Series Archive
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Oil Dog” by Kelly Dulaney
It can be difficult to write short stories about large global issues—take, for instance, our worldwide dependency on fossil fuels—and not have it come off as preachy, in need of novel-length expansion, or as a coy thematic stand-in for our characters’ interior lives. Kelly Dulaney’s short story “Oil Dog”
Interplanetary Postcards: Lessons from the Martian School of British Poetry
Emerging in the late 1970s and already diminishing by the early 1980s, Martianism was a short-lived yet influential movement in British poetry. Principally associated with Craig Raine and Christopher Reid*, it derived its name from the title poem of Raine’s second collection, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979),
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Punkin” by Dawn S. Davies
You could say sentences are to words what good border collies are to sheep: Each take a disorganized group of individuals and compel them to do the collective bidding of their respective bosses. Both the author and shepherd would have a very difficult time without them. But the analogy
Literary Enemies: Junot Díaz vs. Meg Wolitzer
Literary Enemies: Meg Wolitzer and Junot Díaz Disclaimer: I refuse to believe that Meg Wolitzer and Junot Díaz aren’t friends. I’m going to try my best to keep this from getting all Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and I promise I’m not going to make When
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Keller in Effects” by Todd James Pierce
There’s a rich body of art that could be described by that famous quote by Thoreau from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”—art in particular focusing on the upper class of the 50s and 60s. Think of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, or more recently the
“Fallingwater: The Rock Opera”: The Collaboration of Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Hall
“Architecture is a study in theft,” says Gary DeVore. We’re standing in an echoing room in Port Allegheny, PA’s Lynn Hall, a building constructed in 1935 by Walter Hall, who later became the chief builder for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. For the last couple of years, Devore and his
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Centrifugal Force” by Jodi Angel
People want to believe that Mark Twain once said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” though there’s zero evidence to back up his authorship. While others have claimed to know the quote’s true origin, most likely it’s one of those anonymous aphorisms passed down through the years. But
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “A Daring Undertaking” by Ashley Davidson
Who doesn’t enjoy reading other people’s mail? There’s a guilty pleasure in eavesdropping on other people’s correspondence. In “A Daring Undertaking” (Shenandoah Volume 64, Number 2) by Ashley Davidson, we’re privy to a strange collection of letters, public and private, spanning from 1856 to 1933, examining the various transgressions—both personal
Pursuing Essence through Ambiguity: On Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Among the known instances of writers reworking published material, Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata stands apart for his seemingly untenable decision to turn his acclaimed novel Snow Country (for which, along with Thousand Cranes and The Old Capital, he received the 1968 Nobel Prize) into an eleven-page story. Kawabata completed
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Lunar Facts” by Michele Finn Johnson
Human beings are nothing if not list makers. Grocery lists. Chore lists. Listings of jobs, scores, events. Lists are a way in which we bring order to a chaotic world. The same could be said of stories, which is why lists can make such great story structures. Michele Finn