One reason to single out Cowling’s work is the frankness with which her scenarios deal with the acute agony of the present moment.
The Ancestry of Objects – Tatiana Ryckman
Ryckman brings the reader along through an exploration of the surprisingly overlapping territories of grief, sex, and religion.
Terminal Park – Gary J. Shipley
TERMINAL PARK stages the failure of systems of value and restraint that will be inadequate in the face of human desperation
Erin Elizabeth Smith’s clear focus and ability to weave together several threads to tell a woman’s story is one of the great strengths of this collection.
DARKCUTTER is the room where someone eats and is eaten. Where the death-surplus is hidden. Softness in all corners.
‘Neighbor’ is everywhere and nowhere. ‘Neighbor’ is out. ‘Neighbor’ is shushing her child. ‘Neighbor’ is simultaneously desired and despised. In this way ‘neighbor’ is that part of ourselves that we both long for and revile.
The core tension of a recovery narrative, which LOTE explores in lush detail, is that many lost writers have been forgotten (or, more likely, suppressed) for a reason.
Silverfish is a story about constructing a (new) story, itself masterfully and creatively constructed.
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.
Readers of THE MASOCHIST in translation may be less aware of Perat’s poetic prose, but few are likely to experience this as something that undermines the cogency of Nadezhda Moser’s voice.
DARKCUTTER is the room where someone eats and is eaten. Where the death-surplus is hidden. Softness in all corners.
“Rather like the eponymous sex act, Holeplay is arch, surprising, and spirited.”
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.
Readers of THE MASOCHIST in translation may be less aware of Perat’s poetic prose, but few are likely to experience this as something that undermines the cogency of Nadezhda Moser’s voice.