I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying by Matthew Salesses (A Review by Jonathan Crowl)

Civil Coping Mechanisms 138 pgs/$13.95 Most humans I know can’t regrow a lost limb, but the same adaptive limitations don’t extend to our minds and souls. Shattered hearts, broken spirits can be stitched and rebuilt given the proper conditions, and, … Continue reading →

The Opposite of Work by Hugh Behm-Steinberg (A Review by Tony Mancus)

JackLeg Press 136 pgs./$14.00 Working in clipped phrases throughout the whole of The Opposite of Work (Jack Leg Press, 2013), Hugh Behm-Steinberg has built a dream-rattled space. It is a space of stretched ideas and ideals set in the pursuit … Continue reading →

Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson (A Review by Dawn West)

University of Iowa Press 124 pgs/$16.00 I was born and raised and still live in Ohio. As a Midwest girl, I can say that Chad Simpson’s earnest yet tough story collection Tell Everyone I Said Hi does the region right. … Continue reading →

My Tranquil War by Anis Shivani (A Review by Kate Schapira)

  NYQ Books 136 pgs/$16.95             When a writer chooses their ground, there’s no point in fussing that a different arena might have served their efforts better. Writers ask us to meet them at a particular set of coordinates; we … Continue reading →

Mantle by C.S. Carrier (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

    H_NGM_N Books $12/ 82 pgs   As a poet who started out as a prose writer first, I’ve always been drawn to narrative poetry, work that is character driven and uses some of the tropes of fiction, while … Continue reading →

The Evening Hour by Carter Sickels (A Review by William T. Langford IV)

Bloomsbury USA    $16.00/336 pgs   Carter Sickels fills his first novel with contradictions— religious devotion and the exploitation of the elderly—that the citizens of a fictionalized Dove Creek, West Virginia fail to hear or resolve. “God bless the pillheads,” … Continue reading →

Flood Bloom, by Caroline Cabrera (A Review by Tony Mancus)

H_NGM_N Books $14.95/102 pgs.   The first thing that I encountered when starting to read Caroline Cabrera’s new book of poetry, Flood Bloom, out from H_NGM_N Books, was the honeycombing that acts as endpaper and splits the book in half. … Continue reading →

Domestic Uncertainties by Leah Umansky (A Review by Anne Champion)

  BlazeVOX Books 74 pages/$16.00   On the back cover of Leah Umansky’s first book, Domestic Uncertainties, Cornelius Eady refers to her as the literary daughter of Emily Dickinson. In fact, the title of this collection is taken from The … Continue reading →

Match, by Helen Guri (A Review by Adam Sol)

Toronto: Coach House Books 88 pgs./ $15.95 US   Here’s what I know about Helen Guri.  She lives in Toronto.  She’s shorter than I am.  And much thinner.  I think she’s dating a guy named Tom.  She may have a cat.  … Continue reading →

The Word Made Flesh, by Kevin Catalano (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

firthFORTH Books 58 pgs./$8.95   Ask ten people for the definition of a short story and you will receive ten very different answers. Some agree on certain basic characteristics—a beginning middle and end, a protagonist, a conflict—yet sound arguments can … Continue reading →

Family Romance, by Tom Bradley, with Art by Nick Patterson (A Review by Ally Nicholl)

jadedibisproductions.com Full Color Bleed  $49.00/246 pages Black & White Bleed on White $16.99/246 pages Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Bizarro fiction.  A relatively new genre, it bills itself as the cult section of the literary world … Continue reading →

Brink by Shanna Compton (A Review by Anne Champion)

   Bloof Books 86 pages/$15.00   Shanna Compton’s Brink is part one of a two part poetry collection: Brink and The Seam.  Both embody the realm of speculative poetry with their focus on fantastic, science fiction themes.  In an interview, … Continue reading →

jimmy lagowski saves the world by Pat Pujolas (a Review by David S. Atkinson)

Independent Talent Group 198 pgs/$12 When I first picked up jimmy lagowski saves the world, the short story collection debut by Pat Pujolas, I was expecting to read a funny little book. Really, that’s all I’d thought from the summary … Continue reading →

The Light and the Dark, by Mikhail Shishkin, trans from Russian by Andrew Bromfield (A Review by Helen McClory)

Quercus 368 pgs/£14.44 The Light and the Dark is an epistolary novel – as soon as I opened the book and caught on to that, I thought of the 18th, 19th century. I thought, uncharitably, I was in for turgid … Continue reading →

Could You Be With Her Now, Two Novellas by Jen Michalski (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

 Dzanc $15.95/ 180 pgs. “The novella,” Ian McEwan writes, “is the perfect form of prose fiction.” And yet, McEwan laments in his short essay, “Some Notes on the Novella,” published in The New Yorker last October, an overwhelming number of … Continue reading →

Confessions from a Dark Wood, by Eric Raymond (A Review by Chris Vola)

Sator Press $15/204 pgs   No other time in history has been more inundated with public creative outpourings than our current Internet-seduced zeitgeist. With every tweet, Tumblr, and wall update, content is generated at an ever-maddening pace, arguably devaluing itself … Continue reading →

Books We Can’t Quit: The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück (A Review by Rachel Mennies)

Ecco 80 pages, $15 When I first read Louise Glück’s Wild Iris, I was not suffering. I sat on my futon several years ago preparing for discussion of the text in my graduate workshop the following week, and I took … Continue reading →

Sympathy from the Devil by Kyle McCord (A Review by Anne Champion)

     Gold Wake Press 80 pages/$12.95              Kyle McCord’s Sympathy from the Devil crosses a myriad of celestial and earthly terrains.  In this collection, readers encounter God, Gabriel, and, of course, the Devil; they … Continue reading →

May We Shed These Human Bodies, by Amber Sparks (A Review by Dawn West)

  Curbside Splendor 150 pgs/ $12.00   Welcome to the cabaret. Amber Sparks’ May We Shed These Human Bodies is a menagerie of twisted fairy tales, ghost stories, and wild fables. Her stories are often fantastical but her prose is … Continue reading →

Chemical Tendencies by Paul Lieber (A Review by Alex M. Frankel)

Tebot Bach 99 pp./$15   Paul Lieber—a student of Method acting—has spent most of his adult life playing tough-guy roles on Broadway and in Hollywood. He played Eric Dorsey in the TV series Barney Miller and has also appeared in … Continue reading →

Somewhere, by Various Authors (A Review by Helen McClory)

  Cargo Publishing and McSweeney’s £5.99   The curiously-named collection of short stories, Somewhere, is part of Elsewhere, a four-book series of fiction, poetry and essays from Scottish and Scotland-affiliated writers. What endeared me to the series was that it … Continue reading →

The Wilhelm Scream, by Jeremy Behreandt (A Review by Sean Ulman)

Plumberries Press $5 Jeremy Behreandt’s prose chapbook “The Wilhelm Scream,” an elegant set of ten tarot-sized cards, clasped in a tattooed tissue and tucked in a textured envelope that could very well contain an urgent ancient telegram, is aware of … Continue reading →

COMPOS[T]MENTIS, by Aaron Aaps (A Review by j/j hastain)

BlazeVOX [books] $16/100 pgs What of ourselves can we see in what we have been given? We stare into the scraps that overflow from our open palms. We stare into the puddles of seepage which are the results of our … Continue reading →

The News Clown, by Thor Garcia (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

   Equus Press  477 pgs/€10 The constant media bombardment that blankets our nation every day has become an accepted fact of twenty-first century life. News spews forth from all media at all times, and it’s nearly unavoidable. A question that … Continue reading →

Melancholia (an Essay) by Kristina Marie Darling (A Review by Gina Myers)

   Ravenna Press $10 Melancholia, Kristina Marie Darling’s new collection, is referred to as an “essay,” but instead of finding a traditional essay inside the covers of this tiny book (part of Ravenna Press’s Pocket Series), the reader encounters an … Continue reading →

A Glimpse of the Numinous by Jeff Gardiner (A Review by David S. Atkinson)

Eibonvale Press (UK) 170 pgs/£18.99 There is something about characters coming into contact with something larger than themselves that makes for particularly compelling fiction. I don’t mean events larger than themselves, more of reaching for aspects of existence that transcend … Continue reading →

Arco Iris, by Sarah Vap (A Review by Diana Arterian)

 Saturnalia Books 80 pgs/ $15 Wind from the water on my legs, my white skirt smeared with dirt, the wine, and the / lime leaf caught in your beard—we had decided to travel. Sarah Vap’s Arco Iris (Spanish, meaning “rainbow”) … Continue reading →

The Smell of Good Mud by Lauren Zuniga (A Review by Amye Archer)

Write Bloody Books 92 pgs/$15 On the back cover of Lauren Zuniga’s The Smell of Good Mud, poet Andrea Gibson writes, “Dear Lauren, it is impossible to read your book without falling in love with you.”  I say, too late.  … Continue reading →

The New Arcana, by John Amen and Daniel Y. Harris (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

NYQ Books 109 pages/$14.95   Too often, poetry is reduced to long-winded lectures in a classroom or pages in obscure literary journals. It’s rare to find poets willing to joke about what the process has become and the race within … Continue reading →

Heeldragger, by Chelsea Tadeyeske (A Review by Sean Ulman)

Plumberries Press 32 pgs./$5.00 In Chelsea Tadeyeske’s “Heeldragger,” a pocketful of space-conscious (cautious) punch-packing poetry spliced among collage-carved graphics (stocking’d legs, heels, domestic furnishings, women’s bodies with blank faces that mimic mannequins), the opening canto blots the page like a … Continue reading →

Ancient Light, by John Banville (A Review by Kaya Genç )

Knopf 304 pgs/$25.95   John Banville’s mesmerizing new novel, Ancient Light, is the latest installment of a trilogy, which began in 2000 with the publication of Eclipse, a book much praised for the beauty of its prose. The elderly protagonist … Continue reading →

Heroines, by Kate Zambreno (A Review by Helen McClory)

