Peter Tieryas

The 1980s were a contentious time in Korea. Following the 1979 assassination of dictator, Park Chung-hee, protests began springing up all over the country after one of his generals seized…

The Echoes of Hinterland series weaves a compelling narrative that is hopeful, tragic, and uplifting all at the same time. The protagonists, Myron and Sindra, make for unlikely heroes, but…

I loved The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. The Wall of Storms (WoS) is not just a brilliant follow up, but one of the greatest novels I’ve read. There…

There’s a new player in the literary field. Gamut is coming and will be edited by one of the busiest people in writing, Richard Thomas. Thomas is the author of…

Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s poetry is searing. In an earlier review about her new collection, Solar Maximum, I wrote: “The poetry drips in the twilight of loss, a decimating emotional scourge…

Michelle Bailat-Jones’ Fog Island Mountains is a literary feast, a gorgeous excavation of perspective and how it shapes suffering. A writer and translator, Jones’ Fog Island Mountains won the 2013…

The effect gravity and memory have on language is the relationship which propels Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Solar Maximum. The poetry drips in the twilight of loss, a decimating emotional scourge…

When Janice and I started Entropy, we specifically wanted to create a venue where people would feel as comfortable talking about Super Mario Brothers and Silent Hill as they would…

A Raskolnikoff by Emmanuel Bove Translated by Mitchell Abidor Red Dust Books, 105 pps In the introduction to A Raskolnikoff by Emmanuel Bove, Brian Evenson refers to a “secret history”…

Prepared to be crushed to death. Or at least feel the palpable intensity of Gabino Iglesias’s Hungry Darkness (Severed Press). This is a taut, subterranean thriller that almost never lets…

In Disintegration by Richard Thomas, the breakdown of the mind is represented in his breakdown of language, a lexicon of destruction, dissipation, and dissolution. Violence is both lyrical and jarring,…

Murder, sexual innuendo, and crime mixed together in the strange adventure game known as the Portopia Serial Murder Case (Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken). Designed by a young Yuji Horii in…

Being by Zach Ellis (Instant Future, 2015) is transformative. It’s a memoir about change and identity. There’s a loose structure, layers that aren’t so much chronological as they are thematic,…

I don’t like finishing essay books from beginning to end. I like reading them in random order, sometimes, only reading 1-2, leaving it for a month, and then coming back…