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Will Rusty Jump?
A review of Benjamin Drevlow’s The Book of Rusty by James P. Austin This seemingly straightforward question belies the complex meditation on unresolved grief, dead-end contexts, and toxic masculinity that animates Benjamin Drevlow’s novel, The Book of Rusty. The question, as asked, begs an answer: yes or no. As a matter of plotting, the question…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: A House on Fire
By Michaella Thornton It’s a little after 8 p.m. and my cozy brick bungalow smells of my favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies. While we may not have much, I can always whip up a little bit of magic on a Friday night as my six-year-old daughter builds new worlds out of little plastic bricks…
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Learning to Swim
Fiction by Eamonn McKeon They had just arrived back at the apartment. Roy was relieved to be inside, away from the heat. Harry was straightening the dining table chairs and looking around the room. “One more time,” Roy said. “If it happens one more time, that will be it.” Harry did not appear to be…
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The Sixties at the Point of a Gun
A review of Library of America’s Crime Novels of the 1960s by Frank Vatel In 1997, the Library of America published Crime Novels, a two-volume anthology of noir fiction from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. It was a watershed for the nonprofit, whose backlist of reprinted authors—literary giants like Melville and Twain, statesmen like Jefferson…
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Imagining the Woman Known Only as Wife On this Eroded Tombstone in the Old Butler Cemetery off Route 194
Fiction by Janice Leadingham James E. McAnderson1887-1948Co. E. 7th Vol. Inf.Born in West Virginia and His WifeC___1900-1962 C___ spent her growing-up split between her grandmothers—Grandmama, a Baptist who lived in a white clapboard just past the General Store, and Mamaw, who told fortunes with the bones of a bad-luck-cat washed clean in a south-flowing-river to pay Popcorn…
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Flexing My Creative Muscles: Training to Failure
By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I have been doing my yearly ukulele challenge for the month of September, where I am playing ten Elvis songs, some new to me, some not, and posting my videos on the place formerly known as twitter and my ukulele Instagram. These videos are not me showcasing my best. It’s just…
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If You’re Not First, You’re Last
Fiction by Brendan Gillen Looking back, the ending was obvious. The cicadas sang, a sigh of deceit. It was summer, depression heavy in the air, heavy in our apartment, in her heavy slurps of hazelnut coffee. I hated the smell. Made my gut lurch, made my ears burn. We did not yet believe that death…
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The Nitty Gritty: Interview with Paul Crenshaw
By Charlotte Hamrick Paul Crenshaw and I have at least one thing in common, we both grew up in a small, conservative, rural town in the American South. But while he was still a boy in the 1980’s, I was a young adult just moved to the big city. Our experiences during that time were…
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Last Rites
by Kim Steutermann Rogers I wake to fog rolling up the hill like it’s late for something. A whirl of misty clouds rushes through the cracks of the old house and slips down the valley. I see shapes and figures in the mist, their hair long, their arms beckoning. Mother always said I had second…