MIT Press 320 pgs/$17.95   It’s probably bad form to write a review entirely composed of quotations from this book. But – that’s my immediate urge. It would be disingenuous not to say, immediately, that I am a massive admirer of Kate … Continue reading →

The Mercury Fountain by Eliza Factor (A Review by Lynne Weiss)

   Akashic Press 280 pgs/$15.95 The Mercury Fountain is Eliza Factor’s first novel, so I did not know her writing or reputation, but her book caught my eye because of the publisher, Akashic Press. Akashic is what you might call … Continue reading →

The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, by Adam Prince (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

 Black Lawrence Press $18/200 pgs Call it original sin, or human nature, or whatever you like. Any way you word it, the human race is one of flaws and imperfections. We do everything in our power to present the best … Continue reading →

Last Call in the City of Bridges by Salvatore Pane (A Review by David S. Atkinson)

Braddock Avenue Books $16   I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that this is not an age of disconnection. More and more of our interpersonal communications take place electronically. Even our news sources are becoming increasingly specialized, one news … Continue reading →

long past the presence of common by j/j hastain (A Review by Gina Myers)

Say it With Stones 87 pgs/$12 In long past the present of common, j/j hastain explores a liminal space without boundaries in an attempt to establish what it means to be a “cyborgian gender.” hastain, self-identified as a trans-genre writer, … Continue reading →

The Ossians, by Doug Johnstone (A Review by Martin Macaulay)

Currently available on Kindle £1.71. 304 pages Doug Johnstone’s The Ossians is his second novel recently reissued as an e-Book by Faber and Faber. The Ossians of the title are a twenty-something indie guitar band on the verge of securing … Continue reading →

Wolf and Pilot, by Farrah Field (A Review by Diana Arterian)

Four Way Books 72 pgs/$15.95 “We are the girls. Everything in the world points to us”   Farrah Field’s book Wolf and Pilot just out from Four Way is a freaky narrative-ish collection telling of many things, but particularly of … Continue reading →

Heavy Petting, by Gregory Sherl (A Review by Ryan Werner)

Yes Yes Books 128 pgs/$16 I say this not to slight his work or age—I liked his poems and he’s only two days younger than I am—but Gergory Sherl is a poet of youth, which is to say that his … Continue reading →

Books We Can’t Quit: Dance on My Grave, by Aidan Chambers (A Review by Katherine D. Stutzman)

Editor’s Note: Books We Can’t Quit features reviews of beloved texts in any genre that are at least ten years old. Amulet Books 256 pgs/$9.95 I first read Aidan Chambers’s novel Dance on My Grave on August 17, 1994, when … Continue reading →

Level End, by Brian Oliu (A Review by j/j hastain)

Origami Zoo $7.00 Equipped with an initial warning page in regard to the dos and don’ts of Brian Oliu’s Level End, we enter this book as we would a rigorous vertigo: an exercise in sense and emotion, an interaction with … Continue reading →

The Moon and Other Inventions: Poems After Joseph Cornell By Kristina Marie Darling (A Review by Anne Champion)

    BlazeVOX 66 pages/ $12 If you are familiar with the work of Kristina Marie Darling, it should come as no surprise that she chooses Joseph Cornell as her muse for her newest collection recently released from BlazeVOX books.  … Continue reading →

Water-Rites by Ann E. Michael (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

  Brick Road Poetry Press 112 pages $15.95     Over the last few years, the world has faced multiple natural disasters caused by extreme weather and rising temperatures. This most recent summer, the United States suffered severe drought, the … Continue reading →

I Am a Magical Teenage Princess, by Luke Geddes (A Review by David S. Atkinson)

Chomu Press 234 pgs/ $14   Bygone pop culture images affect us in curious ways. Things like Scooby Doo episodes, fifties educational hygiene films, and bad girls in trouble movies, they were shallowly designed for surface appeal and quick consumption. However, … Continue reading →

15 Views of Orlando, Nathan Holic, Ed. (A Review by Ally Nicholl)

 Burrow Press 184 pgs/$15   For me, Orlando was always the theme park advert that came on before Lady & the Tramp. When I was a prepubescent whippersnapper living along the drizzly east coast of Scotland, Florida seemed like paradise; … Continue reading →

The Orphan Palace, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Chômu Press, 2011. 376 pages/$17   Certain things in this world resist definite classification. Is Jello a solid or a liquid? Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Add to this list Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s The Orphan Palace. … Continue reading →

Short Dark Oracles, by Sara Levine (A Review by Ryan Werner)

Caketrain 188 pgs/$8.00   I wasn’t necessarily losing faith in the modern short story before I read Sara Levine’s debut collection Short Dark Oracles, but I was experiencing a dry spell of sorts—a month at most in these saturated times—in … Continue reading →

The Body, The Rooms by Andy Frazee (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the ninth in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press reviews have covered … Continue reading →

Nine Months by Paula Bomer (A Review by Dawn West)

There are plenty of books and films about men fleeing domesticity, about men who resist the surrender of self that making a family requires, about men who are ambivalent about being a husband and a father, with all its joys … Continue reading →

Fires of Our Choosing, by Eugene Cross (A Review by Andrew Scott)

Dzanc Books, 2012 195 pages $15.95   When a house burns to the ground, a man must come to terms with the limits of memory and friendship. After his father’s death, a boy lures a fellow camper into the woods … Continue reading →

Bartleby, the Sportscaster by Ted Pelton (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the eighth in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press reviews have covered … Continue reading →

Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch (A Review by Dawn West)

I, and many other sensible folks, believe that women should have primary control over our own bodies and stories, and Lidia Yuknavitch, my spirit animal, is no exception. Yuknavitch’s Dora: A Headcase, her divine whore of a debut novel, is … Continue reading →

The Listeners By Leni Zumas (A Review By Helen McClory

  Tin House   352pgs/$15.95   Some books require you to focus when reading. They jingle with loose connections you are meant to, as an active reader, hold together for the curren to pass through. While reading The Listeners, I flailed … Continue reading →

After the Witch Hunt by Megan Falley (A Review by Jason Carney)

Write Bloody Books 120 pgs/$8.84 Beautiful lines, harsh realities, absolute truths, and precise images combine in the poems offered in After the Witch Hunt by Megan Falley to create a book that sings in an authentic voice. This is Falley’s … Continue reading →

Good Intentions by Jeff Lacy (A Review by David Atkinson)

310 pgs/$18.95 Many of us forget that the people involved in the criminal justice system are still people. After all, the only contact many of us knowingly have with such people is through the news, such not being a common … Continue reading →

The Birdwisher by Anna Joy Springer (A Review By Helen McClory)

Birds of Lace 108pgs/$10 I found this a difficult book to read, though it was short, and beautifully put together and in parts as light as souffle. ‘A murder mystery for very old young adults’, it describes itself within, and … Continue reading →

Good Grief by Stevie Edwards (A Review by Gretchen Primack)

Write Bloody 112 pgs/$14 I just wrote up a piece for a literary magazine’s Contributors’ Blog, and in it I described what I look for in poems: “I admire the poet who keeps a gleam in his rolled eye. I … Continue reading →

Moon Is Cotton & She Laugh All Night by Tracy DeBrincat (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the seventh in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press reviews have covered … Continue reading →

Three Squares a Day With Occasional Torture by Julie Innis (A Review by Meg Tuite)

Foxhead Books 188pgs/$15 There are moments, hours, days in a lifetime that you actually feel like you have gone somewhere to a point on a map that doesn’t exist. That is the power of great writing. You’ve been transported from … Continue reading →

Fast Machine by Elizabeth Ellen (A Review by Helen McClory)

Short Flight/Long Drive Books 380 pgs/$11.95   Some books have a colour palette. Certain colours tinge the prose, or give the impression of appearing in the furniture, scenery, shadow, across the spread of tales.  This occupies a bleed zone between poor remembrance of … Continue reading →

What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali (A Review by Joy Mushacke Smith)

Putnam 197pgs/$11.99 The end of the school year. The time when even your favorite students start to get under your skin. Grades are due. Assignments are missing. You’re tearing off each calendar day with the ferocity required to wrestle an … Continue reading →

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel (A Review by Dawn West)

Unbridled Books 288pgs/$24.95 If the crime thriller, bildungsroman, and domestic realism genres all got together for drinks in a smoky blue-toned jazz club and went home in a needy haze of swamp heat, passing abandoned businesses and ignored newsstands, to … Continue reading →

Domestication Handbook by Kristen Stone (A Review By Helen McClory)

Rogue Factorial 96pgs/$TBD   Domestication Handbook, not appearing, by its thickness (slender) or its cover (of bloodied and pounded meat arranged in symmetry) to be really a handbook on some aspect of farming, is in fact a book of finest … Continue reading →

Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson (A Review by Kirsty Logan)

Chatto & Windus 266pgs/£12.99 The first line of Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float contains four swear-words, which sets the tone perfectly for what’s to come. This is the story of a Scottish childhood: the women all struggling, screeching … Continue reading →

American Poet by Jeff Vande Zande (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Bottom Dog Press 160 pages, $18   American Poet is a novel filled with scenes that are all too familiar to anyone involved in a local poetry community. Jeff Vande Zande successfully depicts awkward open mic nights, workshops, and competitive … Continue reading →

Song & Glass by Stan Mir (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the sixth in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared … Continue reading →

Fractured West #3 (A Review by Dawn West)

Fractured West 42pgs/£4.99 The third issue of Fractured West, a petite magazine of short fiction, is a testament to the notions that brief doesn’t mean empty, that a single scene can show you a life, and that a handful of … Continue reading →

Fuckscapes by Sean Kilpatrick (A Review by j/j hastain)

Blue Square Press 100pgs/$12 I have spent a few days in Sean Kilpatrick’s fuckscapes and need to name the disturbances (induced by reading this book) I feel in my body, as well as the awareness of the rare beauties within … Continue reading →

