Opening with visceral imagery of crying, flailing children on the floor of a church, Josiah Hesse’s On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right (Pantheon Books) sets itself up to be an emotional and unflinching interrogation of evangelical Iowa. The book follows a religious childhood using gorgeous, descriptive language […]
Sarah Elgatian
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Dreams of Fields: Memory Traces of Iowa’s Past’ by Roy R. Behrens
As a born-again-Iowan, I delight in Iowa trivia and the relaying of impressive and surprising Iowa facts that challenge perceptions of a so-called flyover state. To me, these bits of information aren’t just trivia, but snapshots of a larger concept of Iowa, outside of whatever cornfields and caucuses that people imagine when they think of […]
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Book Review: ‘Groceries’ by Nora Claire Miller
Groceries by Nora Claire Miller spills into the hybrid terrain to challenge expectations of mixed-genre. It opens a narrative sentence and bulldozes parts of speech to reach its own truest conclusion. It forces its audience to re-learn how to read.
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Book Review: ‘Burnt Mountain’ by Emily Wilson
The most prominent, consistent feature of these poems are the heady — even baroque, indulgent — descriptions of the natural world. (I wrote “descriptive” three separate times in my notes.) In “Heath Obscure” Wilson writes of “sumptuary / crumble underfoot” and “the meanly / spangled mollusk grays.” In another poem, “Attention,” Wilson describes “the butte […]
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Book Review: ‘Malleable and True: A Hybrid Craft Anthology from BRINK Literary Journal’
I have read many craft books, taken gobs of writing classes and read all manner of literature. In my personal time, I tend toward writing that challenges me as a reader and inspires me to try new things. I love hybrid work, which is disinterested in being placed solidly within a single genre. As such, I […]
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Book Review: ‘The Mean Ones’ by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Tatiana Schlote-Bonne’s sophomore novel The Mean Ones (Creature Publishing) sounds relatively straightforward from the summary: a young girl survives a ritual sacrifice in the woods at summer camp, from which she suffers intense PTSD, and upon finding herself in the woods as an adult she’s faced with familiar horrors. In reading the book, though, the […]
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Book Review: ‘Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest’ by Art Cullen
Being an Iowan has been difficult for those of us who love our home and are horrified by its policies. Art Cullen, in his new book Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest (Ice Cube Press), lays bare the complicated web of events that made it this way…
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Does your book break the mold? Is it growing mold? Iowa’s new One of Us horror fest accepts you!
Filthy Loot, a small boutique literary press based in Ames, specializes in what founding editor Ira Rat calls “misfit fictions.” The books published by Filthy Loot push boundaries. “I found that a lot of the writers I like were getting ignored because they didn’t fit into a mold,” Rat said in a phone interview. An […]
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Book Review: ‘At the Park on the Edge of the Country’ by Austin Araujo
Austin Araujo’s debut poetry collection At the Park on the Edge of the Country (Ohio State University Press) explores life at the intersections of immigration and naturalization, adulthood and childhood, understanding and apathy. Using figurative language and descriptive imagery, the collection’s three sections separate poems into formal and thematic movements. The first section addresses borders, […]
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Book Review: ‘Soft Ceremonies’
Pitched with the concept “if A24 made horror in the days of shot-on-video,” indie press Filthy Loot’s horror collection Soft Ceremonies absolutely hits its marks. For the uninitiated, A24 is an indie film production company whose horror movies are known for arthouse elements and getting under people’s skin. “Shot-on-video” is exactly what it sounds like: […]
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Book Review: ‘Plain Clothes Hamburglar’ by Sean Moeller
Sean Moeller’s debut poetry collection Plain Clothes Hamburglar (Rejection Letters Press) is a tightly compressed collection of vignettes that are laden with beat, location and nostalgia to create an anthemic volume of poems that, despite their playful dressing, ask to be taken seriously. Divided into sections by ingredients in a hamburger (bun, pickles and onions, […]
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Book Review: ‘Optional Saint’ by Kelsi Vanada
Kelsi Vanada’s Optional Saint (Bench Editions) is a delicate collage of poetic styles that maintain a signature sparseness of language — the poems ask the reader to connect the dots. What’s interesting and exciting about Vanada’s poetry is that she trusts the reader and invites the reader to become part of the narrative. With brevity, […]
