by Maxamina Muro In our daily lives, we can communicate with people who speak and read entirely different languages with the aid of translation software, though it works best with brief pronouncements. To communicate entire stories, whether a novel, short story, or poem, we need human translators like Kianny N. Antigua. Antigua uses the Spanish language to communicate the complexities…
Interviewed by Luree Scott In Pete Hsu’s short story collection If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home, the struggles and sorrows of childhood are brought to light with a fully compassionate view. Family, friends, and strangers change the trajectory of one another’s lives in small ways that are rarely noticed, but Hsu has a way of enlarging moments…
Interviewed by Michael Medina Cecil Castellucci does it all. In addition to writing for DC Comics (Batgirl; Shade, the Changing Girl; Female Furies), she pens music, opera librettos, novels, and everything in between. With her new graphic novel, Shifting Earth (illustrated by Flavia Biondi and colored by Fabiana Mascolo), the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author brings a “hope…
By Kaia Gallagher An award-winning novelist and short story writer, Erika Krouse published her first book of nonfiction, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, in March of 2022. Described by The Washington Post as masterful and mesmerizing, Tell Me Everything recounts Krouse’s role as a private investigator who gathered evidence during a five-year investigation into a…
By Rob Bowman Patrick O’Neil spent the golden age of American punk rock touring as a roadie and road manager with now-legendary bands Dead Kennedys, Flipper, T.S.O.L., Subhumans, and others. That time—the misadventures on the road, the grime and needs of addiction, and the violence of the punk stage—fills the pages of O’Neil’s new memoir, Anarchy at the Circle K:…
By Nicholas Belardes In Tyrell Johnson’s second novel, The Lost Kings, Jeanie King has to stitch together a violent, uncertain past in order to understand the mysterious disappearance of her brother and father. We’re right there with her, tight amid all her reliability and unreliability as a narrator. At times, her traumatic story reads like a case study of the…
by Jenny Hayes In Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, Jim Ruland chronicles the history of legendary independent punk/alternative rock label SST—an epic tale filled with rock-and-roll thrills, chaos, bad behavior, good times, shady financial maneuvers, lawsuits, cross-country tours, and many other twists and turns with an eclectic cast of misfits. Started in 1979 by Black…
by Fabrice B. Poussin The Coachella Review: Where were these photographs taken? Fabrice Poussin: All these were taken at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. TCR: How did you become interested in photography? FP: My sister, who is five years older than me, was first to get a camera and to experiment with it. I was nine then and was…
By Emily Schleiger The Coachella Review had the pleasure of reprinting Maryann Aita’s essay “The Geography of Flight” in our Winter 2021 issue. The essay also appears in Aita’s debut memoir Little Astronaut (ELJ Editions). Aita’s collection of essays deals with her childhood experience in the shadows of family members’ illnesses (anorexia, cancer, alcoholism), the ways in which she coped,…
By Sara Grimes In Natashia Deón’s second book, The Perishing, Lou, a Black youth with no memory of her past, wakes up fighting for her life in an alley in 1930’s Los Angeles. She gets taken under the wing of a police officer who helps her as she adjusts to life in a foster home. But, as Lou transitions…