Zee Bee & Bee (aka Propeller Hats for the Dead) by David James Keaton (A Review by Simon Jacobs)

Open Casket Press 148pgs/$10.99 “…And With These Hats We Shall Fly”  1. “Shiver Moments” The premise to David James Keaton’s novella Zee Bee & Bee (aka Propeller Hats for the Dead) ought to be enough: a themed bed-and-breakfast in which customers … Continue reading →

A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman (A Review by Brian Libgober)

Akashic Books 332 pgs/$15.95 Set a few years after the end of the Second World War, A Mind of Winter opens with protagonist Oscar musing about the irony of his impending indictment for crimes against humanity.  They say that an … Continue reading →

I Have Blinded Myself Writing This by Jess Stoner (A Review By Helen McClory)

Short Flight/Long Drive Books 192 pgs/$12.95   Experimental Fiction. What comes to mind when you read or hear these words? For me they conjure up feelings of eager apprehension, similar to walking into a free exhibition at a small, untested … Continue reading →

A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics By CAConrad (A Review by Diana Arterian)

Wave Books 240pgs/$18 “Every single thing can now be highlighted as a possible WAY to a poem. It’s true to say the poem is there, it’s right there, it’s always there, and it’s waiting, actually waiting for us.”  The bulk … Continue reading →

Self-Titled Debut by Andrew Farkas (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the fifth in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared … Continue reading →

Variations of a Brother War By J.A. Tyler (A Review by Ryan Werner)

Small Doggies Press 116 pgs/$12.95 Fairness, love, and war are usually dealt with in that order. This says nothing of the truths found within the inversions, the war in love and the love of fairness and how it’s only a … Continue reading →

Wichita by Thad Ziolkowski (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

Tonga Books 256 pgs/$16 It takes a certain kind of writer to pull off a wild rumpus of a book. (Particularly, when there are no accompanying illustrations of teeth and eyes and claws.) Acclaimed poet (Our Son the Arson) and … Continue reading →

The Bee-Loud Glade by Steve Himmer (A Review by Helen McClory)

  Atticus Books 224 pages/$9.99 Sitting in a cafe full of bustle, greasily-lit against the mist outside and pungent with the unsettling reek of poorly-brewed grounds dumped into an open bin, I open this book at its beginning, and suddenly … Continue reading →

Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins (A Review by David Atkinson)

Atticus Books 216 pgs/$7.99 In recent memory, it seems that much of the fiction that receives significant critical attention is the writing that is unusual.  Whether this means fiction that experiments with language, fiction that challenges what a story is … Continue reading →

Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

Mud Luscious Press 118 pgs/$12 Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby has been a tremendously difficult book for me to review. I’ve read it twice now and still find myself at a loss for words, though, admittedly, it’s a loss in an … Continue reading →

F-Stein by L. J. Moore (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the fourth in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared … Continue reading →

The Postmortal by Drew Magary (A Review by Steven Casimer Kowalski)

Penguin 384 pgs/$10  The Postmortal is a book about a near future in which humans develop a “cure” for aging.  Take the cure, and you’re locked in at the same age until an outside force like cancer or a bullet … Continue reading →

Reality, Reality by Jackie Kay (a review by Helen McClory

Picador Press   240 pages,  £12.99   Jackie Kay’s voice in my head is clear and light and dancing, a young river through green grass. I’ve been to see her read poetry twice, and both times reveled in that voice, … Continue reading →

Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine (A Review by Lynne Weiss)

Tonga Books/Europa Editions 176 pages/$15.00 Anyone who loves reading has discovered at some point the book or the character that seems to offer a model for how to live. Some find it in Dostoevsky, others in Austen, or Bronte, or … Continue reading →

Living Arrangements by Laura Maylene Walter (A Review by Dawn West)

BkMk Press  175 pgs/$12 Laura Maylene Walter’s Living Arrangements is a collection of finely honed stories, all deeply concerned with place and memory. Her stories are quietly resonant–beneath the everyday veneer of each of her characters, Walter clarifies their internal … Continue reading →

Creatures Here Below by O. H. Bennett (A Review by Martin Macaulay)

Agate Bolden 272 pgs/$10 O H Bennett’s Creatures Here Below is an accomplished and compelling novel. Structured around character-titled sections, the author pushes us into the lives of Mason and his mother Gail. They share top billing in terms of … Continue reading →

A Cloth House by Joseph Riippi (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Housefire, 2012. 94 pgs/$7.99 Everyone has the capacity for several different types of memories, one of which is the flashbulb memory. A flashbulb memory is a highly precise snapshot sort of memory, one that sticks with a person for a … Continue reading →

They Hover Over Us by Richard Fellinger (A Review by Dawn Zera)

Snake Nation Press $25.00 In his solid collection of short stories, They Hover Over Us, the 2011 winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for fiction, Richard Fellinger writes about Pennsylvania’s rust belt so vividly that I nodded and winced and … Continue reading →

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka (a review by Helen McClory)

Red Lemonade (2011) 256 pages, $15.95 Please note: this review is quite effusive. If I don’t overtly order you to go out and buy a copy of this book, it’s only down to my sense of propriety. How otherwise could … Continue reading →

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (A Review by Alan Stewart Carl)

Alfred A. Knopf 336 pgs/$25.95 Whenever I’ve collected a particularly burdensome number of writing rejections, I like to make myself a thick-cut sandwich and fill a bottle with water and take a trail up into the hills. As I hike, … Continue reading →

With One’s Own Eyes by Sherwood Anderson (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the third in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared … Continue reading →

A Hollow Cube is a Lonely Space by S.D. Foster (A Review by David Atkinson)

Eraserhead Press 108 pgs/$9.95    As a preliminary matter, I am not an expert on bizarro fiction. In all honesty, I’ve never been able to truly define what it is, or is not. I’ve never been able to really be … Continue reading →

My Untimely Death by Adam Peterson (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the second in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito Press. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared … Continue reading →

Sweet Nothing by Nate Pritts (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Lowbrow Press 107 pages, $13  American poet and critic Ezra Pound once described a poetic image as something that should capture an emotional and intellectual complex in an instant of time. Nate Pritts’ latest collection of poems, Sweet Nothing, is … Continue reading →

Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) by Eileen Myles (A Review by Helen McClory)

271 pgs/$16 OR Books, 2010   Imagine you come into a room all wooden and light, say it’s a bar, or an old converted church. You’ve come in out of the NYC street (LES or East or West Village) into … Continue reading →

Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah by Patricia Smith (A Review by Jason Carney)

Coffee House Press 116 pgs/$16  Patricia Smith’s newest collection, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, evokes a sense of history and self-awareness combined with precise storytelling and the most crafted verse. Each poem delves deeper into the mythology of her family, her … Continue reading →

Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events by Kevin Moffett (A Review by Amye Archer)

Harper Perennial 240 pgs, $10 I first met Kevin Moffett on a cool April evening when he cracked open my skull with an ice pick and settled into my brain for the next three weeks.  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t … Continue reading →

Nectar by Lisa Bellamy (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)

Encircle Press 24 pgs/$12.95   I staggered out of the theater after Waiting for Godot. Jeez, I griped to Peter, That’s it? We’re all just wind and gristle? Yep, he said after a minute, and I knew he was trying … Continue reading →

Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus by Kristin Abraham (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

What follows is the first in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared at … Continue reading →

God’s Autobio by Rolli (A Review by David Atkinson)

Now or Never Publishing 233 pgs/$17.95 To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I picked up God’s Autobio by Rolli. I hadn’t heard a lot of talk about the book. In fact, I hadn’t really heard … Continue reading →

Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell (A Review by Ryan Werner)

Future Tense Books 168 pgs/$12 I remember being young because I still am. What is there to say about it? I met a lot of people, didn’t have sex with most of them, and then either left them or was … Continue reading →

Not Merely Because of the Unknown that was Stalking Toward Them by Jenny Boully

84pgs/$14 Tarpaulin Sky, 2011   In this prose-poem hybrid, the texts of Peter Pan have been enmeshed, re-corded, and spun into a thickness of sensual detail and slippery cross-reference. Under Boully’s fingertips, Neverland has burst open like a sodden swollen root, … Continue reading →

My Dead Pets Are Interesting by Lenore Zion (A Review By Thomas Michael Duncan)

TNB Books, 2011. 228 pgs/$14.99 In the title essay of her collection, My Dead Pets Are Interesting, Lenore Zion recounts how she told a man on their first date about her dog being hit by a car. He didn’t want … Continue reading →

L’Vis Lives! by Kevin Coval (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Haymarket Books 103 pages, $16 Renowned poet Patricia Smith writes in the introduction to Kevin Coval’s newest collection of poems, L’Vis Lives, that his latest offering is a “relentless book, brave and uncomfortable.” Indeed, Coval’s collection is brave and forceful … Continue reading →

Shenanigans! by Joseph Michael Owens (A Review by David Atkinson)

Grey Sparrow Press 100 pgs/$9.99 I’ve heard that by the time Bukowski was really into the swing of things as a writer, he had stopped reading much of anything.  He did not feel that most of what he came across … Continue reading →

Hot Pink by Adam Levin (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

McSweeney’s 256 pgs/$18 Sometimes, other people really sum up your thoughts more perfectly than you can—at least in a single statement:  Dude just got his foot off everybody’s throat and now he’s back ALREADY. That’s what Adam Novy (The Avian … Continue reading →

Flood Letters by Karin Gottshall (A Review by Aiden Arata)

Argos Books $10 In an age when apocalyptic threats have become a plague unto themselves—whether one kneels at the alter of spirituality, science, or general confusion—a collection of letters from a protagonist beyond salvation may seem like overkill.  Karin Gottshall’s … Continue reading →

So There! By Nicole Louise Reid (A Review by Janet Freeman)

Stephen F. Austin University Press 176 pgs/$12   Reading Nicole Louise Reid’s short story collection So There! is like reuniting with someone you thought had left the planet years ago—or in this case, a host of someones: sassy, fearless girls … Continue reading →

