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Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Self-Published Book
Here’s some news for anyone who’s self-published a book: Shelf Unbound book review magazine announces the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Self-Published Book. Any self-published book in any...
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Three Ways of the Saw
This week’s review appears in The Conium Review, where I am serving as a guest editor.
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The Man Who Danced with Dolls
The Man Who Danced with Dolls by Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams is a tiny book that packs a lot of punch. The story revolves largely around the narrator’s recollections of his odd intercontinental,...
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Public Displays of Affectation
Shaun Haurin’s debut collection of short stories, Public Displays of Affectation, offers a subtle and emotionally complex examination of the ties that bind. For the most part, the characters in this...
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Three Stories by Ken Kalfus
I’ve known of Ken Kalfus for a long time. A fellow Philadelphian (or is that phellow Philadelphian?), he shows up at a lot of the readings I attend at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and he’s...
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A Rough Guide to the Darkside
Towards the end of Daniel Simpson’s A Rough Guide to the Dark Side, the author writes of his earliest attempts to come to grips with the manic, maddening events described over the course of the...
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“Each Novel Can Be a Lifetime” – Seniors Reign at The Permanent Press
Martin & Judith Shepard—both 77-year-olds and co-publishers of The Permanent Press (founded in 1978 and considered by many to be America’s premier independent literary press), are happy to...
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Kmart Shoes
Lance Ward’s autobiographical graphic novel Kmart Shoes focuses on the author’s early years, a time of intense personal upheaval marked by divorce, the arrival of his mother’s abusive boyfriend, and a...
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The Law of Strings
Physics, gravity, string theory, attraction, and repulsion are all at play throughout The Law of Strings, a collection of short stories by Steven Gillis. The book’s theme and tone are reminiscent of...
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The Fiction Writer’s Handbook
Rather than espousing theories on writing or prescribing dicta regarding the craft, The Fiction Writer’s Handbook by Shelly Lowenkopf offers aspiring and established writers a comprehensive glossary of...
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What I Saw
In an essay titled “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that in nature, “We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,)...
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Casual Day at the Crazy House
In her latest stand-alone short story, Casual Day at the Crazy House, Helen Mallon deftly explores issues of family, race, madness, and acceptance all in the space of a few thousand words. The story...
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Wally – Review by Lavinia Ludlow
Wally is a chemically imbalanced playwright in his late twenties who claims he is a part of a generation who has “lost the ability to be inventive,” and rather than wallow in “nothingness” and career...
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Whatever Used to Grow Around Here
In her debut collection of short fiction, Whatever Used To Grow Around Here, Lauren Belski lovingly charts the unmapped and ever-shifting borderland between adolescence and adulthood in contemporary...
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Five Years of Small Press Reviews
Wow! I’ve been doing this for five years already. Actually, it’s been a little longer, but I just realized that the anniversary passed a few weeks ago, and now here we are. Back in 2007, Curtis Smith’s...
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Familiar
J. Robert Lennon’s Familiar opens with an intriguing hook: A woman driving home from an annual visit to her son’s grave notices that a crack in her windshield has vanished and suddenly finds herself in...
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The Artemis Effect
In The Artemis Effect, author Kasia James offers a compelling tale of humanity’s quest for survival in the face of an ongoing and mysterious natural disaster. The narrative centers on three characters...
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Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys
When I dropped by Farley’s Bookshop a few weeks ago, Jordan Krall did his best to talk me out of buying his latest novel, which was ironic since he was in the store for a book signing along with his...
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Feast of Oblivion
A few weeks ago, I was in New Hope, Pennsylvania, to meet my friend Sean for coffee. As it turns out, I arrived early and, as chronicled elsewhere on this blog, had some time to kill and wandered over...
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