by SHARON BARRETT Of the people who knew her, few would have said of Cathy Richards that she was spirited. At twenty-two, she was married with three children and another on the way; she appeared to be firmly on the … Read more
by SUSAN SCUTTI Katya Apekina, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish (Two Dollar Radio, September 2018), pp. 353 Two teenage sisters, Edith and Mae, leave Louisiana to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights … Read more
by KEN DERRY To hear author Ken Derry reading this piece, check out the latest episode (Episode 3: Real/Fantastical—Fantastical/Real) of our podcast, CQ Speaks. — When Ms. Martin first heard the discharge and shattered glass, she did not pause to consider … Read more
by KATHARINE COLDIRON Alyson Hagy, Scribe (Graywolf Press, October 2018), pp. 176 It’s unclear where or when we are at the start of Scribe, a slim novel that maps an extraordinary range of human cruelty. The awful, scraping life led … Read more
by MATT WHELIHAN Ed had sat through two days’ worth of speakers and breakout sessions at the hotel. He’d eaten the dry chicken and butter-slicked green beans served in tinfoil trays. He’d slept in the hotel bed with its pillows … Read more
by EMILIO JESUS TAIVEAHO Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, November 2017), pp. 236 “And what a year 2016 was. Oh, friends, those of you who are still with us, what a year we … Read more
by OLIVIA NEAL Beth Pickens, Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, April 2018), pp. 136 Not everyone will like this book because not everyone needs this book. In Your Art Will Save Your Life, Beth Pickens speaks to … Read more
by NORA BONNER No more breath for him now: lungs deflated, spirit departed. I had a week left in seventh grade. Evening after evening I walked four doors down to check for Greg’s television in the side room, and evening … Read more
by PAUL BLOM, Fiction Co-Editor Kathleen McNamara is the first-place winner of the The Carolina Quarterly’s recent fiction contest, “Wake, and Dream Again.” Our editors here at the CQ selected the finalists, and among those finalists, author Daniel Wallace selected the … Read more
by ANI GOVJIAN Ryan Habermeyer, The Science of Lost Futures (BOA Editions, May 2018), pp. 216 Ryan Habermeyer makes beautiful promises of inventive tales drenched in the bizarre and unsettling. Each tale in his new collection, The Science of Lost Futures, … Read more
