The Blog

Mark Wisniewski's SHOW UP, LOOK GOOD

Jack Smith

“Wisniewski shows a shrewd hand with sparkling dialogue,” said Publishers Weekly of All Weekend with the Lights On, Mark Wisniewski’s 2001 collection of short fiction, and while this assessment is certainly true, Wisniewski’s deeply engaging prose style also owes much to the author's incisive wit and subtle irony. Combining the best of literary forebears Twain and Hemingway, Wisniewski’s narration offers a fine mix of arresting humor and keen lucidity, and generously so in his second novel, Show Up, Look Good (Gival Press, 2011).

Leslie Marmon Silko’s THE TURQUOISE LEDGE

Josh Garrett-Davis

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Somewhere outside Tucson, there’s a Laguna Pueblo/Euro-American/Mexican-American woman living in a house with space blankets tacked inside the windows, with half a dozen mastiffs, a pit bull, a pet rattlesnake, a small flock of macaws (including a twenty-two-year-old named Sandino, with one leg—owl attack), an African gray parrot singing along to Sesame Street, and tables full of crystal quartz and turquoise pieces collected from the arroyos nearby. She’s probably painting canvases to communicate with “Star Beings.” She is Leslie Marmon Silko, best known for her 1977 novel Ceremony.

Crossing

Russell Scott Valentino

Our editor-in-chief, Russell Valentino, is writing a series of posts from a trip across Eurasia via ferry, plane, and Trans-Siberian Railway.

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