INTERVIEWS
Arrangements of Language: An Interview with Burt Kimmelman
The author of eight collections of poetry and numerous critical essays, Burt Kimmelman speaks to his influences and the mechanics of language in his work. interviewed by Eric Hoffman
Pieces of Sky
an interview with J. Otis Powell‽
Proudly influenced by the Black Arts Movement, Powell‽ is one of the great progenitors of the Minnesota spoken word scene. Download this FREE PDF of the complete interview with Powell‽, a portion of which was featured in our Fall Print Edition. CLICK HERE to purchase his chapbook, Pieces of Sky!
interviewed by Eric Lorberer
The Story in History
An interview with Fred D’Aguiar
Fred D’Aguiar discusses his new novel, Children of Paradise, which explores the traumatic events in the Jonestown settlement in Guyana.
Interviewed by Alexander Dickow
COMICS REVIEWS
Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World
Edited by Monte Beauchamp
In these sixteen graphic biographies, artists take on the masters with their own unique twists. Reviewed by Paul Buhle
Photobooth: A Biography
Meags Fitzgerald
More accurately described as a mixed-genre graphic nonfiction that combines elements of history, autobiography, travelogue, and long-form personal essay, this unique volume tells nested stories stemming from classic analog wet-chemistry photobooths. Reviewed by Jay Besemer
MIXED GENRE REVIEWS
The Haunted Life and Other Writings
Jack Kerouac
Lost in a taxicab in 1944, this lost manuscript resurfaced in 2002 to be included in this collection of prose sketches, letters, and diary entries. Reviewed by Steve Matuszak
Berlin! Berlin! Dispatches from the Weimar Republic
Rheinsberg: A Storybook for Lovers
Kurt Tucholsky
Two new translations of work by Kurt Tucholsky show why he is widely acknowledged as one of the shrewdest commentators of Weimar Germany. Reviewed by M. Kasper
Starlight in Two Million: A Neo-Scientific Novella
Amy Catanzano
Let’s take a journey involving both quantum and cosmic universes, a metafictional investigation of the human capacity to express in words. Reviewed by Cindra Halm
The Uncertainty Principle
rob mclennan
In this book made up of mostly fragments, alternating between a story, a diary entry, a joke, mclennan explores uncertainty. Reviewed by Brian Mihok
CHAPBOOK CORNER
Unfixed Elegy and Other Poems
Brendan Lorber
Lorber’s work experiments with living and dying as they twin and double on themselves. Reviewed by Davy Knittle
POETRY REVIEWS
Puppets in the Wind: Selected Poems
Karl Krolow
This third collection of poems written by the German poet shows off a luminous clarity and expression of complex emotions. Reviewed by John Bradley
my god is this a man
Laura Sims
What is not written is just as critical as what is on the page in Laura Sims’s new collection of poetry. Reviewed by Molly Sutton Kiefer
The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, Translated by Red Pine
and
Yellow River Odyssey, by Bill Porter
While Red Pine, or Bill Porter, is a best-seller in China, he is relatively unknown in his native country. These two books may help to rectify that. Reviewed by Justin Wadland
Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Translated by Sam Hamill
Hamill is still revising his translations in this new and revised edition of poems by Chinese poets. Reviewed by John Bradley
Ten Thousand Waves
Wang Ping
Wang Ping’s new collection looks at a wide swathe of Chinese history and literature, and examines various issues stemming from immigration to America. Reviewed by Andreas Weiland
mUtter-bAbel
Christine Wertheim
Christine Wertheim’s mUtter-bAbel partakes of a serious-as-your-life whimsy in its evocation of the emergence of a human child first into the world and then into language. Reviewed by Maria Damon
Compass Rose
Arthur Sze
In his stunning tenth collection, Sze creates artifacts in which the profusion of each present moment can be felt viscerally. Reviewed by Ted Mathys
The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
Edited by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
This new anthology provides American readers with a refreshing glimpse of contemporary poetry from the other side of the globe. Reviewed by Holly Karapetkova
Copia
Erika Meitner
