Barrelhouse Reviews: Dreams Under Glass, by Anca Szilágyi
Anca Szilágyi’s second novel, Dreams Under Glass, explores a young artist’s ache to make meaning in a world that feels meaningless.
We’re Reaching for Something, and That Something is a Mystery: Barrelhousing with Killian Czuba
I’ve been into the Weird and Unknown my whole life. I grew up Catholic, and all of the strangeness and magic really stuck with me.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Belly to the Brutal, by Jennifer Givhan
Where does a mother’s body end and a child’s begin? Belly to the Brutal roots itself in that liminal space.
The Last Submission I Loved, by Dave Housley
There is nothing better as an editor than to get a chance to do this, to find something wonderful and brilliant and weird and surprising written by a person you had never heard of before, to be in a position to get that story poem essay out there in the world.
Issue 23 Preview: My Monster Mask, by Nic Anstett
“I used to be the Goatman of PG county. It’s been eight years since I was unmasked,” Earl said. The others nodded. Joan made a warbling sound with her throat that was maybe supposed to sound like a farm animal. Carol punched her in her shoulder.
Issue 23 Preview: An Approximate Hourly Record of Thoughts and Feelings During a Time of Intense Sleep Deprivation, by Lucas Mann
My daughter has a sound machine for when she sleeps. It offers many bells and whistles — tinkling lullaby options, pulsing color change through a pediatrician-approved scroll of soft reds and blues — but we don’t use those.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Doom Town by Gabriel Blackwell
This is a hard book, in multiple senses of the word. Hard like difficult, like indestructible, like painful, like merciless.
Barrelhousing with Assistant Nonfiction Editor Craig Knox
I'm a big believer in hooking the reader from the first paragraph with a unique story or point of view and memorable language.
Turning Natural Order on Its Head: Barrelhousing with Jennifer Fliss
When I read a collection, I like to feel like I’m on a rollercoaster. Ups and downs, time and space to breathe before I sail (and maybe flail) down a hill again.
Barrelhousing with Assistant Fiction Editor Sian Griffiths
The thing about reading submissions is how quickly you realize that a story doesn't have to just be good. It has to be special.
Barrelhousing with Assistant Poetry Editor Lane Berger
Dynamism is important too. For me, the brevity of the medium means a poem must be functioning on multiple levels. As I read, I’m chewing each word for color, tone, texture
Barrelhouse Reviews: If This Were Fiction, by Jill Christman
An author, professor, and mother, Christman worries about many things, “but mostly,” she writes, “I worry about the physical safety of my kids. All the time.”
Barrelhouse Reviews: Panics, by Barbara Molinard, Translated by Emma Ramadan
The best story in Barbara Molinard's book Panics, and the one which establishes the thematic thread binding all the others together into a cohesive collection, is the author's own, which Marguerite Duras explains in the book’s preface.
Barrelhouse Reviews: It’s Not Nothing, by Courtney Denelle
For a debut novel, Courtney Denelle’s It’s Not Nothing embraces a remarkable degree of risk. Voice and a highly internal focus drive the fragmented narrative.
Barrelhouse Reviews: How to Adjust to the Dark, by Rebecca Van Laer
Early in Rebecca van Laer’s debut novella, our protagonist, Charlotte, states, “I have been wondering for a long time what to do about my poetry.”
Barrelhouse Reviews: L(eye)ght by Jessica Kim
In her new poetry chapbook L(eye)ght, Jessica Kim explores the power of the eye as it relates to the body and perceptions of identity.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Antique Densities by Jefferson Navicky
When books aren’t melodramatically losing ground to the digital realm, they’re beckoning us inside their logical leaps and syntactic slides in Jefferson Navicky’s defiant Antique Densities.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Tooth Box, by Jenny Irish
“Ten years from now I will think of Texas as the end of girlhood,” writes Jenny Irish in the closing poem of Tooth Box. This end encapsulates the constant question Irish asks the reader throughout the collection: where were you when everything changed?
Barrelhouse Reviews: One Person Holds So Much Silence, by David Greenspan
In David Greenspan’s One Person Holds So Much Silence, a migration occurs in two dimensions.
Barrelhouse Reviews: The Fact of Memory by Aaron Angello
ne of the challenges of writing about Aaron Angello’s The Fact of Memory is trying to categorize it. As the author explains in the introductory note, he tasked himself with writing a prose poem a day meditating on each word of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29.”