Just a quick update for y’all:
Over at Lambda Literary I wrote about Cat Fitzpatrick’s novel-in-verse The Call-Out. I liked it a bunch, it’s a witty and clever look at life in Brooklyn. Read it here: https://lambdaliteraryreview.org/2023/05/puns-sex-clubs-a-review-of-the-call-out-by-cat-fitzpatrick/
Over at Live in Limbo, I wrote up McKenzie Wark’s new book Raving. It’s a nice mix of memoir and theory, although she’s fudged with the details enough she calls it autofiction. I guess that’s fair, although it reads more like Reverse Cowgirl than her books on more academic matters. Read it here: http://www.liveinlimbo.com/2023/04/24/literature/raving-mckenzie-wark-duke-university-press-2023.html
I caught Casey Plett’s workshop at FOLD this past weekend. It was interesting, if geared more towards people gravitating towards writing than older hands like me. There was an interesting bit I’d like to relate though: Plett talked about the difference between networking and building community. Networking is transactional- I’ll help you if you help me - while community is about building each other up. I think that’s a lesson I should try to learn from, and find ways I can help people.
I also attended the book launch for Plett, Hazel Jane Plante and A. Light Zachary on Monday evening. It was a pretty cool night, especially because it’s not often I’m around that many other trans people who are also into the same kind of books I am.
It was nice hearing both Plett and Plante read from their books, and both showed themselves as engaging speakers - Plante for the way she brings the humour out of her book, and Plett for the way she makes the story come alive. If you get the chance to see them on your, I’d recommend it.
The highlight of the evening was Zachary’s reading which bordered on spoken word performance art. In a series of poems (they sometimes call them “interruptions”) they chanted and stomped, reading pieces about identity. Both me and my girlfriend found it a moving performance - she told me later she was crying. We both bought their book More Sure (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023) and I’d recommend you do, too.