Joseph O'Neill

Joseph O'Neill's "Pardon Edward Snowden" and "The First World" are short stories I enjoyed this September. Likewise, O'Neill's interview in The Paris Review includes this gem: "Publication is almost certainly a punishment for having written a book."

Daniel Kalder

Best known for his Russian travel narratives, Daniel Kalder published a new book,  

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy.

He was writing his novels. . .

"He was writing his novels as a way to escape his life."

South Korean sighting

Jessica Bruder's Nomadland

Among the wide range of books in the post-Nickle-and-Dimed category on American workers in economic trouble, Nomadland is an informative title that I enjoyed.

Hillary Leftwich on "Free Car"

"Alex Kudera’s 'Free Car' is not a story about a car. It’s a story about a car taking a man through a series of events that lead to his 'situation,' or 'stagnant stuckness.' How memory is a tricky thing, and what the brain can recall in its own ghost patterns isn’t always what is remembered when we need it to be. 'Free Car' is reminiscent of what we will do once we are pushed across our own bottom line and realize even in our own day-to-day hustles, a certain amount of satisfaction can still be found." 

 ~~Hillary Leftwich 
Ghosts are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock forthcoming from CCM 2019. Website: https://hillaryleftwich.wordpress.com/  Twitter: @hillaryleftwich

After Noon by Don Riggs

After Noon

I eat lunch with a group of older men.
Some of them are older than me; others,
my own age, are older than most people
around us--"kids," we call them, teenagers
and twentysomethings, many of them born
this side of Y2K, whereas we have
lived most of our lives in the previous
century. Students don't know what I mean

when I refer to recent books written
back in the 1980s, and those from
the 'sixties and 'seventies, when the Now
Generation was in the ascendant,
have receded to the Middle Ages,
which I consider myself still part of.

Free Car

Thanks to Heavy Feather Review, "Free Car" is available anywhere short stories are read online!