Fiction Spotlight: Peter Orner

In a striking moment from the novella that caps Peter Orner’s Maggie Brown & Others (Little Brown), the main character, Walt Kaplan, hears his young daughter hovering outside the door to his study. She is watching him through the door’s keyhole. Walt goes to the door and kneels to look through the keyhole, his eye seeing,…

Fiction Spotlight: Ed Pavlić

Ed Pavlić’s début novel Another Kind of Madness weaves an intricate narrative as two people return to Chicago: Ndiya Grayson, who navigates professional life with high-end lawyers, and Shame Luther, carving out an existence as an intense temp laborer. Their reasons for leaving still not behind them, Ndiya’s chance night out and Shame’s self-taught talent…

Literary Ventures: Acre Books

For our latest installment of Literary Ventures, our new column that highlights new presses, magazines, literary organizations, and other literary adventures,  we spoke with Nicola Mason, editor of the new press, Acre Books, born out of The Cincinnati Review. Tell us about Acre Books. Acre Books is the newly established book-publishing arm of The Cincinnati Review….

Literary Ventures: Krouna Writing Workshop

Welcome to Literary Ventures, a column where editor-in-chief Rebecca Morgan Frank talks to writers, editors, and entrepreneurs about their new literary ventures. Our first guest is novelist Henriette Lazaridis, founding editor of The Drum literary magazine and the newly launched Krouna Writing Workshop, which will take place this summer in Papingo, Greece. Tell us about the Krouna…

(Non-)Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Peter Orner

Peter Orner is the author of several books, including the novels The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown) and Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown), and the short story collections Esther Stories (Back Bay) and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (Back Bay). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary…

Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Sharma Shields

Sharma Shields’s debut novel The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac (Henry Holt) was published in 2015—and we’re still not over it. “Imagine a mashup of Moby-Dick and Kafka’s Metamorphosis (with a hearty dash of Twin Peaks thrown in),” writes Kirkus Reviews, “and you’ll begin to get an idea of what Shields’ ambitious tale of disenchantment sets out to do.” The novel, which won…

Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy’s stunning work of flash fiction called “Revival” appeared in the seventh issue of Memorious. At the time, his second collection of short stories was due out, after his first outstanding collection, The Language of Elk. In the decade since, Percy’s gone on to publish three novels—The Wilding, Red Moon, and The Dead Lands—with a fourth…

Joanna Luloff’s Anticipated Books of 2017

At the end of this tumultuous year, it is tempting to want to move on and train our gaze onto the new. Like many of us, I imagine, I’ve been thinking about what reading and writing can do—politically, socially. To me, these seemingly solitary acts encourage empathy, curiosity, engagement, and self-scrutiny. I hope, too, that…

Derrick Austin’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, Charif Shanahan (Southern Illinois UP, February) In a geographically sprawling collection—set in Morocco, The United States, and Europe—Shanahan writes of the bond between all three regions, bonds established by the brutal legacies of slavery, colonialism, colorism, and racism. He writes through global history as well as family history as…

Wendy Oleson’s Anticipated Books of 2017

Writing this list reminds me, at a time I so need it, that there’s much to look forward to—particularly emerging voices from small, independent presses. There are many talented writers who coming to us with urgent messages, and we are desperate to hear them. The Education of Margot Sanchez, Lilliam Rivera (Simon & Schuster, February)…