We are proud to announce that The Brooklyn Review 2017 Print Issue has arrived! A compilation of pieces previously published online, the issue features cover art by Evan Paul English, an interview with Mary Gaitskill, works by Mac Wellman, Trinidad Escobar, Jessica Laser, and many other talents. Download the PDF […]
Review: The Hideout by Egon Hostovský
The Hideout, by Egon Hostovský, was first published in the U.S. in 1945, and now has been reissued by Pushkin Press in an English translation by Fern Long. The novel – really more of a novella, at roughly 120 pages – consists of one extended epistolary soliloquy-cum-confession-cum-suicide note. The writer […]
An Interview | Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill is the writer of three story collections, three novels and, most recently, a book of essays called Somebody with a Little Hammer. She was my teacher last summer at the New York State Writers’ Institute, where my classmates and I hiked, ate several kinds of fruit pie right […]
Five Poems | Ruben Rodriguez
Telling Grandma Stories At the end of Grandma Esther’s cul-de-sac, summer moon found me coins. Mexican money—round plata imbedded in roots. How do our hands find themselves soiled? Old man bursts through screen door, barking ¿Qué haces? I should have grabbed two handfuls of dirt and run. Instead, Grandma’s pursed […]
Drop-Menu Scheduling Calendar with Only One Black-Out Date | Anthony Madrid
When he took me out with his people, you could see he was ashamed of me. The next youngest guy there was twenty years older than I. Observe the parent bird strangely urging her babies from the nest. The poet’s eye is a mother bird, and the tears are jumping […]
Surface Tension | Evan Paul English
Evan Paul English was born in Meridian, Idaho. He received his BFA from University of Arizona, and earned his MFA from Pratt Institute in 2016. He has exhibited work across the United States, recently had a solo exhibition at NAPOLEON Gallery in Philadelphia, showcased work at […]
Three Poems | Linda Harris Dolan
come to the edge, the edge (a poem to dad) i have followed myself to a hotel balcony in switzerland and i still can’t decide whether to take on that new editing project. and i can’t figure out how to think about memory. do you think we were the wood […]
In Divers Fashion | Jessica Laser
I sat in a hot tub late one wedding And weathered falling branches Like a thing that could transcend me But that I could still carry If I had to go. The tub was Like an endless conversation about authenticity No more than two feet deep. And you thought you […]
The Tower | Adam Scott Mazer
The Psychedelic Tragedy of the Donner Party CHAPTER III Winter The Five of Coins (Gale-force winds blow, swallowing sound and blasting snow across rock. Everything is an endless field of white.) (From the whiteness emerge a few dark shapes. They yell at each other.) Stanton: I CAN’T […]
Three Collages
James Scales lives and works in New York City’s oldest house. His visual art has appeared in The Birds We Piled Loosely and Sinker Cypress Review. His poetry has appeared in Sinker Cypress Review, Go Places, and Cadenza Magazine, and is forthcoming in Yes Poetry. He […]
Review: Skeleton Coast by Elizabeth Arnold
Skeleton Coast (Flood Editions) opens with an epigraph from George Herbert’s 17th century poem, “The Temper (I).” Herbert’s poem recounts his soul’s ecstasy and anguish, begging of God, “rack me not to such a vast extent,” but, in the stanza Elizabeth Arnold quotes, Herbert submits to God’s torture: “Stretch or […]