Barrelhouse Reviews: Heart X-rays: A Modern Epic Poem by Marcus Colasurdo and G. H. Mosson
The authors of this collaboration, Heart X-rays: A Modern Epic Poem, are not new to the apparent insanity of the early 21st century.
Barrelhouse Reviews:
Like all good memoirs, Rerun Era reflects on how slippery, even duplicitous, the act of remembering itself can be.
My Big Little Break: Monica Prince
In My Big Little Break, we ask authors to talk about the first piece they ever had published, how it felt to finally break through, and what they’ve learned since then. This week we’re pleased to be speaking with one of the featured authors at our upcoming conference in Pittsburgh on October 26, Monica Prince.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Fishing Through the Apocalypse, by Matthew L. Miller
That’s what this book does best: it provides hope. Hope that we can preserve what’s left.
Barrelhouse Reviews: The Remainder, by Alia Trabucco Zaran, Trans. by Sophie Hughes
It was in that narrative 180-degree turn that I realized: Holy shit, I’ve read this before.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Extratransmission, by Andrea Abi-Karam
EXTRATRANSMISSION did not leave me breathless. It violently pumped me full of air and brought oxygen back to my brain — almost too much.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Star, by Yukio Mishima, Trans. by Sam Bett
In Mishima’s world, an outpouring of sincerity is only good once, and the value of a moment correlates with its proximity to beauty or death.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Intrusive Beauty, by Joseph J. Capista
Some books you reread because you want to get another hit of dopamine. I reread Intrusive Beauty because I wanted a second round with it, to go back for a rematch.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Know the Mother, by Desiree Cooper
In all of the stories, the complexities of the female experience are laid bare, interlaced with themes of race, class, gender, and adultery.
Barrelhouse Reviews: This is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, by Alan Chazaro
With intelligent musicality, Chazaro takes us back and forth over the Bay Bridge, into the diverse neighborhoods where he learned his own language for poetry and art.
Barrelhouse Reviews: The Pretty One, by Keah Brown
I realized that it had likely been over fifteen years since I’d lived in a world without Jennifer Aniston on the cover of some magazine.
Barrelhouse Reviews: Doxology, by Nell Zink
Zink’s novels take care of everybody; they cosset all the players in her imagined communities.
Downstate, by Laura Bandy
We’re headed downstate and Natalie’s driving, she insisted, a Chicago girl who’s driven across Paris, Tokyo, the left side of London streets like a pro, so she can handle this, and I wake from a doze to find us weaving on my country road
Three Flash Fictions, by William Hoffacker
On the road you see a cloaked and hooded figure. You are traveling north, he south. He hails you before you can pass.
Final Girl Slumber Party, by Meghan Phillips
We don’t braid each other’s hair. Can’t stand the yank tug of the brush, the drag of bristles over scalp. Warm breath on the backs of our necks.
A Little Man Roaring Like a Lion, by Jack Pendarvis
At night I double check to make sure the… front and back doors are locked.
Cheddar Moon, by Aleyna Rentz
My first crush killed a man in Ohio. His name was Taylor;
the crush, not the man, whose name I do not know.
A Brief Guide to America’s Haunted Outbuildings, by Patrick Berry
By day the Quartermain greenhouse is still an actively-maintained conservatory, boasting an impressive assortment of flowers and vegetables, along with some righteous weed.
1992, by Josh Lefkowitz
That was the year
I dressed up as confident
I loved my best friend
but candy more
Three Poems, by Jeannine Hall Gailey
It will happen on a sunny day when other thingsare happening that are more important