Evans asks the reader to confront the role of big corporations in our everyday existence, how we do and do not hold them accountable for their actions.
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Review • Oil and Water by Mei Mei Evans
Review • Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart
The bewitching coherence of these poems—in philosophy, and, in many cases, phrases—shapes Bidart’s latest into what feels more like a lyrical essay with obsessive thoughts.
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Review • Idiopathy by Sam Byers
With surgical precision, Byers peels back the artifice that decorates our daily experience. Dialogue resonates, every twitch of a character’s face has purpose, and action and inaction alike are boiled down to requisite and discrete motivations.
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Note • From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha by Donald S. Lopez Jr.
It is a story of confusions, misinterpretations, mistaken identities, and ignorance, and it is unique in that it ends where most accounts of Buddhism begin.
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Review • Schroder by Amity Gaige
Schroder is not an evil, malevolent kidnapper, but a caring father with his own reasons for doing wrong, a tone and rationalization reminiscent of Humbert Humbert.
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Review • Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek
Jelinek’s text interrogates the presence of Walser’s biography in his prose, as well as the myths that have grown around both.
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Review • The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
The Woman Upstairs is the story of Nora’s rebellion against living “as if.” It’s about not accepting mediocrity. It’s about saying a big FUCK YOU to everything ordinary. And it’s written by an author on top of her game.
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Review • My Father’s Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain by Patricio Pron
What was once simple becomes complex; through the case of the disappeared man, the narrator discovers his parents’ connection to the Marxist struggle in the seventies.
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Review • The Bridge Over the Neroch and Other Works by Leonid Tsypkin
Leonid Tsypkin’s collection, The Bridge Over the Neroch, is the final publication of an unarguably fluent thinker and writer, but is likely not what you should read next.
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Review • A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Anthony Marra is the infinite pressure we've been waiting to be sewn into, and, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, is the debut of the year.
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Review • Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
Mason Currey has ingeniously collected anecdotes about the daily routines of our civilization’s greatest minds, revealing how they were able to create their masterpieces.
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Review • Dossier K. by Imre Kertész
To be more accurate, Dossier K. was not “written” at all; it is a two hundred page interview that editor Zolatán Hafner conducted with the author during 2003 and 2004.
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Review • Thinner Than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan
Unfolding in the icy climes and unfriendly peaks of the glaciers of north Pakistan, the novel is narrated by Nadir, a Pakistani photographer living in San Francisco, and Maryam, a gypsy lady from a nomadic tribe in north Pakistan
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Interview • Matt Bell
Every time I thought I knew where I was headed, that destination turned out different than I'd expected: I'd exhaust a storyline until it was broken, and then there'd be another one inside the fracture.
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Fiction • Current by Caroline Zeilenga
Her daughter tells her she should not fish alone. Her daughter, Sarah, calls most Sundays. “Mother,” she says, the sirens of a distant city blaring in the background, “you really shouldn’t fish by yourself anymore. Especially at your age. It’s dangerous.” She forces herself to laugh when Sarah tells her this, to show there was never an admonishment so absurd. How could she...
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Fiction • Kennesaw Mountain by Laura Usselman
Brian is getting further and further away from me in the storm, but still I do not call out for him to stop. I don’t know how he can see to guide himself through the pitch darkness of these woods. The storm hasn’t begun to flash and roar the way it will when it really arrives, and the trees...
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Interview • Sjón
I’m a little bit surprised at how exotic people think the books are. It tells me that maybe my way of thinking is a little bit stranger than I had realized.
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| MFA Corner | University of Oregon
The MFA students form a very strong, supportive community, holding regular readings at a local bookstore and meeting informally with each other throughout the year. Eugene is a pleasant city tailored to student life and interests, with affordable housing, a diversity of cafes and restaurants, an active music scene in clubs and bars, and independent movie theaters.
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| MFA Corner | University of Massachusetts
There is always an invigorating exchange going on, and always courses in which writers and poets gather together, as well as readings and involvement of alumni who stay in the area because it’s a lovely place to live.
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Fiction • Mendel’s Wall by Jai Chakrabarti
As soon as Shabbos ended, Mendel went for his heavy tools. He had enough sheetrock in the basement—that wouldn’t be a problem—but first he made himself a coffee and added a bit of schnapps. He poured a little into his palm and rubbed it behind his ears like perfume. Sweet luck for the week ahead. When Leah came home,...
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| MFA Corner | Colorado State University
Through our portfolio (which requires annotations and/or a critical paper), students are expected to read widely and rigorously. We believe that this particular challenge is crucial for students’ writing.
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