National Poetry Month: ‘We Californians’

by Meg Hurtado Bloom

Posted on by Zack Ravas

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ll be sharing a poem a week from our archives. The following poem, “We Californians” by Meg Hurtado Bloom, is from our recent Bay Area Issue. You can read more poetry from Meg Hurtado Bloom in the issue itself, which is currently available from our Store. We never admit we have a problem. We compress. We knead. We withdraw toxins. Sun-blind and blond-hearted, we hang around Valhalla, keeping old warriors alive. It’s all super-casual. Our host, the spectral Spanish king— whose every vein burned blue as winter wind, who left us names for every hillside— has betrothed […]

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Shelter in Place Compatibility Quiz

by Christine Sneed

Posted on by Zack Ravas

For this period of forced togetherness and self-quarantine, take this quiz to determine if you and your mate really are suited to spend so much time together. 1. Fill in the blank: I am a ________ person A. Dog B. Cat C. Horse D. Carp E. Squirrel 2. If you chose “carp,” you did so because A. It is a difficult word for your Uncle Jeff, the family bully, to pronounce B. You are indifferent to cats, dogs, and horses, and squirrels are imbeciles C. As an anagrammable word, it is subpar, but you’re crap at Boggle anyway D. Carp […]

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‘Born Slippy’ by Tom Lutz: Unchecked by Moral Scrutiny

by Michelle Latiolais

Posted on by Zack Ravas
Tom Lutz novel Born Slippy

With great guilty pleasure I left off reading A Journal Of The Plague Year by Daniel Defoe and picked up Born Slippy (310 pages; Repeater Books) by the critic and scholar Tom Lutz. This is Lutz’s first novel, and on show are the wild and woolly qualities of the best first novels, I am happy to report. There is no bubonic plague to drive the narrative and to provide the agar within which we observe human behavior, no. Instead, there is in Born Slippy a character named Dmitry, a one-man plague. Frank, the novel’s central intelligence, regrets many, many times […]

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ZYZZYVA Recommends March 2020: What to Read, Watch, & Listen to

by ZYZZYVA Staff

Posted on by Zack Ravas

There’s no doubt March has been an incredibly stressful time for our community—it’s our hope with this Staff Recommends that we can, at the very least, recommend some books, graphic novels, films, and other works that might offer welcome relief or distraction as we all Shelter in Place: Alicia Long, Intern: On the upside of things, if you’re stuck at home there’s likely ample time to delve into the ever-accumulating list of shows you’ve been meaning to watch. And with only two seasons and twelve short episodes between them, Fleabag is the perfect series to ease your way into binge-mode. […]

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Limited Time Offer: 3 Issues for $35

by ZYZZYVA

Posted on by Zack Ravas
ZYZZYVA 3-issue subscription

With our milestone 35th Anniversary issue shipping soon, the best way to ensure you promptly receive it is if you have a subscription. To make that much easier to do, we’re offering a special deal till this Sunday: Get our next three issues for only $35! The 35th Anniversary Issue features fiction by Bryan Washington, Lysley Tenorio, Kristen Iskandrian, and Peter Orner; poetry by Meg Hurtado Bloom, Troy Jollimore, and Jennifer Richter; nonfiction by Lauren Markham; an interview with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton; and much more. So be safe. Mind the six feet of distance.And get ready for a wonderful issue! […]

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35th Anniversary Issue

by ZYZZYVA

Posted on by ZYZZYVA
ZYZZYVA Volume 36, #1, Spring 2020 (No. 118)

Our 35th Anniversary Issue. Fiction: Bryan Washington, Lysley Tenorio, Elizabeth Reichert, Santiago José Sánchez, Mark Chiusano, Peter Orner, and Kristen Iskandrian. Nonfiction: Lauren Markham, Dave Madden. Interview: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton talks to John McMurtrie. Poetry: Meg Hurtado Bloom, Lisa Higgs, Troy Jollimore, Debora Kuan, Jennifer Richter, Dujie Tahat, John Sibley Williams, and Emma Winsor Wood. Art: Anne Siems. You can purchase a copy of No. 118 here, or order a subscription to ZYZZYVA now. […]

