Books

L'Incroyable is a monographic magazine dedicated to an artist's teenage years and his cultural background. This second issue focuses on Jim Shaw's Californian youth between the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1970s.

34 contributors—including Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler and Cary Loren—discuss childhood, adolescence, being a student in California in the 1970s, Mike Kelley, comic books, drawing, painting, California, the hippies, LSD, Charles Manson, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, My Mirage and Oism, Born Again Christians, catechism, transhumanism, cyborgs, Scientology and the Church of Satan, Terrence Malick, the Beat Generation, counter-culture, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Crumb, Janis Joplin and Basil Wolverton, Michigan, Ann Arbor, proto- punk, Destroy All Monsters, MC5, John Sinclair, and Tiki culture.

Works by Mathilde Agius, Joan Braun, Bertrand Dezoteux, Golgotha, groupe CCC – Alice Gavin and Valentin Bigel and École Duperré Paris students, Jérémy Piningre, Jim Shaw, Pierre Vanni.
Founded in 2015 by artist Clotilde Viannay, L'Incroyable magazine is dedicated to adolescence and retraces the teenage years of a personality, examining the cultural context of his youth.
The magazine is extended by the “Mini” series. Each book immerses itself in the youth of artists through an interview about their teenage years.

Jim Shaw (born 1952 in Midland, Michigan, lives and works in Los Angeles) is an atypical figure in the Californian art world, sharing with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley a similar desire to produce an immersive visual oeuvre aimed at exploring the dark side of the American psyche.

Texts by Philippe Aronson, Jacques Barbéri and Yves Ramonet, Claire Barliant, Laura Ben Hayoun, Mathieu Buard, Robert Buchard, Laurent Courau, Michel Croce-Spinelli, Michel Parbot, Jill Gasparina, Étienne Greib, Doug Harvey, Yves-Alexandre Jaquier, Cary Loren, Alex Mar, Robert Somma, Philippe Vasset, Clotilde Viannay, interviews with Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler, Cary Loren, Neil Harbisson, Natasha Vita-More, Gilbert Shelton.

This book tiptoes between aesthetics and ethics; it proposes to rethink trauma in its necessity as well as impossibility to be represented and understood.

The traumatic experience of violence marks social orders and imbues history. How does it reach beyond distress and pain? This collection of works interrogates alternative narratives: The traces of trauma may also comprise a subversive potential, which withdraws from the hold of power and instead makes room for a sense of history's vulnerability.

Thoughts, artistic contributions and text, most of them produced especially for this volume, move around notions of trauma, in an attempt to encircle moments, at which translation of meaning seems suddenly suspended.

Contributions by Pavel Büchler, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Jenny Edkins, Aurélien Gamboni & Sandrine Teixido, Unica Zürn, Falke Pisano, Katja Mater, Georges Perec, Andrea Bellu, Ben Seymour, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Gitte Villesen.

Published with Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève.

published in March 2020
English edition
13 x 20 cm (softcover)
240 pages (ill.)

First comprehensive monograph on Marion Baruch's work. This edition presents a broad span of Baruch's oeuvre, from the 1960s to her recent textile production. It includes three essays—by Fanni Fetzer, Martin Herbert, and Noah Stolz—as well as polyphonic focus texts by curators, friends, and art historians from the artist's circle, all providing compelling insights into her works and methods.

There is no question that ecological ideas acquired a central role in contemporary episteme. In contrast, the heuristic function that these ideas can assume in the current polarisation is questionable: that which, over the last decade, has identified the environmental crisis with the (categorical and totalitarian) concept of the Anthropocene.

Ecological discourse positioned itself inside historically situated trajectories that contributed to the transformation of aesthetical paradigms and political practices. In the scenario that 1968 opened up, the transversal nature of subjectivity allowed it to cover different fields, beginning with the tension between the logic of a unitary discourse and the creation of a multiplicity of possible worlds, between the molar and the molecular, the micro and the macro.

