“Well, when she does all the thinking and knowing, won’t I be … dead?” (Jackson 241).
Twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth Richmond lives an ordinary life. Orphaned and living with her maiden aunt Morgen, Elizabeth spends her days working at a museum and living off of her dead mother’s inheritance, but strange things have started to occur. Threatening letters have been left for her at work, she has started to suffer from migraines and backaches, and after a disastrous dinner party that Elizabeth only has vague recollection of her aunt decides to send her to a psychiatrist to figure out what’s wrong, no one predicting what they’ll discover. Continue reading
I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.
“Every day, I want to reach / inside my chest, dig my fingers in, / and pull my rubs apart: / let me breathe / until I burst,” (“Ritual for Release,” Bates-Hardy, 9).
In Anatomical Venus, Courtney Bates-Hardy writes a collection of poetry where she takes readers into the vulnerable and real experience of living through chronic pain and how it fundamentally changed her life, not only physically but mentally. Continue reading
“Which is better?…The grief of death of the ambiguity of indefinite loss?” (Wallace 76).
In the small town of Euphoria a suburban couple, Blue and Culver, have disappeared, but only their estranged friend Fir seems to care. Without any help from the police, Fir enlists the help of their friend Fain as they begin their search. But the answers are hidden in the mysterious Unwood where Slip, an elderly trailer park resident, finds a cluster of bones and decides it is their job to find the bones a better resting spot. Meanwhile, two true-crime obsessed teens Limb and Mal have seen the bones in Slip’s trailer and are determined to crack the case. Continue reading
“Lily: They’re all dead now,” (Act 1, Prologue, 14).
An adaption of Ann-Marie Macdonald’s novel of the same name, the play follows piano tuner James Piper and his thirteen-year-old wife Materia Mahmoud, their four daughters Kathleen, Frances, Mercedes, and Lily. Dark secrets are unearthed as each daughter tries to find their place in the world, haunted by the mistakes of the past and, somehow, finding joy hidden as well. Continue reading
I received this book from the editor in exchange for an honest review.
“Despair followed me like a lingering shadow. The passage of days and nights became a seamless blur, rendering the concept of time inconsequential…Believing death to be my sole escape, I grappled with the realization that both suicide and homosexuality were considered sins,” (“Convert” by Gemma Hickey, 155).
Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories on Conversion Therapy is a collection of accounts by queer and trans writers recalling traumatic forms of conversion practices they’ve experienced in the hopes that such practices will no longer be used to shame, demonize, and traumatize people in the LGTBQ2S+. Continue reading
“Rarely in life does one occasion upon irrevocable proof of a higher power. But sometimes a coincidence stretched not just the bounds of credulity, but possibility,” (Malla 15).
After surviving a plane crash, an unnamed narrator and another survivor, K. Sohail, find themselves stranded on an island anything but deserted. Holding a Wellness Couples retreat, our narrator and K. Sohail are mistaken for the Dhaliwals, who have probably been killed in a helicopter crash. Taking their identities, the new Dhaliwals are welcomed by a robot named Jerome, learn about the subject of Trunity by the unfamous Brad Beard, and have sessions of erotic counselling with Professor Sayer. But this seemingly idyllic paradise is not what it seems, and K. Sohail at least is determined to find out what is happening while our narrator cheers her on. Continue reading
I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.
“By not claiming space for my art, I am the aporia, the one feigning uncertainty, the one who pretends to others like I don’t know what it is I want to do,” (Purdham 187).
A long time advocate for people with disabilities as a mother of a daughter with Down Syndrome, Adelle Purdham discusses ableism, motherhood, nature, and more in her book of essays. Continue reading
“The basic story was far from original. But in the hands of two visionary creators like David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks took the familiar and transformed it into a series no one could have anticipated,” (Burns 2).
In Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks, Andy Burns takes a look at the early nineties show Twin Peaks and how it made a mark on the cultural zeitgeist at the time before seemingly disappearing from the mainstream, though leaving it’s mark regardless on the television shows and movies we watch today. Continue reading
“We were girls…bad girls, neurotic girls, needy girls, wayward girls, selfish girls, girls with Electra complexes, girls trying to fill a void, girls who needed attention, girls with pasts, girls from broken homes, girls who needed discipline, girls desperate to fit in, girls in trouble, girls who couldn’t say no.
But for girls like us, down there at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend,” (Hendrix 6).
After telling her family she’s pregnant, fifteen-year-old Fern is sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida to deliver her baby, give it up for adoption, and then return home as if nothing ever happened, a common enough though unspoken thing in the 1970s. As Fern settles in with her hippie roommate Rose, mute Holly, and aspiring musician Zinnia, the girls do chores, have their diets restricted, and have every moment of their lives controlled by the stern Miss Wellwood. But there is some respite from the bookmobile which visits the home every two weeks, and Miss Parcae, the old librarian who gives Fern a book that could change everything, for a price. Continue reading
“If someone looks out at the world…they should not be surprised if the world looks back,” (Leduc 61).
In 19th-century Scotland, Josiah MacDougal is banished to Siberia with a small Christian mission after claiming that animals can speak to him. While scrubbing the floor of the church one night, he is visited by God in animal form, two hyenas who tell him he is needed elsewhere. Once returned home, Josiah founds a religion where he believes that the hyena’s divine speech is a plan from God to heal and raised up the human race. But the hyenas, Barbara and Kendrith, are having second thoughts about Josiah and disappear and reappear throughout hundreds of years following the wind while animals around the world start to speak and free themselves, forcing humans to recognize the wildness within themselves. Continue reading
Sarah O'Connor 