C.J. Potter In Bali the motorcycles outnumber cars two, maybe three, to one. Dirt bikes, street bikes, crotch rockets, Harley’s and rice burners, Indians, Triumphs, and Vincents. The scooters are teeming and ubiquitous: I saw a Vespa all tricked-out…
Julia Stone In his novel Beyond the Horizon, Ryan Ireland intertwines magical realism with a haunting mythological allegory of frontier America. Ireland’s debut, a twist on the traditional western, is a journey through the origins of modern America bursting…
John Newlin Professor Lewis Lockwood’s latest book, Beethoven’s Symphonies: An Artistic Vision, takes a fresh look at Beethoven the man and the creative process he used in composing the nine monumental orchestral works that forever changed the symphonic music…
Sara Kuhl I remember reading a story in the New York Times last year about a 21-year-old summer intern who died from exhaustion at the end of his seven-week experience. Dead from overwork at an investment firm. At…
Mary Slebodnik A Slant of Light opens with a gritty and gripping scene western New York state: Malcolm Hopeton returns home from fighting for the Union Army and murders Amos Wheeler, the long-time friend and employee who stole…
C.J. Potter You probably saw in the news where a Republican presidential candidate thinks people should work longer hours to help grow the economy. Sounds to me like something you say about work when you haven’t done much…
David Colodney In five years, life will be so different, won’t it be, honey? The kids will be off to college, and this house will echo only with our talking louder to one another as our hearing fails…
David Colodney I’m black and white, I’m an 8-track left over after a garage sale that couldn’t be sold for a dime, I’m sitting at a desk writing on an old typer with a sticky Q key, listening…
Scott Laughlin If you want to write a better short story, read Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry. It’s that simple. Jesus’ Son? Johnson readily admits he ripped off Babel. George Saunders claims Babel freed him. Even Hemingway might concede…
Anni Liu Nothing seems real. Events seem to take place on a poorly lit theater stage, and while the actors recite their lines, shadowy figures menace them from unseen corridors. There is the sense that all meaningful exchange…