Ecological thought, as such, cannot help but conflict with that which is assumed to be homogeneous and constant, with that which forces the earth to be centred, measured, and expropriated, just as life must be biogenetically controlled, colonised, and subjected to patriarchy.

A necessary and relevant addition to the Black LGBTQ literary canon, which oftentimes overlooks Black lesbian writing, Lez Talk is a collection of short stories that embraces the fullness of Black lesbian experiences. The contributors operate under the assumption that "lesbian" is not a dirty word, and have written stories that amplify the diversity of Black lesbian lives.

At once provocative, emotional, adventurous, and celebratory, Lez Talk crosses a range of fictional genres, including romance, speculative, and humor. The writers explore new subjects and aspects of their experiences, and affirm their gifts as writers and lesbian women. Beginning with Sheree L. Greer's "I Can't Turn it Off," a short, powerful tale imbued with socio-political undercurrents, the collection also includes work from Claudia Moss, LaToya Hankins, Lauren Cherelle, K.A. Smith, S. Andrea Allen, Faith Mosley, and Eternity Philops.

It's summer in New York City and the streets are sizzling. Below 14th Street the girls at the Kitsch-Inn are hard at work on their new lesbian version of A StreetCar Named Desire. As the temperature rises, lesbian-at-large Lila Futuransky is looking for adventure, with her keys in her pocket and a copy of On The Road in her hand.

A fast-paced, spirited romp through politics and sexuality, Girls, Visions and Everything offers a funny, affectionate portrait of a group of struggling young artists trying to find meaning in their changing world.

Exit Ambition is a catalogue of practices, documents, videos, and other projects - virtual & actual. The book operates as an incomplete index of a series of installations, instructions, anti-plays, performance scores, descriptions, etc.

Jake Reber lives and works in Buffalo, NY, where he co-curates hystericallyreal.com.

Queen Mob's Teahouse is an online literary magazine. Queen Mob's Teahouse: Teh Book is this volume. All new, no doubts.

"Everyone has come for tea! Poets, robots, literary critics, essayists, philosophers and clouds, beamed in from around the world to think about a new order and remind you that literature really is the cure for what ails you. A humane and diverse collection of voices getting to grips with their human condition, and yours, and the end of the world, too." - Octavia Bright, co-host of Literary Friction

Queen Mob's Teahouse: Teh Book was edited by Russell Bennetts and features work by the following authors. 

Setsuko Adachi, Rion Amilcar Scott, Russell Bennetts, Gem Blackthorn, Robert Boucheron, M. Soledad Caballero, Caroline Cabrera, S Cearley, Dorothy Chan, Trinie Dalton, Dana Dawud, Amanda Earl, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Jeremy Fernando, Claire Rudy Foster, SJ Fowler, Patricia Garcia, Mark Gluth, Eloise Grills, Allison Grimaldi-Donahue, Brinda Gulati, Judson Hamilton, Susan Harlan, Heather Hughes, Erik Kennedy, Naveen Kishore, Rauan Klassnik, Virginia Konchan, Keith Kopka, Nate Lippens, Reb Livingston, Marissa Maciel, Scott Manley Hadley, rob mclennan, Jasminne Mendez, Lupe Mendez, Calliope Michail, Thomas Molander, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Jason Novak, Emily O’Neill, Elizabeth Onusko, Robyn Maree Pickens, Whiskey Radish, Colin Raff, Reyes Ramirez, Christina M. Rau, Raquel Salas Rivera, Vlad Savich, Michael J Seidlinger, Medha Singh, George Szirtes, Eileen R. Tabios, Chris Tse, Leah Umansky, Nadia de Vries and Kimmy Walters. 

Cover design and finishing touches on the typesetting by Shuwei Bennetts and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Cover photo of Julia Frakes by Kathryn LeSoine. 

