The Withdrawal Method
In his introduction to the Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Ben Marcus writes that the best contemporary fiction synthesizes the heartfelt and the innovative.
Reviews
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The Naked City
Randall Mann’s second collection of poems explores desire and death in the City by the Bay.
A Book About My Father: George, Being George
I should perhaps start off by saying that I had almost nothing to do with the oral biography about my father, George Plimpton.
Naked in DC
Craig Seymour is funny, precise, and egoless: the perfect combination for a good sex worker memoirist.
To Err Is Human
A memoir of the war in Afghanistan asks questions about war and responsibility and what it means to be an American after 9/11.
Scrawl Girl
What does it mean to draw outside the lines? Allison Benis White sketches it out in Self-Portrait with Crayon.
The Ground Beneath Their Feet
Aaron Gwyn’s novel describes a world in which people can fall through the surface of the earth and be snatched by a mythological creature, never to be heard from again.
Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed
Mark Blatte’s hip-hop-crime novel brings a touch of philosophy to New York’s mean streets
A New Babel
These poems by Kazim Ali are gorgeous, each phrase a breath of prayer, the words presented as humbling offerings, each one a deep bow.
Small-Town Gothic
Keith Lee Morris’s new novel exposes the hidden desires and fears of the local darts champions.
The Political is the Personal
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s new memoir about life in the Socialist Workers Party shows the effects of political idealism on a child’s upbringing
Jeffrey Rotter and the Politics of Paranoia
Jeffrey Rotter’s debut novel The Unknown Knowns concerns a pasty comic book collector whose inability to distinguish between the real and the fantastic leads to terrible consequences.