank everyone listed below: especially our collaborators at mnartists.org for their generous, genuine, and fun process while we developed this concept together, the amazing artists that joined us to visualize others’ words from dusk to dawn, and the thousands of people that passed through ANALOG CAVE and contributed or marveled at the artistic feats being accomplished in real time.

— Eric Lorberer, Executive Director, Rain Taxi Review of Books

COORDINATORS AND ARTISTS

Rain Taxi:
Eric Lorberer
Kelly Everding
Robert Martin
Sarah Evenson

mnartists.org:
Scott Stulen
Susannah Schouweiler
Jehra Patrick
Chloe Nelson

participating artists:
Jack Walsh
Bridget Mendel
Steve Stwalley
Ken Avidor
Ryan Dow
Jajeev Nithiananda
Kayla Halberg
Nicholas Straight
Emma Gallenberg
Kirubel Tebeje

VISIT MNMADE.TUMBLR FOR MORE PICS!

And see here for more photos of some of the people and art from Analog Cave:

Analog Art Cave one
Analog Art Cave two

An Evening with Dessa and Friends

Sold-out audience waits for Dessa

Charismatic Dessa reads from her new chapbook, A Pound of Steam.

Aby Wolf performs a song inspired by "Dear Sir or Madam."

Sims answers a question from the audience. He took the inspiration for his song from Dessa's poem "Mercy."

Benjamin Burwell and Jake Pavek performed Dessa's poem "Kept Company" in the classical style.

Dessa treated the audience to a couple of songs from her new album, Parts of Speech.

Dessa signs copies of A Pound of Steam at the book signing.

Exuberant crowd waits to get their books signed.

Rain Taxi, in partnership with Dessa, is a fiscal year 2013 recipient of a Cultural Community Partnership grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Return to Readings Page

MINNESOTA ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR

Saturday, June 27, 2026 • 10am to 6pm • $5 entry
Minnesota State Fairgrounds, The North End Event Center

Rain Taxi is pleased to participate this year's Minnesota Antiquarian Book Fair! We’ll have all our chapbooks, broadsides, and other ephemera for sale at special prices, plus an assortment of cool used books, comics, and more. Come by and browse our tables and scores of others for whom printed matter… matters! Visit The Minnesota Antiquarian Book Fair for more details.

MARK NOWAK

Tuesday, May 12 • 7 pm
Moon Palace Books
3032 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis

Join us for a deep dive into 21st-century documentary poetry!

25 years ago, we hosted poet Mark Nowak in our reading series for his stunning first book Revenants. Join us as we welcome Nowak to the Rain Taxi stage again for his latest work, . . . AGAIN. Combining poetry and photographs, wordplay and sober documentation, . . . AGAIN looks at the depredations of capitalism and other societal ills in an attempt to make sense of a bitterly divided nation. At this special event, Nowak will read from . . . AGAIN, and then discuss the book in conversation with Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer.

About the Author:

Mark Nowak is one of America’s most innovative political poets. Heralded by Adrienne Rich for “regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature,” his books include Revenants, Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, Social Poetics, and . . . AGAIN, all published by Coffee House Press. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and Creative Capital foundations, Nowak is founding director of the Worker Writers School, a sought-after speaker on documentary poetry, and author of the introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022).
(author photo by Lisa Arrastia)

Jamie Kalakaru-Mava

Wish for Spring, 10" x 18" paint on canvas

Jamie (Schumacher) Kalakaru-Mava is a visual artist and accomplished writer. Her written work has been featured by Pollen, the Star Tribune, and the Minnesota Women’s Press. Her book It’s Never Going to Work was released in 2018 and details the ups and downs of starting an arts nonprofit. (Spoiler: it did work, at least for a little while.)

Jamie received a master's degree in innovation in nonprofit management. She currently works with LISC Twin Cities, building the capacity of the more than two dozen cultural and creative districts of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Jamie currently lives in Bloomington with her partner, Nick, their two daughters, a rescue pup named Rufus, a still unnamed betta fish, and four chickens. While she is available for hire, she would also like to warn you that she dabbles in the dark arts with only limited success. Find out more at jamie-schumacher.com.

Volume 31, Number 3, Fall 2026 (#123)

250 Years of American Literature

INTERVIEWS

FICTION REVIEWS

NONFICTION REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

OTHER FEATURES:

INTERVIEWS

FEATURES

FICTION REVIEWS

NONFICTION / ART REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

COMICS REVIEW

ESSAY

INTERVIEWS

FEATURES

POETRY REVIEWS

FROM THE BACKLIST

NONFICTION REVIEWS

FICTION REVIEWS

EXTRAORDINARYa brief recap of ANALOG CAVE

COORDINATORS AND ARTISTS

And see here for more photos of some of the people and art from Analog Cave:

Return to Readings Page

Tuesday, May 12 • 7 pmMoon Palace Books3032 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis

Join us for a deep dive into 21st-century documentary poetry!

About the Author:

Tuesday, May 12 • 7 pm
Moon Palace Books
3032 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis