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Hard to Say, by Ethel Rohan

27 Oct

I do believe that Hard to Say, a painfully beautiful linked collection of stories by Ethel Rohan, will leave you as speechless as it did me. The book begins with a young woman whose own desire not to speak her family’s many secrets chokes her. It is not until she envisions herself speaking, through a dream of bloodletting, that her stories are set free.

Long kept hidden away in the narrator’s secret spaces, the stories burst onto the page with confessions of wrong doing–both that which is done to the narrator and that which she does out of necessity and survival and desire. Indeed, the book reminded me of the first time I went to confession. I remember being disappointed because the priest was not in a booth as I had anticipated. Instead, we sat in a small room together, nearly facing each other. I could not possibly tell him all of my sins face-to-face.  Instead, I told him those I thought he could most easily swallow. Had I been able to speak freely in a dark booth, away from his eyes, I might have told the truth as the narrator does in these stories.

While all of the stories moved me, the one that broke me was the final story, “Mammy,” which is peeled back to the first word and possibly the final word any human being thinks or says and that is a name for mother: Mammy, Maw, Ma, Mummy, Mommy, Mama, etc.  The narrator, leaving her ailing mother in Dublin as she flies back to the US, watches a documentary about girls’ circumcision in a Ugandan village. She is on the plane and her thoughts are, obviously, with her mother, as are mine while I read it. I have been on that plane, flying back and forth to and from my sick mother, wishing for relief from the anguish of it all. And then the final lines which pierced me deep in my heart and continue to:

Then, on the plane, from the TV, those girls’ cries from that hut in Uganda, calling their mothers, Mammy, Mammy, Mammy. Cries that stabbed me, that should have cracked the earth.

It’s a gorgeous book. Read it.

Ayiti, by Roxane Gay

20 Oct

At the heart of Roxane Gay‘s devastating debut collection, Ayiti, is truth. Whether a language is shared or a language divides, what it offers, when spoken with strength and authority, is an opportunity to share the truth. There is a connection to the desire for truth from the title of the book, which is the Haitian Creole for Haiti, to the final words, which are about more than language. The final words are about that which is beyond language. That which we all share: a desire for love, a release from fear, a necessary need for freedom.

Each of the stories within this book is a slice of heartache and of truth, but the one that struck me most was the one at the very heart of the book–both its physical center and its spiritual center–and that is, “In the Manner of Water or Light.” From the very first words, I was swept into a dark, puzzling, and beautiful world:

My mother was conceived in what would ever be known as the Massacre River. The sharp smell of blood has followed her since.

The Massacre River is both the taker and giver of life. It offers a baptism in blood. And as important as the river is to the players in the story, it is also the keeper of their secrets:

The ugly details are trapped between the fragments of our family history. We are secrets ourselves.

Indeed, “we are secrets ourselves” is at the core of the stories within these books. It is as if each is a confession whispered into a deaf ear, or, conversely, a secret bursting forth, no longer able to be contained, screamed loudly from the tallest mountain, “You will hear me!” These are secrets that need telling. It is in telling and sharing the secrets that people are set free:

I had pictured the river as a wide, yawning and bloody beast, but where we stood, the river flowed weakly. The waters did not run deep. It was just a border between two geographies of grief.

If you had never read anything else Roxane Gay had written, you would certainly know from these stories that she is a truth teller, which she is. She does not hide her face or turn away from that which people do not want told. Ayiti is a brave and beautiful book, filled with truths that need to be told. Read it.

Other Heartbreaks, by Patricia Henley

18 Oct

It seems an oversimplification to say that Patricia Henley’s gorgeous new short story collection, Other Heartbreaks, will break your heart. But it will. It will break your heart again and again but you will come back to it, begging for more.

You will come back because this is what love it about. The thrill of attraction, the comfort of togetherness, the razor’s edge of disintegration. Love is, in fact, a heartbreak the second it begins because within that second what you know, but do not dare voice or even allow yourself to think, is that someday love will end. Either you will stop loving or the other person will stop loving or, worst of all, one (or both) of you will die.

Patricia Henley knows all of these things about love and these are the gifts that she generously offers us with her stories. And she gives us these gifts with great skill, with great humor, and with a great deal of empathy. She is, in short, a master.

Usually there are one (or sometimes two) stories within a collection that I feel I must push myself through; not so here. Each story was as skillfully wrought and humane as the next. The book is perfectly bookended with two examinations of family’s dealing with loss and.

The first story of the book, “Rocky Gap,” totally knocked me out. The setting is a family reunion at a campground. Innocuous enough, or is it? What we all know about family is that usually when we come together as adults there are many past wounds lingering in the shadows. Same here for this family which is coming together for the first time since the death of one of the sisters. At the same time that the the protagonist is mourning for her lost sister, she is also mourning for the loss of her partner as she watches their relationship disintegrate. And yet, through all of this sadness, there is beauty. One sees a way forward. No matter what, June will survive.

