Reviews

Prairie Edge – Conor Kerr

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A member of the Métis Nation and an Edmonton resident, Kerr . . . highlight[s] what happens when activism does not move the needle in the intended direction.

Holy Winter 20/21 – Maria Stepanova

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HOLY WINTER is, especially on first reading, even more “difficult” and “dense” than Stepanova’s previous work, bewildering the reader with multiple voices between the constituent texts.

Cigarettes Until Tomorrow: Romanian Poetry

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It is normal to mourn a dying planet, it is common to feel isolated and embittered in this new era, but the true loss would be to accept such disaffection, to not fight for a better tomorrow.

Yard Show – Janice N. Harrington

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The Black yard show is in dialogue with the Middle American landscape; the padlocked garden and the pockmarked prairie blur each other’s boundaries.

Fog and Car – Eugene Lim

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Characters, like Lim’s stylistic choices, shift and transform . . . The novel suggests identity is a beguiling, perhaps not even achievable thing: just mirror, marriage, and mirage.

Arctic Play – Mita Mahato

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Mahato’s poetic attention interacts with ideas and observations about community and climate, and the spaces in her language are literally filled in with color.

Cuckoo – Gretchen Felker-Martin

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While drugs and very vaguely defined anti-social behavior were often cited as the cause for warehousing kids in violent dormitories, queer youth experienced an added layer of horror, often sent here as part of aggressive “conversion therapies” . . .

Vague Predictions and Prophecies – Daisuke Shen

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In Daisuke Shen’s short story collection . . . characters don’t make choices, exactly. They rebound and ricochet like sentient pinballs, plunged into a psychotic god’s arcade game.

Low: Notes on Art and Trash – Jaydra Johnson

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Most of our social processes involving trash are designed to remove it from consciousness: out of sight, out of mind. Johnson’s goal is the opposite. She aims to spur a renewed awareness of trash.

Coming Out Like a Porn Star – ed. Jiz Lee

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The declaration that “sex sells” is not to be taken lightly at all—nor the labor of the industry’s workers.

Low: Notes on Art and Trash – Jaydra Johnson

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Most of our social processes involving trash are designed to remove it from consciousness: out of sight, out of mind. Johnson’s goal is the opposite. She aims to spur a renewed awareness of trash.

Ordinary Devotion – Kristen Holt-Browning

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ORDINARY DEVOTION is an original work on the ancient and current theme of women’s desire for respect in a society that often devalues them.

Holy Winter 20/21 – Maria Stepanova

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HOLY WINTER is, especially on first reading, even more “difficult” and “dense” than Stepanova’s previous work, bewildering the reader with multiple voices between the constituent texts.

Cigarettes Until Tomorrow: Romanian Poetry

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It is normal to mourn a dying planet, it is common to feel isolated and embittered in this new era, but the true loss would be to accept such disaffection, to not fight for a better tomorrow.