The Mimic’s Own Voice by Tom Williams (A Review by David Atkinson)

Main Street Rag 97 pgs/$9   There are few things in life, at least for me, as captivating as a puzzle. As much as my mind craves answers; answers that leave other lingering questions are the sort that I find … Continue reading →

Dan Holloway’s The Company of Fellows: A Review by Andrea Mullaney

Meet Tommy West. He’s the hero of Dan Holloway’s The Company of Fellows, a new Oxford-set crime novel, and he’s a man of many attributes. In fact, so many that I began taking note every time a different ability or … Continue reading →

Morocco by Kendra Grant Malone & Matthew Savoca (A Review by Gina Myers)

Dark Sky Books 116 pages/$10 Inappropriate relationships and illicit affairs have long been the stuff of literature. Morocco, a new collection of poetry from Dark Sky Books, contributes to this tradition but strips away the romance, showing things for what … Continue reading →

A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes by J. Bradley (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)

Deckflight Press $2.oo Fort Myers, August 2002  I should have fended off the emotard when he gnawed your hands, then spat your own fingerprints back.   The pelt hangs in my chest. I try not to wear it. I try … Continue reading →

The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You by Caits Meissner and Tishon (A Review by Amye Archer)

Well&Often Press $15.95/76 pgs. In the preface to The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You, Caits Meissner and Tishon impart to us that they have only been friends for five years, but their poems speak to one another in … Continue reading →

Lavinia Ludlow’s alt.punk: A Review by Sara Thomas

Lavinia Ludlow’s novel alt.punk(Casperian) concerns Hazel, a thirty year old Safeway manager with a cleanliness obsession, writing habit and layabout actor boyfriend. After the latter’s stray pubes eventually get too much for her, she meets the somewhat unstable Otis, lead … Continue reading →

(T)ravel/Un(T)ravel by Neil Shepard (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

  Mid-List Press $13/85 pgs Neil Shepard’s latest collection of poems, (T)ravel/Un(Travel), takes the reader across the landscape of time and place, through crowded marketplaces of China to sacred temples in Bali that are home to secret burial chambers of … Continue reading →

The Rebel Wife by Taylor M. Polites (A Review by Tyler Grimm)

Simon & Schuster $15.99/304 pgs. The Rebel Wife, expertly written by Taylor M. Polites, is a genre-subverting novel, framed within the Southern Gothic tradition that is very much a meditation on the purposeless of death, which is immediately evident in … Continue reading →

All Her Father’s Guns by James Warner (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Numina Press $13.95/200 pgs. The United States of America is heavily divided, possibly more so now than anytime since the end of the civil war. Strict bipartisanism and our elected representatives’ inabilities to cross party lines is one of the … Continue reading →

Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, edited by Kathleen Warnock: A Review by Nikki Magennis

This book is overflowing with graphic sex. That might sound like a duh thing to say about a collection of erotica, but it’s the thing that struck me most forcibly while I was reading it. Close-up, vigorous, vivid sex scenes, … Continue reading →

Gathered Here Together by Garrett Socol (A Review by David Atkinson)

Ampersand (&) Books $15.00/230 pgs. As my layman’s understanding of the human brain informs me, human attention is drawn to differences as opposed to similarities.  We are surrounded by immense amounts of information during almost every moment of every day … Continue reading →

The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux $14.95/288 pgs I made a mistake in writing this review, or, perhaps more specifically, before writing this review: I read a couple reviews online. I did it on a whim and it was only because I … Continue reading →

Jason Bredle’s Smiles of The Unstoppable (A Review by Joseph Goosey)

Magic Helicopter Press $11.95/76 pgs. “AT NIGHT WE’D BANDAGE OURSELVES WITH GAUZE AND VISIT RESTURANTS / TO DELIGHT OTHER’S OF STORIES OF WHAT HAPPENED:” REGARDING JASON BREDLE’S SMILES OF THE UNSTOPPABLE.” When Mike Young said hey will you review Jason … Continue reading →

PULP AND PAPER By Josh Rolnick (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

University of Iowa Press 192 pgs/$16 Reading is a solitary experience. We sit alone, we read alone; and yet, in the hands of an adept and gifted writer we are never alone. We are in the trusted company of characters … Continue reading →

Theater State by Jack Boettcher (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)

Blue Square Press 198 pgs/$12 In Theater State, Jack Boettcher’s debut novel, published by Blue Square Press, the world has become what we wanted it to be. And yet, it isn’t exactly what we thought it would be. Although Boettcher … Continue reading →

Blackwash Canal by Jason Labbe (A Review by Jana Wilson)

H_ngm_n Books 33 pgs At first glance Jason Labbe’s new chapbook Blackwash Canalis a faulty play with form. In the first section entitled “Six Poems for X” Labbe’s exemplary language is lost in the over-reliance of form that it becomes … Continue reading →

Books We Can’t Quit – S.F.W. by Andrew Wellman

Random House January, 1991 Chosen by David Atkinson I have to admit, I’m a little nervous to talk about this book.  For a lot of people, certain books take on an almost sacred character.  They speak to a part of … Continue reading →

territories of folding by TC Tolbert (A Review by j/j hastain)

Kore Press 38 pgs, $13 In territories of folding TC Tolbert saying “needless to say I am hegemony” is pleasantly destabilizing in the same way that a crystalline or jeweled brick that one comes upon by surprise while meandering might … Continue reading →

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 416 pgs, $15 “In Professor Saunders’s opinion, the novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and … Continue reading →

Etcetera’s Mistress by Thom Ward (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Accents Publishing 57 pages, $10 Thom Ward’s latest collection of poems, Etcetera’s Mistress, isn’t a book to merely breeze through. Like all good poetry, Ward’s poems demand time and energy on behalf of the reader. The poems range in scope … Continue reading →

Mule & Pear by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (A Review by Kim Loomis-Bennett)

New Issues Poetry & Prose 97 pages/$15 Mule & Pear contains voices of black women literary ghosts and their creators, collected and collaged. This is poetry made by a reader for readers—not ordinary rush-to-get-to-the-end-readers, but for those readers whose intimacy … Continue reading →

Mad for Meat by Kevin Simmonds (A Review by Ally Nicholl)

Salmon Poetry 78 pages/$17 When I first sat down to write a review of Kevin Simmonds’ poetry collection ‘Mad For Meat’ I had the uneasy feeling that I would end up using sentences like “Simmonds serves up prime cuts of … Continue reading →

Hack by Dmitry Samarov (A Review by Brian Libgober)

The University of Chicago Press 184 pages/$18 If Augie March were a real person, it seems likely that his memoirs would have turned out a lot more like Hack than the novel Saul Bellow ended up writing.  Consider the basic … Continue reading →

Books We Can’t Quit – Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

Harper Perennial December, 1993 Chosen by Andrew Bales Fuckhead Goes to the Moon [and Turns Back]… Jesus’ Son might as well be the literary world’s nineties gospel; the book of Johnson. The collection of interconnected stories— the bulk of which … Continue reading →

Bearded Women by Teresa Milbrodt (A Review by David Atkinson)

ChiZine Publications 250 pages/$21 I do not think anyone would argue that most people are not overly attracted to the unusual, the bizarre.  Freak shows would never have been so prevalent if this was not the case.  Certainly, modern views … Continue reading →

In the Time of the Blue Ball by Manuela Draeger (A Review by Alicia Kennedy)

The Dorothy Project 136 pages, $16 A succinct description of Manuela Draeger’sIn the Time of the Blue Ball (Three Post-Exotic Stories)would be:a children’s cartoon about a bumbling detective, set in a postapocalyptic dream. With that out of the way, you … Continue reading →

Meat is All by Andrew Borgstrom (A Review by Sean Ulman)

Nephew 41 pages, $10.00 The opening line grants “the noise” knowledge and equates sound to smell (“noise like a scent”), and Meat Is All steadily metes out sensory guiding sensors for all five senses, but on my initial read my … Continue reading →

The Little Bride by Anna Solomon (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

Riverhead Trade 320 pgs, $10 A great novel is everything. To live wholly inside something else for a while  — isn’t that why we read? Yet it can be tough to find works that sustain without the slightest unevenness, that … Continue reading →

How the Days of Love & Diphtheria by Robert Kloss (A Review by Kenny Mooney)

Nephew 50 pgs, $10 Robert Kloss writes like he has a fever. Anyone familiar with his short fiction will know that his work has a kind of delusional quality to it, as though each line has been crafted through blinding … Continue reading →

Rust Fish by Maya Jewell Zeller (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)

Lost Horse Press $15.00 Childhood memories, how important they are. The very earliest impressions we experience as children, the places we grow up in, they shape who we are later in life. It seems that, the older we get, the … Continue reading →

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (A Review by Stanton Hancock)

Doubleday 256 pgs, $14 Madison Spencer has it all.  Rich Hollywood A-list parents, houses all over the globe, private jets to shuttle her wherever she desires to go, all the perks of the super-elite.  There’s just one problem – she’s … Continue reading →

A Shiny, Unused Heart by J.A. Tyler (A Review by David Atkinson)

Black Coffee Press 110 pgs, $12.95 I could start out this review by telling you what A Shiny, Unused Heart by J.A. Tyler is about.  Perhaps I would mention that the book is the story of a man who learns … Continue reading →

A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)

McSweeneys 955 pgs, $24 A Moment in the Sun is a tricky book for me to review. At 955 pages, it’s definitely the longest book I’ve read since McSweeney’s last “big book,” The Instructions by Adam Levin (which I highly … Continue reading →

Baby and Other Stories by Paula Bomer (A Review by Dawn West)

My sister was always the one who talked about getting married, having babies. She wanted six children. That’s always what she said, and it’s always disturbed me. I thought, even when I was very young, that having so many babies … Continue reading →

In the Time of the Blue Ball by Manuela Draeger, translated by Brian Evenson (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