The final stories are a tale in triptych of the March family, within which there is an examination of the parents falling in and falling out of love all leading to the heart of the story, the daughter, Sophie, who has lost her young husband to random violence. Indeed, it is within Sophie story that I found the echo from many of the other stories and that is the biggest heartbreak–the one of love lost too soon. I was reminded so keenly of Gabriel and Gretta in the final scene of “The Dead” where he knows that he can never (and could never) replace the love his wife has lost. It is the same for Sophie; while her heart is opening up again, it may never again be as open as it was with Luis. As it is for many of the other characters within “Other Heartbreaks”–they may be heartbroken but they are not broken. They are not dead. They live and as long as they live, there is hope.

Wild Life, by Kathy Fish

28 Aug

If you’re like me, when you finish the brilliant new chapbook Wild Life just about every other page will be dog eared. From the prodigal brother eating watermelon in the dark, to the Payless shoe store clerk who may or may not be a child abductor, to the couple with the new bed, you will turn the last page of this book and feel as though you have entered a truly beautiful and brilliant mind. And that mind belongs to the book’s author, Kathy Fish.

Fish’s wry humor, keen vision, and deft language will leaving you laughing one minute and crying the next. She is not manipulative with her words. She does not scream her stories. She does not thrust them down your throat. She offers them to you quietly. She offers them to you as a whispered prayer. In fact, what she does is trust you with her unique and precious gift.

Take, for example, “One Purple Finch” a gentle and unexpected love story that is utterly complex in its beautiful simplicity:

He would make pancakes for her, with berries and honey. And she would life the hem of her skirt. And she would build him a fire. And he would make her a card, drawing a picture on the front, of trees and one purple finch. And they would look at each other at the end of the day and say now what should we do? We should be friends forever and hold each other’s hands and tell each other when we have something stuck between our teeth and trade anecdotes and say oh you told me this before but I love hearing you tell it, so tell it to me again. And you should untie my sneakers when I am weary and I will wear the silky aquamarine robe when you want me to.

All of the pieces in this book moved me in some way, but the one that will not ever let me go is “Spin” which is about a mother and her young child. As a teacher tries to get the mother to “redirect” her child and teach him how to conform to a certain way of learning, she remembers her past life, mourns her imagined present, and learns to live in the moment and the successes that seem small, but are immeasurable. I would argue that this story will push its way into even the hardest heart and that once the reader gets to the end, he will understand this mother’s heartache and her incredible love:

When she finished, she found him lying flat under the sofa cushions. She wondered if she was supposed to unbury him. She sat on the floor and leaned in as close as she could. She felt the boy’s breath on her face. It smelled like apples.

“Hello in there,” she whispered.

This book is a gift and I hope you will read it.

Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock

23 Aug

Donald Ray Pollock’s, Knockemstiff, is an exceptionally devastating, unquestionably American, undeniably well-crafted collection of linked stories that, if you dare to finish it, will leave you feeling utterly gutted. And this is a good thing. You should feel gutted after you read it and you should read it.

It’s a brave book, for while it is not about politics it is, for sure, a political book. This is a book about ignorance and violence. This is a book in which children are left un-nurtured and unloved and unfed and unclothed. This is a book in which women are absent or beaten and used for sex. This is a book in which men are mostly predatory and even those who would rather be another way, find they have no choice but follow suit in the predation.

Most importantly: this is a book about the results of poverty. If you grew up in poverty or violence or ignorance or one or the other of these things, you will find some semblance of your reality in these pages. You will recognize your oppressor or you will witness the time you oppressed out of your fear and frustration.

Indeed, this is a book that is sadly relevant in the US today given our current economic climate (not to mention headlines like this one: Between haves, have-nots, an ever greater gulf).

This book is not entertaining, but it is instructive. This book is not beautiful, but it is beautifully written. You will find yourself sucked into the holler so much so that even the voices from these pages take over your thoughts (for example, I killed a mosquito as it bit me the other day and as I did, I thought, “Damn skeeter!”). And still, even within all of this bleakness there is redemption, particularly when the boy from the first story, becomes the man in the final story—the one who makes the choice to walk away from the holler rather than let it kill him.

I can’t tell you that you’re going to love or even like this book–there is language you won’t like and situations you find appalling. You will be grossed out and furious and depressed. You will want to put the book down but find that you can’t. You will wish that you didn’t now know what you know. But I can promise you this: you will never forget this book once you’ve read it and you shouldn’t forget it. Let it live in you until you find a way to help others out of their situation. Let it live in you until you walk away from your own hopeless situation. Let it live in you until you rise up and make a change. Let it live in you.

