Your hold is ready! (10. 31. 24)

Happy Halloween, everyone! Sneaking in at the last minute to drop a newsletter in your inbox, freshly in my PJs after a fun-filled day on campus dressed as Pooh Bear. (I actually saw another Pooh Bear in passing, but thankfully, we did not have to battle about it).

October has been an overwhelming month, even just writing-wise! Submissions were open for manywor(l)ds as we prepare both for issue 6 (11/15/2024!) and the first issues of 2025. I am chipping away at Mad Dykes, Queer Worlds for Sinister Wisdom, as well as the Disability Justice issue of smoke + mold, both of which I’m guest-editing. And amidst all of that, I managed to get a completed draft of my dissertation done, cited, and sent off to my committee for feedback.

There’s also the small (NOT SMALL; VERY EXCITING) detail of me having secured literary representation! Having given a lot of thought to what an agent could/would/should do for me, first as I placed Failure to Comply with featherproof books and Differential Diagnosis (forthcoming in 2026) with Northwestern University Press unagented, and then as I move toward a step in my literary career in which I think representation is a wise move, I am so excited to move forward with Noah Grey Rosenzweig advocating for my work.

In the meantime, I have some November events!

• Nov 8 - Counterpath Books (Denver) w/ Bri Gonzalez (7:00pm)

• Nov. 11 - Pilsen Community Books (Chicago) (7:00pm)

• Nov. 12 - A Room of One’s Own Books (Madison, WI) w/ Helen Rottier (6:00pm)

I will also be at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in Detroit, MI, with copies of Failure to Comply in tow! I so appreciate all of the support I’ve received this past month, and invite you (probably forever, sorry) to review it on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Also, contact me if you’re interested in a review/interview. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my personal Bookshop page.

Lastly. It has been more than a year since the zionist entity escalated its decades-long campain of genocide against the Palestinian people. We are days away from the conclusion of an election season in which we were asked to choose between two financiers for that genocide. Meanwhile, israel, like other colonies in their death throes, wreaks indescribable destruction upon countless communities, families, priceless historical artifacts and cultural lifeways.

I believe genuinely in our collective fortitude, and in the fortitude of the Palestinian people in particular. I know that israel can - will - and indeed, must - fall. Each of us should look inward and ask, how can I hasten that fall? And, more importantly, how can I support Palestinians not only in surviving, but in thriving free of colonial apartheid?

Consider donating to a verified fundraiser such as CareForGaza, which helps cash aid reach the hands of those trapped in Gaza and facing outrageous food and supply prices. Support Writers Against the War on Gaza, because the cultural boycott of genocidal institutions is smart, sexy, and direly necessary. (Sign this letter if you’re a book person).

As of today, Suzanne Nossel, israel sympathizer and (ex)CEO of PEN America, resigned. She had spent the months since last October doing the deeply american activity of advocating free speech when it suited the interests of power, while suppressing any free expression which challenged it — namely, pro-Palestine speech. What I am saying here is that boycotts, pressure, and persistence work. Keep it up. If we don’t invent a future, our enemies will –– and it certainly will not include us.

Now, onto the recommendations.

Today’s Recs:

Books:

• Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

• Shelley Parker-Chan, He Who Drowned the World

• Cara Hoffman, Ruin

• Sheila O’Connor, Evidence of V

Podcasts

• Adoptees On

• Cults to Consciousness

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

• Zeid, Al-Lugha Al-Ingleeziya (The English Language) (2024)

• Leah Korikan, Nancy (2024).

• K.C. Mead-Brewer, Daddy Thing (2019).

• Zaynab Bobi, Set Operations for a Country in the Belly of Wa(te)r (2022)

• Rachael K. Jones, Five Views of the Planet Tartarus (2024)

• Pegah Ouji, In the Name of Those Optimist Iranian Fools (2024).

• Lena Valencia, Vermillion (2024).

Essays and Articles:

• Yasmin Nair, The NYT Book Review Is Everything Book Criticism Shouldn't Be (2024)

• Ruwaida Kamal Amer, “The Israeli Army Martyred My Father”: What Gaza’s Journalists Have Endured (2024).

My Recent Work:

• You May Feel Odd or Different All Day in The Offing

• nude / poem / with (top : scar) in where meadows

• Every Trans Suicide is State-Sanctioned Murder in Protean Magazine

• Three Micros in X-RAY Lit

• Loving Renee Back in The Rumpus

• This event may contain singing / accompanying craft essay in Half Mystic

• POEM IN WHICH I READ TRANS in JAKE Magazine, *nominated for Best of the Net*!

• My Reflection Has Been Tricky Lately in JAKE Magazine

• dyke (genealogy) / alt: a letter to my grandfather in this first year of silence in Canthius *Priscilla Uppal Memorial Prize for Poetry honorable mention*

• Mad Studies in khōréō.

• Burrito Texts: Mel Baggs and the Language of Crip Life in Review of Disability Studies (academic).

• port-man-toes: the aroace - queercrip - transmad - neuroqueer erotics of digital collaboration with ulysses/constance bougie in Kairos (academic?!?)

• Find my chapbooks on my website and my Goodreads author page! Contact me for PDF requests.

  That’s all for now! Again, feel free to let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more of, and if you have any recommendations of your own!