“The last two years have given long overdue visibility to trans / non-binary realities, pushing us to re-imagine what centering the margins truly means. Being intentional, though, is more than a special issue of a literary journal for the ‘marginalized;’ it’s about creating a space for folk to curate, create, and declare their own bodies: of work, of resistance, of survival.” Editor Jayy Dodd introduces the new issue of The Offing, devoted to trans and non-binary artists. Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s piece on literary activism.
All Voices Must Be Heard
The Poetry of Borders
Over at the Southern Humanities Review, Javier Zamora, Veronica Marquez, and others share their poems in a special feature for undocumented writers. Pair with Andrew Kay’s Millions essay on the power of poetry.
The Book of Mormon, on Broadway
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park and Team America World Police, are turning their wild imaginations to a new subject and a new genre: “The Book of Mormon,” a musical the duo co-wrote with Robert Lopez, will open on Broadway next year.
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Art Dealer$
Fresh on the heels of Rachel Cohen’s Believer piece on “the unexpected double history of banking and the art world,” one of the country’s biggest art collectors is slammed with a $276 million insider trading accusation.
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Have Eyes, Will Write
You’ve read Elif Batuman’s dissertation on the double-entry book-keeping of novelists (pdf), but now your “debit” balance is low. (Whose isn’t these days?) Enter Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman. They can document your very essence. The Paris Review has an excerpt from The Chairs Are Where the People Go.
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Poet and Magician
One of the titans of Modernist poetry, Hilda Doolittle, or H.D. to her friends, was psychoanalyzed in the 1930s by none other than Sigmund Freud. Her letters to her friends describe the account in great detail, despite explicit instructions from Freud not to speak about their time together with anyone. This essay from The Millions on video games and Freud is a nice complementary piece.
Yup, Still Cold
With a huge winter storm bearing down on the East Coast, the Hopkinton library in Massachusetts did the only sensible thing: they erected a sign extolling the virtues of curling up with a book. What makes theirs unique is that, unlike many of their peers, they found a way to avoid the “warm yourself up” cliché. (Previously spotted on Reddit: “What are some good books to read [in jail?]”)
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Sleep Indulgence and Piñata Effigies
“BEST FEATURE: If you glance at the word it looks like it says ‘tiny axe’ which sounds very cute. It makes me picture a tiny lumberjack. WORST FEATURE: Anxiety can turn a pleasant afternoon into a sweat-drenched pair of slacks that are hard to explain.” Ted Wilson reviews anxiety (spoiler alert: it only gets one star out of five) for Electric Literature.
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