Paula Carter is the author of No Relation, a collection of flash essays that details her experiences helping to care for, and then leaving, two boys from her partner’s previous marriage. Incorporating prose poems, fairy tales, metaphors, and vignettes, Carter creates a mosaic of…
Shawn Shiflett is a Professor in the English—Creative Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago. He is the author of the novels Hidden Place and, most recently, Hey, Liberal! He was recuperating from a knee injury and slid gingerly into a chair in the Punctuate…
As a pigheaded writer and a person who hates being told she’s wrong, criticism can be a hard thing for me to swallow. I’ll admit that I’ve gotten better over the years at accepting advice and criticism, but there are some days when I…
At this stage in my career, I definitely consider myself a poet. The simplicity of being able to articulate my every day emotions, the stresses of day-to—day life and the hopes I have for the world and myself gives me a sense of liberation,…
Calamities Wave Books, 126 pages, $18 Prose Architectures Wave Books, 144 pages, $50 Renee Gladman Prose as a Naked Language I began reading Renee Gladman’s Calamities on an early morning Southwest flight from Chicago to Washington D.C. in February 2017. It was for an assignment, of…
Last week, an article in the New York Times described the opening of a time capsule that had been placed in a monolith in the town square fifty years ago by the children of the city of Cherepovets, Russia (then the Soviet Union). The…
What to Eat When You Are Rich I spat out a slice of fresh tomato one morning in Honolulu. That was how my journey to New Mexico began in the late 1990s. I didn’t feel sick, but no solid food would go down. I…