20 years ago and today

10 Aug

20 years ago, I was finishing up my first summer out of college. I was teaching summer school (a miserable experience for both the students and me) and I had much to look forward to. I had finished writing my first novel and my agent at the time was sending it out to publishers. I had a handful of stories upon which my creative writing professor had written, “If you keep writing, you will get published. I promise.” I had a double degree in Secondary Education and English and I was on my way to grad school. I had a plan. Things were happening.

Then: Things happened. I left grad school degreeless. I stopped writing for a while. I went within. People loved me. People fell out of love with me. I fell out of love with people. I fell in love with people. I moved in. I moved out. I worked at this job. I left that job. People told me secrets. People stopped talking to me. I stopped talking to people. People moved away. People stayed close. People got sick. People died.

I pulled myself back up. I kept writing. I got published once and twice and a bunch of times. People believed in me and kept believing in me. I began to believe in myself. I took a chance. I put my work out there. Some people liked it. Some didn’t. There was much rejection and some success. Those who would have broken me, did not break me. I kept writing and people who mattered to me said yes to me and to my words.

Now: in less than a month I begin back at grad school. I will not leave again until I have my Master’s degree.

Now: in March 2012 a novel of mine will be published. Thank you for saying yes to my words, Engine Books!

Now: In August 2012 my short fiction collection will be published. Thank you for saying yes to my words, PANK Little Books!

As for you: don’t you ever give up on yourself. Keep going. You, keep going. Don’t stop. Do not stop.

Big World, by Mary Miller

16 Feb

I first encountered the work of Mary Mill when I was guest editor for SmokeLong Quarterly and my friend Katrina Denza suggested I check out her writing. I did and asked her to submit for the issue. She sent us this: A Blind Dog Named Killer and a Colony of Bees.

All this is to say that before I even cracked the spine of Big World I had a feeling that I’d love reading it.

And that feeling was right on. Miller can write the hell out of a story. Most (if not all–I think there may have been one in 3rd person) of the stories within the book are written in 1st person, told from the point-of-view of a self-conscious and yet feisty female narrator. These are women who understand precisely where they are on the food chain and sometimes they like just where they are, but more often than not, they’d rather be elsewhere:

She prayed to St. Jude, she told me, the patron saint of lost and hopeless causes, and I didn’t mind being lost but hopeless bothered me. Hopeless was going too far. Someone was going to have to tell her.

These women are bar flies and usually they are in bad relationships. Or these aren’t women at all, they’re lost little girls, wanting love, comfort, something. Whoever and whatever they are, the story that pulls together the common threads of this collection, is the gloriously painful title story, “Big World”:

You want it too much, I told her. You want it so much no one’s ever going to give it to you. We were tipsy and someone was dead and I was under the impression we could be honest.

They are telling the truth about all of their pain, sharing it openly, wielding it like a weapon:

I liked to say things to shock him, the truth. Like my father, he had sent me out into the big world all alone and I was going to show him how ugly it was.

You might think this book sounds bleak, but I promise it’s not. It’s funny and, at times, hopeful about the future. As it is rooted in a sense of reality, this book doesn’t try to show us a beautiful, sugar-coated world. Does not strive to show us an optimistic and wonderful world. Instead it offers us a big, ugly, real world and even then, it’s still one well worth living and surviving in.

Read this book.

Best of the Web 2008 Contents Announced

10 Jul

Best of the Web 2008 Contents Announced

Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2008 anthology hits stores next Tuesday and can be ordered online, or pre-ordered at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or by your favorite store today! Ryan Call recently reviewed the collection at NewPages.com, ending his review with:

“The book both recognizes a wide range of quality online writing, and gives its readers a comprehensive look at the field from which its contents come – two characteristics of a good anthology. As for the fate of the series, I do not doubt that it will continue to appear each year, given the tremendous success that Dzanc has had since its founding in 2006. Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing.”

We’re working on others, but there are two readings confirmed, Tuesday, July 15 at Pacific Standard in Brooklyn, and Thursday, July 17 at McNally Robinson in Manhattan.

In order to whet your appetites – here is the listing of contributors and their works – plus the anthology has introductions by both Series Editor, Nathan Leslie, and this year’s Guest Editor, Steve Almond, short interviews with four of the authors, and an appendix with editorial and submission information for over 300 online journals!

