What should I read next? It’s a question we all ask ourselves time and again. Even with the countless stories, poems, essays, scripts, art, comics, and films to discover, to fall in love with or to detest, it can be a challenge to choose. Enter Expo Recommends, a curated selection of readings brought to you by the editors of Exposition Review.
Meanwhile, Expo is in the midst of our 2025 annual issue submission season. For Vol. X, our editors chose the theme “Spring,” seeking stories that well from the imagination, language that leaps off the page, writing that’s liberated from the constraints of genre and crackles with the energy of a spring storm.
Heading into the second half of our submission season (our deadline is December 15), we want to give you—our readers, writers, submitters, and community—an extra dose of inspiration. So whether you read Expo Recommends for the recommendations or a behind-the-scenes look into the preferences of our editorial team, we hope you’ll enjoy our “Spring”-inspired Expo Recommends. And when you buy your copies of the books from our Bookshop, Exposition Review gets a cut!
Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi (poetry)
From Poetry Associate Editor Kiana Shaley
Birds and spring? Not so groundbreaking. But what if the “bird” in question was not a thing with feathers, but scar-tissue-covered appendages splitting forth from our hips without permission (or anesthesia)? In Phantom Pain Wings, Kim Hyesoon falls into the liminal space between grief and continuation, and in that incubator, becomes the grotesque creature loss makes of us all. Within this collection of poems impeccably translated by Don Mee Choi is a new language that does not seek to describe grief, but to be grief. If the season of rebirth sends you into a spiral, this is the collection for you.
Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang (fiction)
From Fiction Co-Editor Mellinda Hensley
When I think about the books I’ve read in the past year that have a certain … spring to them, C. Pam Zhang’s Land of Milk and Honey tops the list. Looking at the plot, one would think that our previous “Hunger”-themed issue might be a better fit, but I definitely think “Spring” is just as apt.
This dystopian novel circles a young, unnamed Asian American chef who gets stuck in England when America’s borders close due to a choking smog that kills most of the plants and livestock. Wanting a better life for herself and her cat, she fudges her resume in order to gain a job at an “elite research community” in the Italian alps, one above the smog where plants flourish and rare animals are still raised for food. At first, being rocketed into this world beyond worlds feels like a dream—the food is sumptuous, the work demanding but rewarding, the literal atmosphere different. But as our chef continues to work for (as she calls him) “my employer,” a more sinister vibe starts to surface. She loses her appetite and a pull of tension between her, her employer, and his daughter Aida begins, threatening to snap at any moment.
That’s what “spring” is about for me: the actions beneath the actions, the change in the weather, the shift that makes us devour pages, wondering what might happen next.
Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton (hybrid)
From Poetry Editor Anya Maria Johnson
I can’t think of anything more exemplary of “spring” than how Danielle Dutton stretches form in Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other. As a reader, witnessing (and being implicated by) how literary constructs are pulled down and reassembled in new shapes is a gift and a challenge. Dutton has assembled a bias-cut collection, and the silhouette is striking.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab (fiction)
From Co-Editor-in-Chief Laura Rensing
Like all my favorite Expo pieces, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue takes a seemingly lighthearted idea—eternal youth—and explores its dark, angsty underbelly. The book follows a young woman who makes a deal with the devil so that she never dies or ages. The catch? No one will remember her once she is out of sight. It’s a Sisyphean torment when one lives for hundreds of years and through some of the darkest eras in history, and a spring-loaded trap designed to steal her soul if she falters.
I read this book in one night, caught up in the dance between Addie, the devil, and the first man to remember her in 300 years, but the beautifully detailed descriptions of time passing, and how history and memory are an essential component of living, has remained with me long after I closed its pages.
Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-sik Hong (comic)
From Dramatic Arts & Graphic Narratives Editor Lauren Gorski
I love a memoir comic, and Uncomfortably Happily offers an honest account of one artist’s transition from bustling city life to rural, minimalist living. As the author navigates harsh seasons, limited resources, and the inevitable existential crisis (because what story isn’t more exciting without one?), the reader is invited to ponder a larger question: is a simpler life truly better? The beautiful illustrations provide a glimpse into modern Korean culture, adding richness to the narrative. Spanning years of life in the mountains, the story’s reflection on spring—as both a season of renewal and a symbol of fresh beginnings—is a perfect fit with our latest theme.
Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich (flash fiction)
From Flash Fiction Editor Jessica June Rowe
I am a huge fan of Cathy Ulrich’s writing and was delighted when we got to publish her story “A Different Kind of Smoke” in our seventh issue. The theme that year was “Flux,” but this piece would be right at home in our “Spring” issue. The first sentence (“It is the spring of spontaneous human combustion, the spring of burning things.”) is the strike of a match—a provocative twist on what you might imagine spring to be. I love the unfurling details and beautiful contrasts in this story, and the tight threads of magical realism weaved with haunting truths.
These are consistent themes across much of Cathy’s work and, in particular, in her searing second short story collection Small, Burning Things, published by Okay Donkey Press in 2023. Highly, highly recommend this collection, which features “A Different Kind of Smoke” alongside 50 beautifully crafted flash fiction stories.
Olafur Eliasson: OPEN (art exhibition)
From Visual Art Editor Brianna J.L. Smyk
Olafur Eliasson: OPEN, currently on view at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, is a highlight of The Getty’s citywide PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. The exhibition contains large-scale, site-specific installations, ranging from immersive kaleidoscopes, shadow and light projections, and circular drawings made in-gallery each day based on the day’s atmospheric readings. It utilizes light, mirrors, movement, and space, and plays on perception to captivate the viewer’s attention.
Whether shifting form as a viewer moves around a work, reflecting and refracting a viewer in a mirror, or projecting the viewer’s shadow on a wall, the optical devices invite the viewer to engage with the pieces, to move around and through them, to question how they were made and why they look the way they do. Eliasson’s play with materials, and our visual perception and mechanical understanding of them, does “open” one’s mind. This viewing process brings delight in both the seeing and the comprehending, in the experience itself.
As far as inspiration for “Spring,” the exhibition embodies the movement and use of light and color that I’m seeking in this issue. It also presents the coiled spring flattened into a (light) wave, an homage to light that is essential to the season of spring, and a wellspring of art, light, color, and shape broken down into Cubist abstractions. For those of you unable to see the exhibition or any of Eliasson’s works, I recommend reading his books.
Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara (poetry)
From Intern Kiana Perez Granados
Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara is a beautiful poetry collection that exhibits the tanka form with short, thirty-one-syllable verses. I read this book last year for a poetry workshop and still find myself returning to it from time to time. It is about a young woman returning to her complicated relationship with her partner/spouse. The language is domestic and nostalgic. For a lover of poetry, this collection is best read while you’re waiting: for the bus, a doctor’s appointment, picking up your child from school, etc. The tanka form is short enough that you don’t need much time to ponder what Tawara is saying; she is very direct and careful about the language she uses to build her imagery. I love this book because of its tenderness for life. My favorite poem is the first of the collection, “August Morning.”
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky (fiction)
From Experimental Editor Rebecca Luxton
Novelist and poet Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel All-Night Pharmacy recounts the end of one season in two sisters’ lives, and the start of a new one. It’s a Los Angeles fever dream that crackles with an energy of transformation and rebirth.
Madievsky’s unnamed narrator stumbles through a neon-lit landscape of addiction and self-discovery, emerging from the long shadow cast by her older sister Debbie, in a journey replete with sudden downpours of emotion and unexpected bursts of clarity. The novel’s prose pulses like tree sap rising, and infuses even its darkest moments with a fierce vitality. Madievsky crafts a world where pills, psychics, and queer awakenings bloom like wildflowers emerging from cracks in the concrete.
All-Night Pharmacy doesn’t shy away from the messy reality of growth, tackling intergenerational trauma and immigrant identity with the same unflinching honesty as it does the nuances of sisterhood. This is more than just a personal metamorphosis—it’s a vibrant addition to queer literature and Los Angeles canon. And like spring, Madievsky’s sharp wit and poetic sensibility ensure that readers will emerge from this story a little dazed, deeply affected, and seeing the world with fresh eyes.
