Sandra Squire Fluck

79 posts

Sandra has a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from U.C.L.A., and an M.A. in Religious Studies from the Lancaster Theological Seminary. She has taught college-level courses in literature, creative writing, composition, and technical writing in Southern California and Pennsylvania. Her most recent poetry chapbooks are available online. She is also the author of Experiential English and Language Play. Sandra is the founder and co-owner of The Write Launch, an online literary magazine, and bookscover2cover, a book review site.

11 min

Rain Clouds and Waterfalls

Not all coming-of-age stories are quite as tender as Piper Templeton’s novel Rain Clouds and Waterfalls. The symbiotic relationship among story, character, action, and mood heighten a reader’s desire to finish this book in one sitting.

6 min

Piper Templeton on the art of short story and other fiction

Piper Templeton is the author of the Beatles' inspired coming-of-age novel Rain Clouds and Waterfalls and the forthcoming mystery Beneath the Shady Tree. It is from typical daily experiences that Piper draws inspiration for both her novels and numerous short stories; perhaps this is why they are so compelling—the drama and ideas of ordinary people who linger in the mind after the first read.

10 min

A Map of Betrayal

Throughout his thirty years as a CIA agent spying for the People’s Republic of China, Gary Weimin Shang, the protagonist in Ha Jin’s psychological novel A Map of Betrayal, betrays…

6 min

The Sound of Things Falling

There is this about the novel The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez: The push and pull between reason and emotion, choice and chance, life and death—a trio of diametrical pairings played against each other in the life of the narrator, Antonio Yammara.

18 min

Reading Obama

James T. Kloppenberg has written an important book that demystifies Barack Obama. In his book, Reading Obama, Kloppenberg reveals a man who is deeply embedded in the American political and cultural tradition of civic virtue.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Introverts need less outside stimulation than extroverts. They shut the door while extroverts keep it open. Introverts work slowly and deliberately, whereas extroverts work quickly and multitask. Introverts’ nervous systems…

5 min

Chapbook 2011

Surrounded by nature, the poet immerses himself in its physicality, a primal act that leads him to an understanding, perhaps even an epiphany, that life and death are everywhere, but you can be alive and free in any case.

10 min

You’ll Find Me in the Darkness, If I Let You

The poetry of Anthony Perales comprises straightforward and telling narratives about growing up in San Pedro, chasing the dragon, spending time in prison, learning native doctrine in the desert of Southern California, losing love, and finding poetry.

17 min

Falling Out of Time

Sometimes a book tears open the fabric of being and forces the reader to question the meaning of existence. A masterpiece of existentialist inquiry, Falling Out of Time by the eminent Israeli author David Grossman is such a book.

8 min

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