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Rain Taxi Volume 29, Number 1, Spring 2024 (#113)

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INTERVIEWS

Darryl Pinckney: The Women Who Shaped Him | interviewed by William Corwin
Jody Hobbs Hesler: Atonement Is Not Transactional | interviewed by Sharon Harrigan
Dorothea Lasky: Why Horror | interviewed by Zachary Pace
Patty Crane: Hues of Translation | interviewed by Dennis Maloney

FEATURES

Plus cover art by Noah Lawrence-Holder

NONFICTION REVIEWS

Dear Jean Pierre | David Wojnarowicz | by Patrick James Dunagan
Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith | John Szwed | by Richard Kostelanetz
The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality | William Egginton | by David Brizer
The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters | Benjamin Moser | by Allan Vorda
New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust | Howard Debs and Matthew Silverman, eds. | by Gale Hemmann

FICTION REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

COMICS REVIEWS

Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story | Julia Wertz | by Greg Baldino

To purchase issue #113 using Paypal, click here.
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Noah Lawrence-Holder

Noah Lawrence-Holder is a black, nonbinary artist from Madison WI, now based in the Twin Cities. Their work consists of illustration and animations centered around racial justice, equity, intersectionality and gender identity. They have featured work in gallery shows highlighting queer and black artists across Minneapolis and beyond. Visit their website here.

Volume 28, Number 4, Winter 2023 (#112)

To purchase issue #112 using Paypal, click here.
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INTERVIEWS

Lynn Levin: Playthings of Chaos | interviewed by Carolyne Wright
Elizabeth Metzger: In Two Separate Rooms, Breathing | interviewed by Tiffany Troy
Marty Cain: Pastoral Politics | interviewed by J. B. Stone

FEATURES

If and Only If | by Scott F. Parker
A Personal View: The Writer as Publisher | by David Stromberg
A Look Back: Bright Lights, Big City | by Neal Lipschutz
The New Life | a comic by Gary Sullivan

Plus cover art by John Schuerman

NONFICTION REVIEWS

FICTION REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

MIXED GENRE REVIEWS

Poets on the Road | Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning | by Kit Robinson
Poetechnics / Poetécnicas: Designs from the New World | Yaxkin Melchy
| by kathy wu

COMICS REVIEWS

My Picture Diary | Fujiwara Maki | by Jeff Alford

To purchase issue #112 using Paypal, click here.
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John Schuerman

*Walk on Lake Hiawatha, Winter Solstice*, 2021

John Schuerman is a self-taught artist and independent curator. His artwork reflects his deep interest in nature both human and nonhuman. His aesthetic style and social consciousness formed as he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. Schuerman is an environmental, and documentary artist, exploring the physical, social, and psychic landscapes through drawing, video, photography, and walking-based art forms. His artwork has been presented in numerous exhibitions locally and nationally.

His curatorial projects engage viewers on today’s most pressing issues: empathy, human overpopulation, gun violence, money, time, nationalism, identity, conflict, environmentalism, and abuses of power. See more of his work online at www.schuermanfineart.com.

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 3, FALL 2023 (#111)

To purchase issue #111 using Paypal, click here.
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INTERVIEWS

Ronnie Pontiac and American Metaphysical Religion | by Zack Kopp
Grant Maierhofer: Keeping the Circulating Happening | by Alex Kies
Amanda Gunn: Black Pleasure vs. Black Joy | by Eileen G’Sell

FEATURES

If and Only If: Imaginary books reviewed | by Scott F. Parker
The New Life | a comic by Gary Sullivan
Remembering Brian O’Doherty (1928–2022) | by Richard Kostelanetz

PLUS: Cover art by Korynn Newville

NONFICTION/ART REVIEWS

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Thinking, Inquiry, and Hope | Sarah Bakewell | by John Toren
Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, And Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan | Alex Pappedemas and Joan LeMay | by Angelo Gentile
The Tribe: Portraits of Cuba | Carlos Manuel Álvarez | by Jesus Francisco Sierra
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir | Jane Wong | by Genevieve Hartman
Soundwriting: A Guide to Making Audio Projects | Tanya K. Rodrigue and Kyle D. Stedman | by Cam Miller
Jean Conner: Collage | Rory Padeken, ed.
Mina Loy: Strangeness is Inevitable | Jennifer R. Gross, Ann Lauterbach, Roger L. Conover, & Dawn Ades, eds.
Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer | Diana Seave Greenwald | by Patrick James Dunagan

