Why We Chose It: “Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn
“Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn will be featured in an upcoming issue of Mid-American Review. “Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn is an astounding metafictional work that shifts the authorial lens back onto the author (fictional, in this case). Though the story maps out the traits and behaviors...
What We’re Reading: You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
I’ve been revisiting Alexandra Kleeman’s novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (HarperCollins, 2015). I find the novel fascinating in that it was written in a pre-Trump, pre-2020 America and yet it feels like the novel is, if anything, a postscript to the last few years. The novel deals with a woman, known only as “A,” dealing...
Why We Chose It: “Daughter” by Dana Deihl
Daughter by Dana Deihl was selected for publication by Mid-American Review staff for Vol. XLI. Daughter is a piece of magical realist fiction that centers around the story of a mother who gives birth to a ghost baby. For reasons unknown, the baby daughter is translucent, floats above surfaces, and has cold breath. Separated from her husband...
Featured Writer: Laura Walter
Laura Maylene Walter will read her work as part of the Prout Reading Series hosted by Bowling Green State University in Prout Chapel, January 26th, at 7:30pm. Laura Maylene Walter is an author, editor, and BGSU alum currently based in Cleveland Ohio. She has been published in Poets & Writers, The Sun, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, Slate, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, and many more...
An Interview with Jeff Fearnside
Jeff Fearnside, author of Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air, A Husband and Wife are One Satan, and, most recently, Ships in the Desert, is a writer of fabulous range and grace. After his poem “What We Call Home” was featured in Mid-American Review Vol. XLI, Jeff agreed to speak to a...
Fiction Review: Hoaxes and Other Stories
Hoaxes and Other Stories by Brian Dinuzzo. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022. 161 pages. $17.95, paperback. Right away, this book pulled me in. The titular Hoax, the leading story of the collection by Dinuzzo, is about a budding actor who keeps dying, found the victim of a number of terrible accidents, though each one reported...
Fiction Review: The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney
The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney. Columbus, OH, FORTHCOMING with Two Dollar Radio. 242 pages. $18.95, paperback. Many may fantasize about writing the Great American Novel, never working a nine-to-five job, and having constant unprotected sex without producing a child, but Kevin, the protagonist in The Red-Headed Pilgrim, fails in all of these respects. As...
Why We Chose It: ”On The Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing”
On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing, by Drew Calvin McCutchen, was selected for publication this spring and published in Mid-American Review Vol. XLI. On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing is a magical story about dreams, community, and the human experience. Readers follow one girl who, for no fault of her own, is unable...