Gaudy Bauble stages a glittering world populated by GoldSeXUal StatuEttes, anti-drag kings, Gilbert-&-George-like lesbians, maverick detectives, a transgender army equipped with question-mark-shaped helmets, and birds who have dyke written all over them. Everyone interferes with the plot. No one is in control of the plot. Surprises happen as a matter of course: A faux research process produces actual results. Hundreds of lipstick marks reanimate a dying body. And the Deadwood-to-Dynamo Audience Prize goes to whoever turns deadestwood into dynamost.

Gaudy Bauble stages what happens when the disenfranchised are calling the shots. Riff-raff are running the show and they are making a difference.

"I'm besotted with this beguiling, hilarious, rollocking, language-metamorphosing novel. The future of the queer avant-garde is safe with Isabel Waidner." - Olivia Laing

After a moment of possible eye contact at a gig, my attraction to the band's drummer - Curt - snowballed into limerent obsession. The unsent letters documenting my crush form the basis of overlove: a non-fiction novella concerned with love, boundaries, leaky jars and the female gaze in today's context of digital communication, millennial malaise and searching online for something 'more'.

Liberating the Canon is an edited anthology capturing the contemporary emergence of radically innovative and nonconforming forms of literature in the UK and US. Historically, sociopolitical marginalisation and avant-garde aesthetics have not come together in UK literature, counterintuitively divorcing outsider experience and formal innovation. Bringing together intersectional identity and literary innovation, LTC is designed as an intervention against the normativity of literary publishing contexts and the institution 'Innovative Literature' as such. More widely, if literature, any literature, can act as a mode of cultural resistance and help imagine a more progressive politics in Tory Britain and beyond, it is this.

Contributors are Mojisola Adebayo, Jess Arndt (US), Jay Bernard, Richard Brammer, Victoria Brown, SJ Fowler, Juliet Jacques, Sara Jaffe (US), Roz Kaveney, R. Zamora Linmark (US), Mira Mattar, Seabright D.Mortimer, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Rosie Snajdr, Timothy Thornton, Isabel Waidner, Joanna Walsh and Eley Williams.

Isabel Waidner is a writer and cultural theorist. She is the author of three books of innovative fiction, most recently Gaudy Bauble (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017), which is currently longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for "hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose". Her articles and short fictions have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including 3: AM, Berfrois, Configurations, The Happy Hypocrite, The Quietus and Minor Literature[s]. She is also the editor of Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Writing (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018) which explores the relationship between identity, intersectionality and innovation in literature. As part of the indie band Klang, Waidner released records on UK labels Rough Trade (2003) and Blast First (2004). She is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Roehampton University, London, UK.

The title COMFORT 7/32/00 refers to a note I found on the street one day, that became a portal into a state of mind or a particular time, although the time was out of date or imagined, foating in between past, present and future. The book is a journey through this imagined place, where vision oscillates between perception and mechanics, where objects and materials are in permanent state of melting or intersecting.

Published August 2020.

A collection of short poetry; (yet) is journey through everything in between; transit zones, temporary shelters, weightlessness and virtual spaces.

"I came here with the illusion it could be an island, a place I could retreat to, where I could forget myself and cover all the holes from potential air infiltration. And for a while it was possible to look at the world through a plastic sheet, but it became either suffocating or the plastic was too thin. As if shutting myself off from the world made me want to look at it even more."  

Published August 2020

In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism.

Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.

Published 2012

In her new book, Mina Fina continues to explore the themes of representation of the female body. Through her interventions to the images from old erotic magazines, she questions the normatives of body acceptance and places it into abstract compositions that are half drawings, half collages.

Riso Paradiso is a collective of six individuals connected by research and creation in the fields of risography, graphic design, printing techniques, visual communications, photography, illustration and publishing.  

The book is continuation of a residency project that was held in January 2020 at the Hiša kulture Pivka gallery. Theme of the residency was inspired by the in-house LP collection of colleague Leon Zuodar who also co-runs the gallery. Through his record collection they recognised the spirit of their generation. 

Result of the residency was 6 different screen prints, but the idea was further upgraded as the project proceeded and an art publication in the risography technique was conceived.  

The third and final volume of Fred Moten's poetic trilogy (including THE FEEL TRIO and The Little Edges), THE SERVICE PORCH is an expansive meditation on black life, love, violence, and the adventure of making art.

National Book Award-Finalist, Moten returns here to reinvent some of his earliest poetic visions and strikes up a conversation with many of the most brilliant African American visual artists through a series of epistolary and ekphrastic poems. By turns mournful, tender, ferocious, and heart-breakingly honest, THE SERVICE PORCH is an open letter, a play list, and a hive of prayer and joy.

"Back in the day when KRS-One intoned —The Bridge is over!— he did not prefigure a poet from Queens of the fierce attitude and intellectual magnitude of Enzo Silon Surin. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST gives the Heisman to such a refrain with lyrical power-packing poetics that settles the score with a succinct— Not! No the Bridge is not over, for Surin's Queens is alive and well and under the gaze of a master observer who eulogizes lives that though at times are battered have always mattered.

Enzo Silon Surin's poems get you caught up in the deeply personal experiences of growing and visceral all-encompassing knowing from an acute witness of every breath and follicle of Black life from palm trees, sand and sea to street corner projects, suburban houses and fistfuls of black water. Surin writes about the confused and disconnected, trigger happy wannabes trapped by outdated notions of masculinity, the cracked head crackheads all held in the clutch of society's clinched fist through which the trauma that comes with being of color, addicted, broke, lost and tossed, is itself a clinched fist of black bodies caught in the Russian nesting doll America's clinched fists make.

WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST is an elegy for 'the premature exits.' It is a blues for the black-on-black black and blue. Surin yields his pen like a microscopic scalpel whereby an autopsy of possibility is performed to un-clinch the remarkable bone gristle poetry in these unflinching heart-wrenching pages."—Tony Medina

Enzo Silon Surin, Haitian-born poet, educator, speaker, publisher and social advocate, is the author of two chapbooks, A Letter of Resignation: An American Libretto (2017) and Higher Ground. He is the recipient of a Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and is a PEN New England Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. Surin's work gives voice to experiences that take place in what he calls "broken spaces" and his poems have appeared in numerous publications including Crab Orchard Review, Origins, Transition Magazine/Jalada, Interviewing the Caribbean, jubilat, Soundings East, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, and sx salon. Surin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College and founding editor and publisher at Central Square Press. His debut full-length poetry collection is WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST (Black Lawrence Press, 2020).

Alexandra Kollontai was a Russian revolutionary who was appointed commissar of social welfare after the October Revolution and later one of the world’s first woman ambassadors. She fought for abortion rights, secularized marriage, and paid maternity leave—and considered “comradely love” to be a political force. This reader, in which artists and thinkers revisit Kollontai’s legacy in light of current feminist struggles, stems from a research project by CuratorLab at Konstfack and Tensta konsthall that accompanied Dora García’s exhibition “Red Love.” It also features the first English translation of the 1977 biographical play Kollontai by Swedish writer Agneta Pleijel.

Edited by MARIA LIND, MICHELE MASUCCI, JOANNA WARSZA
Contributions by BINI ADAMCZAK, SARA AHMED, GIULIA ANDREANI, LISE HALLER BAGGESEN, DORA GARCÍA, MICHAEL HARDT, MARIA LIND, MICHELE MASUCCI, ALLA MITROFANOVA, MARTYNA NOWICKA-WOJNOWSKA, PONTUS PETTERSSON, JONATHAN BROOKS PLATT, AGNETA PLEIJEL, NINA POWER, PAUL B. PRECIADO, THOMAS RAFA, ALICJA ROGALSKA, MOHAMMAD SALEMY, SALLY SCHONFELDT, AARON SCHUSTER, SOPHIA TABATADZE, PETRA BAUER & REBECKA THOR, OXANA TIMOFEEVA, JOANNA WARSZA, HANNAH ZAFIROPOULOS

The Annotated Reader is a publication-as-exhibition and exhibition-as-publication featuring 281 creative personalities responses and remarks on a chosen piece of writing.

Ryan Gander and Jonathan P. Watts invited a range of people, encompassing contemporary artists, designers, writers, institutional founders, musicians and so on – to imagine they’ve missed the last train.

“Is there one piece of writing that you would want with you for company in the small hours?” With this in mind, we asked people to submit a text with personal annotations and notes made directly onto it.

With over 281 contributions collected over the last few months, we have gathered a selection of contributors including Marina Abramović, Art & Language, Paul Clinton, Tom Godfrey, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Alistair Hudson and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The annotation adds a further layer, making each piece unique and a historic record of our current times.

Contributors:
Julian Abraham, Marina Abramović, Larry Achiampong, Saâdane Afif, Aaron Angell, Spencer, Anthony, Rachel Ara, Uri Aran, Cory Arcangel, Ellie Armon, Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden), François Aubart, Mary Aurory, Giles Bailey, Dan Baldwin, Fiona Banner, Simeon, Barclay, Anna Barham, Alvaro Barrington, Vanessa Bartlett, David Batchelor, Jacqueline Bebb, James Beckett, Frank Benson, Hans Berg, Emilia Bergmark, Vanessa Billy, Harry Bix, Juliette Blightman, John Bloomfield, John Bock, Doug Bowen, Benjamin Brett, Jack Brindley, Jim Broadbent, Yoko Brown, Hannah Brown, Stefan Brüggemann, Savinder Bual, Pavel Büchler, Nathaniel Budzinski, Gregory Burke, Wayne Burrows, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Mira Calix, Helen Cammock, Banu Cennetoglu, Tony Chambers, Rachael Champion, Alice Channer, Lou Cantor, Adam Chodzko, Perienne Christian, Martin Clark, Kaavous Clayton, Paul Clinton, Lucy Clout, William Cobbing, Gary Colclough, Beth Collar, Jack Cooke, May Cornet, Cel Crabeels, Paul Crook, Rob Crosse, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Francois Curlet, Matt Darbyshire, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau, Gabriele De Santis, Poppy De Villeneuve, Richard Deacon, Liu Ding, Stevie Dix, Nathalie Djurberg, Gabor Domokos, Lauren Doughty, Helen Dowling, Joe Dunthorne, Sam Durant, Daniel Eatock, Shannon Ebner, Sean Edwards, George Eksts, Olafur Eliasson, gerlach en koop, Vivo Enky, Gareth Evans, Alice Andrea Ewing, Sam Falls, Abbe Faria, Chantal Faust, Jes Fernie, Spencer Finch, Alice Fisher, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Sal Fontaine, Tim Foxon, Mary Furniss, Ryan Gander, Mark Geffriaud, Alessandra Genualdo, Amir George, Alexie Glass-Kantor, Patrick Goddard, Tom Godfrey, Antony Gormley, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Rodney Graham, Lavinia Greenlaw, Hannah Gregory, Joseph Grigely, Corey Hayman, Richard Hayward, Louise Hayward, Louis Henderson, Holly Hendry, Camille Henrot, Susan Hiller, Andy Holden, Ashley Holmes, David Horvitz, Alistair Hudson, Craig Hudson, Candice Jacobs, Glen Jamieson, Tess Jaray, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, Sophie Jung, John Kaldor, Allison Katz, Jasleen Kaur, Jonathan Kemp, Sharon Kivland, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lorenz Klingebiel, Matthew Krishanu, Gabriel Kuri, Zak Kyes, Emily LaBarge, Suzanne Lacy, Max Lamb, Abigail Lane, Hannah Lees, Gabriel Lester, Jenny Lindblom, Hanne Lippard, Tom Lock, Sarah Lucas, Georgia Lucas, vanessa maltese, Shepherd Manyika, Céline Manz, Michael, Marriott, Rui Mateus Amaral, Midori matsui, Rebecca May Marston, Niall McClelland, Chris McCormack, Luke Mccreadie, Francis McKee, Bea McMahon, Harry Meadley, Nathaniel Mellors, Jo Melvin, Mathieu Mercier, Daisuke Miyatsu, Jonathan Monk, Jade Montserrat, Brian Moran, Franzi Mueller Schmidt, Clive Myrie, Hiroyuki Nakanishi, Shahryar Nashat, Daniel Neofetou, Kate Newby, Simon Newby, John Henry Newton, Olaf Nicolai, Helen Nisbet, Ryan Noon, Hana Noorali, Sophie Nys, Alek O, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Harold Offeh, Ahmet Ögüt, Ima-Abasi Okon, Vanessa Onwuemezi, David Osbaldeston, Kate Owens, Jonathan P. Watts, Barnie Page, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Francesco Pedraglio, Hannah Perry, Sybella Perry, Pratchaya Phinthong, Rachel Pimm, Emily Pope, Sam Porritt, Liv Preston, Paul Purgas, Tobias Rehberger, Pedro Reyes, Emily Richardson, Jacques Rogers, #Additivism Daniel Rourke, ryanna projects (Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen), syndicate (Sacha Leopold and François Havegeer), Giorgio Sadotti, prem sahib, Anri Sala, Margaret Salmon, Lucy A. Sames, Eran Schaerf, Annelore Schneider, Barry Schwabsky, Stephen Sheehan, Amy Sherlock, Anj Smith, John Smith, Bob and Roberta Smith, Renee So, Rustan Söderling, Nedko Solakov, Sriwhana Spong, Elinor Stanley, Georgina Starr, Astrid Stavro, Amy Stephens, Michael Stevenson, Jack Strange, Alfie Strong, Jamie Sutcliffe, Maki Suzuki, Rayyane Tabet, Mika Tajima, Lynton Talbot, Sally Tallant, Anne Tallentire, Maria Taniguchi, The Floors (Luke Dux, Ryan Dux and Ashley Doodkorte), Alice Theobald, Sam Thorne, Cara Tolmie, Marie Toseland, Rosemarie Trockel, Thom Trojanowski Hobson, Simon Turnbull, Lauren Velvick, Dana Venezia, Martin Vincent, Yonatan Vinitsky, Miriam Visaczki, Frances von Hofmannsthal, John Walter, Dan Walwin, Jessica Warboys, Ossian Ward, Evie Ward, Emily Wardill, Emily Warner, Nicholas Fox Weber, Lawrence Weiner, Charlott Weise, Richard Wentworth, Pae White, Riet Wijnen, Lillian Wilkie, Holly Willats, Issy Wood, Bill Woodrow, Seymour Wright, Shen Xin, Samson Young, Bruno Zhu, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Andrea Zucchini, Heidi Zuckerman

"Whether it’s around a kitchen table or from the pages of a book, hearing the voices of resilient women is like having the companionship of a sister or mother — tender and sustaining, like maha di dahl on a sodden wet day in Glasgow. With that innate knowledge of measuring by eye, atta, chawal, mirch, comes the wisdom of a women’s experience, as she tells us to, ‘be like teflon, be like teflon, don’t let anything stick.’" Jasleen Kaur

'Be Like Teflon' is a new book by Jasleen Kaur commissioned by curatorial company Panel for Glasgow Women's Library. In a collection of conversations between Jasleen and women of Indian heritage living in the UK, arise themes of labour, duty, sustenance and loss. Here we find a place for their histories, experience and strength. Through the simple act of listening, over a hot tava or plate of food, begin acts of solidarity and self-nourishment.

This publication received support from Creative Scotland and was produced by Panel. It is co-published by Glasgow Women's Library and Dent-De-Leone.

Published 2019

From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed trilogy of novels, Vernon Subutex—short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. But who is Vernon Subutex?

Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Paris, where his name was legend throughout Paris. By the 2000s, however, with the arrival of the internet and the decline in CD and vinyl sales, his shop is struggling, like so many others. When it closes, Subutex finds himself with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Before long, his savings are gone, and when the mysterious rock star who had been covering his rent suddenly drops dead of a drug overdose, Subutex finds himself launched on an epic saga of couch-surfing, boozing, and coke-snorting before finally winding up homeless. Just as he resigns himself to life as a panhandler, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook takes the internet by storm.

The word is out: Subutex is lugging around a bunch of VHS tapes shot by that same dead rock musician—his last recordings on this earth. Soon a crowd of wild characters, from screen writers to social media groupies, from porn stars to failed musicians to random misfits, are hot on Vernon's trail . . . but Vernon is none the wiser.

Virginie Despentes is a writer and filmmaker. She worked in an independent record store in the early '90s, was a sex worker, and published her first novel, Baise Moi, when she was twenty-three. She adapted the novel for the screen in 2000, codirecting with the porn star Coralie Trinh Thi. Upon release, it became the first film to be banned in France in twenty-eight years. Despentes is the author of more than fifteen other works, including Apocalypse Baby, Bye Bye Blondie, Pretty Things, and the essay collection King Kong Theory.

Part social epic, part punk-rock thriller, writer/filmmaker Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy continues the Man Booker International Prize shortlisted sprawling tale of an ex-record shop clerk's celebrity fortunes and misfortunes. Rock star Alex Bleach might be dead, but he has a secret. It's a secret that concerns several people, but the only person who can unlock it is Vernon Subutex, former record shop proprietor turned homeless messiah and guru, last seen hallucinating and feverish on a bench. He has tapes of Alex that will shake the world. The hunt is on, and the wolves are closing in.

Meanwhile, the cast of lovers and killers in Vernon's orbit is in violent disarray. Aïcha wants to know the truth behind the death of her mother, the porn star Vodka Satana. And if she finds the bastards responsible, she wants to make them pay, whatever Céleste thinks of her plan. Céleste wants Aïcha to get a grip and stop hanging around with Subutex's gang of disciples. The Hyena wants to find the Bleach tapes. She wants to untangle her complicated feelings about Anaïs, her boss's assistant. And speaking of her boss, she does not want Laurent Dopalet to discover how badly she has double-crossed him.

Big-shot producer Laurent Dopalet wants the Hyena to find and destroy the Bleach tapes. He wants to forget he ever knew Vodka Satana. He wants people to stop graffitiing his apartment with ludicrous allegations. Above all, he wants people to understand: NONE OF THIS IS HIS FAULT.

"Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read . . . [It] has dupes and assholes and racists and the people they hate and a stunning diversity of internal monologues and trans true love. Like the last decade, it searches for a happy ending that isn't merely personal and can't find it . . . These novels with their depth and detail kick TV's sorry ass." Nell Zink

Virginie Despentes is a writer and filmmaker. She worked in an independent record store in the early '90s, was a sex worker, and published her first novel, Baise Moi, when she was twenty-three. She adapted the novel for the screen in 2000, codirecting with the porn star Coralie Trinh Thi. Upon release, it became the first film to be banned in France in twenty-eight years. Despentes is the author of more than fifteen other works, including Apocalypse Baby, Bye Bye Blondie, Pretty Things, and the essay collection King Kong Theory.

Translated from french by: Frank Wynne
Published July 2020

This definitive volume gathers work from June Jordan’s ten books of poetry and includes many never-before-published poems—including a tender, fierce, and innovative collection of poems written before her death in 2002. Throughout her storied career as an artist and activist, Jordan chronicled a living, breathing history of the struggles that have defined the United States. Having engaged in a vast stylistic range, Jordan’s work broadened and enriched the traditions of American poetry. Alice Walker wrote of Jordan: “[She] makes us think of Akhmatova, of Neruda. She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet.”

With a foreword by Adrienne Rich.

June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and was the author of ten books of poetry, seven collections of essays, two plays, a libretto, a novel, a memoir, five children’s books, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. As a professor at UC Berkeley, Jordan established Poetry for the People, a program to train student teachers to teach the power of poetry from a multicultural worldview. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and her articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, and The Nation. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.

Published 2007