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Ranging from a custodian at an underfunded college to a medicine man living in a temple dedicated to San Simon, the patron saint of alcohol and cigarettes, the characters in Jared Lemus’s Guatemalan Rhapsody (Ecco Press) find themselves at defining moments in their lives, where sacrifices may be required of them, by them, or for…
In Doctor Faustus, Mephistophilis offers the hero a hell of deal: twenty-four years of fortune, followed perhaps by some minor burning. The temptation, which plays on the common reflex of “take now, worry later,” is an inversion of narrative: for Faustus, who knows how the story will end, the real excitement is in getting there.…
My research for my debut novel, Moral Treatment, began when I was a kid, exploring the park-like grounds of the Traverse City State Hospital. A sprawling, residential psychiatric facility on the west side of my hometown…
The nine short pieces in this chapbook form a landscape fraught with dangerous pitfalls and survived thanks to female camaraderie. One of the collection’s strongest pieces,“The Island,” is set in antiquity, yet its themes are modern and encompassing. Christiana Elena wanders the countryside berry picking, only to return to her village where she finds the…
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Brittney Corrigan writes about The Ghost Town Collectives, winner of the Osprey Award for Fiction from Middle Creek Publishing. + Everything in Its Place The research process is one of my…
A slim novel in three parts, Living in Your Light centers on Malika, an indomitable Moroccan woman modeled on the author’s mother. Visiting the souk with her father at Béni-Mallal, south of Rabat, in the mid-1950s, seventeen-year-old Malika falls headlong in love with Allal, the son of a distant relative. Her father leaves the pair…
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Jonathan Taylor writes about A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons from Goldsmiths Press. + “We’ll look back on this and laugh”: What I learned about memoir in writing…
In Alex Higley’s True Failure, if the American Dream survives anywhere, it’s in the realm of reality TV, where shrewd producers create a social microcosm in which small windfalls come to those bold enough to compete for them. True Failure centers on the fictitious Big Shot, a Shark Tank-esque production where aspiring contestants pitch business…