The Graphic Life of Steven Seighman

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The Graphic Life of Steven Seighman

by Christopher Katz Steven Seighman is best known for his book covers, some of the most visually arresting and inspired on the market today. He is heavily involved in the independent literary scene, both as a book designer and as an editor of his own magazine, Monkeybicycle, which he ›

Book Review: Suspended Heart, by Heather Fowler

Heather Fowler’s debut collection, Suspended Heart, deals out extended metaphors like black jack cards. Though some of the stories feel crowded with the metaphor, the innovative works always present an innovative point of view—such as a girl who sculpts cocks for a living, and not the kind that live on a barn and can't fly. Themes of love and losing, bea ›

Book Review: Exit Wounds, by Kevin Finn

reviewed by Will Nixon [separator] Exit Wounds Poems by Kevin Finn Gob Pile Chapbook Series Amsterdam Press, 2009 6199 Steubenville Road SE Amsterdam, OH 43903 $8.00, 26 pages ISBN 13: 978-0-9822221-6-4 Poems about crows, like crows themselves, appear everywhere, brusque heralds of mortality. Here's a good one from Exit Wounds, a short chapbook ›

Book Review: Asunder, by Robert Lopez

Review by Tyler Gillespie Robert Lopez’s new collection of short stories Asunder takes readers on a dirty-ash tray trip into the lives of characters more familiar with sex than love. Lopez’s quick-paced narratives usually last the attention span of the Adderall-generation, but the awareness of detail in the stories makes them something much more diffic ›

Book Review: Swallow, by Jendi Reiter

book review by Martha Rzadkowolsky-Raoli What I Like About Swallow Amsterdam Press Jendi Reiter created a tidy poetry book in which swallow means everything you can expect swallow to mean. She exhausts the word; its mashed remains a mix of cow meat, desire, intestines, bird. If you read the book, and you should, you’ll experience the beating of the ›

Pushcart Prize Nominations

Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that in the year of our terminal dissolution, 2010, the Greatest Literary Project of All Time did nominate for Pushcart Prize consideration the following literary badasses Mr. Benjamin Lowenkron, for his compelling poem, "Fire Line," from the Bloody Fine chapbook, Preacher's Blues. Ms. Melissa Broder, for the mixture of optimism ›

Book Review: Misfits and other Heroes, by Suzanne Burns

Freaks are everywhere in Suzanne Burn’s collection of short stories, Misfits and Other Heroes. Burns, whose characters are obsessed with food, offers readers a feast of funky characters from Alano with a third, miniature hand, to Tiny Ron, who is so tiny that his wife carries him around in a birdcage, to a wax statue of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest ›

Ampersand Minion Reviews: Best of the Web, 2010

The Best of the Web series, published by Dzanc Books, is an impressive and daunting enterprise: seeking out and giving the legitimacy of print to the best writing featured solely on the web. Digging through the thousands of great pieces published in online literary magazines may seem like a Magic Tollboth-style job, but every year series editor Matt Bell an ›

Ampersand Minion Reviews: HiStory of Santa Monica, by Michael Atwood.

A book for anyone who has ever been in love or hate with the idea (or actuality) of Hollywood, HiStory of Santa Monica is one of this year’s best collections about the Golden State. Written by Michael J. Atwood and published by Aqueous Books, HiStory tackles themes of men supporting crumbling families with care ›