This week, I rounded up some fiction you should read.
1. Ilana Masad – “Hamlet, Claudia, Zanzibar” (Volume 1 Brooklyn)
2. Michelle Lyn King – “Ghosts You Loved More” (Joyland)
3. Rion Amilcar Scott – “The Party” (Joyland)
4. Kamil Ahsan – “The Bare-Bones Facts” (Entropy)
5. Han Yujoo – “The Impossible Fairytale, excerpt” (Cosmonauts Avenue)
6. Henry Hoke – “Genevieve Exists” (Entropy)
7. Bud Smith – “Temporarily Here” (Digging Through the Fat)
8. Celeste Mohammed – “When a White Man Paints Black People” (The Rumpus)
9. Becky Mandelbaum – “Straw House” (The Rumpus)
10. Chavisa Woods – “A New Mohawk” (Lit Hub)
11. Nick Cave – “The Sick Bad Song” (Lit Hub)
12. Kerry Cullen – “Tell Me What to Do” (Luna Luna Magazine)
13. Justin Lawrence Daugherty – “This Is Conquest” (Joyland)
Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Xenos, and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault.
Henry Hoke was a child in the South and an adult in New York and California. He authored The Book of Endless Sleepovers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and Genevieves(winner of the Subito Press prose contest, forthcoming 2017). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, PANK, Gigantic and Carve. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (ELJ Publications, 2016), & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets.
“In Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz deftly navigates the land of dreams in what she calls a dreamoir. By telling us her dreams, by revealing her most unguarded and vulnerable self, Ortiz is, truly, offering readers the most intimate parts of herself–how she loves, how she wants, how she lives, who she is. Bruja is not just a book–it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing.”
“It’s the skull-fucking you didn’t know you needed.”
“The stories Matthew Simmons tells in The In-Betweens are strange delights. I love the way he writes, between the unexpected and inevitable, the very narrow place where comedy and tragedy both live, and I love the weird little worlds that first appear alien but later open up to reveal the actual ache and joy inside. The In-Betweens is a really fun and meaningful book and I am happy I was alive to read it.”
Lauren Hilger’s debut is a masterful expose of filmic proportions. In each poem is a film beckoning to be viewed, emotional resonance pulling you in for a full embrace. Lady Be Good is a delight and declares Hilger as an important voice in contemporary poetry.