Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

Sneak peek of Slice Magazine's 8th Issue

Dear loyal readers,

I’m pleased to announce that my short story “Dorian in Germany” has been selected for Slice Magazine’s 8th Issue: Lies & Make-Believe to be published this April.

“Dorian in Germany” concerns the life of Dorian Shelley, a young woman living in the 1940s who endures a broken engagement that shames her family. Her depressive temperament and melancholy disposition are closely observed by her much younger brother, Brandon, who struggles to understand his sister’s loss. When Dorian’s family abruptly disowns her for reasons unbeknown to Brandon, he develops a fascination with the country to which she has fled: Germany.

The cover of Issue 8 is designed by prominent illustrator, Sophie Blackall, known for her illustrations in Big Red Lollipop, Pecan Pie Baby, and many others.  The spring/summer issue will also feature interviews with Ray Bradbury, Joshua Ferris, and Lev Grossman.

Issue 8: Lies & Make-Believe is available to pre-order here.

More details to come as I learn of them.

Love, Koa

Read my entire review of Jennifer Pozner’s critical take on reality TV on Bookslut.

Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV is the debut book by Women in Media & News founder and feminist journalist Jennifer L. Pozner. An established media critic and leader of media literacy workshops, Pozner has compiled nearly ten years of analysis and research of recent reality shows such as The Millionaire Matchmaker, America’s Next Top Model, and The Real Housewives series, all the way back to Survivor and The Bachelor. Pozner unpacks these guilty pleasure shows with an eye for sexism, racism, misrepresentations of LGBTQ individuals, and canned messages about romantic relationships and gender dynamics.

Eighteen Acres, the debut novel by Nicolle Wallace, communications director under George W. Bush and campaign advisor for John McCain and Sarah Palin, approaches contemporary politics from the angle of women’s commercial fiction. The three main characters each carry different careers within the realm of US politics: Melanie Kingston, the White House chief of staff, Charlotte Kramer, America’s first female president, and Dale Smith, a White House correspondent.

Read the entire review on Bookslut.

Erin Blakemore’s debut book chronicles the most important heroines of the literary canon as well as their authoresses. Beginning with the life stories of writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Betty Smith, and Harper Lee, Blakemore then transitions to the inspiration behind their most notable protagonists, marking financial hardships, marital woes, and the illnesses that obstructed their respective literary paths.

Blakemore mines these literary figures for inspirational qualities, looking to Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God for faith, Celie in The Color Purple for dignity, and the infamous Claudine in Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette’s Claudine novels for indulgence.

Blakemore applies an autobiographical read of these classic literary giants when analyzing characters like Scarlett O’Hara or Jo March, inviting the reader to study the kernels that gave them such notable fictional females.  Louisa May Alcott’s poverty-stricken childhood and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s complex relationship with her daughter are shared in an effort to understand how these experiences may have shaped their work.

Blakemore’s indisputable passion for the literary canon, and more specifically for the women who have helped punctuate it, make this pocket-sized dose of literary criticism a very quick read. Her light-hearted study of the many functions and facets of these classic literary figures evidences a childhood, as well as a womanhood, devoted to understanding literature. Employing a feminist understanding of Mary Lennox and Lizzy Bennet, Blakemore always looks to the circumstances, history, and societal expectations of both heroine and authoress.

What makes The Heroine’s Bookshelf a gem amongst leather-bound tomes, however, is Blakemore’s unassuming narrative; she presents complex literary themes and character analysis in ebullient prose. Much like the fervent notes you might scratch to yourself in a college level English course on women characters, The Heroine’s Bookshelf reads as the diary of an impassioned student rather than the essay you would turn in.

A delight for seasoned readers of classic literature or younger first-timers, The Heroine’s Bookshelf prompts a revisit to favorite novels while encouraging others to tackle what they have not yet read.

To read more about Erin Blakemore, click here.

What He’s Poised To Do by Ben Greenman, author of Please Step Back, Correspondences, and Superbad, is a collection of original romantic tales that analyze the tenuous nature of heterosexual love.

Exploring failed marriages, infidelities, trysts, and one-time encounters, these 14 stories capture the intimate moments between lovers in contemporary Boston, 1940s Havana, seventeenth-century North Africa, and Atlanta in 2015, among other scenarios. Within each is the theme of letter-writing, a carefully used device that sometimes manifests in an epistolary form or a well-served detail between characters.

In one story, a man unhappy with his marriage and family has an affair with a woman he meets in a hotel bar. The two communicate via postcards that they leave on the bed after sexual encounters. In another, a character falls in love with a woman at first glance and writes her more than 2,000 letters, none of which he actually sends to her. An unnamed male narrator in a different story receives letters from his fiancée’s mother about current events in London; all the while, he harbors a deep infatuation with her.

The stories are delicately composed with a fluid narration that deftly slips from first person to second person, and sometimes back again. All these complex characters cross the page with a very unique and individualistic longing that seems as intrinsic to them as the story Greenman imparts. Infused with tasteful ambiguity, the stories of What He’s Poised To Do don’t conclude as much as they wane exquisitely.

This sophisticated collection offers a varied depiction of romantic relationships, with many sentiments and voices that are uniform only in their excellence.  Greenman’s writing conveys a specific elegance that echoes classic literary influences while also flirting with the experimental. Nuanced, slightly mysterious, and romantic, the stories of What He’s Poised To Do present the amorous with mature restraint.

To read more about Ben Greenman, click here.