Welcome to Late Night Conversation. This week host Paul Martone talks to Edward Champion, producer of The Bat Segundo Show—a cultural radio program devoted to quirky and very thorough long-form interviews with contemporary authors, idiosyncratic thinkers, and other assorted artists. Things get heated when Paul questions Ed about his introductory comments in a recent episode [...]

Reagan Arthur Books, 2013 Reviewed by Patrick McGinty I often feel uncomfortable looking at photos of children in Zimbabwe. I realize that discomfort is largely the point of such photos, but when National Geographic features these children—smiling or maybe sad, half-clothed or less than—the scenario never feels authentic to me. I’m overly conscious of the fact [...]

One Cup of Curiosity, Thawed: In Conversation with Sarah Gerkensmeyer

“Each time their husband found them bunched up together on one of the couches, chuckling and chortling, or in the heavy swing out on the back porch doing the same, he’d laugh and look at them sideways and say, shyly, in his feathery voice: Hear my voice, ye careless daughters. Number three knew that this [...]

A Provisional Limbo: Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s What You Are Now Enjoying

Autumn House Press, 2013 Reviewed by W.M. Lobko The plenty clever title of Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s debut volume of short stories does indeed apply to you, dear reader. The way in which it applies to you, however, reveals itself gradually: this volume is defined as much by restraint and subtlety as it is by surprise. Upon [...]