In Erika Meitner’s Copia, the abundance of language referred to in the title springs from the American landscape. Reviewed by Michele Balze
FICTION REVIEWS
Papers in the Wind
Eduardo Sacheri
Argentinian writer Sacheri writes a story about four men who never really grow up. Reviewed by John Toren
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s new novel combines fantastical and realist elements to create a highly entertaining story that will usher in a new wave of Western readership. Reviewed by Douglas Luman
Last Words from Montmartre
Qiu Miaojin
Qiu's long-neglected, fragmentary novel Last Words from Montmartre contains the author's final words on desire, displacement, and art before her suicide in 1995. Reviewed by Jenn Mar
A Simplified Map of the Real World: The Renata Stories
Stevan Allred
Engaged in age-old amorphous feuds, youthful adventures, and acts of vengeance, Allred’s characters bring the imaginary town of Renata alive. Reviewed by Jason Cook
Hold the Dark
William Giraldi
Better known for his criticism, Giraldi’s second novel is a dark, folkloric vision that pictures humanity as absolutely alienated within nature. Reviewed by John Pistelli
Flowers & Mishima’s Illustrated Biography
Mario Bellatin
In this unique dual language flip-book edition, Spanish author Bellatin’s two novellas question how we change in the face of a devastating loss. Reviewed by Greg Baldino and Adrian Nelson
Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo
Miyuki Miyabe
Heavily steeped in Japanese cultural tradition and folktale, the nine-story collection subtly asserts Miyabe’s skill as a storyteller. Reviewed by Douglas Luman
The Professor of Truth
James Robertson
The Scottish author’s new novel is a fictionalized, revisionist account of the aftermath of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which rained its awful freight directly into a small town in the Scottish Borders. Reviewed by Catherine Rockwood
All Dogs Are Blue
Rodrigo de Souza Leão
Souza Leão’s exuberant depiction of his life in hell harkens to other great works in this subgenre. Reviewed by Douglas Messerli
American Neolithic
Terence Hawkins
Hawkins tackles everything from race to privacy rights in his newest work of fiction. Reviewed by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Made to Break
D. Foy
Foy offers up a pre-apocalypse end-of-the-world tale about cannibals, mutants, corpses, survivors, road trips, lovers, and friends. Reviewed by Joseph Salvatore
Painted Cities
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski
Story after story, Galaviz-Budziszewski explores the theme of reality/unreality as the world is distorted through the prism of memory. Reviewed by Scott F. Parker
Inappropriate Behavior
Murray Farish
In his first story collection, Farish draws in the reader with a personal style and gets increasingly weirder until the finale flickers out. Reviewed by Andrea Wills
Belle Vue: Sigmund Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Meaning of Dreams
Barry G. Gale
In this novel on the icon of psychiatry, Gale seeks to upend Freud’s image as sober, self-disciplined, and sexually conservative. Reviewed by Madelon Sprengnether
NONFICTION REVIEWS
The Sea Inside
Philip Hoare
British author Hoare takes the reader on a lyrical journey into the outer and inner depths of oceans. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller
In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States
Jennifer Kelly
Through interviews with twenty-five female composers, Kelly seeks to counteract the trend of underrecognizing and ignoring this vital work. Reviewed by Kelsey Irving Beson
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
Edited by Barbara Cassin
A stable of learned women and men under the direction of editor Barbara Cassin have set themselves the task of delineating a wide range of philosophical concepts. Reviewed by John Toren
Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, Vol. 1
Mark Lewisohn
Lewisohn's book, Tune In, is the tell-all book every Beatles fan has been waiting for. Reviewed by Britt Aamodt
A Place in the Country
W.G. Sebald
In this posthumous and belated English translation of essays, Sebald writes on influential writers and artists. Reviewed by E. J. Iannelli