-
Aug 15, 2024 | 
video.startribune.com | Phil Morris |Kavita Kumar |Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Featured Videosnow playingAfter a stroke, this musician found his singing voice again with help from a special choir02:23Heavy T-storms may drop 1-2" of rain on southern Minnesota (including metro) tonight00:55Quake felt from L.A. to San Diego02:16Weather perfection into Wednesday morning, then midweek showers and T-storms return
-
Aug 15, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jackie Thomas-Kennedy |Jo Hamya
BooksFICTION: Jo Hamya’s novel unspools at an expert pace, exploring questions of performance and narrative. Jo Hamya (Sophie Davidson/Pantheon)Jo Hamya’s “The Hypocrite” toggles primarily between the perspectives of Sophia, a 28-year-old playwright in London, and her father, a famous writer who is referred to, pointedly, only as “Sophia’s father.”While her father attends a matinee of Sophia’s play, she sits above him at a rooftop restaurant, enduring a tense lunch with her mother.
-
Aug 7, 2024 | 
washingtonpost.com | Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Review by Jackie Thomas-KennedyAugust 7, 2024 at 12:42 p.m. EDTArtificial intelligence already plays a role in various daily transactions; to imagine that it will become truly omnipresent is not much of a stretch. To saturate a novel with the implications of such omnipresence is a different task. In “Hum,” Helen Phillips presents potential outcomes in measured, elegant, chilling prose.
-
Jul 17, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Sarah Manguso |Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Sarah Manguso's "Liars" — gorgeously written, eminently readable — is the study of a marriage. Narrator Jane, a writer, marries John Bridges, an aspiring artist with sporadic professional success. Jane examines her relationship with ruthless clarity and minute detail; the effect is of a report. She documents John's many failures — to do housework; to pay bills; to complete projects; to consider her — with a reserve that reflects how accustomed she has become to their incompatibility.
-
Mar 27, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Alexandra S. Tanner |Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Within the first few pages of Alexandra Tanner's dark, funny debut, sisters Poppy and Jules exhibit their capacity to indulge in the titular word. As a verb, it is among their central activities: They interrogate the source of Poppy's hives, the cleanliness of a restaurant, their parents' willingness to subsidize their lives in New York.
-
Feb 27, 2024 | 
thebrunswicknews.com | Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
"I did not want to have a job," the protagonist of "Green Dot" declares. Hera Stephen, the twentysomething narrator of Madeleine Gray's debut, is a newly hired community moderator at a Sydney newspaper, a job to which she brings multiple arts degrees and acidic wit.
-
Feb 27, 2024 | 
dailyitem.com | Madeleine Gray |Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
"I did not want to have a job," the protagonist of "Green Dot" declares. Hera Stephen, the twentysomething narrator of Madeleine Gray's debut, is a newly hired community moderator at a Sydney newspaper, a job to which she brings multiple arts degrees and acidic wit. Forced to make internal calculations such as "Coffee: good. Money: none," she reluctantly accepts her post. Hera's thoughts on labor — specifically, the plastic quality of workplace communication — are biting and funny.
-
Feb 24, 2024 | 
pressherald.com | Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Diane Oliver was a graduate student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop when she died in a motorcycle crash at age 22. Before her death in 1966, she published four stories in such journals as the Sewanee Review. It’s hard to know what brilliance she might have bestowed on the world had she lived longer, but the newly published collection “Neighbors and Other Stories” provides some inkling. Oliver’s perceptive, insightful work reflects great talent and ambition.
-
Feb 21, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Madeleine Gray |Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
"I did not want to have a job," the protagonist of "Green Dot" declares. Hera Stephen, the twentysomething narrator of Madeleine Gray's debut, is a newly hired community moderator at a Sydney newspaper, a job to which she brings multiple arts degrees and acidic wit. Forced to make internal calculations such as "Coffee: good. Money: none," she reluctantly accepts her post. Hera's thoughts on labor — specifically, the plastic quality of workplace communication — are biting and funny.
-
Feb 16, 2024 | 
washingtonpost.com | Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Diane Oliver was a graduate student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop when she died in a motorcycle crash at age 22. Before her death in 1966, she published four stories in such journals as the Sewanee Review. It’s hard to know what brilliance she might have bestowed on the world had she lived longer, but the newly published collection “Neighbors and Other Stories” provides some inkling. Oliver’s perceptive, insightful work reflects great talent and ambition.
