Author: Salik Shah
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Annie-Ted Complex
Photograph by José Mandojana / The California Sunday Magazine ^ I’ve reached a phase where my fast-food approach to creative writing simply doesn’t work. It’s not enough to get printed. Now I’m asking editors to hold a piece because I think it could be better, which means I’m making no new submissions for a while. And…
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The Apex Book of World SF 4
The Archivist by Julie Dillon © My review of The Apex Book of World SF 4 is now up at Strange Horizons. Excerpt: The first story in the collection is Usman T. Malik’s Bram Stoker-winning “The Vaporization Enthalpy Of a Peculiar Pakistani Family.” I’ve read it many times here and elsewhere. This time I was struck by the author’s…
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The Devourers by Indra Das
My review of Indra Das’s debut novel, ‘The Devourers,’ is now up at Strange Horizons. Excerpt: Much of the conflict in The Devourers comes from Alok, Fenrir, and Gévaudan’s guilt and inability to reproduce among their own kind, and Cyrah’s struggle to come to terms with the werewolves’ identity and sexuality. Ultimately, she refuses to become…
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Reading and Writing Long Poems
Once I get inside a long poem, said Ron Padgett, I never want to get out. That’s what happened to me when I started reading Anne Carson’s ‘The Glass Essay‘ on her birthday, earlier this week. I didn’t know the poem would be 7877 words long, which turned out to be a good thing. I…