weekend reading

There’s a new(ish) literary journal in Austin, The Austin Review! From their most recent issue, An Execution, by Gabe Durham, is a comment about the death penalty and how, in our modern technological age, the internet grants a type of anonymity that often leads to less-than-well-thought-out commentary on serious issues- like the loss of life.

The Austin Review also has an online literary journal, Spotlight! Night of the Schwinn,  by Erica Mosley, is about preserving mementos of lost loved ones, and also about daughters’ relationships with their mothers.

Shoes, by Siamak Vossoughi, is a beautiful short story from The Kenyon Review. Here’s one of my favorite parts: “There are men whom you can’t describe without starting with their hope for their people. You’ll start describing their hair color or eye color or style of dress, and you’ll think, what does this have to do with them? What does this have to do with the look in their eye as they’re walking down the street, the way that a universe is being filtered through another day of striving, a striving that is not just their striving but their people’s striving?” Whoa.

From Midnight Breakfast,  Every Super Painful Thing That Isn’t Dying, by Colin Winnette, is a short story about suffering, but surviving.

The currently featured fiction on Covered with Fur is Ulysses S. Grant, His Horses, by Kelly Ramsey. It is a beautifully written piece about, well, Ulysses S. Grant and his horses.