The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa (hybrid)
From Co-Editor-in-Chief Annlee Ellingson
In her memoir The Story Game, what Shze-Hui Tjoa thought would be a collection of political essays morphed into an excavation of memory—or lack thereof. Revisiting periods of her life when she vacationed in Bali with her family, volunteered at an eco-friendly hostel in the Baltic region, and washed dishes at a Jerusalem convent, Tjoa, a former fiction co-editor at Expo, discovers a blank spot in her Singaporean childhood when she doesn’t remember much of anything.
She excavates these years through fictional conversations between a speaker named Hui and a young girl in a room outside of time, blurring the boundary between what we remember and what we tell ourselves. The succession of stories Hui tells the girl represent a workshopping of sorts of Tjoa’s history, growing more verdant and vibrant with each telling—or, in one case, complete retelling—in what becomes for her a season, of sorts, of reflection and renewal.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (fiction)
From Fiction Co-Editor Dave Gregory
I wanted to recommend something contemporary, but when I scanned my bookshelves, the work that most clearly resonated with Expo’s Vol. X: “Spring” theme turned out to be Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is a brilliant and beautiful novel that has equal doses of philosophy, history … and sex.
The book is set during the Prague Spring—a few brief months in 1968 when the Czech and Slovak people, who had suffered under Nazi occupation throughout World War II, followed by two decades of repressive Communist rule, witnessed an exuberant and hopeful period of liberal and democratic reforms that promised “socialism with a human face.”
During this critical period in humankind’s struggle for freedom, Kundera contrasts Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return with the theories of lightness and weight examined by the Greek philosopher Parmenides. Springing from this philosophical framework, what emerges is a very readable, memorable, profound, and entertaining story about the relationships, difficult choices, and extraordinary challenges faced by Tomas, the main character, his wife, Tereza, Tomas’ mistress, Sabina, and Sabina’s lover, Franz.
If you haven’t yet read this book, you definitely should. I promise you’ll never forget it—and you’ll learn so much about freedom, history, and the human condition.
Reset by Howard Ho (stageplay)
From Dramatic Arts & Graphic Narratives Editor Lauren Gorski
Reset is an intriguing, carefully constructed sci-fi play. I saw a production of this last year at Moving Arts Theatre in Los Angeles with Flash Fiction Editor Jessica June Rowe, and we absolutely loved it. It didn’t hurt that friend-of-Expo playwright Howard Ho always has a knack for approaching complex ideas with a mix of dark humor yet intense care for his protagonists. Reset is a perfect example of how tension throughout a piece can be established early on, and remain coiled beat-by-beat until the chilling climax. Reset has recently been published by Next Stage Press, so purchase a copy today!
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing (nonfiction)
From Nonfiction Associate Editor Francesca Spiegel
There are things in life that don’t renew, but only get worse. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking is about alcoholism as a unidirectional progression to ruin. British author Olivia Laing pushes the boundaries of knowledge on alcoholism through a literary search within the works, lives, letters, museums, and archives of America’s greatest dead white males—Cheever, Carver, Berryman.
The “Echo Spring” in the title is a bourbon, and a fountain of madness. One core belief guides Laing: that fine literary writing has “the power to map the more difficult regions of human experience and knowledge” more than any medical textbook ever could. As if that alone was not reason enough to love this book, there’s also the writing about writers, the finding fresh answers to old questions, and the fact that it’s all wrapped into an American road trip. So rich. So pretty. So dreadful. Just like spring itself.
Young Woman and the Sea by Joachim Rønning (film)
From Dramatic Arts & Graphic Narratives Editor Lauren Gorski
Young Woman and the Sea tells the story of competitive swimmer Gertrude Ederle, who in 1926 was the first woman to ever swim across the English Channel. The film stars Daisy Ridley and is based on the book by Glenn Stout. When thinking about the theme of “spring,” I love the connectivity to water. YWATS is an inspirational biopic, but more than that it celebrates the call to adventure inherent to the ocean. Probably no surprise that Jerry Bruckheimer, Pirates of the Caribbean producer, teamed up with Pirates director Joachim Rønning to bring this story to life.
Now that you have some good writing inspiration and an insider’s look into our editors’ tastes, get reading, get writing, and get submitting to Vol. X “Spring” here.
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