When Jay Reatard was alive, he got called anything from “possessed” to “total dick.” Looking back on his recorded legacy with the ease awarded by hindsight, I see that he…
Terry Gearlds and I have never met. We’re friends on Facebook. We share some stuff in common like True Blood and horror movies. Also, anytime either of us see a…
At Backdoor Review, we receive tens of thousands of submissions. We’ve collected a few cover letters and reprinted them now (without permission) with manuscript comments from our editors in italics.
I met Grace Smith (Yup’ik) when I was researching an article for The Circle, a Native American newspaper in the Twin Cities. The Native community in the Twin Cities is…
I heard about Margaret Murray before I met her: strange rumors about her being a kept woman in LA and a sad, true story of her apartment burning down in…
The last book I loved was Charles D’Ambrosio’s essay collection, Orphans—but in fact, I loved the book before I read it. Smitten with the small format, I plucked it from…
Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil has won the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize for books. The US Review of Books writes: “By enfolding folk beliefs, tales, or superstitions into contemporary experience,…
Blake Butler is the author of There Is No Year (Harper Perennial, 2011), Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books, 2010), and Ever (Calamari Press, 2009). He is the editor of HTMLGIANT, Lamination…