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Episodes
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Join White Witch Maja D’Aoust as she gives a live divination demonstration exploring an alternative method for reading the Tarot based on Alchemical techniques. Her new Tarot deck, The White Witch Tarot, uses a spread that encourages the use of psychological archetypes in a marriage of opposites that mirror the Shakespearean drama. Examine the purposes and properties of the Tarot through this unique deck that uses meditative channeled images and text to convey the mysteries.
Use the transformative and healing power of the white witch as White Witch Maja D’Aoust explores the 22 Major Arcana archetypes of the Tarot through meditative art and channeled mysteries in this stunning black and gold deck and companion guide. Use this deck as a traditional Tarot Majors-only system or delve into a technique using protagonists and antagonists pitted against each other until they reach unification, much like Shakespearean therapy where we explore problems via another lens. Learn to visualize and build your own reality by discovering answers to your deepest questions, bringing to light powerful truths and seeing the radiance of the self through a poetic treatment of the Majors. Created through decades of research into Alchemy and different divination modalities, this deck offers a fresh new perspective on using the cards to unveil what has been hidden.
Maja D'Aoust is a practicing Witch who performs public rituals and gives educational lectures. Maja's interest in Alchemy, magic and the esoteric sciences spans her entire lifetime. After completing her Bachelors degree in Biochemistry, Maja studied oriental medicine, martial arts and acupuncture, later earning her Masters degree in Transformational Psychology. Maja worked for 11 years as the librarian of Manly P. Hall's Philosophical Research Society. Author of several books, journal articles and blog content Maja writes and is a visual artist. Currently Maja is starting a public educational non-profit 501 c-3 called The Well Wishers which focuses on teaching wellness and esoteric sciences to the community.
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy
From writer Cecil Castellucci and artist Marley Zarcone, Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy—a bold new reimagining of one of comics’ maddest and most memorable characters and part of the DC’s Young Animal imprint led by rock-star Gerard Way.
Loma Shade may be from another planet, but she’s still like every other twentysomething who feels that their life is going nowhere fast. Bored out of her mind, her solution is to drop out of school, dump her boyfriend and leave her homeworld of Meta behind—courtesy of the infamous “madness coat” of renegade poet Rac Shade, which is not so much a garment as it is a multidimensional gateway.
After stealing the coat and astrally projecting herself across space, Loma ends up in the body of Megan Boyer, an Earth girl who seems to have it all: youth, beauty and a conveniently damaged brain. Following her “miraculous” recovery, however, Loma finds there’s just one problem with being Megan: Everyone hates her. She was a bully who terrorized her enemies and her friends alike, and now Loma’s stuck with the consequences.To make matters worse, back on Meta there are dark forces that want Rac’s dangerously valuable coat for their own nefarious purposes, and they’re closing in on Loma’s vulnerable physical body. At the same time, the primal madness that the coat channels is slowly, irresistibly eroding Loma’s equally vulnerable soul.
With two new lives to live, can this Changing Girl survive either one without losing her mind?
Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth and the Eisner-nominated Odd Duck. She is currently writing Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy, an ongoing comic on Gerard Way's DC Young Animal imprint. Her picture book, Grandma's Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. She lives in Los Angeles.
Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground
DC’s classic Silver Age hero is revived in Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground, the first chapter of a trailblazing new saga from artist Michael Avon Oeming (Powers) and writers Jonathan Rivera and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, the visionary founder of DC’s Young Animal imprint!
Cave Carson was once the world’s greatest underground adventurer—but that was a long time ago. When he settled down with his wife, Eileen, to raise their daughter, Chloe, he traded the controls of his vehicle, the Mighty Mole Mark 1, for a desk and keyboard. Since then, Cave has led a quiet life—even with the constant distraction of his otherworldly cybernetic eye. But when a sudden illness claims Eileen’s life, Cave’s tranquil existence is shattered—and he and Chloe soon find themselves hurtling down a terrifying tunnel of danger, discovery, mayhem and madness. At the bottom of that tunnel lie secrets buried for decades—secrets that hold the key to thwarting a conspiracy that threatens to consume the surface and subterranean worlds alike. But will Cave and his intrepid team of super-spelunkers be able to overcome this new generation of evil—or is there less to this hero than meets the eye? Collects issues #1-6.
