Your hold is ready! (5. 31. 25)

Author

Cavar S
May 31, 2025

Hello everyone!

May has absolutely flown by, and I sit here on the 31st as it reaches 100ºF here in Davis, bewildered that I’ll be receiving my PhD in less than two weeks. In truth, I probably haven’t been as celebratory as I ought to be: I’ll be back on the academic job market this fall/am still applying to jobs, feeling discouraged about the sheer level of competition, precarity of funding, and overall demanding, overworked, underpaid nature of academia. But what else is new, right? (If you have a job opportunity for me, shoot me an email!!)

What else have I been up to? I went on a retreat with some science & technology studies folks from several UC campuses last weekend, and it was a great way to celebrate my other main news: my dissertation is officially complete, polished, and signed-off on. I’m done! While this is definitely bittersweet given my job search struggles, it’s nice to be able to “coast” these last few weeks, especially given the amount of time and effort I’m putting into book proposal writing and job applications.

Between applications and restless nights, I’ve been taking solace in small, simple things: running and working out have been lifesaving in my times of panic, and I just signed up for a ten mile [about 15-16km] (!!!) race in July, my longest ever. Soon, I’ll be prepping my apartment for my mom’s and girlfriend’s visit for my graduation, and continuing to pack for my move in July. I’ve also still been loving my silent book club here in Davis; I highly recommend you find one in your area.

Transitioning into book/writing news! Earlier in May, I got to read with Callum Angus and Miranda Schmidt in Portland, OR, and have a scintillating conversation about eco-queerness and posthuman/multispecies writing. It was wonderful to talk about these themes in the context of Failure to Comply, and I hope I get more opportunities to do so in the future!

I’m also happy to announce that some older poems have been anthologized in Defunkt Magazine’s Surreal Confessional anthology, and that my article for Rooted in Rights on writing, craft, and junk journalling has also been published. And, in academic publishing news, my article for Transgender Studies Quarterly, which explores transMadness and the right to opacity, is now officially out in the Trans[]Crip Theory issue, the first of its kind. I’m honored to be part of it. For the next 3 months, you can read and download it for free here.

Submission news for you: manywor(l)ds re-opens tomorrow for submissions of all kinds. We’re especially interested in reviews and interviews this time around, so if you’ve got one, send it in!. You can read our latest issue, published May 15, here.

In self-promotion news: my sixth chapbook, a neuroqueer scholarpoetic thing called how we sheep, co-written with scholarly-(anti-)crush/comrade/collaborator ulysses/constance bougie, is out now Ethel Press. For background on what we’re doing with queerness, Madness, and (a)sexualities, check out our work in) Kairos and Asexualities. You can order it on its own or purchase it bundled with my third chapbook and first with Ethel, Out of Mind & Into Body.

And, as usual, 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:

Audio/Visual Media:

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: