April 19, 2019
The Blank Page
Last week, I sat down to finally start the new short story that had been percolating in my mind for months. Beyond the story’s premise, I hadn’t settled on much […]
June 12, 2018
The Marvelous “Maybe” in Faulkner’s Short Stories
While Jennifer Burg, Anne Boyle, and Sheau-Dong Lang claim that “Faulkner’s stories can leave unseasoned readers with a jumble of ‘incidents’ related through the ramblings of memory,” this jumble is […]
October 26, 2017
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties: The Mad Woman in the Attic and the Abject-Mother-Baby-in-the-Basement
Although not all the stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties reach the accumulative electricity of its first tale, “The Husband Stitch,” this is not uncommon in […]
August 29, 2016
‘Is that real?’: an interview with Justin Sanders
A few weeks back, I wrote about the work of emerging writer Justin Sanders. Here, Sanders takes some time to answer questions about truth and fiction, higher education, influence, and Baltimore. I’ve […]
August 5, 2016
Ghost Stories, Systems
Between sad, hateful blats from Trump’s trumpet and the usual political dogwhistles came the (largely unheard in national mainstream media) dirges for three (more) Black women killed, in the words […]
February 15, 2010
Reading Ahead
Inspired by Cody’s lovely six-things list, a great post on The Millions, and those Valentine’s Day chocolate boxes where everybody bites half of everything looking for the caramels, I bring […]