Fiction Reviews

Maybe This Is What I Deserve by Tucker Leighty-Phillips
Reviewed by Shlagha Borah | July 21, 2023 Split/Lip Press, 2023 Paperback, $12 Tucker Leighty-Phillips’ flash fiction chapbook, Maybe This Is What I Deserve, is

Deadheading and Other Stories by Beth Gilstrap
Reviewed by Mariah Rigg | June 14, 2022Red Hen Press, 2021Paperback, 232 pages, $22.95 Beth Gilstrap’s Deadheading and Other Stories is a love letter to

Those Fantastic Lives, and Other Strange Stories by Bradley Sides
Reviewed by Rebecca Pyle | June 8, 2022Backlight Press, 2021Paperback, 130 pages, $16.95 A method artists and photographers use for determining the worthiness or power

The Predatory Animal Ball by Jennifer Fliss
Reviewed by Rebecca Pyle | May 2, 2022Okay Donkey Press, December 2021Paperback, 190 pages, $15.00 The shadow of war—our collective guilt, its drifting, numbing effect

Reversing Time by Charlotte R. Mendel
Reviewed by Jennifer Smith | February 15, 2022Guernica Edition/Microland Publishers, Fall 2021 Paperback, 314 pages, $21.95 Like many teenagers, Simon just wants to survive the school

Dig Me Out by Amy Lee Lillard
Reviewed by Jennifer Marie Donahue | November 16, 2021Atelier26 Books, October 2021Paperback, 214 pages, $16.00 The ten stories within Amy Lee Lillard’s debut collection, Dig

Tree by Melina Sempill Watts
Reviewed by Melinda Backer | November 2, 2021Change the World Books, April 2017Paperback, 246 pages, $18.00 Tree, a novel written by Melina Sempill Watts, takes on the challenge

Pathos, Wry Wit, and a Yellow Mustard Penis: Renee Simms’ Debut Story Collection Meet Behind Mars
Reviewed by Jody Hobbs Hesler // May 28, 2019 Renee Simms’ outstanding debut collection, Meet Behind Mars from Wayne State University Press, captivates with fully-imagined characters who

How to Survive the Rest of Your Life: Vanessa Blakeslee’s Perfect Conditions
Review by Samantha Edmonds // November 15, 2018 Several weeks after finishing Vanessa Blakeslee’s Perfect Conditions (Curbside Splendor, 2018), I still feel these stories overflowing in my

The Death of Empathy: Anna Moschovakis’ Eleanor or the Rejection of the Progress of Love
Review by Amy Lee Lillard // September 9, 2018Coffee House Press, August 2018Paperback, 224 pp. $16.95 Something has happened to Eleanor, the thirty-nine-year-old teacher and

Avuncularly Pynchonian: Joe Ponepinto’s Mr. Neutron
Review by David A. Southard // March 20, 20187.13 Books, March 2018Paperback, 300pp., $15.99 You have heard it before: you are the lead in the

Exquisite Desolation: Emily Fridlund’s Catapult
Review by Sarah Appleton // January 18, 2018Sarabande Books, 2017ISBN: 978-1946448057240 pp. / $15.95 Emily Fridlund has had an eventful year: her novel The History of
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