Radiant, apple-cheeked Zelda Harris was a high school senior when I first met her during Pre-Frosh Weekend 2003. We were standing together awkwardly with Amy Widdowson—Zelda’s host and a friend of mine—on the gray gravel path behind Nassau Hall that gets all murky and disgusting when it ...

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Apparently contemporary fiction is suffering from an infusion of effeminate, lazy, timid and predictable male writers. Or at least that’s the impression I get from the Canadian-based publisher Raincoast and the sprinkling of various reviewers who are championing former Nassau Weekly editor Nathan Sellyn ’04’s literary debut Indigenous Beasts as a “daring collection of fiction” from “a bold, young writer whose work is masculine, energetic, and shocking.” For the record, I have no idea what a “masculine” piece of fiction could be, beyond containing a bunch of tough-guy male characters (but, then again, so does a lot of gay erotica).