In the Time of the Blue Ball is the tip of an iceberg. Translated by Brian Evenson, this book is a collection of three stories from Manuela Draeger’s ten story catalog featuring Bobby Potemkine, a hapless quasi police officer assigned … Continue reading →

Bring Down the Chandeliers by Tara Hardy (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Write Bloody Press 85 pages, $15 Bring Down the Chandeliers is not a collection of poetry for the faint of heart, prude, or squeamish. At times, Tara Hardy’s poems can be unsettling, as they address rape and incest, using raw, … Continue reading →

Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez (A Review by David S. Atkinson)

Akashic Books $22.95 Tension is not usually comfortable in actual life.  In fact, most people do what they can to avoid having tension in their lives.  Strangely enough, though, tension seems generally necessary for stories to hold reader interest.  If … Continue reading →

Four Books of Poetry by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (A Review by Alicia Kennedy)

Write Bloody Press Various page counts, $15 each The titles drew me to Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s first four books of poetry: Dear Future Boyfriend, Hot Teen Slut, Working Class Represent, and Oh Terrible Youth. They promised tales of the all-important … Continue reading →

Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter (A Review by Joseph Owens)

Featherproof Books 217 pages OK, before I dive into this review, I feel compelled to offer my two cents on an issue I personally feel is pressing. “Experimental literature” is kind of a nebulous term and ultimately a misnomer. Though … Continue reading →

The Gambler’s Nephew by Jack Matthews (A Review by David Atkinson)

Etruscan Press $12.75 Perhaps I am just prejudiced against historical novels, but to me there seems to be a distinction between historical novels and novels that are set in a historical place and time.  In the way I draw the … Continue reading →

Freight by Mel Bosworth (A Review by Morowa Yejidé)

Folded Word Press $14 It isn’t often that a story allows us to simply muse, to contemplate the high and the low of things, but Mel Bosworth’s Freight does just that.  This novel is aware of its own kind of … Continue reading →

The Body is a Little Gilded Cage by Kristina Marie Darling (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

In short: Kristina Marie Darling’s The Body is a Little Gilded Cage is the best book that Darling has written and the best book that Gold Wake Press has produced. I’ve read Darling’s previous Night Songs (also from Gold Wake … Continue reading →

Damascus by Joshua Mohr (A Review by Tyler Grimm)

Available October 2011 from Two Dollar Radio 208 pages $16.00 “A life without art was like skin without tattoos, boring and empty and pale.”    - Joshua Mohr (Damascus) We’ve all been to seedy bars. Hell, some of us practically … Continue reading →

Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You by Lea Graham (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You is Lea Graham’s first full-length collection, as well my first date with No Tell Books, and both are a solid way to begin something new. The physical product is … Continue reading →

Domestic Apparition by Meg Tuite (A Review by Anna March)

San Francisco Bay Press $14.99 Meg Tuite’s “Domestic Apparition” is sublime. In this mosaic of tightly intertwined chapters that seamlessly join to form the novel, we meet Michelle, our narrator, whom we will not just come to root for, but … Continue reading →

Luminarium by Alex Shakar (A Review by Randy Brzoska)

SoHo Press $16/432 pages It seems fitting that Alex Shakar would open his novel, Luminarium, with an invitation.  Not your garden variety party invitation, mind you.  Something a bit more oblique, less straightforward.  But an invitation nonetheless. Picture yourself stepping … Continue reading →

Jeanette by Joe Simpson Walker (A Review by Martin Macaulay)

Chomu Press $17/408 pages ‘Jeanette, is something the matter?’ In Joe Simpson Walker’s novel, people have a habit of asking Jeanette Hesketh ‘What’s the matter?’ Her parents, her teacher, her neighbours, her is-he-isn’t-he boyfriend – they all want to get … Continue reading →

World Tree by David Wojahn (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

University of Pittsburg Press 134 pages. $16 David Wojahn’s latest collection of poems, World Tree, is a book in which the dead come alive on the page. His poems are filled with voices of the past, including spirits from the … Continue reading →

Re:Telling, An Anthology Edited by William Walsh (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

An Anthology of Borrowed Premises, Stolen Settings, Purloined Plots and Appropriated Characters Edited by William Walsh Ampersand Books, $17.95 This is a book that’s good fun. The tagline says it all: collected fictions that steal a page from, or lend … Continue reading →

The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals by Rae Bryant (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Patasola Press $14 Remember the last time you woke up after a one-night stand and chewed your own arm off so you could sneak out without waking the semi-stranger sleeping next to you? No? What do you mean, that’s never … Continue reading →

The Mutation of Fortune by Erica Adams (A Review by David Atkinson)

The Green Lantern Press $20 The Mutation of Fortune is not an easy book to get a fix on.  The stories are too fluid to be easily grasped for quick summary.  The ground beneath the reader’s feet shifts too rapidly … Continue reading →

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert (A Review by Dawn West)

Unbridled Books 272 pages, $24.95 Lies have a way of revealing truth. Motives. Fears. Obsessions. And aren’t writers the most fabulous liars? Great fiction is, in a sense, a series of fantastical lies spun into a gold-threaded web that somehow … Continue reading →

Pittsburgh Noir (A Review by William D. Prystauk)

Akashic Books 237 Pages, $15.95 Editor: Kathleen George When it comes to anthologies of fiction, one usually finds one or two decent tales worthy of note while the rest is completely forgettable. Pittsburgh Noir is not one of those.  The … Continue reading →

Compendium by Kristina Marie Darling (A Review by Brian Fanelli)

Cow Heavy Books 55 pages, $10 Like a jigsaw puzzle, Kristina Marie Darling’s Compendium asks to be pieced together. It is a collection of lyric poems, vignettes, erasures, glossaries, footnotes, and histories that present only bits and pieces of a … Continue reading →

Black Hole Blues By Patrick Wensink (A Review By P. Jonas Bekker)

Lazy Fascist Press $10.95 After reading Sex dungeon for sale, Patrick Wensink’s debut story collection that came out in Eraserhead Press’ New Bizarro Author Series I decided he could (and should) write a very good novel if he would just … Continue reading →

The Iguana Complex by Darby Larson (A Review By Joseph Michael Owens)

Mud Luscious Press Despite what you may have heard, Darby Larson is a lyricist. He might be the Eminem of prose fiction, but probably not. Perhaps he’s more like Sage Francis or one of the guys from Definitive Jux, but … Continue reading →

What Doesn’t Kill You: An Anthology (A Review By Gale Martin)

Press 53 $17.95 Editors: Murray Dunlap & Kevin Morgan Watson When the premise of an anthology is compelling, reader expectations are high. Upon receiving a review copy of collected stories and narrative non-fiction called What Doesn’t Kill You published by … Continue reading →

I Know When To Keep Quiet By Dawn Leas (A Review By Amye Archer)

Finishing Line Press $12 I often lament that I have never lived anywhere else.  Sure, I’ve moved like a roulette wheel ticking around to different suburbs, but that center, the crumbling metropolis of Scranton, has always been within reach.   And … Continue reading →

I Don’t Respect Female Expression By Frank Hinton (A Review By Stanton Hancock)

Safety Third Enterprises 15 pgs, $3.00 In her chapbook “I Don’t Respect Female Expression,” Frank Hinton manages to include an astonishing amount of content within just fifteen pages.  Fittingly, considering the traditionally masculine name of “Frank” is being employed by … Continue reading →

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive By Christopher Boucher (A Review By David Atkinson)

Melville House Press 208 pgs, $11.95 Having been born in the middle seventies to parents who owned a VW Beetle, I admit to being confused when I first picked up How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher.  I … Continue reading →

Short Bus By Brian Allen Carr (A Review By Sal Pane)

Texas A&M University Press $22.95 My first encounter with Brian Allen Carr was over the internet.  HTMLGIANT had just linked to this long diatribe I’d written about a semi-obscure video game from the 1990’s. I checked the comments section hourly, … Continue reading →

Hector and the Search for Happiness By Francois Lelord (A Review By Rebecca Leece)

Gallic Books £6.99 Hector is a French psychiatrist who is dissatisfied because he’s not able to make people happy. He decides to look into matters by going on a trip around the world to observe what makes people happy—or unhappy. … Continue reading →

Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate By Johannes Göransson (A Review By Joseph Michael Owens)

Tarpaulin Sky Press 100 pgs.  $14 Beware beware I have begun a king A jacklighting king There is a talented bunch of contemporary writers doing some really cool things with experimental prose lately (I’d hate to call it experimental “-literature” … Continue reading →

Front Man By Brian Fanelli (A Review By Gretchen Primack)

Big Table Publishing Company $12 From the first listen—and I’m punning here, since this chapbook begins with a poem called “First Listen”—Brian Fanelli sets the reader up for music. Not the melodious, harmonious kind you might imagine when you hear … Continue reading →

Hurricane Story By Jennifer Shaw (A Review By Amye Archer)

Chin Music Press, July 2011 118 pages.  $18 I, like most Americans, watched from the comfort of my oversized Lazy-Boy as Hurricane Katrina swept away New Orleans in August of 2005.  Don’t get me wrong, I recognized the tragedy of … Continue reading →

So You Know It’s Me By Brian Oliu (A Review By Ian Denning)

Tiny Hardcore Press, $7 There’s a lot of delusion involved in trying to find someone on Craigslist Missed Connections. The writer deludes herself into thinking that the message will find its intended recipient. The reader deludes himself into thinking that … Continue reading →

Go The Fuck to Sleep By Adam Mansbach (Review by Amye Archer)

Akashic Books 32 Pages, $14.95 My sister, Jennie, called me on the phone one day when my twin daughters were about eighteen months old.  It was a Tuesday and it was during nap time.  My heart sank when I realized … Continue reading →

Big Bright Sun By Nate Pritts (A Review By Brian Fanelli)

