Sunday, December 07, 2008

Winter Break Reading List + 1 Question

OK. So now that I am close to done, I am about ready to declare what I will read over break that has nothing to do with SCHOOL!! I decided that I would read books by friends and almost-friends over break. I hate having not read my friends' books because of school. School. Sometimes it stops you from reading.

1) Aaron Kunin -- The Mandarin
2) Michelle Koerner -- First dissertation chapter in manuscript form on Deleuze and American Lit (roughly speaking)
3) Fred Moten -- Hughson’s Tavern
4) Lucy Corin -- Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls, A Novel
5) Ali Liebegott -- The Beautifully Worthless

Alright, if I get through that by January 8th and write my Melville paper, I will be psyched.

Real Question: So, how do I get free new books? I have to spend all my money on school books and thus feel like I can't keep up with all the new poetry and fiction I want. I know a bunch of you are poor like me, and yet I see on GoodReads etc, you all get your hands on the new stuff. Tell me, please.

Friday, December 05, 2008

The Wound of Things

Hello. It seems like my life of finals keeps extending itself. I am finishing up a paper on Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" and starting to think about a Melville paper, which I image as a talk to writers rather than academics. I am thinking about Meliville's Billy Budd as a corrective to the problem of my book (or maybe I just mean "of writing") in relationship to the real world. Something I keep thinking about. For more on this, see the X Poetics feature (link to the left). But until I turn into the Handsome Sailor (I would like to exist that way, minus the hanging), my interview on the local NC public radio station show (The State of Things) can be heard
here.


Also, I want Jacob Russell to be my own personal critic. I feel like he really gets my book and I am grateful for all the time he has taken to write about it on his blog. It's very generous of him. And makes me feel understood, which is a rare feeling for anyone, I imagine. His latest post is
here.


And NY, I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Until then, think kindly of me.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

NYC on TUESDAY!

Next Tuesday—at a triple book party—the final QT of 2008—the pleasure of your company is requested—

QT: Queer Readings at Dixon Place presents:

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN
Your Body, Figured (Nightboat)
+
MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights)
+
MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI
The Bruise, winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize (FC2)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at Dixon Place: 161 Chrystie Street, between Delancey and Rivington doors (+ snacks + drinks + hangouts) at 7 / reading at 7:30

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN is the author of two novels, Outline of My Lover and Branwell; a book of stories, They Change the Subject; a lyric narrative, Your Body Figured; three volumes of poetry, most recently In The Time of Assignments; and a new novel, Once You Go Back, forthcoming in 2009. He is an English professor at Wesleyan University and teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Goddard College in Vermont.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE is an insomniac with dreams. Unfortunately sometimes the dreams are awful and the next day is worse. This pattern may have influenced Mattilda's new novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). Mattilda is also the author of Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003) and the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, most recently Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and an expanded second edition of That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008). She is currently at work on a new anthology, titled Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? You've probably asked that question yourself.

MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that's where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

QT: Queer Readings at Dixon Place
http://qtreadings.blogspot.com
qtreadings@gmail.com