by Ryan R. Campbell | Mar 9, 2021 | And Ampersand, Book Review, Publicity
And Ampersand: Short Stories on Endings and Beginnings (of a Sort) has hardly been out for a full day, and it’s already receiving rave reviews. Thanks to Books and Quills Magazine for this review, in which they wrote— And Ampersand is one of those rare books...
by Ryan R. Campbell | Feb 22, 2021 | Book Review
Full disclosure: I watched the Netflix limited series before I read the book, but even if I hadn’t, I still think I might prefer the show to the book. Don’t hate me. It’s not that The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis is a bad book by any means....
by Ryan R. Campbell | Feb 15, 2021 | Book Review
If you’ve recommended me a book this year, first of all—thank you. Second of all, thank you. Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea was recommended to me by author and fellow WWA board member Silvia Acevedo, and I’m so grateful...
by Ryan R. Campbell | Feb 2, 2021 | Book Review
Were it not for my trouble settling into it, The Vanishing Half would be, for me, a near-perfect book. Do its character’s struggles ground readers concretely in those characters and how they choose to be (or not to be) defined by those challenges? Yes. Does the...
by Ryan R. Campbell | Jan 18, 2021 | And Ampersand, Book Review, On Writing
If you’re a longtime reader (or listener) of mine, you know 2020 was a year of reckoning, identity-wise. Who did I want to be as a writer? Who did I want to be as, you know, a regular old person? As one might have expected, when the clock struck midnight on the...
by Ryan R. Campbell | Jan 16, 2021 | And Ampersand, Book Review
I’ve long struggled to embrace success, but when advance praise like this rolls in, it’s hard to not hold it close. Minimalist and visceral, these American literary short stories address the themes of fatality, mortality and the continuum of existence....