Your Hold is Ready! (02. 10. 23)

Hi everyone, and happy February! This past month-or-so has been busier than ever for me, between drafting my dissertation prospectus, doing more work for the Remote Access Archive, editing swallow::tale and Stone of Madness presses, and….

….I want to do a drumroll, but I don’t even know how to convey the amount of excitement I’m feeling right now….

PREPARING TO PUBLISH MY DEBUT NOVEL!

Right around the new year, I signed a contract with Chicago-based small press featherproof books to publish my abolitionist-sf-experimental-theory-hybrid novel, Failure to Comply, with an expected release date of spring 2024. This is a project I have been working on since undergrad, and one that has required immense effort not only in its construction but also in figuring out where to place it, given its genre-weirdness and form-defiance.

featherproof is a press I truly love and trust, and Jason, its EIC, has been amazing to work with so far. I can’t wait to share more news about this with you, too, both via excerpts/interviews/reviews (contact me if you’d like to receive an ARC when they’re ready and I can put you on the list!) and via my own reflections on the very weird and wild world of publishing. If you want the full experience of that –– and access to some other meditations and essays and rambles of mine, consider subscribing to the paid version of this newsletter, or of sending me a one-time tip.

Moving forward on my own Mad book, while also exploring Mad poetics/epistemologies in my dissertation work, has breathed even more life and love into my relationship to swallow::tale press. You can shop our Mad books and zines here; your support helps us keep bringing Madwork to a wider audience.

We at the press also have a free and paid newsletter. Mad writers and artists can submit works of any/no genre to me at [email protected] to be featured in future issues, for $10 per published piece. In the next few days, our first feature + interview with Jay Besemer will come out –– subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Okay, PHEW, I think that’s all. Hope you enjoy these recs, and thanks for coming along on this publishing journey with your friendly neighborhood librarian :)

Today’s Recs:

Books:

• Mairead Case, See You In The Morning. (a featherproof book!)

• Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen.

• Neal Shusterman, Gleanings.

• Beatrice Alder-Bolton & Artie Vierkant, Health Communism.

• Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America.

• Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest.

• Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin.

Media & Music:

• Rian Phin, post-gatekeeping fashion discourse fatigue lol (2022).

• Elephant Gym, Dreams (2022).

Poetry & Prose & In-Between (including chapbooks):

• Cindy Juyoung Ok, Assembly (2022).

• NM Esc, Service (2021).

• Mark DuCharme, Scorpion Letters (2022).

• Lee Hyemi (trans. by Soje), Ligature Marks (2022).

Essays and Articles:

• Robin Williamson, The Switzerland Schedule (2023).

• Billie Walker, Is Body Horror the New Intimacy? (2023).

• Kay Gabriel, Whose Trans Realism? (2022).

• Astra & Sunaura Taylor, Our Animals, Ourselves (2022).

• Alexis Wright, The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times (2022).

My Recent Work:

• My fourth chapbook, bugbutter, is available from Gap Riot Press and up on Goodreads.

• My third chapbook, Out of Mind & Into Body, is available from Ethel Press and up on Goodreads.

• My 2021 chapbooks: Buy The Dream Journals and A Hole Walked In. And add them on Goodreads! [x] [x]

•  transfinite::a dialogue in Just Femme & Dandy

• Two Poems in Electric Lit: The Commuter

• The Queer Aut of Failure: Cripistemic Openings for Postgraduate Life in Lateral: The Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. [academic]

• Headcase! in The New Orleans Review.

• The Beholding & Beheld in Nat Brut.

• Hybrid Interview: Claire Oshetsky in CRAFT Literary.

• I AM GOING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT MOLI in X-Ray Lit.

• Toward transMad Epistemologies: A Working Text in SPARK: A 4C4 Equality Journal. [academic]

• Diagnostician's Note in Mudroom Magazine.That’s all for now! Again, feel free to let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more of, and if you have any recommendations of your own!