INTERVIEWS

The Stories Choose You: an interview with Rosa Montero
Critically acclaimed and award-winning Spanish novelist Rosa Montero discussed her newest novel, La Carne, in her art-adorned Madrid apartment.
Interviewed by Jorge Armenteros

Of Mirth and Pathos: An Interview with V. G. Lee
Painter, author, and comedian V. G. Lee discusses her new novel in which “everyone is queer somehow” disposing of the perfect love story for something less gendered and more meaningful.
interviewed by Rebecca Weaver

FEATURES

A Savage, Celibate Gaze: Cris Mazza’s Foray into Independent Film
In her new hybrid “fictive documentary” Anorgasmia, Cris Mazza explores her lifelong alienation from her own sexuality. Essay by Michael Newirth

FROM THE BACKLIST

Alexander’s Bridge
Willa Cather
Perhaps the best short novels rely more on character than plot—having a theatrical quality that condenses or transcends time. Cather’s Alexander’s Bridge fits this pattern snug as a glove. Reviewed by Dennis Barone

COMICS REVIEWS

Trump: The Complete Collection by Harvey Kurtzman, et. al.
The Realist Cartoons edited by Paul Krassner and Ethan Persoff
These reprints of comics associated with two important twentieth-century American satirists show how they used humor to shine a sometimes harsh light on reality.
Reviewed by Steve Matuszak

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
Thi Bui
Focused on her family's emigration from Vietnam in the ’70s, Bui’s graphic memoir explores feelings of alienation with inclusivity and empathy. Reviewed by Jeff Alford

POETRY REVIEWS

In Which I Play the Runaway
Rochelle Hurt
Hurt explores the infinity encapsulated in labels by composing studies of colors and towns with sad names, until they resemble still lives of places blowing in the wind. Reviewed by Rachel Slotnick

Aperture
Anna Leahy
Leahy points her poetic lens at a variety of women subjects, each of whom is unique, but also contributes to the group’s chorus of wisdom, sorrow, and beauty. Reviewed Eileen Murphy

A Woman of Property
Robyn Schiff
Schiff’s narrative poems paint a picture of historical figures in their prime, connecting their past struggles to her current ones. Reviewed by Shayna Nenni

Basic Vocabulary
Amy Uyematsu
In this new collection, Amy Uyematsu explores external and internal wars, finding solace in the cosmic wonder of mathematics. Reviewed by Julia Stein

American Purgatory
Rebecca Gayle Howell
In this collection of poems, Howell drops the reader into a dystopian world torn apart by industry and environmental cataclysm. Reviewed by Kent Weigle

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter
Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner
Jetn̄il-Kijiner draws her poetic power from her home in the Marshall Islands, her culture, and her people’s history. Reviewed by by John Bradley

NONFICTION REVIEWS

All the Lives I Want:
Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen To Be Famous Strangers
Alana Massey
In her debut collection of essays, Massey focuses on troubled, flawed, forgotten, and at times outwardly ridiculed women. Reviewed by Lizzie Klaesges

The Birth of the Imagination: William Carlos Williams on Form
Bruce Holsapple
Poet Bruce Holsapple enters an ongoing conversation concerning Williams’s thinking about form in general, prosody in particular, and imagination’s cosmological implications in relation to them. Reviewed by Michael Boughn

Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
Virginia Heffernan
New York Times Magazine regular Virginia Heffernan weighs the gains and losses of our information age in all its digital-versus-analog splendor. Reviewed by Michael Workman

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun Li
In this collection of autobiographical essays, Yiyun Li writes about how the literature that formed her became her lifeline as she endured crushing feelings of isolation and suicidal depression. Reviewed by Donna Miele

Revisiting Allen Ginsberg:
The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats & First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg
Two recent publications offer unfiltered access to Ginsberg’s enthusiastic support for his friends and insight into the influences that drove him. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

FICTION REVIEWS

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
This Census Taker by China Miéville
Two visions of dystopic futures from SF greats mix grimness with whimsy. Reviewed by Paul Buhle

4 3 2 1
Paul Auster
Is this 866-page novel a departure from or career-culminating apotheosis of the offhand existentialism Auster’s been practicing for decades? Reviewed by Steven Felicelli

Dear Cyborgs
Eugene Lim
A wild and wildly intelligent work, Dear Cyborgs skillfully employs elements of essay, noir, fantasy, and pop in order to question the limitations of identity in the Internet age. Reviewed by Robert Martin

I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like: New and Selected Stories
Noy Holland
In Holland’s recent new and selected, her language tilts and loops, diffuses and dissolves, and then reconstitutes itself into something other. Any message a reader might seek evades. Reviewed by Kate Berson

Men Without Women
Haruki Murakami
In his recent collection of bizarre short stories, Murakami focuses on hetero-relationships marked by varying degrees of physical and psychological infidelity. Reviewed by Allan Vorda