I have a new website and it took an adrenal crash and going on all kinds of hormones to finally get it finished. Go to it and click on it and those gorgeous photos are by Itzel Luccas Photography.
My essay on desire, a failing political imagination, and puffer fish mating rituals is up on The Rumpus. “I didn’t understand my gender or sexuality until I saw puffer fish mate... Talk about desire, talk about potential”.
A sweet and exciting nod from The Best American Series. My essay “The Language of Kudzu” which follows a kudzu eradication group in Spartanburg, SC called the Kudzu Coalition was selected by Jonathan Franzen as one of the notable essays in Best American Essays 2016.
“This is where I imagine Billy pointing to me “Someone is watching,” she says, so I’ll say this of what I saw: Sometimes you know how to touch someone so that they can experience their genitals as they perceive them away from the world. A spongy warm instrument that we can bend and curl in our mouths. There are positions you’ve heard of that make sense to you now; mouths lurching towards the other’s groan. What kind of portal opens when babes find this kind of sex without significant trauma first? I’m tearing it open. I need this to exist—
when the mouth is harder than the thing it touches; when it’s desire that hits the back of your throat and maybe not force, who cares what shape the genitals are? I hate descriptions of them anyway but I think of Billy and Maggie when I see a starfish swollen, purple, and bulging on the legs of a dock—
of having a person conjure us; of moving in the air or being held down to the earth or pressed against a trailer’s faux wood paneling. This smells like heavy dank hair; wet must. What leaves the body and meets the air is our own steam of wanting.
Let them have this time to themselves.”
--From Potential Monsters, in progress this month in Rockland County, NC.
corinnemanning reblogged
Episode 51: Litmag special with Ari Baum-Hommes, Tania Nwachukwu, & Corinne Manning
Today we bring you readings from three excellent independent literary magazines: NOÖ, Synaesthesia, and Moss, with short prose from Ari Baum-Hommes, a poem from Tania Nwachukwu, and an excerpt from a short story from Corinne Manning. (Read the rest of that story here.)
Download this episode from iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, or listen right here:
As always, if you’d leave a rating & review in iTunes, your life will be, litmag-like, full of diverse writing with a coherent point of view, interspersed with provocative moments of visual art.
About the writers:
Ari Baum-Hommes is originally from the mystical land of Western Massachusetts. Her fiction has appeared in Two Serious Ladies and Right Hand Pointing. She lives in Minneapolis now, near many, many lakes. twitter: @going_homes
Tania Nwachukwu is a Nigerian writer born and raised in London. She is a member of the Barbican Young Poets collective. Her work has been published in various publications, and performed to audiences across the UK and Nigeria. When she’s not writing, she’s on Skyscanner plotting her next escape. TaniaNwachukwu.Tumblr.com
Corinne Manning is the founding editor of The James Franco Review, an online journal dedicated to the visibility of underrepresented artists. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Story Quarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, The Oxford American, Arts & Letters, and Lit Hub, and as a chapbook through alice blue review’s Shotgun Wedding Series. She co-runs The Furnace Reading Series in Seattle, teaches for Writers in the Schools, and is a 2016 Jack Straw Writers Fellow. http://corinnemanning.tumblr.com/
About the magazines:
NOÖ Journal is a free literary print/online journal distributed all over. We are invested in making inclusive and collaborative community in independent literature and art. We put out guest-edited issues called NOÖ Weeklies that in no way can be said to come out weekly.
Synaesthesia Magazine is an online literary and arts magazine, criss-crossing senses worldwide. The magazine aims to engage writers and artists in an exploration of the senses, publishing poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, photography and artwork. We set a theme for each issue, and encourage a multi-sensory response to each theme.
Moss is a journal of Northwest writing, dedicated to bringing Northwest literature to new audiences and exposing the emerging voices of the region to new readers, critics, and publishers. Moss is a community-first project; every issue is made available online for free, we don’t charge submission fees, and we pay every writer we publish. In January, we released our first print anthology, which is now available on our website and in select bookstores.
Got to read a portion of my story Professor M for the Catapult podcast and daaaamn! Tania and Ari’s pieces made me shiver.
Let’s hang out. Got a bag of fluorite crystals and a heart full of compliments for you.
Reimagining Literary Spaces features editors from Apogee, The Offing, Voicemail Poems, Yes Poetry, and Luna Luna Mag along with The James Franco Review. Join as we explore what it means to desire more from literary media.
My Story, Professor M in Moss
Some experiences with submissions and publications have been more intense than others. This story, about a queer theory professor who relishes in sexual power but risks custody of the family dog, is one of them. I think part of the power of this story is that Professor M says and does things that seem unheard of, and it feels emphasized because it's unseen or unheard of for this queer character with so much power to command that kind of attention. You'll see. Published by Moss, a journal of northwest literature last week, it has found a really beautiful home
An Assignment from Adrienne Rich
Thinking about those who are teaching today, the day after the Grand Jury statement in Ferguson, and I came across Adrienne Rich's syllabus from when she was teaching in the SEEK program at CUNY. This assignment was sent as a memo to English 1.8 B2 and 1.8 C4 in light of the national student strike in 1970:
Assignment for the week of May 11
Write two pages or more in support or in opposition to the following paragraph:
"Even if you feel that the government is committing unjust or immoral acts, it is better to remain silent than to express your opinion. No ordinary citizen knows enough to criticize the men who are in positions of highest leadership, since they have access to inside information which the citizen cannot possess. moreover, a government threatened by criticism and protest may respond with acts even more unjust and immoral than those which are being protested."
--Adrienne Rich "What We Are Part Of" Teaching At CUNY 1968-1974, Part 1, from The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, Lost and Found
The James Franco Review is the newest literary publication out of Seattle - the mission of it is simple: treat every submission as if it was from James Franco, i.e. a celebrity lauded for creative ...
I talked a bit about my upcoming class on linked stories at Hugo House for their blog. Naming a darling I've killed (literary) was a pretty tricky one to answer.
Click here for an octopus slideshow
At The Cephalopod Appreciation Society I got to share some artwork by and give a creative talk about Rupa Dasgupta, an artist (and who I know from way back-- St. Rose Grammar School Days) who began drawing an octopus a day three years ago. Through this reconnection I felt really inspired by the artist process and how the octopus, for Rupa, is not just an opener of jars, but of doors.
Click the link to the slideshow on slide snack and play the mp3 over it.
I am very happy to be a contributor to Qarrtsiluni's imitations issue. I took on Jim Heynen and wrote this piece in the style of his collection The One Room Schoolhouse. Qarrtsiluni has a daily podcast and my piece was included as part of that last week.