Reviewed by Jessica Ribera Evoking riveting murder and courtroom dramas from its start, Victor Suthammanont’s debut novel Hollow Spaces combines the satisfaction of solving a mystery and the adrenaline of a thriller. With tight, descriptive language and carefully developed depictions of emotion and relationships, it also presents as a literary family drama in which the siblings’ opposing beliefs about their…
Edited by Cambria Matlow and Dave Oei Though for many of us these times feel unprecedented, the need to make “good trouble” is timeless. The term, coined by civil rights icon and United States Representative John Lewis, points to taking necessary actions of resistance against systems of oppression in service to our shared humanity and collective liberation. These works, ranging…
By Breen Nolan The characters in Kyle Seibel’s debut short story collection Hey You Assholes (CLASH, 2025) are the freaks and weirdos of the world. They’re the everyday people struggling to figure it out. They’re doing the best they can. Whether Seibel’s writing about a someone experiencing an existential crisis inside of a Taco Bell kitchen, a dying father’s pursuit of pork…
Interviewed by Jessica Ribera This month marks the paperback release of Abby Geni’s second short story collection, The Body Farm. In the collection, Geni has created a laboratory for studying humanity’s relationship to the risks and weaknesses—but also incredible powers—of our bodies. The characters grapple with common yet serious challenges, from physical and mental illness to abuses and lost love.…
Interview by T.J. Tranchell Author John Palisano has worn many hats, among them musician, filmmaker, teacher, president of a writers’ organization, and fan of horror and sci-fi. His latest novel, Requiem, is a gothic-in-space following a crew as they visit an artificial moon, the Eden, designed to serve as a sort of cemetery. Grief, music, and the ever-present threat of…
By Breen Nolan I first met Emily May the summer of 2021 in a Zoom room. We were attending the Southampton Writers Conference and spent five days workshopping our essays with a small group of other writers. It was the height of the Delta variant and the West was burning; everything felt bleak. But May’s writing beckoned to something in…
By Breen Nolan Elizabeth Ellen’s dazzling and darkly funny novel, American Thighs, follows Tatum Grant, a former child actor who steals her daughter’s identity to start her life over as a high school cheerleader. Tatum’s troubled upbringing is the catalyst for her move from Hollywood to Elkhart, Indiana, a town with painful ties to Tatum’s past. Written in interview style,…
Reviewed by Eric Martin In his latest novel, Theft, Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah spins a tapestry of interwoven lives in Tanzania, where social mores both connect and divide. It’s a world defined by family—historic and impromptu, broken and reimagined. In this world, the lives of individuals are powerfully shaped by a family history that the individual has no power to control.…
By Breen Nolan Award-winning author Edgar Gomez is back with his second book Alligator Tears, an arresting memoir-in-essays that chronicles his experiences growing up in poverty with a single mother amidst the backdrop of touristy Florida. Gomez’s writing evinces a skillful analysis vital for examining one’s life on the page. Whether interrogating the systems hell-bent on silencing marginalized individuals or exploring the path to…
By Brian Hooper The Coachella Review first discovered Toronto native Chris Klassen when we published his short story “Thank You No Thank You” in our Summer 2023 issue. What we’ve learned is that Klassen isn’t afraid of the big questions. His first novel, An Individual, is an epic story about an anonymous man on a spiritual journey to unearth life’s…