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‘Barn 8’ by Deb Olin Unferth: A Comically Extreme Heist

by Zack Ravas

Posted on by Zack Ravas

The premise of Deb Olin Unferth’s latest novel, Barn 8 (252 pages; Graywolf Press), involves the heist of a comically extreme number of chickens—yet to label the novel a mere comedy would be tantamount to calling Kurt Vonnegut a “humor writer.” Sure, the book is funny, quite funny, but it is much more. Unferth is tackling, with great wit and technical skill, topics as pressing as Big Agriculture, the humane treatment of animals, and the impossibility of maintaining ideological purity in any social movement. The reality is that Americans love eggs: free range or not, we will eat as many […]

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New Book Releases to Read During Shelter in Place

by ZYZZYVA Staff

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Readers and friends, we hope you are staying safe during these trying times. We are all adjusting to the societal changes that are taking place due to the impact of COVID-19. It occurs to us that many new book releases have not received the coverage they would have during a normal news cycle, and their authors’ book tours have been cancelled due to safety concerns. As such, we thought we would collect a list of such books here in the hopes of giving them their due attention, with a reminder that you can order from Bookshop.org to support your local […]

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‘Here I Am!’ by Pauline Holdstock: The Messenger of an Urgent Truth

by Alecsander Zapata

Posted on by Zack Ravas
Pauline Holdstock novel Here I Am!

The past years have seen a renewed interest in capturing the adolescent perspective. In shows like Netflix’s Stranger Things and films like Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit,  the earnestness of a child’s voice in a period when everyone in the audience seems to have something to say seems both timely and necessary. Pauline Holdstock’s latest novel Here I Am! (292 pages; Biblioasis) embraces this trend, shining its narrative spotlight on Frankie Walters, an incredibly intelligent six-year-old with Avoidant Personality Disorder. When his mother dies while his father is out of town, Frankie is left alone; the young boy attempts to tell […]

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‘Track Changes’ by Sayed Kashua: A Loss that Reverberates

by Alicia Long

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Sayed Kashua’s fourth novel, Track Changes (240 pages; Grove Press; translated by Mitch Ginsburg), is a haunting exploration of the unplaceable loss that reverberates through one man’s memory. Saeed, an Arab-Israeli man hailing from the small Palestinian village of Tira, has long maintained a passion for writing, and he develops a career of ghost-authoring other people’s life stories. As he learns to craft memoirs, drawing out stories and observations from taped interviews with his subjects, he finds that his true power lies in editing. At first, he transcribes the stories precisely as they are relayed to him, but he comes […]

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Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres

by Chia-Chia Lin

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Chia-Chia Lin is the author of the novel The Unpassing (FSG). Below is an excerpt from her short story “Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres” from the Bay Area Issue, which you can purchase at the link. You can also apply to our Fiction Workshop with Chia-Chia Lin by submitting here. When Delepine first started running, the air shredded her lungs. Like inhaling powdered glass. After a run, she kept right on sweating and her face kept coloring, peaking at its maximum carmine hue when she was doing something embarrassingly low-impact, like sitting at her desk and rattling […]

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‘The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories’ by Sam Pink: Conveying the Toil

by Zack Ravas

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Literature is full of characters who experience reversals of fortune or claw their way to the top; Sam Pink does not write about those people. His latest collection, The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories (268 pages; Soft Skull), is comprised of stories about the individuals who wash the dishes at your favorite restaurant, set the plates at your wedding, and yes, drive the ice cream truck through your neighborhood. In Pink’s writing style, words cascade down the page as he creates a line break after every sentence. The ample white space means it’s never long before the reader is […]

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