Author Archive

Review: Y. T. by Alexei Nikitin

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Y.T. is a tightly-drawn novella with a novel’s breathing room for reflection and reminiscence. While the title and the early pages seem to point at the importance of the game itself, by the end it seems the game was merely an instigator, and could have been any product of

Review: DIMESTORE by Lee Smith

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Hers is a voice that I will never tire of: encouraging, kind, and so forthright about the complexities inherent in life, specifically life lived as a writer, a woman, and a resident of a place that is experiencing the unpredictable transience of time, while also rooting itself in the

Review: THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS by Liam Durcan

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It is this sort of layered questioning early in the novel where The Measure of Darkness is at its strongest and most emotionally resonant—who are you if the very skill that has been your reason for existence has been taken from you? And on a secondary level, what it

Review: PRODIGALS by Greg Jackson

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Greg Jackson’s debut collection is full of different voices that seem to make up a collective sound. These stories take their characters to task as much as they sympathize or identify with them. Jackson may well be trying to figure out the answers to life his characters so desperately

Review: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS by Eric Weiner

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The author of The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places, from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley says our ideas about creativity underestimate the importance of place. But how did creative clusters arise in such varied cultures: Renaissance Florence, The Song Dynasty, Edinburgh during the

Review: SUBLIME PHYSICK by Patrick Madden

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When reading Sublime Physick, the yin-yang symbol comes to mind, as Madden cites academic thinkers and essayists from generations past, alongside contemporary popular icons, usually of the musical variety, specifically his personal favorites like John Lennon and Geddy Lee.

Review: HORSEFEVER by Lee Hope

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Lee Hope, in her richly imagined and ambitious novel, Horsefever, explores a similar dynamic both between rider and horse and between women and men, but she goes beyond Lawrence to explore riding as a metaphor for the challenge and art of story-telling. Her story-in-progress itself becomes the author’s

Review: TRACE: MEMORY, HISTORY, RACE, & THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE by Lauret Edith Savoy

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Reading nature writing is second in transformative joy only to being in nature. That joy is slippery in Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Edith Savoy, where moments of sublimity are often punctuated by cruelty and alienation.

Review: YEAR OF THE GOOSE by Carly J. Hallman

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In her debut novel Year of the Goose, Carly J. Hallman investigates whether or not unbelievable amounts of money can, in fact, buy happiness. (No. The answer is no. And here's the other thing: in this story, the goose is evil.)

Review: THE STARGAZER’S SISTER by Carrie Brown

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The Stargazer’s Sister Carrie Brown Pantheon, January 2016 352 pp; $25.95 Buy: hardcover | eBook Reviewed by Ellen Birkett Morris Here it is, the moon that has followed her everywhere through her childhood—racing between treetops to find her, darting over rooflines, appearing suddenly in the river at her feet or