Author Archive

Review: EIGHTY DAYS OF SUNLIGHT by Robert Yune

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As Yune crafts a story of family ties and gently illustrates the breakdown of said family, his characters come to life through dry wit, keen observation and just enough boob jokes to make readers truly feel like they’re spending time with men in their twenties.

Review: INHERITED DISORDERS: STORIES, PARABLES, & PROBLEMS by Adam Ehrlich Sachs

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The shorts are wide-ranging. Some are heartbreaking in less than 500 words; others are unexpectedly hilarious whether outright or with a darker flavor to their humor. Disorders is a contemporary stable of parables not only about fathers and sons, but about the everyday struggle to live one’s life in

Review: TAKING BULLETS: TERRORISM AND BLACK LIFE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICA by Haki R. Madhubuti

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The waning months of President Obama’s presidency coupled with the populist ascendancy of Donald Trump has seemingly expedited feelings of fear, loathing, and endless uncertainty among many. To some, Obama’s ascendancy was supposed to usher in a post-racial democracy that would rescue, resuscitate, and render the American dream (or

Review: GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR by Mary Roach

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Those in the business of National Security classify diarrhea as a clear and present danger. It’s particularly hazardous for members of the U.S. Special forces, because diarrhea is an enemy from within that can attack without warning. I know this because I’ve read Mary Roach’s GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE

Review: GHOST/LANDSCAPE by Kristina Marie Darling & John Gallaher

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In the collaborative poetry collection Ghost/Landscape (Blazevox, 2016) by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher there is no beginning or end. The first poem is “Chapter Two.” So begins traversing a time loop of poems where the reader can really “begin” anywhere. What is a beginning and what is

Review: LABOR OF LOVE: THE INVENTION OF DATING by Moira Weigel

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Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating Moira Weigel Farrar, Strass and Giroux, 2016 304 pp; $26 Buy: hardcover | eBook Reviewed by Andrew McKernan What are you doing tonight? We should Netflix and chill. Even without receiving that exact text, one knows the purpose, and the posture. Why

Review: A BESTIARY by Lily Hoang

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Not all rat mazes have corridors. For the Morris water navigation task, it is as it reads: a rat must learn to fare in water. It is placed inside a pool and must swim to the other side.

Review: THE CHILDREN by Ann Leary

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When I recently entered Ann Leary’s, The Good House, I found myself enjoying some of the quirkiest, most human, and authentically rendered company in Leary’s characters, each of which inspired me to get to know more of her work.

Review: SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN, YOU’LL SEE by Christos Ikonomou

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Though Ikonomou’s characters are faced with Greece’s economic crisis, and the collection is beholden to particular circumstance, place, and time, Something Will Happen is not so particular as to be prohibitive. It’s spare. It’s intricate, full of heart and heft, and about the crisis only insofar as it enters

Review: SAD GIRL POEMS by Christopher Soto

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This collection’s jacked up heart beats in its final piece, “Hatred of Happiness.” “Hatred of Happiness” rejects and buries practically every trope proposed by the mainstream LGBTQ movement. Gone are the banners calling for marriage equality and positive representations of gay life. Gone is the assertion that “we are