REVIEW: Begat Who Begat Who Begat by Marcus Pactor
byShort Fiction. 116 pgs. Astrophil Press. November 2021. 9780998019963. A text is a text and we’d be best to remember that. Words mean something. They are weapons. It’s our responsibility…
Reviews
REVIEW: Teenager by Bud Smith
byFiction. 400 pgs. Vintage. May 2022. 9780593315224. What if Albert Camus wrote The Stranger in the mid-2000s but wanted the humming engine of it all to be the absurdity of…
REVIEW: People Want to Live by Farah Ali
byShort Fiction. 222 pgs. McSweeney’s. October 2021. 9781952119293. As international news coverage paints its own picture of Pakistan filled with political unrest, author Farah Ali honors her homeland by stepping…
REVIEW: True Fiction by Sohrab Homi Fracis
byShort Fiction. 96 pgs. Texas A&M University Press. October 2022. 978-1-62288-932-7. Disclaimer: The opening story of True Fiction appears in our book 15 Views of Jacksonville and the manuscript was…
REVIEW: Year of the Buffalo by Aaron Burch
byNovel. 190 pgs. American Buffalo Books. November 2022. 9780578394015. We’re wrestling. We’re listing to CDs. We’re building a fence. Sorry, Fence. We’re raising Billy. Year of the Buffalo is a…
REVIEW: Baby is a Thing Best Whispered by Keely O’Shaughnessy
byFlash Fiction. 79 pgs. Alien Buddha Press. August 2022. 9798844456459. In her flash fiction collection Baby is a Thing Best Whispered (Alien Buddha Press), author Keely O’Shaughnessy assembles a series…
REVIEW: Slight Return by Rebecca Wolf
byPoetry. 116 pgs. Wave Books. October 2022. 9781950268658. Rebecca Wolff’s stunning new collection, Slight Return, (forthcoming from Wave Books), attacks culture with a sharp knife of fragmented lines and lucid…
REVIEW: Shadowselves by Jason Ockert
byFiction. 192 pgs. Dzanc Books. February 2022. 9781950539390. Disclaimer: Bridge Eight published “Y’Idiot” – featured in Shadowselves – you can read it here. My daughter started walking this week. At…
REVIEW: Velvet Hounds by Aimee Seu
byPoetry. 73 pgs. University of Akron Press. March 2022. I have always felt sorry for the Iliad’s unsparing treatment of Paris. Saddled with the burden of divine Judgement; scorned and…
REVIEW: O by Niki Tulk
byPoetry. 94 pgs. Driftwood. July 2022. Poetry is dangerous. It disrupts the order of things and burrows under society’s collective skin, an itch it can’t scratch without removing the wound…