The voice in a Steve Almond story or essay or blog post is unmistakable, shaped by a tone typically anchored in dry wit, and a sharp, hungry intelligence that seems capable of taking us anywhere. The world, as Almond observes it, is at once hilarious and pathetic, sad and intensely beautiful. And it’s his willingness to … Read more

In Blake Butler’s work, the ordinary world is made and remade, the familiar becomes strange, the quotidian becomes uncanny, haunted: families discover their own doubles living among them; homes retain their usual dimensions on the outside, but inside are doubling and expanding with secret passages and dark tunnels and strange rooms; caterpillars mysteriously overrun mailboxes and … Read more

Erin Belieu’s poetry moves. Each line break holds the potential for a rapid expansion of the poem’s emotional and imaginative reach. The result is sometimes unsettling, sometimes relieving, sometimes hilarious, but always wonderfully consuming. To enter a Belieu poem is to surrender to the paradoxes of the heart and mind, and reading her work feels like … Read more