Gerard Way is the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Umbrella Academy and the comics miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. He is the creative mind behind the new grassroots imprint, DC's Young Animal, whose retro-inspired lineup bridges the gap between the DC Universe and Vertigo. Way is also widely known for his former role as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance.
Jon Rivera is a writer of comic books and graphic novels, best known for his work on DC's Young Animal. Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, co-written by imprint founder Gerard Way, is one of the line's inaugural titles.
Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Brick by Brick
The spirit of Grant Morrison's groundbreaking Doom Patrol is captured in this debut series starring the cult-favorite misfits as a part of Gerard Way's new Young Animal imprint.
Flex Mentallo, Robotman, Rebis, Crazy Jane, and more are back to twist minds and take control. This new take on a classic embraces and reimagines the Morrison run's signature surrealism and irreverence. Incorporating bold, experimental art and a brash tone to match a new generation of readers, Gerard Way's Doom Patrolestablishes radical new beginnings, breaks new ground, and honors the warped team dynamic of the world's strangest heroes. This abstract and unexpected ensemble series nods at the Doom Patrol's roots by continuing to break the barriers of the traditional superhero genre. Collects issues #1-6.
Doom Patrol is the flagship title of Young Animal--a four-book grassroots mature reader imprint, creatively spearheaded by Gerard Way, bridging the gap between the DCU and Vertigo, and focusing on the juxtaposition between visual and thematic storytelling.
Gerard Way is the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Umbrella Academy and the comics miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. He is the creative mind behind the new grassroots imprint, DC's Young Animal, whose retro-inspired lineup bridges the gap between the DC Universe and Vertigo. Way is also widely known for his former role as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance.
Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress
As part of the new DC’s Young Animal imprint, a bold new take on the world of the Batman comes from writer Jody Houser, artists Tommy Lee Edwards andShawn Crystal and DC’s Young Animal mastermind Gerard Way—Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress.
The shadow of the Bat falls over all of Gotham City, from its dark alleys to its glittering high-rises. But a new vigilante has just stepped away from that shadow, and she has her own brand of violent retribution to deal out to the city’s corrupt elites.
Meet Violet Paige, a rich young celebutante with a bad attitude and a worse reputation. No one would ever suspect that this tabloid-fodder wild child has a secret hidden beneath her spoiled heiress exterior—a secret that has driven her to become the terrifying force of vengeance against her privileged peers known as Mother Panic! But even as Violet launches her all-out assault on the rich and twisted, her shaky allies threaten to betray her, and every one of Gotham’s guardians—from Batwoman to the Dark Knight himself—is hot on her trail. Will Mother Panic continue to strike terror into her enemies’ hearts? Or will her violent quest for justice reach an equally violent end? Collects Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress #1-6.
Jody Houser is the creator behind the webcomic Cupcake POW! Houser has written Faith for Valiant Comics, Max Ride: Ultimate Flight and Agent May for Marvel, and Orphan Black for IDW. She has been a contributing writer to numerous comics anthologies, including Avengers: No More Bullying, Vertigo CMYK: Magenta, and both Womanthology series. Houser contributed to Justice League of America: Road to Rebirth and is currently writing Mother Panic for DC.
Friday May 25, 2018
Friday May 25, 2018
In this smart, funny, impassioned call to arms, a pop culture critic merges memoir and commentary to explore how our culture shapes ideas about who women are, what they are meant to be, and where they belong.
Who is “the girl?” Look to movies, TV shows, magazines, and ads and the message is both clear and not: she is a sexed up sidekick, a princess waiting to be saved, a morally infallible angel with no opinions of her own. She’s whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. She’s an abstraction, an ideal, a standard, a mercurial phantom.
From the moment we’re born, we’re told stories about what girls are and they aren’t, what girls want and what they don’t, what girls can be and what they can’t. “The girl” looms over us like a toxic cloud, permeating everything and confusing our sense of reality. In You Play the Girl, Carina Chocano shows how we metabolize the subtle, fragmented messages embedded in our everyday experience and how our identity is shaped by them.
From Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive ’70s through the backlash ’80s, the glib ’90s, and the pornified aughts—and at stops in between—Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. She explains how growing up in the shadow of “the girl” taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections. In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than we think, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.
Praise for You Play the Girl
“You Play the Girl by Carina Chocano blew my mind. Like a goldfish realizing that water existed, I instantly came alive to the air and the atmosphere of how my Otherness informed my girlhood. Each and every message of being asked to stand still so that I could be seen by the cultural product of male-made entertainment made me scream with recognition. In particular, the Flashdance chapter time-travelled me back to my youth, but holding hands with a clear-eyed, brilliant, hilarious friend. Re-looking at Stepford Wives, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched and all of the other hypnotic suggestions about my supposed woman-hood made me feel alive and energized and ready to topple the patriarchy. The world is changing for women and girls and here is one of the first steps—going back to do archaeology about what the heck happened to us, how we got colonized. If information is power, You Play the Girl is amsuperpower.”—Jill Soloway, writer, director, creator of Transparent
“Carina Chocano is a brilliant thinker, a dazzling stylist and an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. An important critical work as well as an entertaining personal story, You Play the Girl looks at old archetypes in new and often astonishingly insightful ways and establishes Chocano as a unique talent and crucial voice in the cultural conversation.”—Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion
“Carina Chocano unearths the little horrors of our culture’s pervasive, insidious sexism in essays so brilliant and witty you’ll wish her book would never end. Chocano is one of our sharpest, most original cultural observers, and You Play the Girl is as engrossing as it is unforgettable.”—Heather Havrilesky, author of How to Be a Person in the World
Carina Chocano is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Elle, and her writing has appeared in Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. A former staff film and TV critic at the Los Angeles Times, she has also worked as a TV and book critic at Entertainment Weekly and a staff writer at Salon. She lives in Los Angeles.
Kristina Wong is solo performer, writer, actor, educator, “culture jammer”, and filmmaker. Kristina’s background in education, art for social change, and community work informs the content of her performances and writing which are both entertaining and thought provoking.
She was awarded the Creative Capital Award in Theater and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network to create her third full-length solo show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest exploring the remarkably high incidence of suicide among Asian American women in a world that’s more nuts than we are. She is completing a novel started with the PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship.
Thursday May 24, 2018
Thursday May 24, 2018
(Podcast editor's note: The Q&A segment for this event took place off-mic for the most part and, despite our best efforts, the audio is difficult to hear at times.)
A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker’s disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever
Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world’s water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that’s making the rounds, and her mother–the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro–wants to have lunch. It’s almost more than she can overanalyze.
But the appearance of a mysterious map, depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement, sends Stella–a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don’t ask)–on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum’s colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul’s been keeping, and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life. Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early thirties with your brain and heart intact.
Praise for Impossible Views of the World
“An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool…Scintillating…A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Stella is like Hannah Horvath from Girls—smart, with an equal tendency toward snark and introspection—living in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The novel sends up the museum world, with pretentious art folks courting corporate dollars and the usual office politics, but maintains a sense of something larger, even magical, working in the background.”—Booklist
“The charm and energy of Impossible Views of the World rest in Ives’s uncanny eye for the subtle tells of romance, the idiosyncrasies of the NYC young, and the details of 19th-century furniture and art…A clever curatorial mystery, a love-gone-wrong rom-com or a sharp-witted story of a young New York woman, Impossible Views of the World is way more fun than a rainy afternoon in the American Objects wing of a cavernous museum.” —Shelf Awareness
“[A] smart and singular debut novel…Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor…odd and thoroughly satisfying.” — Publishers Weekly
“I first knew Lucy Ives’s work as a poet, and to have her prose is a gift, too. The detailed novel she’s built with such authenticity, wit, and feeling is remarkable for its vitality, insights, and lyrical view of a changing world.” — Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls
“This book was written by a rampaging, mirthful genius. It stands before me like a runestone, magical, mysterious—an esoteric juggernaut masquerading as a ‘debut novel.’ During the days I spent reading it, I said goodbye to all else.” — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
“There are abundant pleasures to be found in Lucy Ives’s debut novel about art curation, corporate control, and utopia (among many other subjects and digressions), but the best is the poetic, elegant intelligence of its narration, vocalized by Stella Krakus, whose every sentence wryly climbs from the ridiculous to the sublime.” — Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
“Lucy Ives, a deeply smart and painstakingly elegant writer, wins the prize with this intricate, droll, stylish book—at once a mystery novel, a romantic comedy, a tricky essay on aesthetics, an exposé of art-world foibles, and a diary of emotional distress. With sharp phrases, uncanny plot-turns, and mise-en-abymes galore, this mesmerizing tale radiates the haute irreality of Last Year at Marienbad and the dreamy claustrophobia of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, this time for adults only.” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays
Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.
Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, and Full Stop, among other places. She lives in Los Angeles
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Join us for release party for Issue 50 of TIMOTHY McSWEENEY’S QUARTERLY CONCERN. To celebrate our 50th issue, we’ve put together a guaranteed show stopper, with stories, essays, treatises, manifestos, letters, comics, and illustrated travel diaries from fifty different contributors. There’s stunning new work from writers who we’ve long published — Jonathan Lethem, Lydia Davis, Sherman Alexie, Etgar Keret, Sheila Heti, Diane Williams, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, Steven Millhauser (among many others) — and fantastic new writing from authors who we’ve long admired, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Thomas McGuane, Kevin Young, and Carrie Brownstein. The physical object that will contain all this great work will be a sturdy and beautiful hardcover book— something to behold and something to keep. Plus, the dust jacket folds out into a poster by Tucker Nichols that can gaze down at you from above your breakfast nook, bathtub, gift wrapping station, or wherever you’d like to be reminded of 50 glorious issues of the McSweeney’s Quarterly.
Readers include:
Kevin Moffett
Corinna Vallianatos
Sarah Walker
Carson Mell
Brian Evenson
Event date:
Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - 7:30pm
Tuesday May 22, 2018
Tuesday May 22, 2018
When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.
But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new . . . the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel’s disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself—or worse.
When I Am Through with You (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
“This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here for a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not. Not for any of it.”
Ben Gibson is many things, but he’s not sorry and he’s not a liar. He will tell you exactly about what happened on what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions. But he’s going to tell you in his own time. Because after what happened on that mountain, time is the one thing he has plenty of.
When I Am Through With You is a gripping story of survival and the razor’s-edge difference between perfect cruelty and perfect love.
Brandy Colbert is the author of the young adult novel Pointe, which was named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, the Chicago and Los Angeles public libraries, and Bank Street, as well as a Popular Paperback by the American Library Association. Her short fiction and essays have been published in several critically acclaimed anthologies, and her next novel, Little & Lion, will be published in August 2017. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Stephanie Kuehn is the critically acclaimed author of four young adult novels, including Charm & Strange, which won the ALA's William C. Morris Award for best debut novel, and Complicit, which was named to YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list. She was also awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her most recent novel, The Smaller Evil. Booklist has praised her work as "Intelligent, compulsively readable literary fiction with a dark twist." Stephanie lives in Northern California and is a post-doctoral fellow in clinical psychology.
Tuesday May 22, 2018
Tuesday May 22, 2018
"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels..." - Ann Richards
Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman. As was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone and the first person to be credited with the title Film Editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared.
This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. "Backwards and in Heels" tells the history of women in film in a different way, with stories about incredible ladies who made their mark throughout each era of Hollywood. From the first women directors, to the iconic movie stars, and present day activists. Each of these stories are inspiring in the accomplishments of women, and they also highlight the specific obstacles women have had to face. "Backwards and in Heels" combines research and exclusive interviews with influential women and men working in Hollywood today, such as Geena Davis, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, America Ferrera, Paul Feig, Todd Fisher and many more, as well as film professors, historians and experts.
Think of Backwards and in Heels as a guidebook, your entry into the complex world of women in film. Join Alicia Malone as she champions Hollywood women of the past and present, and looks to the future with the hopes of leveling out the playing field.