Blaze Vox [books] 100 pages, $16 Nate Pritts begins his fourth collection of poems, Big Bright Sun, with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “But for me the earth is new today, and the sun is raining light.” For Emerson … Continue reading →

The Bee-Loud Glade By Steve Himmer (A Review By Dawn West)

Atticus Books, 2011 224 pages,  $14.95 Like many ‘80s babies raised in or around mid-sized Midwest cities, my interaction with nature was largely confined to backyards, bike trails, cornfields, and the inevitable pumpkin patch. I’ve spent a healthy amount of … Continue reading →

The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill: A Review by Ethel Rohan

I’m the girl who faithfully raced home from school to watch BBC’s historical drama, Upstairs Downstairs; the teen who reread Wuthering Heights obsessively; and the young adult who attempted to write a novel set in a mansion in nineteenth century … Continue reading →

Norman Lock’s Grim Tales: A Review by PJ Bekker

I hope you’re reading this sitting down, because I am about to dispel a widespread myth about literary criticism: there is no such thing as objectivity. Every reviewer has his or her ideas and preconceptions about what literature should and … Continue reading →

xTx’s He Is Talking to the Fat Lady: A Review By Lauren Schmeer

Reading xTx’s newest chapbook He Is Talking to the Fat Lady gives me the feeling of being laughed at while I’m huddled over in pain, and I appreciate it more with every read. There’s an empowered anger in each piece, … Continue reading →

My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales Edited by Kate Bernheimer (A Review by Marcella Prokop)

Penguin Books, 2010 543 pages, $17 One of the delights in reading fairy tales as an adult knows that the story isn’t real, but finding truth in it anyway.  Memorable for their (mostly) all-but-happy endings, fairy tales are like horror … Continue reading →

Parcel #1: A Review by Ally Nicholl

The first thing you’ll notice about Parcel is that it looks and feels gorgeous. The creators have clearly put a lot of effort into making it an enjoyable reading experience, with artwork by Jaclyn Mednicov and stylish design work by … Continue reading →

Download Helvetica for Free by Steve Roggenbuck, a review by Perrin Carrell

Steve Roggenbuck is part of a relatively new movement of “internet” poets writing loosely in the tradition of Tao Lin. He published a book of 100 poems, Downloadhelveticaforfree.com, which is also available for free on the book’s website of the … Continue reading →

Sarah Rose Etter’s Tongue Party: A Review by Dawn West

There is a particular scene in HBO’s Six Feet Under when Claire Fisher is in art class and her professor, Olivier, is raving about how sensual sensation is the most reliable gauge for evaluating a work of art; he insists … Continue reading →

Fragmentation + Other Stories: A Review by Rebecca Leece

Anthologies. What’s to be done about them? Millions exist, and undoubtedly millions more are in the making this very instant. Say, for example, you are fascinated by stories about dead babies. You require a fresh dead baby story to read while you … Continue reading →

This Modern Writer: Ideas of Order in Chronology by Nathan Huffstutter

Trust me on this: you’re going to read The Chronology of Water. Superlatives in its reviews will scratch where you itch, discussions in lit forums will demand your engagement, someone will press a copy into your hands. Here, read this. … Continue reading →

Spilt Milk Issue 1 (blue-eyed boy bait) – A Review by Ally Nicholl

Spilt Milk describe themselves as “collectors & distributors of word joy”, and their first magazine ‘blue-eyed boy bait’ is a handsome collection of short stories, flash fiction and poetry which aims to do just that. Thirty different writers have contributed … Continue reading →

Brendan Connell’s The Life of Polycrates & Other Stories for Antiquated Children: A Review by JL Williams

I’m loath to summarise each story in this fascinating and sensual collection as at least one other has already done it very well, and because they’re just so good you ought to read them yourself. If you do, prepare to indulge, to savour, … Continue reading →

Fractured West #2: A Review by Tania Hershman

It took me far longer to read this magazine of flash fiction than it usually does to read most novels, and that is testament to the power and intensity of an excellent piece of flash fiction. I carried it around … Continue reading →

Clare Fisher’s The Hole in the Wall: A Review by Dan Holloway

Clare Fisher’s The Hole in the Wall is a beautifully produced, exquisitely edited novella, just as I’ve come to expect from the fantastic Philistine Press. It’s daring, and so nearly brilliant. For such a short book The Hole in the … Continue reading →

By Invitation Only: A Review by Kenny Mooney

By Invitation Only, a collection of short stories from Unbound Press and Spilling Ink Review, ironically enough, came into my life uninvited. I won it in a competition I was only vaguely aware I had even entered – a promotional … Continue reading →

A Life Transparent by Todd Keisling – A Review by Ally Nicholl

Donovan Candle has a problem: a telesales rep for nine years, the mundanity of his existence has brought him to the attention of the Gatekeeper of the Grey, a sinister overlord named Aleister Dullington who feeds on boredom and uses … Continue reading →

Bragi Ólafsson’s The Ambassador (translated by Lytton Smith): A Review by Rebecca Leece

It was January of 2011 when—working my way through the lung-high drifts of snow—I decided to focus on reading international writers. “No, wait!” I cried out, raising a mitten-clad hand, just in time to catch the arm of another Brooklynite … Continue reading →

Ocean Vuong’s Burnings: A Review by Krystelle Bamford

It’s a strange feeling to miss a place sporadically.  I lived in New York for a few years before moving to Scotland, and when I think about the city it’s a glancing, regretful attachment.  A really beautiful and thoughtless boyfriend who you’re … Continue reading →

Tenderoni by Kathy Fish: A Review by Ethel Rohan

The story collection, Tenderoni, by Kathy Fish is forthcoming soon from Cow Heavy Books. I had the great honor and pleasure of reading an advance copy. I admit on first learning the story collection’s title, Tenderoni, I felt somewhat ambivalent. … Continue reading →

Barry Graham’s Nothing or Next to Nothing: A Review by Martin Macaulay

I’ll always remember seeing Barry Graham (now Dogo Barry Graham) on TV about 20 years ago. It was a regional show called Scottish Books which ran in a past-bedtime slot. Each week a different panel discussed the latest releases, but … Continue reading →

A Review of Brevity, Winter 2011

I don’t know about you, PANKsters, but I am in that middle section. I’d like to pretend I’m far too busy and important to read things that are longer than 1,000 words, but as it’s midday and I’m still in … Continue reading →

Sex Scene: An Anthology, a Review by Ally Nicholl

Thirteen writers, each with different backgrounds and experiences, are given the simple brief : write a sex scene. This forms the intriguing premise of Sex Scene: An Anthology, edited by Robert James Russell, and the results are fascinating. It gets … Continue reading →

Mary Carroll-Hacket’s The Real Politics of Lipstick: A Review by Amy Whipple

At night, I read these memories like the finger-worn pages of my favorite childhood Mother Goose book.   These memories are barefoot and covered in the first good sweat of late spring.   Southern front porches and long green lawns. … Continue reading →

Emma Straub’s Other People We Married: A Review by Sara Lippmann

We all have our things we never tire of, things that burrow inside us and stay, things we can’t get enough of and continue to revisit, such is the nature of their hold. Dark chocolate. Urban Cowboy. “A Perfect Day … Continue reading →

The Feel and Felt of Matt Mauch’s Poetry Collection, Prayer Book

Matt Muach’s poetry collection, Prayer Book might threaten to cross the line of decency—even enter realms of blasphemy—if it weren’t for the poems’ sincerity. It is a book of tangents and fragments arranged into the form of prayers. The poems … Continue reading →

The Wild & Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

D. Ray White was a revered mountain dancer from Appalachia who, while being filmed for the documentary The Talking Feet, was murdered in a shootout in 1985. His son Jesco filled his tap shoes and has danced his way to … Continue reading →

Raymond Luczak’s Mute: A Review by Robyn Oxborrow

Books from the deaf GLBT community are hard to come by, but Raymond Luczak has been trying to change that for over decade with the publications of Eyes of Desire:A Deaf Gay & Lesbian Reader (1993) and Eyes of Desire … Continue reading →

David M. Peak’s The Rocket’s Red Glare: A Review by Thomas DeMary

Nearly 350 million quarters are minted each month. In the second after a coin is pressed, an entire civilization of germs can rise and file, leaving behind only their tale of survival. The Rocket’s Red Glare is one of these … Continue reading →

Darlin’ Neal’s Rattlesnakes & the Moon: A Review by Robyn Oxborrow

Great stories can make us see our lives in a new way, pulling us in, taking the time to make us feel welcome so we step alongside the main character. In Rattlesnakes & the Moon, Darlin’ Neal creates this atmosphere … Continue reading →

Review: Room by Emma Donoghue

I am in love with Emma Donoghue. Not in a naked babymaking sort of way (well, maybe a little), in the sort of way that I want to be like her when I grow up. I first read her when … Continue reading →

Jo Cannon’s Insignificant Gestures: A Review by Sara Lippmann

No matter who we are or what we look like or where we’ve been or why  we’re here, if we have a human heart it’s going to break—if it’s not already broken. Anguish permeates the twenty-five stories in PANK contributor … Continue reading →

We Need to Talk about Beside the Sea: by Dan Holloway

Sometimes, without you even noticing it, a book will wander out of the media’s review pages and plant its bum firmly on the features seat. It’s impossible to unravel the vagaries of the process by which some cheeky little volumes … Continue reading →

Timothy Willis Sanders’s Orange Juice: A Review by Matt Cook

Timothy Willis Sanders’s Orange Juice is the second release from Awesome Machine, a sideline of the well-established Publishing Genius, and the remit for the little brother press is specific. Through short runs (125) of interesting projects, without all the hassle … Continue reading →

We Can Be Happy Underground: A Review of D.R. Haney’s Subversia by Matt Cook

When a book has a cover this arresting, features writing by a punk-author originally published on The Nervous Breakdown, and has an opening chapter entitled “I was a child porn model”, you might anticipate an abrasive experience filled with memory-scorching … Continue reading →

