Blog – Page 41 of 116

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

by Alecsander Zapata

March 12, 2020

Posted on March 12, 2020 (March 10, 2020) by Zack Ravas

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 […]

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

by Alicia Long

March 9, 2020

Posted on March 9, 2020 (March 6, 2020) 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 […]

Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres

by Chia-Chia Lin

March 5, 2020

Posted on March 5, 2020 (March 4, 2020) 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 […]

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

by Zack Ravas

March 4, 2020

Posted on March 4, 2020 (March 3, 2020) 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 […]

Talking Shop: Chia-Chia Lin on Writers’ Workshops, Pitfalls and Inspiration

by Alicia Long

March 2, 2020

Posted on March 2, 2020 (February 27, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel The Unpassing (FSG) was released last year to widespread acclaim (it was named one of the Best Books of 2019 by TIME, The Washington Post, and Esquire). Her short story “Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres” was featured in the Bay Area issue. And soon Lin will be teaching a Fiction Workshop that you can apply to now. Lin recently shared her thoughts on the Writers’ Workshop process, as well as some of the pitfalls students can avoid. ZYZZYVA: What do you think a Fiction Workshop can offer writers who feel their piece is […]

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

by ZYZZYVA Staff

February 28, 2020

Posted on February 28, 2020 (February 28, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Our Staff Recommends for February 2020 includes a look back at some of the most acclaimed films of last year, a novel by Nicole Krauss, and more—so here’s a sampling of what we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately: Alicia Long, Intern: In 2019, director Lulu Wang made waves with the indie dramedy The Farewell. Although 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians certainly drew a bigger crowd at the box office, the undoubtable success of these two films so close together made the much-welcome case that there is in fact an audience for Asian–American stories in film. That said, The Farewell […]

Draw a Bigger Circle: Q&A with Joyce Jenkins

by Meryl Natchez

February 26, 2020

Posted on February 26, 2020 (February 25, 2020) by Zack Ravas

To anyone in touch with the Bay Area literary scene, the publication Poetry Flash is part of the furniture—comfortable, essential, taken for granted. Its small office on Fourth Street in Berkeley is crammed with books, journals, and broadsides—a crush of continually incoming poetry, reviews, and fiction managed by Joyce Jenkins. She is the force behind this literary nexus, and has been dedicated to the Bay Area poetry world since the early ’70s, working daily to serve that community and advocate for the arts in general. This interview describes her history with Poetry Flash and how the non-profit organization has grown […]

‘The Town’ by Shaun Prescott: A Legacy of Erasure

by Zack Ravas

February 21, 2020

Posted on February 21, 2020 (March 3, 2020) by Zack Ravas

The Town (249 pages; FSG), the first novel by Shaun Prescott, takes place in New South Wales, a region of Prescott’s native Australia that was once home to the Wiradjuri people. The United Kingdom’s colonial campaign in the region erupted into war by 1824, which led to famine among the Wiradjuri, as well as to the destruction of many of their sacred sites. With this legacy of erasure in place, The Town takes a look at life on the fringes of contemporary New South Wales as our unnamed narrator visits the titular town, an isolated smattering of petrol stations, fast […]

A Visit to Two Art Fairs

by Dominica Phetteplace

February 11, 2020

Posted on February 11, 2020 (February 10, 2020) by Zack Ravas

In the Instagram era, the consumption of art can become conflated with narcissism. If you can’t take a selfie with, does it even exist? The flip side of this is art that warmly invites the viewer in. I thought of this as I was turning a music box handle at the FOG Art + Design Fair, which ran from January 16-19 at Fort Mason. The music box was part of Anri Sala’s 2016 installation No Window, No Cry, (Olavo Redig de Campos) displayed by the Marian Goodman Gallery. A freestanding white wooden frame encloses a clear glass pane that is […]

‘Creatures’ by Crissy Van Meter: Bound to the Sea

by Alicia Long

February 6, 2020

Posted on February 6, 2020 (February 4, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Set among the seasons and temperaments of a fictional island just off the coast of Southern California, Crissy Van Meter’s first novel, Creatures (256 pages; Algonquin Books), explores the world of Winter Island through the eyes of its narrator, Evangeline. Her story begins just three days before her wedding as she awaits her fiance’s return from the sea, even as a storm grows on the horizon and a whale’s carcass lodged deep in the harbor fouls the air. With her fiance possibly lost at sea and with a rotting whale to dispose of, Evie must also make do with the […]

‘Dead Heat’ by Benedek Totth: A Record from the Abyss

by Zack Ravas

February 4, 2020

Posted on February 4, 2020 (February 3, 2020) by Zack Ravas

In the Nineties, it wasn’t uncommon for a shocking film like Larry Clark’s 1995 Kids to be marketed as “The Movie Every Parent in America Should See”—the implication being, it’s occasionally worthwhile or even necessary for parents to subject themselves to outré youth movies so as to keep abreast of what their children may or may be doing outside of adult supervision. It’s difficult to make the same case, to parents or anyone, for Benedek Totth’s first novel, Dead Heat (251 pages; Biblioasis; translated by Ildikó Noémi Nagy). The book, which concerns a quartet of teenage boys in an unnamed […]

The Escape Artist: Bill Vollmann’s Remarkable Retreat into the Real

by Paul Wilner

January 30, 2020

Posted on January 30, 2020 (January 31, 2020) by Zack Ravas

An interview is by definition a species of performance: by the subject, struggling for definition, or invasion; and by the interlocutor, finding his or her own path in a journalistic enterprise perilously akin to speed dating. Conversations with William T. Vollmann (252 pages; University of Mississippi Press), edited by Daniel Lukes as part of the publisher’s “Literary Conversations” series, fulfills both functions. The incorrigibly ambitious Vollmann is the author of myriad explorations into Western mythologies, European history and literary journalistic inquiries into the roots of violence and environmental dystopia. His latest novel, The Lucky Star, returns to the Tenderloin underbelly […]