5 STAR LITERARY REVIEW - featuring DOGZPLOT

Check out TJ Forrester's 5 STAR LITERARY REVIEW. In the past he has featured such journals as: Storyglossia, Zoetrope: All Story Extra, Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, and others. This week it's DOGZPLOT's turn. I chose to feature a story from Angela's Birthday issue 2008, FISTFUL, by Elizabeth Ellen.

Here's an excerpt from FISTFUL:

"I turned over, got up on my hands and knees. There was a mirror on the headboard. As he fucked me I stared into it, stared at my black eye and the asshole who’d given it to me. His face was puffy and red, his black hair matted and drenched in sweat. He didn’t look much like the boy I’d fallen in love with. He looked like one of my mom’s asshole ex-boyfriends, one of the ones who beat her and told her she had a spoiled, little bitch for a kid. I didn’t look much like myself either. My stomach was elongated and swollen, my tits veiny, the areolas that centered them darkened and textured. I looked like something out of a goddamn National Geographic magazine; like a strung out, pregnant Courtney Love smoking a cigarette in the pages of Vanity Fair."

Here's an excerpt from my review:

"We are more interested in good storytelling than precision, than fancy words and metaphors and concepts that sound real pretty but don’t necessarily inform the reader. We like subtle, seemingly simplistic writing that blows your fucking head apart when you take the time to excavate below the surface. We like to dig in and get dirty."