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The Brussels Review
@thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
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Collected Works in Contemporary Prose and Art

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#TBR #poetry #fiction #nonfiction #art #photography
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Set in Northern Thailand, this immersive narrative explores a young traveler’s descent into Muay Thai training, where through violence and the discipline of repetition, a bruised body and restless mind find unexpected clarity.
#TBR #Thailand #MuayThai
thebrusselsreview.com/micaela-edel...
Unleashing Rage By Micaela Edelson
A raw journey through Muay Thai, rage, and fleeting healing in Northern Thailand—where violence becomes both discipline and catharsis.
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June 9, 2025 at 8:28 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
First episode of Call to the Editor
We speak with Ximena Maldonado Sánchez, a Mexican artist whose desert-inspired landscapes burn with memory and heat. From Brussels to Athens, her work resists easy reading—it watches you back.
#calltotheeditor
#art #ximenamaldonadosánchez #mexicanart #brussels
Ximena Maldonado Sánchez
Call to the editor · Episode
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June 8, 2025 at 9:59 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
Two poems trace the quiet collision of inner and outer worlds: one through the sensory hush of a child's late-summer retreat, the other through the philosophical pull of erasure and ancient language.

#poetry #childhood #nature #memory #TBR thebrusselsreview.com/daniel-sofae...
Uprooting Cubit By Daniel Sofaer
A tender meditation on memory, wilderness, and estrangement, where childhood longing and ancient language entwine.
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June 8, 2025 at 2:45 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
Through a cascading series of lyrical inversions, Never too Late explores the mutable borders between sorrow and strength, fear and awakening, memory and rebirth.

#TBR #poetry #resilience #spirituality #transformation

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Never Too Late By Ramzi Albert Rihani
When fear stretches itself and awakens our strength / When noise stretches itself, and you start listening / and the beast stretches itself to become human / It is never too late to remember, wish, an...
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June 7, 2025 at 5:52 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
#Ximena_Maldonado_Sánchez’s landscapes are not depictions but emanations—deserts that remember heat, speak in glare, and shimmer with chemical memory. Hallucinogenic and radioactive.
#TBR #painting #contemporaryart #LatinAmericanart #landscape
thebrusselsreview.com/dritan-kici/...
The Paintings Of Ximena Maldonado Sánchez. Hot! By Dritan Kiçi
The desert in Ximena Maldonado Sánchez’s paintings is not a place but a pulsing, radioactive body remembering heat, exile, and hallucination.
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June 6, 2025 at 10:19 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
In this sharp and uncanny parable of the afterlife, a man’s casual dismissal of medical advice turns metaphysical when he dies of a heart attack—and wakes to a cosmic guide cloaked in familiar forms.
#fiction #magicalrealism #afterlife #workingclass #TBR
thebrusselsreview.com/jonathan-d-s...
A Grain Of Salt By Jonathan D. Scott
“You’ve just come from hell, Frankie. Only you’re not Frankie anymore.”
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June 5, 2025 at 9:23 AM
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A quiet witness behind glass, the speaker captures a world of both tenderness and brutality.
#TBR #poetry #urbanlife #existentialism #observationaldrawing

thebrusselsreview.com/ifunanya-geo...
Spectator By Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano
A quiet observer at a window reflects on the disarray, tenderness, and violence of everyday life—torn between distance and immersion.
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June 3, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
TBR Dark, edited by Femke van Son, gathers literary fiction that veers into the uncanny and speculative. These stories explore fractured identity, mechanized memory, and psychological rupture.
#TBR #literaryfiction #speculativefiction #TBRDarkhttps://thebrusselsreview.com/admin/introducing-tbr-dark
Introducing TBR Dark By The Brussels Review
What binds these stories together is not genre, but mood: an atmosphere of hesitation, rupture, and epistemological drift... They ask what remains of the human when its constructs—identity, memory, ev...
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June 2, 2025 at 1:46 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
#HopeJoseph writes against extinction—of butterflies, of soil, of fireflies, of youth itself. Rooted in the textures of #Ekiti, this lyrical essay gathers records of life before they fade.
#TBR #essays #nostalgia #climatechange #Nigeria #Memory
thebrusselsreview.com/hope-joseph/...
Read And Be Young Again By Hope Joseph
“I want a portal I can walk through to a place where people aren't permitted to visit twice: youth. I want my parent's laughter crackling through my ears half a century from now as fresh and alive.”
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May 31, 2025 at 1:45 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
If writing a standard bio feels awkward and you crave some poetry in it, write it in the first person. Speaking of yourself in the third person makes you sound like Trump. #bio #writingabio
May 27, 2025 at 4:46 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
Ghayath Almadhoun’s I Have Brought You a Severed Hand is a searing poetic indictment of war, exile, and complicity. @dritankici.bsky.social #TBR #poetry #translation #Syria #Europe thebrusselsreview.com/dritan-kici/...
Ghayath Almadhoun: Europe, We Love Your Art And Hate Your Bombs By Dritan Kiçi
A furious, unrelenting poetry of rupture—Almadhoun’s verses indict, mourn, and resist with devastating force.
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May 25, 2025 at 10:12 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
📢 Writers: A non-temporary bio is not a promo.
✅ Name, origin, languages, profession, education, major publications.
🚫 No blurbs, no “explores identity,” no “my latest book…”
Keep it timeless. Think passport, not pitch.
May 24, 2025 at 9:56 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
Atomic legacy meets personal reckoning in a collection that speaks through pain, memory, and the quiet defiance of survival. #TBR #poetry #war #Oppenheimer #redemption #motherhood
Cover art by Mia Felić
thebrusselsreview.com/colleen-s-ha...
Ash Psalms By Colleen S. Harris
Power is not in melted Buicks, not in making angels cower and sing your name in fear. There is no godhood for you, who have only sealed your name in dust.
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May 18, 2025 at 1:46 PM
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Televised absurdity, Eurovision is revealed as both camp spectacle and geopolitical masquerade. From Australia's "migrating" to Europe to the politics of absence. Hills are... Was that a man?

#TBR #essays #Eurovision #popculture #geopolitics #satire
thebrusselsreview.com/dritan-kici/...
Eurovision: Where Nations Compete For The Right To Be Confused By Dritan Kiçi
Eurovision is what happens when musical theater and international diplomacy get drunk at the same wedding—messy, performative, and dazzlingly absurd.
thebrusselsreview.com
May 18, 2025 at 12:58 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
What makes a story unforgettable? Our editor articulates a triadic framework that dissects the anatomy of enduring narratives and elements that grant stories their lasting power.
#TBR #storytelling #narrativetheory #literarycriticism @dritankici.bsky.social thebrusselsreview.com/dritan-kici/...
The Three Xs Of A Great Story: Extraordinary, Exclusive, Extendable By Dritan Kiçi
Three Xs Framework—Extraordinary, Exclusive, and Extendable. A practical method for evaluating why some stories endure in cultural memory, while others, no matter how lyrical, fade fast.
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May 17, 2025 at 7:20 AM
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In this gently obsessive, unsparing account of near-meetings with Paul and Ringo, Szabolcs Benedek explores the ecstasy of fandom and the quiet grief of distance. Translated from Hungarian by Dóra Emma Esze.
#music #TheBeatles #Vienna #TBR thebrusselsreview.com/szabolcs-ben...
Day Tripper By Szabolcs Benedek
A tender, obsessive tribute to Paul McCartney, masculinity, and the fragile distance between idol and admirer.
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May 11, 2025 at 5:02 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
n The Only Summer and My Shell, the poet offers a quiet disassembly of beauty, longing, and self-deception. These pieces unfold with lyrical restraint, questioning meaning as artifice and love as undoing.

