Black Observatory – Christopher Brean Murray
A mixture of flash fiction-like prose poems and sensory-laden verse, the collection itself is the black observatory.
A Cigarette Lit Backwards – Tea Hacic-Vlahovic
I was, in my own JNCO ways, very much like Kat and maybe you were, too.
No matter how profoundly the rapist’s actions affected the victim, the man himself, separated from that act, is nothing. Or not much, anyway. A boring man in a boring ranch house.
I think the invitation is very much there to root for the Predator as a kind of consequence for and corrective to the historically horrific behavior of humans.
Simply existing, writing through doubt and degradation, is a Native way of being in literature.
The novel provides insight toward and empathy with people struggling with disordered eating and shows how online social groups and real-life communities can exacerbate or perpetuate those struggles
ALIEN STORIES feels very aware of itself and of how to make meaningful ideas connect with a broad audience: the stories are accessible, but thought-provoking, with clarity and concision.
For many readers, Tromblay’s gift may be perspective, a reminder of what a life can really entail, how powerless each of us is to stop what happens to us, and how much strength it takes to keep going.
Ctasy, -of shapes off shore – John Pætsch
CTASY, -OF SHAPES OFF SHORE, is a confrontation, each poem subverts expectations, challenging the reader’s perceptions and understandings of form.
In FRIEND, Paek Nam-nyong reminds us that the local and interpersonal elements of our lives are just as real as the ideological and political, and certainly tell more about what it means to be human.