Issue 42
-
A Review of Tony Koji Wallin-Sato’s Poetry collection “Okaerinasai”
by LIT Managing and Poetry Editor, Richard Berwind
The cover of Tony Koji Wallin-Sato’s Okaerinasai depicts a black and white photo of an isolated farm recolored in an off-white ivory and surrounded by the encroaching black limbs of a tree. The square photo sits in a matte white frame with a larger blue border: a piece of art hung up on the wall of a gallery, or perhaps a home. The rest of the collection takes a reader on a journey of the singular, a journey of the collective, and the intricate relationship between both as Wallin-Sato asks us what even constitutes a home through the opening definition of his title.
-
An interview with Alexa Yasemin Brahme (MFA ’22) on her debut novel “Good News”
by LIT Interviews and Books Editor Jonathan Kesh
Good News, the debut novel by Alexa Yasemin Brahme, weaves a web of many different topics from art to immigrant families to dissections of womanhood, but the title reflects the central focus of a young artist waiting for things to get better.
The novel follows a struggling painter named Maggie — although her family and a certain ex-boyfriend know her by her Turkish name, Müjde — as several points of stress in her life converge at once. Her studio art MFA is reaching its end,
-
Searching Childhood: Driftwood Center at Night; Daughterland; Tongue-lied Girl; Lobotomy; Undaughter *
art by Jeff Hartnett
by Maggie Wolff
*We at LIT admire Maggie's bold and unflinching prose. But, we would be remiss without supplying readers with a trigger warning for strong content: trauma and emotional abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, behavioral health hospitalization and discussions of suicide.Searching Childhood: Driftwood Center at Night
This is where you remember the night memories: your sleeping mother, her sleeping daughters, a night so still someone should have heard the crunch of grass under the men’s shoes.
