Shawn Brodie can’t catch a break. All he was doing was trying to feed his poor family, and the poor kid (14 years old) gets busted for rustling for killing a broken-legged cow and tossed into prison with a passel … Continue reading →

Tell Cotten’s The Confessions of a Gunfighter is nearly pastiche, a well-crafted story not only in the tradition of Max Brand and Louis L’Amour, but one that could have been published in their era. Rondo Landon is  a good boy … Continue reading →

If anyone can prove to me there’s a better short story writer than Edith Pearlman, I’ll eat my keyboard. Why I haven’t stumbled on to her long ago is as big a puzzle to me as why I’ve missed all … Continue reading →

Phew, I’m glad that’s over. Lisa Alther’s first novel, Kinflicks, must have been a daring enterprise in its time (1976), especially for a female writer. All that sex in enormous quantities and varieties. Flouting of every imaginable social convention from female … Continue reading →

Today we welcome back to Writer Working Poet Laureate (Ukiah CA) Dan Barth, who recently contributed an enlightening and entertaining piece on the new world of Haiku. Today, his subject is the epigram, a form different, but not unrelated to … Continue reading →