I wasn’t expecting my friend D to smash the green anole with a rock. But he did, and the lizard’s insides smeared red against the concrete driveway. Its eyes, black and bleeding, sunk into its tiny skull. We were nine. I’d caught the green anole in the tree down the street. We caught brown ones…
Hello! It’s winter! Which means snow here in Iowa. Here’s a cute puppy running through some: And here’s me, Florida girl that I am: But winter doesn’t only mean cold. It also means a brand new issue of Ploughshares, and a playlist to go with it! Here are nine songs to go with nine…
John Henry Fleming’s forthcoming story collection, Songs for the Deaf, is full of haunted characters: haunted by the deaths of loved ones, memories of lovers, knowledge of truth. The range of characters—aliens, bigfoot look-alikes, cloud readers, floating girls—lends itself to satire, creating a new mythology out of crises of faith. Most importantly, though, these stories…
Recently, I put cream cheese, Nutella, and orange zest between two pieces of bread and cooked it up like a grilled cheese. A little butter, a hot pan. Grilled cheese is tried and true. It doesn’t need improvement. But I saw the recipe (though for grilled cheese, I’d call “recipe” a stretch) in this book…
After a detour into the Land of Internet GIFs, I’m back on the music train, bringing you tunes to accompany Julie Brickman’s new story collection, Two Deserts, released the first of this month from Hopewell Publications. Brickman’s stories examine the breadth of love—love between mother and son, husband and wife; between those ill and those…
Everyday in Airstrip One (the country formerly known as England), Winston Smith goes to work. At work there is a girl named Julia. Winston gets pretty nervous around her because he’s convinced she’s part of the Thought Police.
I have to admit that this was one of the tougher playlists to put together. Aimee Bender’s latest collection, The Color Master, does not easily lend itself to non-ephemeral song. It’s a collection that drops hints. In the opening story, “Appleless,” for example, a girl refuses to eat apples, compelling those in the orchard to…
The first time I met Rick Bass, in early 2010, I was sick as a dog. Iowa State University had invited him to participate in its annual Wildness Symposium, during my first year in the MFA program. In the middle of the symposium my Florida-born body rejected winter altogether. I discovered what a full-blown Iowan…
In my last post I talked about my love of zombies—the blank stares, the hyperfast sprinting, and the social allegory of the undead—and my less-than-love for the resurgence of swoony vampires. In light of the revival of such classic horror monsters, I’m left wondering: what about werewolves? (Or for that matter, mummies—because isn’t a walking…
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