FICTION REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

COMICS REVIEW

The Planetoid and Other Stories | Joe Orlando and Al Feldstein | by Paul Buhle

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KORYNN NEWVILLE

At the time this was a final piece, but it actually created the space and thought process to begin Indiscernible Elements: Calcium. The painting is an exploration of the next life, after the process of grieving the planet. Bringing the question, after grieving is the future of the planet only a fairytale? Visit Korynn Newville at: www.newvillekorynn.com.

Anne Enright

In conversation with Francine Prose

Wednesday, September 13, 2 pm Central
Free Virtual Event (registration required)

Rain Taxi proudly presents Anne Enright, one of Ireland’s greatest living writers, to celebrate the U.S. publication of her newest book, The Wren, The Wren—a searing story about the ravages of love across three generations of women that will both break and warm your heart. At this unique event, Enright will be in conversation with acclaimed American author Francine Prose. Join us for an exploration of literary fiction at its finest!

Book Purchasing Information: The Wren, The Wren, other books by Anne Enright, and a selection of titles by Francine Prose, are available from Magers & Quinn Booksellers at the link below. Don’t forget, when you buy books at an event, you support not only the authors and their publishers, but a great independent bookstore and the event host.

About the Book:

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother. The Wren, The Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances of both abandonment and a sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.” In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.

"These pages practically crackle with intelligence, compassion and wit. Phil McDaragh is so real I almost googled him. The Wren, The Wren might just be Anne Enright’s best yet."

—Louise Kennedy

“A true masterpiece by one of our greatest novelists. Rich, emotional and brilliantly observed, Anne Enright’s eighth novel, The Wren, The Wren, may even beat her Booker-winner, The Gathering."

—The Telegraph

“A novel where shards of brilliance flash in every direction.”

—The Times

About the Authors:

Anne Enright is the author of seven previous novels, most recently Actress, as well as story collections and nonfiction. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives in Dublin.

Francine Prose is a novelist and critic whose most recently published book is CLEOPATRA: Her History, Her Myth. Coming up next is a memoir titled 1974: A Personal History, to be published by Harper next year. Her previous books include the novels The Vixen, Goldengrove, A Changed Man, and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller Reading Like A Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them. She writes frequently for the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.

JUDITH MARGOLIS

*Holy Profane / Permitted Forbidden*
Gouache, ink and pencil on watercolor paper, 9” X 11” / 2018

Raised amidst Yiddish endearments, I learned how to draw very young. Political activism in high school, including Ban the Bomb, Civil Rights, and Anti-War demonstrations, led to a few years on Magic Forest Farm, a leaderless, egalitarian, West Coast commune. My drawings of country hippie life, (under the name Judith St. Soleil) were published in several books, including Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Epilogue. Thus I became a professional artist before I even graduated college.

Along with raising three children, I studied Art and Psychology at Cooper Union, Lone Mountain College and USC, all the while drawing, painting, making collages, publishing artist’s books, teaching art in colleges and writing for ARTweek Magazine (1986-1991), and since 2000, as Art Editor of NASHIM, Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues (U.of Indiana Press).

Since 1993 I have been designing and publishing limited edition and unique books, under the imprint Bright Idea Books. These have been acquired by numerous public and private collections, including Yale U, The New York Public Library, UCLA, U. of WA, U. of Denver, U. of Michigan, Arthur Jaffe Center for Book Arts, and UC, Berkeley.

My book Life Support Invitation to Prayer, (Penn State Press Graphic Medicine Series, 2019) was reviewed by Julie Stein for the Winter Issue 2020 of Rain Taxi.

In February 2022, an online interview with Rain Taxi’s Eric Lorberer, was conducted with myself and CS Giscombe about our book Train Music Writing and Pictures, (Omnidawn Publishing/ Oakland, 2021)

I worked on this book, which was originally called Praise Emptiness, all during the Covid pandemic, with Philip in LA and me in Jerusalem. Considering art from every era of my adult life, he chose to include so many, that Philip eventually changed the title to Praise Emptiness Essays Verbal and Visual.

