Suspend Your Disbelief

Search Results: miriam poli

Essays |

Oh My! What Is That?: Strange Objects (Part I: Joy Williams’s “Congress”)

by Elizabeth Mayer

…Once born to fruition, the lamp elicits yet another surprising response in Miriam: Miriam, expecting to be repulsed by the thing, was enthralled instead. It had a dark blue shade and a gold-colored cord and a sixty-watt bulb. A brighter bulb would be pushing it, Jack said. Miriam could not resist the allure of the little lamp. She often found herself sitting beside it, staring at it, the harsh brown hairs, the dainty pasterns, the polished black h…


Interviews |

Writing as Bricklaying: An Interview with Miriam Polli

by Donna Baier Stein

…’s worked to see this important project come to fruition. I was happy when Miriam shared some of the experiences on her non-traditional path to publication with me. Interview: Miriam Polli Donna Baier Stein: I know first-hand that it can be a real challenge to combine the responsibilities of family with writing. Can you talk a little about your own experiences with this issue? Miriam Polli: My love for writing has always been there, but my family,…


Reviews |

The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews

by Lee Thomas

…onderfully: What do you think? [Thebes] asked. She spun around and did a few jumping jacks. She teetered around like Chaplin, twirling an imaginary cane. You just … I don’t know … You’re beautiful, though. Definitely. (166) Miriam Toews pulls it off just as brilliantly: one hot mess of a family, but a book so enchanting it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the page. For Further Reading Interviews with Miriam Toews from Powell’s and Bookslut….


Reviews |

All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews

by Eleanor J. Bader

…has done. Her sister Yolandi, six years her junior, and the protagonist of Miriam Toews’s new novel, has always been her confidante and accomplice. Together, the pair has spent decades exploring, gossiping, and testing the waters of adulthood and identity. Indeed, they were a mighty duo until Elf (as she is known to family and friends) developed a serious mental illness in her 40s that left her not only clinically depressed, but suicidal. All My P…


Interviews |

The Trickster Answers So Many Questions: An Interview with Rosalie Morales Kearns

by Philip Graham

…f himself. Father Kevin is a lovable guy. Not only does he have a crush on Miriam, but he’s in awe of her: “when he daydreams about Our Lady appearing to him in a vision, […] she looks like Miriam Ramos.” He wouldn’t put it past her to be able to walk through walls. He tries not to think about her as he’s going to sleep, but she enters his dream anyway, in triple-goddess form as the three Marys at the foot of the Cross (Miriam is Hebrew for Mary)….


Reviews |

Dysfunction by Annam Manthiram

by Rosalie Morales Kearns

…g insults and casual violence, then stalks him when he breaks up with her. Miriam is a person who pours hand sanitizer into the eyes and mouth of a semi-conscious flu sufferer, a person who tosses a gerbil onto the road (she had it in her trunk to bring to Jerry, and decides it’s no longer of use). Don’t look for a redemptive ending (not for nothing is the book’s title Dysfunction), but the author does provide a beautifully ironic twist: dreadful…


Essays |

Oh My! What Is That?: Strange Objects (Part II: Yoko Ogawa’s “Sewing for the Heart”)

by Elizabeth Mayer

…frivolity of our consumerism and our disregard for nonhuman creatures. As Miriam’s source of solace, the lamp also highlights the lack of intimacy within Miriam’s human relationships. Through her attachment to the lamp, we see the failings of her connection with Jack. We see her reaching out for something more than a tepid existence and a lackluster relationship with a man. The lamp is her path to the celestial unknown. In “Sewing for the Heart,”…


Interviews |

An Interview with James Magruder

by Kathy Flann

…things? It’s almost like that fantasy of knowing. James Magruder, photo by Miriam Berkley Right, and that’s one of the reasons why I don’t ever want to leave that dorm. That’s why I deliberately left the last coda in the present tense, so it’s always happening. It’s always happening. Yes! I love that. And it wasn’t until the long last grind of rewriting that–so much time had passed–that it became a historical novel. I started it at age thirty-six…


Interviews |

The American Dilemma: An Interview with Tyler McMahon

by J. Reuben Appelman

…e farm labor forces in the Midwest and West, but in the business world, in politics, and in the media. So, it’s crazy to think that this massive population of people who are now so widely accepted by so many as integral to the structuring of our society are also so widely shoved-aside. I won’t ask you to try to explain racism but how does Dream of Another America tackle this bipolarity of the American consciousness? It is crazy. This is part of th…


Interviews |

Writing to Please Myself: An Interview with Kim Magowan

by Michelle Ross

…iting “Family Games.” I am also attached to my linked stories, the Ben and Miriam ones (“Brining,” “This Much”) and the ones about Laurel (“Eleanor of Aquitaine,” “Warmer, Colder,” “On Air,” “Pop Goes the Weasel”). My writing group of the time really didn’t like one of the Laurel stories—they found “Warmer, Colder” disturbing. I remember you talking me off the ledge about that story, convincing me that it was not only worth including, but one of m…




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