The Brooklyn Rail

SMALL WONDER

Painter, Installation Artist, Writer, Andrea Scrima has written a work of fiction. Dreamlike Marquezian sequences float and weave through the eyes of a woman in the wake of her father’s death, the shadow of her mother’s passing.

TOKENS

Centering on the racial turmoil in Mississippi in the early 1960’s, The Queen of Palmyra carries its reader from Millwood, Mississippi in early summer 1963—that fateful summer of Medgar Evars’s assassination—through the destruction and confusion of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

From the Woods, A Peach

Poetic, insightful, and delightfully honest, Mike Young tells stories of mundane days with a vulnerable, esoteric filter reminiscent of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.

In Conversation

SUSAN SHAPIRO with Nicolle Elizabeth

Susan Shapiro has written and published seven books in seven years. A professor, journalist, and author, she is credited with helping young authors to publish their own projects. Her most recent work, Overexposed, is a comic novel about careers, family, jealousy, and in its own way, (feminism and at times a lack thereof).

Poetica

Wigleaf literary journal publisher Scott Garson has written a book of flash fiction, American Gymnopedies (Cow Heavy Books). In minute detail, Garson writes of “windblown drizzle,” bringing his unique gifts of perception to the page.

School of Thought

Randall Brown is the director of the MFA in Writing program at Rosemont College. Hidden on an obscure campus over a century old we find innovation. The program is one of the few in the country to offer instruction on the version of the short story known as flash fiction.

Anthology Review

When I was an 18-year-old kid learning about contemporary fiction, I would go to the indie journal section at Trident Books in Boston, and I would purchase copies of Open City. To me, it was one of the coolest journals in the universe, and it changed my writing forever.

FICTION
Mostly Redneck

In a no-frills manner, Rusty Barnes bestows upon us Mostly Redneck (Sunny Outside Press, 2011). Editor of Night Train Magazine, a historied journal respected as a propulsion board for flash fiction writers, Barnes’s editorial taste is a leap from the flash pieces in his recent collection.

POETRY
Blog Posts from an American Poet

Muumuu House, purveyor of relevant, artful, interesting literature, has published a book of poetry composed of blog posts by Megan Boyle. This work is terrifyingly open, daringly honest, and elegantly innovative in its sparse use of words.

In Conversation

PENINA ROTH with Nicolle Elizabeth

The Franklin Park Reading Series, headed by Ms. Penina Roth of the New York Times and many other outlets, is one of the places to be for sure. Roth agreed to e-mail with me about the reading series and to offer advice for those who are looking to start their own series.

Tell It Quick

Unapologetic, relentless, empathetic, hard-working, Holler Presents is headed up by fiction writer Scott McClanahan. And his camp touts some of the more quick-witted yet simultaneously tenderhearted small-press writers in the business.

In Conversation

TARUN TEJPAL with Nicolle Elizabeth

Tarun Tejpal is a writer and journalist, titled one of the “most powerful men in India” by Time in 2009. His 26-year-long career in journalism spans from India Today to Outlook, some of the most respected, and serious publications in India.

TOKENS

From Dubai to Japan to Boston to Brooklyn to Romani Gypsy grandparents, the stories in Anatolia and Other Stories (Black Lawrence) are varied and, conceptually, architected on an intriguing premise. The first story, “Dubai,” reads like a Malamud folklore legend/Flannery O’Connor hybrid.

And the Son Coughed Up the Son

Blake Butler’s highly anticipated novel, There Is No Year, has had a controversial start in the criticism world. Baffling to many, those unsure of how to perceive the work avoid discussing it altogether.

Fiction: Circle Takes The Square

Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier is a veritable “who’s on first” labyrinth of identity, cultural criticism and familial torture.

A Very Productive Season

The small presses are coming out swinging this fall, respectfully.

Interpretations

Michael Stewart is currently the Rhode Island Council for the Arts Fellow in both Poetry and Fiction, as well as a lecturer at Brown. His list of independent press publications is extensive. His most recent work, The Hieroglyphics, a novella out from Mud Luscious Press is one of editor J.A. Tyler’s strongest publishing choices.

Reading and Listening with Listener

There is beautiful, heartbreaking, fascinating work resounding in the basements of every punk house in the country, and it behooves us all to listen.

I Would Be Remiss If I Did Not Mention That I Have Nothing To Offer You In Return Whatsoever

Jeanie is standing with one foot up like a bright pink flamingo and missing a shoe. I do not know what happened to it. Everything about her is pink. She oozes sex that pink flamingo, that apple orchard. It’s hot August and it’s slow honey.