A cheer for Small Beer

Small Beer is a teeny tiny press out of Easthampton, MA, founded by Gavin Grant and author of the highly acclaimed story collection Magic for Beginners Kelly Link. They publish like 2 books a year. We love small indie presses, especially when they do wonderful, unconventional books. Small Beer is the publisher of Elizabeth Hand’s [...]

The Quick and The Dead: A Review by Matthew Salesses

This is the fourteenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project “Thoughts are infusorial,” says Nurse Daisy, bard of Green Palms nursing home and one of the many characters populating Joy Williams’s sharp-as-the-reaper’s-scythe The [...]

Last Chance for Ethnos and 25 Books!

The end of the year approaches, and so does the end of Ethnos submissions and our 25 Books project. This week is your last chance to submit writing on ethnicity and race for our second anniversary issue. We are particularly in need of art submissions! Also, the 25 Books polls close December 31. So speed-read [...]

Vote for Your Favorite Books

The end of the year approaches, and with it, the closing of Fringe’s 25 Books Poll. In a nutshell, we were appalled that the New York Times top 25 list included only 2 women, one of whom was the only writer of color on the list. We vowed to make our own list, where the [...]

Vote for the Best Novel of the Last 25 Years

Here at Fringe, we love novels, writers of color, and women writers (along with a whole lot of other things like feminism, culture, and judging from our blog tags, more feminism). That’s why the New York Times’ list of the Best 25 Novels of the Last 25 Years made us sad. (As the Guerilla Girls [...]

Two Cities: A Love Story by John Edgar Wideman: A Review by Katie Spencer

This is the thirteenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project It may be that the most enduring, affecting art produced within modern cultures develops when cultures are in crisis. Think about the greatest [...]

Bastard Out of Carolina: A Review by Elizabeth Stark

This is the twelfth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project. Dorothy Allison’s devastating novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, was the last fiction book I read before entering journalism school. The day I started [...]

Fringe 12 is Live

Issue 12 focuses on image and icons. We’ve got pieces on hair and teeth, AIDS, and myth. Read on, brave reader, and don’t forget to vote as part of our 25 books project. A gloss of this month’s issue: Brett Allen Smith’s short story Needle! Now! Broken! takes what could be a horribly sentimental plot [...]

Heartbreak Hotel by Gabrielle Burton: A Review by Katie Spencer

This is the eleventh of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project. Gabrielle Burton’s Heartbreak Hotel runs each of its engines at full capacity. It is completely intelligent, completely feminist, completely hilarious, completely furious, completely [...]

Jump at the Sun: A Review by Jillian D’Urso

This is the tenth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project. There’s something about reading a book by someone you see on a regular basis—something that makes the book somehow more personal, more complex, [...]