Vanessa Blakeslee is the author of the debut novel, Juventud (Curbside Splendor, 2015), hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “tale of self-discovery and intense first love.” Her story collection, Train Shots (Burrow Press) won the 2014 IPPY Gold Medal in Short Fiction and has been optioned for feature film. She has also been awarded grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Banff Centre, Ledig House, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs.
KR Reviews
Slipped Boundaries, Infinite Lives: The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
One needs courage to emerge from a Jenny Erpenbeck novel merely stirred to deeper contemplation and not to paranoia about the mysteries of metaphysics, and how haphazardly we human beings meet our fates.
Summer 2015
The Triumph of Third Place: Egg Heaven by Robin Parks
“Working class fiction” has long occupied a distinctive subcategory of American literature, with Russell Banks, Dorothy Allison, and Sherman Alexie crafting some of the most resonant contemporary works
Winter 2015
Treading the Lyrical Tightrope: The Understory by Pamela Erens
What drives the novel of simmering obsession, where plot takes a backseat to other narrative devices?
Spring 2014
In the Belly of the Beast: Andri Snær Magnason’s LoveStar
Andri Snær Magnason is among the most fascinating contemporary Icelandic authors writing today—alongside the popular crime writer Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, the novelist and celebrated lyricist Sjón, the short fiction writer Gyrðir Elíasson, and numerous others not yet translated into English.
Winter 2014
End of the Road: Kevin Barry’s City of Bohane
“A blackwater surge, malevolent, it roars in off the Big Nothin’ wastes and the city was spawned by it and was named for it: city of Bohane.”
Winter 2013
Heart of the Matter: Myfanwy Collins’ Echolocation
In his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner stated that what writers most needed to remember was “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
Fall 2012
Evening Blueness in the West: Gerald Duff’s Blue Sabine
Blue Sabine is the seventh novel by Gerald Duff, known for his vivid depictions of Deep East Texas in his numerous works, most recently the memoir Home Truths: A Deep East Texas Memory.