Your hold is ready! (6. 29. 25)

Author

Cavar S
June 29, 2025

Hello from Dr. Cavar!!

June has been momentous. On the 12th, with my mom and my girlfriend, Gwen, in the audience and alongside my cohort-mate, Angel, I graduated from UC Davis with my PhD in Cultural Studies, with a designated emphasis in Science & Technology Studies.

Mom, me, and most importantly, Dr. Cinnamoroll, PhD

Gwen and me!

Two days prior, both my mom and girlfriend arrived in Davis, which worked out far better than my anxieties suggested they would. That evening, while my mom rested in the apartment, Gwen and I went to a local brewery for a little graduation party for Angel and me. This was a pretty uncharacteristic move for me as a Non-Partying-Person, but it was incredibly nice and (because I wasn’t hosting it at my own place) pretty easy and comfortable. It was certainly a nice, low-key way to celebrate prior to a crowded, sweaty (despite being inside) and overwhelming graduation day. Fortunately, we escaped the crowds pretty quickly once the ceremony was over, and certainly didn’t a make the mistake of trying to go out for dinner downtown!

After that, my mom and I took what would be her first trip to San Francisco, sight-saw and enjoyed a Redwoods-filled hike nearby. After SF, we headed back to Davis for me to say goodbye to my mom and hello, mostly, to packing up my apartment and preparing for a big move. A big move where, you ask? Well, first, I’m visiting home, and gratefully storing some of my stuff in my childhood home.

Purisima Creek Redwoods Preserve

After that, for this upcoming academic year, I’ll be headed on an exciting new journey as Sundress Academy for the Arts’s long-term writing resident. I’ll be based in Knoxville working on a) novel #3 (as #2 is now officially out on submission!!) and b) the book version of my dissertation, “transMadness, in terms of: An Emblogged Experiment.” You can have a taste of what I’m writing about here by reading “Access Fictions: Clarity, Violence, and the Promise of transMad Opacity,” published in Transgender Studies Quarterly in May 2025. I am so, so excited to return to Knoxville (I visited for the first time last year when I taught at Sundress’s Survival and Healing writing retreat), enjoy the brilliant community Sundress curates, and get more than a few hikes in.

So, lots of news. I feel tired just writing all that! Let’s move onto some housekeeping:

Submissions: manywor(l)ds is open through July 31. Send your work, and view our latest issue, published May 15, here.

Take a peek at how we sheep, co-written with scholarly-(anti-) crush/comrade/collaborator ulysses/constance bougie, is out with 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 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:

Music & Art:

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: