Your hold is ready! (1. 30. 24)

January 30, 2024

Wow. Well. Hi.

January has been chaotic, exciting, devastating, and everything in-between, but the last ~48 hours has been especially so. As I posted yesterday in an impromptu message:

The cover for my debut novel, Failure to Comply, is here, along with a (US) pre-order link! Thanks to my incredible publicist, Addie Tsai, I got an exclusive cover reveal in the Chicago Review of Books. I’m over-the-moon happy about these updates, about the impending availability of ARCs (interested reviewers/interviewers, contact me! In the meantime, add it on Goodreads and Storygraph, and tell your friends.

In addition: for the first time ever, I’ll be at AWP! With (if the postal service is kind to me) very-early copies of F2C for those interested, as well as some copies of bugbutter. Catch me reading at A Very Gay Literary Happy Hour (Thursday, 5pm, offsite) and Poetry in the Woods: Open-Air, No-Mic Poetry Hike (Friday, ass-o’clock-early, offsite [in the woods]). I can’t wait to see everyone there. I’m the mostly-bald one with tattoos and a carabiner….Oh, wait.

Other literary updates: Submissions are open for manywor(l)ds through Jan. 31, 2024 (the end of the day tomorrow, as I send this out) for general submissions. Those affected by any of the ongoing genocides, and all MENA/SWANA creatives, are encouraged to submit year-round.

All who are, live, laugh, or love Mad dykes are also welcome to submit my guest-edited issue of Sinister Wisdom called Mad Dykes, Queer Worlds, open through June 2024. Check out my immaculate taste in manywor(l)ds, and my recent TRANS IS THE FUTURE / THE FUTURE IS TRANS folio in beestung magazine.

…And Don’t You Dare Forget Palestine.

While you’re reading and writing, keep Palestine at the front of your mind, especially now that israel’s genocidal practices have been (albeit weakly) been legiblized at a global level. Donate esims (as manywor(l)ds did for our second issue, and as co-editor Joyce, myself, and countless others continue to do on our own), which allow vital connections between those in occupied Palestine and the rest of the world to continue, and facilitate the vital and courageous work of on-the-ground journalists, whom the IOF is murdering at rates impossible to comprehend –– or, as the Committee to Protect Journalists illustrates –– reflect in reporting.

As of today, the documented number of lives lost exceeds 26,000, and this is only the official number (the number possible to record amidst the genocidal mass destruction of civilian infrastructure and record-keeping). There is little doubt that the true number of casualties –– especially given the (longstanding) deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid for Palestinians –– is far higher. Consider, too, the unrecorded instances of permanent disablement that result from the targeted destruction of civilian spaces, including sites supposedly designated for internal refugees. Consider, too, the deaths of disease, starvation, thirst (note that this article is from 2021 –– lack of safe drinking water is a longstanding issue), and suicide. These, too, are murders by israeli occupiers.

Note that it is difficult to find information about people in Palestine dealing with suicide in any capacity. This is because of the preponderance of articles detailing past instances and ongoing, outsized anxieties around Palestinian “suicide bombings.” I could write paragraphs about Madness, racialization, and abjection here. But I hope you can connect the dots.

(NB: to be completely honest, if I were Palestinian and suicidal, I’d also want to take a few enemies with me).

It is strange, as I’ve said many times, to celebrate personal accomplishments at a time like this. Yet guilt is a profoundly unproductive emotion, and a self-centered one. So I take the energy, joy, and meager hope as I can find it, and hope to bring it to my daily practices, my personal interactions and political actions and all in-between. I encourage all of us to dispense with guilt and get on to the work of justice, of tikkun olam. And to those of you neither Jewish nor Palestinian, those who have long stalled standing up for your values for fear of stepping on toes: now is (past) the time. Read, listen, and share Palestine. Witness. Never again for anyone means not only preserving and celebrating Palestinian lives, but also refusing to allow the ongoing work of cultural preservation and epistemic justice to go forgotten or worse, trampled. You can start here.

Take care, everybody.

Now, onto 2024’s first recs.

Today’s Recs:

Books:

Audio & Games:

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: