Lit Pics, Part Deux

Duke University Press is set to begin publishing a transgender studies journal in 2014. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly will be “the first nonmedical journal dedicated to transgender studies.”

“The plot, obviously, is kind of difficult to explain, like an earnest, pared-down, hipster Foucault’s Pendulum. Not only are all of the plot turns above laid out through a multiframed narrative, replete with several people’s footnotes, but the events are interwoven with disquisitions on the history of map-making, Situationist philosophy, urban planning, and pop music.” At Slate, our own Lydia Kiesling reads Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. (ICYMI, Dan Lopez reviewed the book for The Millions.)

If Claudia Rankine writes it, it’s safe to say I’d recommend it. Here she is in a long, lovely essay on Adrienne Rich and her poetic transformations.

This week I linked to one poet’s concerns about the top MFA programs ranked in Poets & Writers. Now, a pretty impressive list of creative writing instructors have some questions for Poets & Writers itself.

“Doctors in England will soon be prescribing books as well as pills to patients suffering from anxiety and depression,” writes Harvey Morris. Hopefully none of these bummers make the cut.

Joshua Cohen, author of the just-published meganovel Witz, dispenses provocations in  The New York Observer: “The targets might be Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Shalom Auslander… When I started this book, I wanted to sleep with their wives. By the time I finished, I wanted to sleep with their mothers.”