Author: Kelly Hydrick

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” – Jessamyn West (To See the Dream, 1956) Introduction “In a substantially altered world, when sea-level rise has swallowed the Sundarbans and made cities like Kolkata, New York, and…

Provocative as in to provoke, as in to provoke interest. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: conversation is flirtation. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation I greatly enjoyed Topics of Conversation, Miranda Popkey’s…

*Note: This review has been updated (as of 1/25/2020) to reflect the controversy surrounding the author and her depiction of the migrant experience, a story that she arguably had little right to tell. I failed…

She would walk along that basement corridor for another twenty-six years, each day cut and folded by the belief that just beyond the museum’s worn paths and daily rituals, there lies the possibility of something…

TEN years ago I volunteered as an English as a Foreign Language tutor for a refugee resettlement agency in central Pennsylvania. During that time I worked with a Christian Karen family from south-eastern Myanmar*: father,…

Recently, BookBrowse sent me a copy of a short story collection by “one of America’s best kept secrets”: Lucia Berlin’s Evening In Paradise: More Stories. Berlin evokes Shirley Jackson (minus the gothic vibes) and Raymond…

LET’S start with a confession: I am a historian and I have never read Gilgamesh. I didn’t read it in graduate school. I didn’t read it in college. I didn’t even read an excerpt in…

IF roses, all roses, suddenly disappeared, would your memory of them fade away as if they had never existed? This is the premise of Yoko Ogawa’s compelling dystopian novel, The Memory Police. On an unnamed…

Embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2011, Syria has long been subject to coups, repressive regimes, and state sanctioned surveillance.* Death Is Hard Work, the latest novel from Syrian author Khaled Khalifa, is infused with…