In a small Kentucky town where “witch hazel and shaving soap scent…the air,” a boy learns to love art by watching his father paint pictures before work. His father warns him, though, that art should be a mere hobby—it won’t pay... Read More

In Angela Woodward’s ruminative surrealist novel "Ink", everyday life is juxtaposed with testimonies related to war crimes. The skill most appreciated in a typist is accuracy. All Marina and Sylvia know about their new job is that they... Read More

Emmanuel Laroche’s "Conversations Behind the Kitchen Door" features interviews with an impressive range of American chefs, restaurateurs, mixologists, and other culinary innovators. Born in Versailles, Laroche grew up with a gourmet... Read More

Held together by references to Chicago, Keenan Norris’s "Chi Boy" is a memoir, a social history, a eulogy for his ancestors, and a tribute to inspiring literary men. Jim Crow racism drove Norris’s family north, landing them in... Read More

In his visionary memoir-in-essays "Without Saints", Christopher Locke freezes the past, covering enforced religiosity, self-destructive habits, his marriage and fatherhood, and teaching. In a framework that mimics the nature of memory,... Read More

In Mary Clearman Blew’s novel "Think of Horses", a disheartened, middle-aged romance novelist returns to her native Montana to reevaluate her life choices. It’s summer in Sun Creek, the mountainous ranching country that skilled horse... Read More

An often sad and always compelling novel in short stories, Thomas H. McNeely’s "Pictures of the Shark" follows Buddy, tracking the echoes of his parents’ broken marriage as they reverberate through his coming-of-age. In “Snow,... Read More

In "Linea Nigra", a fragmentary work of cultural commentary, Jazmina Barrera investigates pregnancy as both a physical reality and a liminal state. The linea nigra, a stripe of dark hair down a pregnant woman’s belly, is a potent... Read More