Review: Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

Want to write flash fiction? Want to write it better, cleaner, harder, stronger? Read this novel. It’s only 200 pages and the font is really big; you have time. Play It As It Lays chronicles the downward drift of resting … Continue reading →

The Maze of Diane Lockward’s Temptation by Water

Diane Lockward’s collection of poems, Temptation by Water, takes readers on a journey through a maze of sorrows and delights. Just as life doubles back on itself, giving the joy of french fries with the regret of trans fats, Lockward … Continue reading →

Mel Bosworth’s Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom: A Review by Martin Macaulay

Have you ever read a real-life story of love? Not one of those decorated love stories, wrapped in adjectives too flowery to connect to any kind of reality, but a love story that grabs you by the hand and drags … Continue reading →

Adam Ford’s Heroes and Civilians: A Review by Thomas DeMary

Novelty is relative. The newness of style, of language, in literature is wholly dependent on the reader’s exposure, limited or otherwise, to various texts. “If I haven’t seen it, it’s new to me,” so goes the mantra. While flash fiction … Continue reading →

Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold: A Review by Melissa Chichester

“The walls felt colder, and I sat shoulder to shoulder with the world.” Get ready, because  it’s a tight squeeze. While reading Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, be prepared to enter the vortex that is Malcolm Blackburn. Wait, … Continue reading →

MONKEY BARS, Briefly

Monkey Bars by Matthew Lippman Published by Typecast Publishing, 10/06/2010 ISBN-13 (cloth): 978-0-984-49610-5 Pages: 72 Size: 6.5 x 8 I am not going to linger long on Matthew Lippman’s new poetry collection  Monkey Bars because Typecast Publishing is also publishing … Continue reading →

Mary Hamilton’s We Know What We Are: A Review by Martin Macaulay

Mary Hamilton’s ‘We Know What We Are‘  is a collection of thirteen short-short stories, beautifully crafted and condensed into microcosms of  life, love, death and dream. Some of the places this writer takes you, you’ll already know; some you won’t. … Continue reading →

Ben Brooks’s An Island of Fifty: A Review by Thomas DeMary

There’s a scene in Spike Lee’s film Mo Betta Blues in which the two main characters, jazz musicians in a quartet, quarrel over the juxtaposition of artistry and pleasing the fans: one wants to do his thing, the other wants … Continue reading →

Monkeybicycle 7: A Review by Matt Cook

From the moment it appeared in my inbox, Monkeybicycle #7 felt big. Weighing in at a beefy 200 pages of high-concept, unpredictable writing, it’s as long as a screenplay and delivers a distinctly cinematic feel. Like a multiplex owned and … Continue reading →

Eric Beeny’s Snowing Fireflies: A Review by Renee Emerson

Reading Eric Beeny’s  Snowing Fireflies is like entering a dream about childhood. Even the look of the chapbook is playful””meandering font, drawings of little fireflies here and there, a picnic basket on the cover. The stories are whimsical, imaginative, but … Continue reading →

Ben Mirov’s Ghost Machine: A Review by Iris Cushing

Are Ben Mirov’s poems haunted? Perhaps not so much as they are preoccupied—inhabited by something that was there before anyone arrived, including, perhaps, the poet himself. Ghost Machine guides us through the narrator’s material occupations: food, friends, money, sex. The … Continue reading →

Harriet Brown’s Brave Girl Eating: A Review by Amy Whipple

“I found something better than cutting,” my friend Anne announces over Instant Messenger. In the black-hole moment between when I ask What? and the ping of her response, I consider smoking, drinking, drugs. The big ones. She is sixteen. I … Continue reading →

The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You is a Robot: A Review

I do not want to read The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You is a Robot. The stories are uncomfortable and violent and the people in them are vicious and abrupt. I would not want to be stuck in a lift … Continue reading →

Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis: A Review By Salvatore Pane

Deborah Willis’s debut short story collection Vanishing displays an impressive range of talents and voices. These fourteen long stories feel texturally distinct from one another, and the book never falls into that trap that some short story collections do where … Continue reading →

Word Play: A Photo Book Review of Marjorie Tesser’s The Important Thing Is…Card Game

Winner of the 2009 Firewheel Chapbook Award, Marjorie Tesser’s chapbook The Important Thing Is– is poetry designed to be played as a game. The book is presented in a box with game cards and instructions that give only one rule””break … Continue reading →

What I Love About YOU

Nuala Ni­ Chonchoir’s debut novel, You, is set in 1980 Dublin against the charged backdrop of the River Liffey. The novel tells the turbulent story of a ten-year-old girl and her broken family. Narrated through the child’s point of view … Continue reading →

Fractured West #1: A Review by Claire King

Reading the first issue of this new literary magazine is like crashing a party. You walk into the room, you recognise a couple of faces but not many. It’s exciting in there, sexy and uncertain. Look around you: there are … Continue reading →

Jay Varner’s Nothing Left To Burn: A Review by Salvatore Pane

A coming-of-age memoir in the tradition of Tobias Wolff’s  This Boy’s Life and Gary Fincke’s The Canals of Mars, Jay Varner’s debut book Nothing Left to Burn tells a generational story in tiny McVeytown, a rundown blip on the map … Continue reading →

Haunted: A Review of Maureen Alsop’s Apparition Wren

I met Maureen Alsop before meeting her poetry. We were ghost hunting together in the hills of the Antelope Valley. To clarify, we are not normally ghost hunters, but poets. We were actually in search of poetry—attempting to soften a … Continue reading →

Review: Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande

When I first started taking my writing seriously — though I don’t know how successful that was, because I still write stupid shit about zombie rockstars and butch girls in bars… Okay, when I started actually finishing stories instead of … Continue reading →

Rob Sherman’s Valve Works: A Review by Dan Holloway

I read a tweet a few weeks ago that “most people who claim to be at the cutting edge have no idea where the cutting edge even is”, so it’s always interesting to check out things that claim to be … Continue reading →

Like Winning at Roulette : A Review of Jessalyn Wakefield’s Unsleep’s Village by J. A. Tyler

I went on cruise and in the stateroom there was a closed-circuit feature about how to bet on roulette and how, if you place those bets just right, you can win big. My wife and I watched the video. We … Continue reading →

Matt Bell’s How They Were Found: A Review by Troy Urquhart

No matter what I write here, I cannot tell you how great this book is. In fact, I’m not even sure I know how to write a review that will  do it justice. So let’s just agree on this point … Continue reading →

Dawn Potter the Frank Zappa of Poetry: A Review of How The Crimes Happen

               

Jason Floyd Williams’ Inheritance Tax: A Review by Adam Palumbo

Last week, my grandfather’s health deteriorated rapidly while traveling to my cousin’s wedding in Houston, Texas. He is 82. He has led a full and adventurous life, serving in both the Second World and Korean wars. He raised five children … Continue reading →

Review: The Fox’s Window and Other Stories by Naoko Awa

Each one of the stories in The Fox’s Window takes your hand and leads you out of the safety of your home, to the deepest, darkest part of the woods or right down to the bottom of the sea or … Continue reading →

Janice Dickinson’s No Lifeguard on Duty: A Review

Before we begin, let me confirm that yes I do mean that Janice Dickinson, yes she does have a book, and yes I have read it. And I think that you should read it too. Lest you think that No … Continue reading →

Sasha Fletcher’s When All our Days Are Numbered Marching Bands Will Fill the Streets & We Will Not Hear Them Because We Will Be Upstairs in the Clouds: A Review By Troy Urquhart

In the second chapter of Walden, the nineteenth-century naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau asserted that the ultimate creative act is, fundamentally, an act of self-creation, an act in which the artist shapes not objects in the world, but his … Continue reading →

Dan Holloway’s Songs From The Other Side of the Wall: A Review By Amy Whipple

While the big publishing houses continue to fret about the future of the book, Dan Holloway just keeps on going. Founder of the Year Zero¸ Writers collective, Holloway preaches free e-books and otherwise self-published items. Much of what he and … Continue reading →

Boundaries before Borders: A Review of Alba Cruz-Hacker’s No Honey For Wild Beasts

Alba Cruz-Hacker’s collection, No Honey for Wild Beasts, is a book about finding the courage to say no. These poems dress feminist theory with the music of confessional poetry, singing important messages to a new generation of readers. Cruz-Hacker, like … Continue reading →

Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter — A Review By Salvatore Pane

In 1989, my parents bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas. I was four years old and this was, unequivocally, the happiest moment of my entire life. This is not an uncommon story; the NES sold more than 61 … Continue reading →

Julie Enszer’s Handmade Love: A Review and Interview By Dan Holloway

A Review: Julie Enszer‘s poetry, riddled with the juxtapositions and contradictions facing feminists and LGBTQ activists today, reads like  the author is throwing questions against the side of her skull to break them open. Her collection Handmade Love isn’t a … Continue reading →

A Visual Review of Ann Carson’s Nox

Three Reasons to Read Federman : A Review of Shhh: The Story of a Childhood by J. A. Tyler

Raymond Federman died in 2009. This is not the reason to read Federman. Rest in peace as they say, but Federman would not want it like that, to gain readers simply by his own mortality. Raymond Federman didn’t die in … Continue reading →

Patrick Wensink’s Sex Dungeon For Sale: A Review by P. Jonas Bekker

Patrick Wensink’s story collection Sex Dungeon for Sale came out last year from Eraserhead Press‘s New Bizarro Author Series, or NBAS. The philosophy of the NBAS is interesting. Normally, the editor’s foreword states, Eraserhead would only have room for one … Continue reading →

Guilty Pleasures: A Review of Chris Priestley’s Tales of Terror

Everyone has a guilty book pleasure. Maybe yours is Harlequin romances about Greek tycoons and Regency fops making all the bosoms quiver. Maybe it’s chick-lit books with pink glittery covers or doorstop fantasy series about psychic dragons. Maybe it’s Jeffrey … Continue reading →

