The One Inside by Sam Shepard

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

I had only previously encountered Sam Shepard as a playwright in my literature survey courses,

so when I saw that he was releasing a novel I was excited to see his work in another medium. I

had been saving up spare cash to get it, but then my friend Santino loaned it to me with a hearty

recommendation and I set to it.

This was another novel that had a much looser plot structure. She...

The One Inside by Sam Shepard

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

I had only previously encountered Sam Shepard as a playwright in my literature survey courses,

so when I saw that he was releasing a novel I was excited to see his work in another medium. I

had been saving up spare cash to get it, but then my friend Santino loaned it to me with a hearty

recommendation and I set to it.

This was another novel that had a much looser plot structure. She...

Water Fragments. Catie Hannigan. Tammy, 2017.

Print. 40 pages. $13.00. Available at tammyjournal.com.

Review by Santino DallaVecchia.

Catie Hannigan’s second chapbook, Water Fragments, manages to be both sparse and dense,

brief and expansive, evocative and somber. It’s a book about water or, more specifically, about

who we are in relation to water. But who is the we? Is it just the speaker, a sort of omniscient

voice ...

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

Someone described this book briefly months ago and made it seem so intriguing that I picked up

a copy as soon as I could. Then it sat on the shelf for a while and I forgot what the person had

said about the book besides their enthusiasm and my own at what they said. When I finally got

back to it for this month’s review, I saw that this enthusiasm was not unfounded....

Patient Zero. Tomás Q. Morín. Copper Canyon Press, April 2017.

ISBN: 978-1556594939. Print. 96 pages. $16.00.

Review by Santino DallaVecchia.

“I used to walk like a sloth,” writes Tomás Q. Morín, “eyes on the slow ground, memorizing

every pair of shoes in the seventh grade.” That this poem, from his sophomore collection Patient

Zero, is called ‘Stargazing’ may begin to give you a ...

The Swimmer by Zsuzsa Banks (translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo)

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

I picked up this book not entirely knowing what to expect. I was straightening the used

books in the store I work at when I saw the title of the book. I decided to take a look. The dust

jacket can only tell you so much though. I took a chance anyway. Bánks did not disappoint. What

I found was a remarkably well constructed narrative of a childhood ...

Fantasy as a Means of Revelation and Justice: Eve L. Ewing’s Electric Arches

Reviewed by Santino DallaVecchia

I’ve come across a few calls for submissions recently that go out of their way to specify how

much they don’t want genre pieces– fantasy, science fiction, horror, and just generally

speculative fiction. And while this makes sense– few lit journals are interested in work that’s not

realism or at least reali...

The Minor Outsider by Ted McDermott

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

Todd McDermott's debut novel, The Minor Outsider, is an engaging downward spiral. He

gives us a narrator who is often aware of his faults and the turn they are making in his life, yet he

makes little effort to change his behavior. Simultaneously, McDermott allows us to find

ourselves blindsided often enough to keep interest. This is by no means a predictable book.

When we ar...

Poems of the Vague Apocalypse: Traci Brimhall’s Our Lady of the Ruins

In her sophomore collection, Our Lady of the Ruins, Traci Brimhall crafts a fractured set of

legends for our time, a collection of story-poems that look at us from our near future, all presided

over by the subliminal presence of the titular icon. It’s a rare feat. While post-apocalyptic or

dystopian poetry certainly exists, collections that sustain this theme and mood a...

A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume

Reviewed by Jacob Hammer

Sara Baume presents in her second novel a book that gives its readers a personal look

deep into its narrator’s life. This, on its own, would not distinguish it from any number of

novels out there on the shelf. What Baume does that sets this novel apart is to give us this

perspective while weaving in multiple back stories seamlessly and providing us with a wealth

of art ...