Elizabeth Crane – Promise – failbetter
David Willems – A Girl Made of Glass – Hotel St. George Press
Melanie Carter – Fish Catcher – storySouth
George Saunders – Some Brief and Frightening Tips from George Saunders – Konundrum Engine Literary Review
Richard Jespers – Basketball is Not a Drug – Blackbird
Tess Taylor – Route 1 North, Woolich, Maine – Memorious
Ron Tanner – My Small Murders – Wheelhouse Magazine
Christopher Rizzo – Zone – H_NGM_N
Amy Minton – Overhanded – Hobart
J.W. Young – Pageant Queen – Apple Valley Review
Juan Jose Millas – Translated by Peter Robertson – To See Them Again – Mad Hatter’s Review
Anne Dyer Stuart – [envy is a nude door] – 2River Review
Jacques Rancourt – Fireflies – Rumble
Kris Broughton – The Black Fokls’ Guide to Survival – Eclectica Magazine
Stevie Davis – Corner Knows the Dust – Failbetter
Amy L. Sargent – Shotgun – Wheelhouse Magazine
Justin Taylor – The Jealousy of Angels – Del Sol Review
Carmen Gimenez Smith – So You Know Who We Are – diode
Seth Harwood – Tattooed People – Storyglossia
Arlene Ang – Ceremonial Spoon – Caffeine Destiny
Paul Yoon – Postcards from My Brother – Memorious
Abby Frucht – Blue Shirt – Brevity
Kim Whitehead – The Split – Terrain
Christina Kallery – Swan Falls in Love with Swan-Shaped Boat – Failbetter
Michael Bahler – The Stiff Jew – Swink
Jared Carter – Prophet Township – Valparaiso Poetry Review
Sarah Sweeney – Tell Me if You’re Lying – fringe
Cara Hoffman – Waking – Our Stories
Zachary Amendt – Casa de Serenidad – Underground Voices
David Bottoms – Thirst and the Writer’s Sense of Consequence – Kennesaw Review
Claudia Zuluaga – Okeechobee – Narrative Magazine
Maurice Manning – The Doctrine of an Axe – Cortland Review
Jenny Pritchett – Bugaboo – Fiction Attic
Thomas King – Household Poisons – Contrary
Nancy Cherry – Yearly Trek to Bear Valley – Green Hills Literary Lantern
LaTanya McQueen – The Women of My Father – BluePrintReview
Garth Risk Hallberg – The One That Got Away: Why James Wood is Wrong About Underworld (and Why Anyone Should Care) – The Quarterly Conversation
Edward Byrne – Island Fever – Apple Valley Review
Robin Behn – Childbirth in Alabama – Brevity
Edward Hirsch – The Minimalist Museum – Per Contra
Sandra Huber – Eels – Danforth Review
Anna Kushner – Olor a Cuba – ep:phany
Andrew Sorge – Bruxism – Menda City Review
Andrea Cohen – Still Life with Childhood – Memorious
Elaine Chiew – Huckleberry Thumb – Juked
Bill Mohr – Headway – Pemmican
Valerie Loveland – Anatomy Test, Eleventh Grade – wicked alice
Okey Ndibe – My Biafran Eyes – Guernica
Benjamin Buchholz – The Cabalfish – Storyglossia
Stefani Nellen – The Attraction of Asphalt – SmokeLong Quarterly
Bruce Fisher – Flat at Dawn and at Twilight – The King’s English
Leigh Anne Crouch – I am not a man; I am dynamite – Blackbird
Charlie Geoghegean-Clements – Woodbury Notes – Furnace Review
Frannie Lindsay – Walking an Old Woman Into the Sea – Valparaiso Poetry Review
R.T. Smith – What I Omitted from the Office Personnel Services Report – Per Contra
Myfanwy Collins – The Daughters – Monkeybicycle
Michael Wood – with introduction by Jonthan Ames – The Mystery of Henry’s Bicycle – Konundrum Engine Literary Review

My work in the new issues of: Mississippi Review and Quick Fiction

7 Apr


I’m thrilled and delighted to announce that I have stories in the latest issues of the Mississippi Review (the movie issue) and Quick Fiction.

Oh Baby, by Kim Chinquee

28 Feb


Be prepared: Oh Baby, Kim Chinquee’s debut collection, will knock you on your ass.

It’s a book about love: mother for child; child for mother, for father; man for woman; woman for man and man and man. Love for running. Love for vodka.

It’s a book about women: a runner, an artist, a nurse, a mother, a girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a friend. A drawer of blood.

A woman who lives in England, in the midwest, in some nameless place.

A woman.

But mostly, it’s a book about identity in which the author constantly scrutinizes these women to find out which one is the one. In “Purple” she asks: “Me, who was I?” and then never answers the question. And then in “Wig” she talks of buying a wig and says: “When I got back to the hotel, I put it on and thought I looked like Kim Chinquee.”

And this is what we’re all looking for: that time and place where we most feel like ourselves. When we are no longer pretending and donning our wigs. Do we ever find it?

Taken seperately, these stories will hurt you; taken together as one in this collection, they will clobber you and rob you of your breath.

Read it.

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