Books
NONFICTION
Beyond the Previously Known Bard
By William S. Niederkorn
There are a number of books relating to Shakespeare and Italy, but none like The Shakespeare Guide to Italy.
In Conversation
ELISSA SCHAPPELL with Jenine Holmes
Sigmund Freud famously asked, “What does a woman want?” Elissa Schappell seeks the answers with her second fiction collection, Blueprints for Building Better Girls.
FICTION
This Young Girl Passing
By Jeff McConaghy
The year is 1976. Vietnam is stagnating, the kids are smoking homegrown, and high school French teacher Bill Richardson keeps a long-legged junior named Sarah after class to discuss her failing grade.
Lost with Phone
By Chris CampanioniIf the Internet brought us to the Age of Information, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have ushered in a new era altogether, one that trades in data for documentation.
FICTION
To Assume a Pleasing Shape
By Liz Axelrod
An innate sense of sadness and joy runs through Joseph Salvatore’s To Assume A Pleasing Shape.
Body Variations
By Mark SnyderMemoir writing has grown commonplace. With the advent of Blogspot and the “Upload Photo” option on Facebook to capture minutiae, the actual art of creating a narrative out of the significant, and not-so, events in a life gets undervalued and ignored.
FICTION
Downward Spiral
By Christopher Vola
The unnamed protagonist of J. A. Tyler’s A Shiny, Unused Heart reaches the endpoint of his chosen demise in the novella’s opening sentence: “Everything had gone to burning, blood-colored skies, and he leapt or jumped, danced or waltzed, carried himself off the building ledge, eighty-seven stories up.”
POETRY
Poetry as Alchemy
By Marietta Abrams
Ariana Reines casts a powerful spell with her sublimely hardcore poems in Mercury.
FICTION
Hooked on Interest
By Mark Snyder
The straight male fantasy of suburban, upper-middle-class affluence (dutiful wife, two-plus kids, multi-car garage, Saturday soccer practice, etc.) upends itself in John Franc’s stunt of a novel, Hooked.
NONFICTION
The Makings of An American
By Justin Mitchell
In the introduction to “Something Urgent I Have to Say to You,” a new critical biography of William Carlos Williams, Herbert Leibowitz writes, “What most distinguished Williams was his drive to turn himself into a masterful American poet.”
In Conversation
JUSTIN TORRES with Jenine Holmes
We the Animals is well-crafted like a great martini, coming in smooth with a potent punch. The semi-autobiographical portrait of three young brothers, raised by tragically young parents in an upstate blue-collar town, emerges in a compact 128 pages.
RAPID TRANSIT
By Jeffrey Cyphers WrightUncanny describes the effect Peter Doig’s figures activate. They appear like reflections in a weathered mirror in which you recognize yourself with a slight start.
POETRY
Blog Posts from an American Poet
By Nicolle Elizabeth
Muumuu House, purveyor of relevant, artful, interesting literature, has published a book of poetry composed of blog posts by Megan Boyle. This work is terrifyingly open, daringly honest, and elegantly innovative in its sparse use of words.
In Conversation
THE EDITORS OF THE COFFIN FACTORY with Aspen Matis
i>The Coffin Factory is a new literary magazine. Its first issue published new stories, essays, and poetry by Joyce Carol Oates, Bonnie Nadzam, Bernard Quiriny, John Reed and Fred Reynolds, and old stories by Milan Kundera and José Saramago, among others. I met Randy Rosenthal and Laura Isaacman, the magazine’s editors, in Park Slope’s Tea Lounge.
In Conversation
MAX WINTER AND LISA LUBASCH with Megan Gillin-Schwartz
Award-winning New York City-based poets Lisa Lubasch and Max Winter recently launched Solid Objects, printing novella-size books in a wide range of literary aesthetics and approaches.
