Fiction by John Weir
Red Hen Press, April 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-636280301
Paperback: 224pp; $16.95
In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
Poetry by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
Orison Books, December 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1-949039-25-2
Paperback: 108pp; $16.00
In her latest collection of English-language poems, trilingual poet Stella Vinitchi Radulescu continues to explore the capabilities and limits of language itself as the nexus where thought and physicality meet. Gathering fragments of idea and image from a vast constellation of influences, Radulescu’s nimble, ever-surprising poems weave a tapestry that embodies what it feels like to be both intensely alive and knowingly transient.
Fiction by Shahriar Mandanipour
Bellevue Literary Press, January 2022
ISBN: 978-1-942658955
Paperback: 208pp; $16.99
In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.
Lessons on the Craft of Writing Fiction
Nonfiction by Clint McCown
Press 53, December 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950413-39-3
Paperback: 162pp; $17.95
“As its title should suggest, it’s impossible to read Clint McCown’s Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud without laughing. McCown’s wit makes this the rarest of books on the craft of fiction: one that is as entertaining as it is instructive. And boy, is it instructive. It’s quite simply the wisest, most succinct, and most comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of writing fiction that I’ve ever read. How I wish it had existed when I first started writing; it could have saved me years of trial and (mostly) error.” —David Jauss