Steinke artfully details how we lose our vitality, our stamina and our abilities, bit by bit, organ by joint. After the book’s tour through disease and misfortune, I’d come to feel lucky for my health.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and the dissolution of a modern marriage.

The answer to the “Negro question” is a mix of sermon and jeremiad, calling attention to the gap between a desired moral universe and disastrous present reality.

For Piper, race was always a conscious affiliation, not an essentialist identity. […] Throughout all of this, Piper seems to have organically arrived at an understanding of race that aligns with its actual definition—a social construct rather than a biological fact.

With the closure of bookstores and in-person readings impossible, sales opportunities for small presses have largely been stymied to the point of near fatality, and the fallout is widespread.

As a card-carrying member of the horde, I have never had the privilege of having only one voice echoing in my head. I have always had multiple voices singing in mine. The call, and the response.

People complain about the city. There is never not something to complain about. The sidewalks fill with leaves — red and gold — and these critics still complain. Some people complain and never say goodbye but, sometimes, a complainer vacates.

The Epiphanic, so-called, will publish at least one piece each month about an artistic enthusiasm, whether literary, visual, or performative in nature