#Poetry #Writing #TBR thebrusselsreview.com/zilin-wu/sum...
Summer By Zilin Wu
A lyrical meditation on impermanence, illusion, and the quiet violence of longing—between self, love, and the aching shell of beauty.
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May 11, 2025 at 4:27 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
The failure of the Green Transition is not logistical or political, but linguistic. By framing climate action in the language of disruption—transition, sacrifice, loss—we’ve seeded public resistance. @dritankici.bsky.social
#ClimateChange #greentransition #EU thebrusselsreview.com/dritan-kici/...
Why The Green Transition Is Already Lost By Dritan Kiçi
A searing critique of the Green Transition's failure—not in policy, but in metaphor, language, and imagination.
thebrusselsreview.com
May 4, 2025 at 7:26 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
From glacial tea rooms to cicada-split heat, traverse the southern terrain of Tasmania in vivid, sensory layers, through memory and dreams. Cover art by #SantaZukker
#Poetry #Nature #Writing #Tasmania #TBR

thebrusselsreview.com/ben-walter/w...
Wandering By Ben Walter
An elemental cycle of weather, memory, and dream—these poems trace Tasmania’s winter and summer in stark, sensory incantations.
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May 3, 2025 at 5:58 PM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
From the Siege of Yorktown to the halls of Congress, an Unknown Soldier chronicles the haunting continuum of American warfare. How many more final battles can there be?
#Literature #History #Writing #Democracy #Veterans #TBR
thebrusselsreview.com/william-h-sw...
The Unknown Soldier - 1781 By William H Swartz
An Unknown Soldier of 1781 bears witness to the brutal legacy of American wars, from Yorktown to January 6th, tracing the fragile arc of democracy.
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May 1, 2025 at 9:35 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
David Newkirk reflects on the quiet strength and deep beauty of introversion, honoring the unseen worlds that shape thoughtful lives.
Cover by Kathy Bruce, Beauty, collage, private collection
#TBR #Essays #Writing #Psychology #Literature thebrusselsreview.com/david-newkir...
Quiet Lives By David G. Newkirk
A moving reflection on the quiet strength, beauty, and misunderstood reality of introversion in a world shaped by extroversion.
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April 26, 2025 at 12:07 PM
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A luminous meditation on intimacy and the quiet revelations of morning light. "Together" captures the tender nearness between bodies, the sacredness of presence, and the almost-miraculous grace found in simple gestures.
#Poetry #Literature #Writing #Reading #TBR
thebrusselsreview.com/kevin-macala...
Together By Kevin MacAlan
A tender morning vision captures love, longing, and the fragile beauty of shared intimacy.
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April 26, 2025 at 9:49 AM
thebrusselsreview.bsky.social
Christopher Kenneally documents the slow erasure of rural Breton life with care and clarity. A stunning tribute to local resistance, cultural identity, and small communities caught in global tides.
#France #BretonLife #EUImpact #Rurallife #TBR
thebrusselsreview.com/christopher-...
Brittany, 1991: Watching The Old World Fade By Christopher Kenneally
An American expatriate in 1991 Brittany captures the twilight of rural traditions under a Europe in flux—tender, wry, and hauntingly beautiful.
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April 24, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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A messy, furious, feminist howl against generational gaslighting, trauma buried under kitsch, and the lie of “he didn’t mean it.” Happy, Texas digs deep and doesn’t flinch. #TBR #SurvivorVoice #SystemicAbuse #QueerNarrative #PopArtPain #bartplantenga
thebrusselsreview.com/bart-planten...
Happy Texas: The Town Without A Frown By Bart Plantenga
This is America, raw and unfiltered: a toxic love story unfolds against roadside relics, familial ghosts, and a broken dream of connection. A dark, lyrical masterpiece for those willing to stare into ...
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April 22, 2025 at 7:58 AM
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The Game confronts the horror of living in systems that exploit trauma, twist identity, and commodify desire. A harrowing take on psychological captivity.
#DismantleTheSystem #MentalHealthMatters #TBR thebrusselsreview.com/jeff-l-olive...
The Game By Jeff L Oliver
A descent into psychological torment, The Game traps the narrator in a nightmare of temptation, manipulation, and self-destruction.
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April 21, 2025 at 2:55 PM