Your hold is ready! (3. 30. 25)

Author

Cavar S
March 30, 2025

WOW - what a month! I write this on my first morning home since AWP, and a few weeks out from my incredible reading at FRUITCAKE. This month, I’ve also done a couple interviews/guest host situations, both in Libre Lit Mag and Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup newsletter –– thank you so much for having me!

While I’ve become accustomed to running to events all over the place since the publication of Failure to Comply, AWP is kind of on another level –– writers, editors, and publishers convening on a city to buy and sell an inordinate number of books and pieces of merch, attending panels (maybe), pouncing on friends we mostly know from the internet, etc. And, of course, attending the myriad offsites of which I, this year, had three –– that is, one after-hours event each day I was there.

Maybe this type of thing wouldn’t be overwhelming for other people, but it certainly was for me. Wednesday night, starting less than an hour after I arrived to my hotel from 1) LAX (evil) and 2) over an hour of LA traffic, I, on behalf of manywor(l)ds, co-hosted Out Like a Lamb, with editor-comrades nat raum, Emily Perkovitch, and Erika Gill. I’m so grateful I got to hang out with such wonderful friends during my first exhausted night in LA, especially given that the event was incredible. I got to read a cyborg sex-filled excerpt of Failure to Comply, which you can watch here!

On Thursday, I wandered over to the conference itself, waited in an absurd line, and then, of course, headed into the bookfair. I did a LOT of damage in the two days I went to the venue, and wanted to drop below a few books that I’m particularly excited about:

  1. Chasers by Eve Harms and Mariah Darling (finished in one sitting yesterday!) (Unnerving Press)

  2. Creature by Amina Cain (currently reading!!!) (Dorothy: A Publishing Project)

  3. Terra Nova by Sophia Terazawa (Deep Vellum)

  4. Carmelina: Figures by Ronaldo V. Wilson (Wendy’s Subway)

  5. Her Read: A Graphic Poem by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (Texas Review press)

  6. Teaching Queer by Stacey Waite (University of Pittsburgh Press)

  7. Realistic Fiction by Anton Solomonik (LittlePuss Press)

  8. TOAF by Renee Gladman (Dorothy: A Publishing Project)

  9. about:blank by Tracy Fuad (University of Pittsburgh Press)

  10. Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah edited by Morgan Bassichis (Wendy’s Subway)

  11. Wrong Winds by Ahmad Amallah (Fonograf Editions)

That night, I attended Nicole Tallman’s amazing Very Gay Literary Happy Hour, at which I read Every Trans Suicide is State-Sanctioned Murder –– a vulnerable, appropriate poem I’d never read aloud before. It went over well, and I was and am grateful to be surrounded people who make me feel so safe and held. You can listen to the recording here.

Finally, Friday! More damage at the bookfair, of course, and then the big event: A Night of Trans Horror, my and CD Eskilson’s brainchild. We had a stellar lineup and a great venue, but, of course, I was nervous: not only was I exhausted physically and socially, but also, you really never know with readings –– sometimes, a lot of people come, sometimes, there’s five people there.

Well, this event kinda surpassed our wildest expectations: it wasn’t just that “a lot” of people came, it’s that the room broke fire code twice over, standing room only, with new people streaming in throughout the evening. The audience was enthusiastic and energized, the readers were stellar, the vibes were amazing, and I sold out of every single book I had –– not only the author copies of Failure to Comply I brought with me, but the extra ones Jason at featherproof gave me after seeing the size of the crowd. Other authors did the same. We socialized and schmoozed and gushed after the event, and I received more than a few expressions of appreciation for creating an affirming and joyful space for trans writing.

I hadn’t realized how much this event would mean –– to other people, but also, to me. Combined with the ambient horror of state-sponsored kidnappings, ongoing genocides, further rollbacks of what scant queer and trans protections once existed in this country, and more, AWP was a strange kind of oasis. The horrors were never far, but there was a kind of insulation, or perhaps a glaze, separating me from the outside world. Trans Horror, as my final event of the conference, did something special: it approached without hesitation not only trans genre fiction, but also horror as a genre of “real” trans life.

And yet, one thing we are experts in is finding pockets of sublime, impossible joy in the rubble of our rotten world. This was apparent at the event, at AWP, in our group chats, our embraces. This isn’t redemptive in the sense that it will, on its own, save the world, but it does make the horrors bearable enough to keep surviving. Home now for less than 24 hours, I feel reinvigorated by the kind words and hugs and enthusiasm of my comrades, and the hope, even if it feels ridiculous, for another year of writing, fighting, waiting to meet and hug again. Because why are we here, if not for those moments of embrace?

Okay, enough cheesiness. Down to business:

First, tomorrow: buy a trans woman a pizza!

In editing news: manywor(l)ds is open through April 30 –– keep sending in your genrefucked work, especially multimedia/audio/visual!!!

In self-promotion news: my sixth (!) chapbook, how we sheep, co-written with scholarly-(anti-)crush/comrade/collaborator ulysses/constance bougie, will be out from Ethel Press in March, just in time for AWP! It’s (deep breath) a chap of epistolary oulipo-flavored scholar-poetics about neuroqueering and (a)romanticizing intimacy/sexuality, in line with some of our other collaborative work in (for example) Kairos and Asexualities. You can order it on its own OR (!!!) bundled with my third chapbook and first with Ethel, Out of Mind & Into Body.

As always, check out Failure to Comply digitally and in print and on Bookshop in both formats, on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my Bookshop affiliate page, where each of your orders gives me a dollar.

Now, onto the recommendations!

Today’s Recs:

Books:

Comics & Podcasts:

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: