Public Republic

Jasmina Tacheva Talks with Artist Viktor Mazhlekov Hi Viktor, you call your style “astral postrealism” – what is it characterized by? Astral postrealism is a wink at the audience, it’s not something I take seriously. I like to give eccentric names to my paintings, and just like that, quite spontaneously, appeared the name of the […]

Peter Cowlam Photo: MAMJODH Borges – always a free thinker – at no time espoused Christian theology, but did regard one of Christianity’s foremost theological poets as having authored ‘the apex’ of all literature – namely Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), whose Commedia continues to be studied, and is regularly translated, by other writers. Dante composed his […]

Joan Donaldson Photo: RonAlmog From the foam I pulled myself from Lake Michigan and peeled away my selkie skin. Waves tugged at my lengthening ankles. My new toes dug into the wet sand, weathered bits of quartz and feldspar. The last rays of the angled sun mingled silver and apricot across the ripples, as I […]

Claudia Bierschenk Photo: L-plate big cheese 9 November 1989 was the day of our weekly school disco. That particular day was supposed to be the last time I’d ever go to the school disco. It was the night I said goodbye to all my friends, because it was very likely I would never see them […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s interview with writer Nancy Jensen Nancy Jensen is a graduate of the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Northwest Review, Other Voices, Under the Sun, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, and The Louisville Review. She is presently at work on a […]

Nancy Jensen Stories: The Ones I Married Ever since I can remember, I have thought of myself as divorced. It started with my mother—trim, bright-eyed, thirtyish—with a sense of self-assurance so powerful that, for much of my childhood, I believed she had created me by herself out of sheer force of will. She made it […]

Barry George Photo: The Wandering Angel About midway through his essays in Sun after Dark (2004), Pico Iyer refers to the Tibetan travels of the early-twentieth-century adventurer Alexandra David-Neel. According to Iyer, the French woman described herself as “a Westerner, a disciple of Descartes,” an expression which Iyer paraphrases by saying she was “committed, in […]

Brian Russell Photo: indi.ca J.R. Moehringer’s lyrical and deeply moving memoir, “The Tender Bar,” employs great use of wordplay – including literary allusions, alliteration, repetition, and reversals. The title itself is the first example of Moehringer’s love of words and wordplay in that it is a play on the word “bartender,” flipping the two words […]