Gary Fincke’s The Canals of Mars: A Review By Salvatore Pane

To call Gary Fincke prolific would be an understatement. He is the author of sixteen books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction (one of which won the 2003 Flannery O’ Connor Award). His latest, the memoir The Canals of Mars (published … Continue reading →

CSI Svalbard Episode 3: A Review By Mark Welker

You might think that by the third episode, the pool of 2,000-odd inhabitants of the Svalbard islands might be running a bit short on murder suspects. And judging by the opening scene of this episode, “ËœDoomsday Vault’, you mightn’t be … Continue reading →

Celebrating Sport: A Review of Stymie Magazine by Mike Revell

Reading Stymie, it occurred to me that you do not often find sport and literature in the same place. Not this kind of literature, anyway: not fiction or poetry. Disregard, for a moment, that childhood staple of soccer stories looking … Continue reading →

Matthew Simmon’s A Jello Horse: A Review and Interview By Salvatore Pane

A Review I came home from AWP with a lot of books, but the one I like best is definitely A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons. Distributed by Publishing Genius, A Jello Horse is a novella about a young man … Continue reading →

Review: Howards End Is On The Landing by Susan Hill

I love books about books. I mean, I really fucking love them. Book-books are my chosen topic of non-fiction writing, and there just aren’t enough of them. I go on Amazon specifically to look at Listmania lists titled ‘books about … Continue reading →

Gutter #2: A Review by Euan McClymont

Gutter is a brave and important venture. It focuses on contemporary Scottish writing but not in any limiting sense of those born in the country; rather in the healthy sense of all and any writers currently based in Scotland.  The … Continue reading →

Dissecting the Paper Monster by Nicelle Davis: A Review of Peter Schwartz’s Old Men, Girls, and Monsters Part 2

Dissecting the Paper Monster by Nicelle Davis: A Review of Peter Schwartz’s Old Men, Girls, and Monsters Part 1

James and Kirsty Talk We’re Getting On

James Kaelan wrote a book, We’re Getting On. Kirsty Logan, our fantastic Reviews Editor shared her thoughts on the book. People (though not the author or the publisher, who have been class acts) had surprisingly strong reactions to the review … Continue reading →

Review: Michele Leggott’s Milk & Honey

Most people I know don’t read poetry. My girlfriend, my mother, my workmates: they say they don’t ‘get’ poetry. They say it excludes them, it doesn’t mean anything to them. Even some of my writer friends are leery of poetry; … Continue reading →

A Reader’s Rapture: A Review of Maurya Simon’s The Raindrop’s Gospel, by Nicelle Davis

Highly adorned Christian churches are always good for renewing my guilt over sex. As scripture is read, my attention is stolen by depictions of half-clothed deities. The arrow protruding from St. Sebastian’s groin makes me blush; Jesus at the crucifixion … Continue reading →

On Michelle Reale’s Natural Habitat

When I was a child, my family moved around a lot, following my father to whatever engineering project he was tackling next. It was hard to feel at home anywhere so it was my family that comprised my understanding of … Continue reading →

Wolf Parts Has Teeth, The Better to Eat You With

There is an unexpected intensity to the writing in Wolf Parts–a graphic, visceral quality that immerses you in a world where seemingly incompatible realities coincide. While I have come to expect solid writing from Matt Bell, I felt he was … Continue reading →

Review: We’re Getting On by James Kaelan

Flatmancrooked is gaining quite the reputation for innovative book marketing. Last year they launched Emma Straub’s novella, Fly-Over State, by asking people to buy a “share” in the project, which includes a signed first-edition copy of the novella. This year … Continue reading →

A Review in Comics by Nicelle Davis: Adam Gallari’s We Are Never As Beautiful as We Are Now

Nicolle Elizabeth’s Threadbare Von Barren: A Review by Salvatore Pane

Nicolle Elizabeth’s chapbook, Threadbare Von Barren, is a slim volume comprised of 32 pieces of flash fiction. The individual stories read more like prose poetry and test the minimalist boundaries of the flash genre. Take for instance, the fourth in … Continue reading →

Review: Lock Up Your Daughters #4

If you are a superhot, supercool Glaswegian dyke, you will already be familiar with Lock Up Your Daughters. I am, however, aware that queer Scottish twentysomethings make up a very tiny percentage of PANK readers, so I will be more … Continue reading →

CSI: Svalbard Episode 2 — A Review By Andrea Mullaney

It’s always tough to judge a new show on the basis of its first episode, even the latest in such an established franchise as the CSI shows, because the set-up and the players have to be introduced in the course … Continue reading →

Review: Angela Readman’s Strip

The poems in Strip (Salt Publishing, 2007) are the glittering twists of burlesque, then the smeared lipstick and fading smiles of the dressing room. They dazzle us with performance then drag us backstage; they are the untouchable neon of the … Continue reading →

Review: Susan Hill’s The Mist in the Mirror

The whole time I was reading Susan Hill’s novel The Mist in the Mirror I wanted to go back and read the whole thing again. At the end of every paragraph — at the end of every sentence — I … Continue reading →

Justin Taylor’s Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: A Review by Salvatore Pane

A lot has already been written about Justin Taylor’s impressive Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, a debut short story collection by an HTML Giant contributor about hip, young people doing hip, young things. Whether or not you believe … Continue reading →

Jeanann Verlee’s Racing Hummingbirds: A Review by Megan Scarborough

Racing Hummingbirds ought to come with a warning: Choking Hazard. I read some of it while eating my dinner: I don’t suggest this. The collection is raucously confessional, full of blood and guts, sex and booze. It’s poetry with its … Continue reading →

Review: Shanghai Baby

There are many reasons to mock Wei Hui’s 1993 novel Shanghai Baby — the irritatingly self-obsessed and clearly autobiographical protagonist, the clumsy translation, the unsexy sex scenes. But the most eye-rollingly awful thing about the book is that it exists … Continue reading →

Review: CSI Svalbard

Everything I have pointed my eyes towards in the past few weeks has gone through a mental filter named Can I Review This? I rejected my library borrowings — a non-fiction book on Bluestockings and a doorstop horror novel — … Continue reading →

Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared: A Review by Troy Urquhart

The experience of reading Shane Jones’s new collection A Cake Appeared (Scrambler Books) is very much like the experience of peering into one of Salvador Dali’s paintings — ‘The Hallucinogenic Toreador’, perhaps, or ‘The Discovery of American by Christopher Columbus’. … Continue reading →

Review: FRiGG #27

There are a few reasons why I love the Law & Order-themed issue of FRiGG so much. Let’s examine the evidence (note: I promise that will be the only pun in this review). 1. Law & Order Is Good For … Continue reading →

Review: Popshot #1

When contemplating a poetry and illustration magazine, it must be easy to get into a chicken-and-egg scenario. Should the illustrations be inspired by the poetry, or vice versa? Jacob Denno went with the former for his magazine, asking artists to … Continue reading →

Ching-In Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (and Quantum Physics as explained on YouTube): A Review by Nicelle Davis

In The Heart’s Traffic, Ching-In Chen writes, “I wish this to be easy, at the same time, I wish this to be difficult.” The plot of her novel in verse is fairly simple. The poems tells the story of Xiaomei, … Continue reading →

Review: Inconceivable Wilson – JA Tyler

JA Tyler has discovered the secret of time travel. There is no other explanation for being able to run mud luscious magazine and ml press, produce several chapbooks and novellas, contribute to Rumble, The Chapbook Review, and Lies With Occasional … Continue reading →

Roses are red, violets are blue, I love ARTIFICE and LUMBERYARD, too.

Among the many vaguely articulated PANK policies I will likely break today, three in particular. First and foremost, PANK staff are supposed to eschew self-promotion of their own individual creative works within PANK air-space, insofar as it can be avoided. … Continue reading →

The Extraordinary Ordinary: Kirk Nesset’s Mr. Agreeable, by Nicelle Davis

One moment, if it’s the right moment, can define a person entirely. Kirk Nesset”â„¢s stories are set within those pivotal moments and result in vivid characters navigating unique circumstances. Mr. Agreeable, out now from Mammoth Books, is a collection of … Continue reading →

This Whole Wide World

Writers are very interested in the idea of the world. In 2009 alone, countless books invoking the word “world” in their title were released including The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway, World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, … Continue reading →

We Take Me Apart: A Review by Nicelle Davis

The remarkable thing about love is how it operates as an entity—something born miraculously with a fast unraveling life span. Love lives, dies then haunts. The human body seems merely a house within which love can sully the sheets and … Continue reading →

Terese Svoboda’s Wild Tongue: A Review of Trailer Girl and Weapons Grade

Trailer Girl works. Against all odds, it works. I hesitated reading the book, afraid I would only find a laundry list of trailer park cliches. Instead I found myself in a world of poetry and mystery. Imagine T.S. Eliot writing … Continue reading →

I’ve Been Reading: Tiny Reviews

I wish I had time to do critical, in-depth reviews of everything I read but alas not during the dissertation year. Still, I’ve been reading some really great writing lately. Every time I read for ten minutes or so for … Continue reading →

New to Me: Agriculture Reader

I stumbled onto Agriculture Reader quite by accident and was extremely put off by their submission guidelines and then I felt guilty about that so I bought issue No. 3 as penance like the good Catholic girl I’m not. The … Continue reading →

Affluenza by David LaBounty

Given our troubled economic climate, Affluenza by PANK contributor David LaBounty, is a timely novel. It is a confession, an unrepentant apologia, a critical examination of how one American couple’s greed and proclivity for indebtedness results in a multitude of … Continue reading →

Scorch Atlas

When it comes to Blake Butler’s writing, I either love it or I hate it. There is never a middle ground when I read his work and perhaps that’s a good thing because no matter what I’m reading from Butler, … Continue reading →

How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace

It has been said the hallmark of a great cook is one who can prepare the perfect egg. Eggs are tricky little things, particularly because it seems so simple. Boil   in water. Fry in pan. Fry in pan while … Continue reading →