You may have read one of Don McLeese’s previous three books, or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon one of the many pieces he’s contributed to publications like Rolling Stone, Chicago Sun-Times or No Depression. In his newest release, Slippery Steps: Rolling […]
In the 1864 novella Notes From the Underground, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky proposes the proto-existentialist notion of “perverse freedom.” There are never no choices in life, because one can always, at any time, choose to act against one’s own self-interest […]
Things not to do: read Mark Levine’s Sound Fury while battling a nasty rhinovirus. Here’s why: Levine (deftly) uses so many literary devices simultaneously that one really needs the full use of their faculties to experience Sound Fury (University of […]
What to say about Robin Hemley’s Oblivion? The University of Iowa Writers Workshop alum’s 16th book was released this year on Gold Wake Press. And although it’s short in pages, the novel is not short on big ideas. Oblivion follows […]
I won’t lie to you. I wasn’t going to read Love and Potato Salad until I read the press quotes on the back of the book. Riddled with jokes but also, quite possibly, real exclamations from shocked readers (“‘Your novel […]
“I am a Holocaust survivor, and every survival story is unique. What makes mine unique is that I was fortunate enough to be on ‘Schindler’s List.’” These are the words of Celina Karp Biniaz, one of youngest to be included […]
Searching for Petco (Forklift Books, 2022) opens like someone suddenly turned on a speaker. I felt accosted by author Skylar Alexander’s opening poems: clearly meant to be spoken, clearly friends with slam poetry. Extra-sensory and openly branded “millennial.” Alexander brazenly […]
Little Village comic contributor Lauren Haldeman’s fourth book, Team Photograph (out Nov. 8 from Sarabande Books) is a poignant exploration of how we’re shaped by the places where we grow up. This graphic novel combines Haldeman’s iconic wolf-headed style with […]
When I started reading All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) by Sarah Thankam Mathews, I was nervous about the passive voice, tonally similar to other books I’ve recently read which I felt lacked substance. But this is intentional. Our […]
To be born in the Midwest is to become acutely aware of the term “flyover country.” And once you are aware of it, you must decide whether or not you’ll embrace your life here regardless or denounce it and move […]
Written as a calendar documenting March through October, a single narrator moves through life in lockdown in L.A. Felleman’s The Length of a Clenched Fist (Finishing Line Press). If I hadn’t lived through 2020 I might not understand references like […]
After the dedications page of her debut novel, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Belinda Huijuan Tang quotes Homer’s The Odyssey, a fitting harbinger for the journey she will take us on. Although A Map for the Missing (Penguin Press) […]
