Fly with Phoenix Wings
by JOHN MARCHINKOSKI The man on stage can’t explain how it feels to burn. Nothing describes the sensation well enough. The fluorescent stage lights overhead remind him of the burning. He considers...
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Meditations on the Mother Tongue: A Review
by ELISA FAISON An Tran, Meditations on the Mother Tongue. C&R Press, January 2017, pp. 154 An Tran’s debut collection Meditations on the Mother Tongue (C&R Press, 2017) is composed of twelve...
View ArticleWild Kingdom
by STEVE PEET The boy lay in a dried out wallow beneath freshly cut rhododendron boughs. To passersby, had there been any, it was an ordinary brush pile worthy of no notice whatsoever. Except for a...
View Article“Wake, and Dream Again” Winners
ANNOUNCING OUR CONTEST WINNERS! 1st Prize: “Cryptozoology” by Kathleen McNamara 2nd Prize: “Haunting Grounds” by Tessa Yang 3rd Prize: “Undertaker” by George Hovis Honorable Mention: “Colby Jack...
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Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics: A Review
by KYLAN RICE Selah Saterstrom, Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. Essay Press, 2017, pp. 290 The poets’ rightful mood is ecstasy. Poets dwell in ekstasis—that is, outside themselves,...
View ArticleA Bird in the Mind
by CAROLINA HOTCHANDANI The trees, the redwoods, waving, skimmed her thought of the trees the way the wind grazed the canopy of the forest. Some trunks creaked, while her mind fell quiet, heightening...
View ArticleEvery Rising of the River
by KATHLEEN SANDS Otabenga stood and spoke with purpose: “I will undergo both trials on the same day.” Under his prestigious hat of spotted fur, Old Liboyo lowered his forehead. “That would be too...
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Treeborne: A Review
by KARAH MITCHELL Caleb Johnson, Treeborne: A Novel (New York: Picador, 2018), pp. 304 Caleb Johnson’s debut novel, Treeborne (Picador, 2018), begins and ends with a flood of biblical proportions....
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The Science of Lost Futures: A Review
by ANI GOVJIAN Ryan Habermeyer, The Science of Lost Futures (BOA Editions, May 2018), pp. 216 Ryan Habermeyer makes beautiful promises of inventive tales drenched in the bizarre and unsettling. Each...
View Article“The Things We Don’t Say”: An Interview with Kathleen McNamara
by PAUL BLOM, Fiction Co-Editor Kathleen McNamara is the first-place winner of the The Carolina Quarterly’s recent fiction contest, “Wake, and Dream Again.” Our editors here at the CQ selected the...
View ArticleReady for Glory
by NORA BONNER No more breath for him now: lungs deflated, spirit departed. I had a week left in seventh grade. Evening after evening I walked four doors down to check for Greg’s television in the side...
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Your Art Will Save Your Life: A Review
by OLIVIA NEAL Beth Pickens, Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, April 2018), pp. 136 Not everyone will like this book because not everyone needs this book. In Your Art Will Save Your Life,...
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“Cartographies of Music, Refuge, and Survival”: A Review of They Can’t Kill...
by EMILIO JESUS TAIVEAHO Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, November 2017), pp. 236 “And what a year 2016 was. Oh, friends, those of you who are still with...
View ArticleThe Superman Pitch
by MATT WHELIHAN Ed had sat through two days’ worth of speakers and breakout sessions at the hotel. He’d eaten the dry chicken and butter-slicked green beans served in tinfoil trays. He’d slept in the...
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Scribe: A Review
by KATHARINE COLDIRON Alyson Hagy, Scribe (Graywolf Press, October 2018), pp. 176 It’s unclear where or when we are at the start of Scribe, a slim novel that maps an extraordinary range of human...
View ArticleAs the Turtles Do
by KEN DERRY To hear author Ken Derry reading this piece, check out the latest episode (Episode 3: Real/Fantastical—Fantastical/Real) of our podcast, CQ Speaks. — When Ms. Martin first heard the...
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Drowning and Burning for Art: A Review of The Deeper the Water the Uglier the...
by SUSAN SCUTTI Katya Apekina, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish (Two Dollar Radio, September 2018), pp. 353 Two teenage sisters, Edith and Mae, leave Louisiana to live with their estranged...
View ArticleThe Cry Room
by SHARON BARRETT Of the people who knew her, few would have said of Cathy Richards that she was spirited. At twenty-two, she was married with three children and another on the way; she appeared to be...
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The Wildlands: A Review
by ELISA FAISON Abby Geni, The Wildlands (Counterpoint Press, September 2018), pp. 368 “Man is the animal who tells stories,” Cora repeats. “We have to remember them. We have to tell the stories.” As...
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Strawberry Fields: A Review
by KYLAN RICE Hilary Plum, Strawberry Fields (Fence 2018), pp. 224 In 2018, Time Magazine named journalists its “Person of the Year.” The magazine published four different versions of the issue’s cover...
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