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Fiction

Ahmad Danny Ramadan

Posted on June 18, 2019

My Name is Bridge (an excerpt)

Mother told me my grandmother has lost her mind. She stood in the moonshine for too long and wandered up into the ocean of stars so deep it was hard for her to find her way back. She was swallowed whole by the myths of the past one night, and never could be retrieved. “Kharafet,” my mother said, “she lives in the land of fables now.” 

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Utopic, Coming-of-Age Story for Millennials

Posted on May 28, 2019

By Megan Kuklis
A Review of Darusha Wehm's The Home for Wayward Parrots (NeWest Press, 2018)

The Home for Wayward Parrots by Darusha Wehm is a charming novel that centres on the complicated lives of its many sweet characters. Exceptionally readable, the novel flows through the past and present of Brian “Gumbo” Guillemot’s life with such care that readers will not be able to put it down. This novel should be devoured in a single sitting.

Exploring Hellscapes and Grotesque Pathos 

Posted on August 1, 2018

By Zachary Alapi 

A Review of J.R. Helton’s Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions

J.R. Helton’s Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions (Liverlight 2018) accomplishes a unique feat: the weaving of social universality and cultural specificity. For Helton, that means a raw exploration of class, the most pressing and relevant issue we face, couched in the sounds and sights of 1980s Austin — the music, the drugs, the hustlers, and the grandiosity and pomp that only a state like Texas, in all its carnivalesque glory, can render both thrilling and morbid. As readers follow Jake Stewart, a burgeoning artist bent as much on self-destruction as producing great writing or visual art, as he navigates the bloated landscape of Ronald Reagan’s America. An undertone of paranoia and stasis infuses this wry and dark book with urgency and energy that even readers disconnected from the setting and era can feel. 

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