I would like to mention how I came to use hand-drawn letter forms for the book cover and chapter titles. I was at a friend’s house and a book cover with a hand-drawn font caught my eye. It was Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I loved how it looked and tracked down the designer, Jon Gray (who goes by 318.gray). I was inspired by his work to hand draw the words on the book cover and all the chapter titles. This gives, I think, the weighty content of the book a bit of a cheering up, “Unhappiness,” on page 33, being the best example.

— Judith Margolis

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 2, SUMMER 2023 (#110)

To purchase issue #110 using Paypal, click here.
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INTERVIEWS

Judith Margolis and Philip Miller: Let Us Now Praise Emptiness | interviewed by Yael Samuel
Rebecca Goodman: Why Write About the Shoah Now? | interviewed by David Moscovich
Yxta Maya Murray: Art and Atrocity | interviewed by Will Corwin
Patrick Parr: Slice of Life | interviewed by Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe

FEATURES

If and Only If: Imaginary books reviewed | by Scott F. Parker
The New Life | a comic by Gary Sullivan

PLUS: Cover art by Judith Margolis

NONFICTION / ART REVIEWS

FICTION REVIEWS

POETRY REVIEWS

COMICS REVIEWS

Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington | Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot | by Paul Buhle

To purchase issue #110 using Paypal, click here.
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2023 Rain Taxi Events

ANGELA RODEL | MEGAN KELSO | RAJA SHEHADEH | RAIN TAXI 25TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY | TWIN CITIES INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE PASSPORT 2023

ANNE ENRIGHT

Saturday, September 13, 2023

On September 13, 2023, the Twin Cities-based literary organization Rain Taxi presented a virtual event with acclaimed Irish author Anne Enright as the kickoff to its annual Twin Cities Book Festival; Enright discussed her new novel, The Wren, The Wren (Norton), with celebrated American author Francine Prose. In this unique book launch for the U.S. publication of the novel, the two writers discussed how the book came to be, the role of poetry in it, the anti-Romantic stance of Irish women writers, and more. A replay of the event (with optional closed captions) is free to view at Rain Taxi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/raintaxiinc.

ANGELA RODEL

Friday, July 28, 2023

Rain Taxi was delighted to present translator Angela Rodel for a pop-up literary salon in celebration of her receiving, with author Georgi Gospodinov, this year’s International Booker Prize for the novel Time Shelter — the first time a Bulgarian work of fiction has won this prestigious prize. Rodel (originally from Minnesota!) discussed her translation work and life in Sofia with Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer. The event took place in the home of Rain Taxi Board member Eric Ortiz.

MEGAN KELSO

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Acclaimed cartoonist Megan Kelso made her first visit to Minnesota to celebrate the publication of her new book, Who Will Make the Pancakes (Fantagraphics). Kelso gave a reading enhanced with audio and was then joined by local cartoonist and Uncivilized Books publisher Tom Kaczynski. The reading took place at Next Chapter Books in Saint Paul.

RAJA SHEHADEH

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Renowned Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh began his US tour for We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Other Press) with a Rain Taxi sponsored event in the Twin Cities! Shehadeh read briefly from his book, gave a scintillating talk about its genesis, and then was in conversation with Joseph Farag, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in Palestinian literature. This event was held at the East Side Freedom Library and co-sponsored by the Arab American culture organization Mizna. Thank you to all! A video of the event (with optional closed captions) is free to view at Rain Taxi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/raintaxiinc.

RAIN TAXI 25TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

On May 10, 2023, Rain Taxi held a belated 25th anniversary celebration at the newly restored Granada Theater in uptown Minneapolis, with musical performances, author readings, and fantastic food and drinks! Thank you to everyone who celebrated this milestone with us.

This event was co-sponsored by DISPATCH and the Granada Theater.

TWIN CITIES INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY PASSPORT 2023

April 24-29, 2023

Another successful Independent Bookstore Day is in the books! Thousands flocked their favorite indie bookstores with the Twin Cities Bookstore Passport in hand to celebrate.

This event was sponsored by Finishing Line Press, The Givens Foundation for African-American Literature, Graywolf Press, Professional Editors Network, The Book House in Dinkytown, Candlewick Press, The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, Haymarket Books, Lerner Publishing Group, The Loft Literary Center, Milkweed Editions, Mizna, and the University of Minnesota Press.