Alicia Malone is a film reporter, host, writer and self-confessed movie geek. She first gained notice hosting movie-centric shows and reviewing films in her native Australia, before making the leap to Los Angeles in 2011.
Since then, Alicia has appeared on CNN, the Today show, MSNBC, NPR and many more as a film expert. Currently, she is a host on FilmStruck, a cinephile subscription streaming service run by the Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies, and she is the creator and host of the weekly show, Indie Movie Guide on Fandango.
Alicia is passionate about classic films, independent movies and supporting women in film. In 2015, Alicia gave a TEDx talk about the lack of women working in film and why this is important to change. In 2017, she was invited to give a second TEDx talk, where she spoke about the hidden stories of the earliest women working in Hollywood. Alicia has also spoken at conferences around America, and because of this, was named of one the 100 Worthy Women of 2016.
Alicia has traveled the world to cover the BAFTAs, the Oscars, the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and SXSW. She is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and over the years has interviewed hundreds of movie stars and filmmakers.
She also wrote this bio, but knew it would sound way less egotistical if written in third person.
Maude Garrett has spent over a decade as a host on all forms of media including television, radio and digital on an array of shows, but she tries her hardest to keep creating content about her favorite topic: geekdom, founding Geek Bomb back in 2012. Maude's other claim to fame is being best friends with Alicia Malone…
Sunday May 20, 2018
Sunday May 20, 2018
The year is 1999, and thirteen-year-old Elliot is a self-appointed "diet coach" who teaches her classmates how to survive on one stick of gum a day to get heroin-chic, Kate Moss thin. Elliot is obsessed with her best friend and former "client" Lisa, who is fresh out of inpatient treatment and dating a nineteen-year-old drug dealer. Meanwhile, Elliot's mother Anna, a capricious poetry professor, has a drug addiction and eating disorder of her own. When Lisa transfers her fixation from food to sex with her boyfriend, Elliot's fragile grip on reality begins to falter, at the same that time that Anna's fascination with the object of her own blind lust, the student who relinquishes his cocaine to her during office hours begins to consume her. I Must Have You is the story of what happens one three-day weekend in an explosion of desire, hunger, and lost innocence.
JoAnna Novak's kaleidoscope of 1990s America, filled with vibrant imagery from riot grrl graffiti to Michael Jordan posters, offers a vision of the complexities of womanhood and the culture that keeps the modern girl sick. I Must Have You is a provocative debut of rare honesty from a daring new voice. Similar to the works of Miranda July, Novak's novel will appeal to a new generation of readers who hunger for raw female protagonists.
Praise for I Must Have You
"I Must Have You is a book about girls―their secret languages and private codes, their painful preoccupations and complex compulsions, and their scary tendency, when caught in the gazes of society, men, (and worst, each other), to diminish themselves―sometimes to the point of disappearing completely. With risky, confident prose and brazen psychological renderings―not to mention a knack for getting the 90's just right―Novak takes us on a seductive, uncharted journey through modern womanhood, obsession and illness. I can honestly say I have never read anything like this book." ―Molly Pretiss, author of Tuesday Nights in 1980 "I Must Have You is a devastating novel about loving and trying to destroy one’s own body."―Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
"I Must Have You showcases JoAnna Novak's raw, real, and vivid voice in the character of Elliott, a sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, and complex young heroine unlike any we've met. Novak's intelligent, funny, frightening, and deeply felt novel bravely goes where this genre has not gone before: into the darker reaches of a culture that casts a long shadow across the lives of girls and women today. Novak explores the extent of our longing, and—ultimately—the source of our strength."—Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Bestselling Author of Madness, Wasted, and others.
"JoAnna Novak's voice is unforgettable and her irreverent, addictive debut is sure to position her as one of the great stylists of her generation. I Must Have You is a brilliant and candid look at what it means to be a girl in this world; it's a meditation on hunger, on wanting, on the things and people that consume us, and on the things and people that we long to consume. A truly exciting, beautiful novel."—Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire and Skinny
“I Must Have You presents a harrowing and immersive story of compulsion and disorder, addiction and obsession, with frequent detours through the teenage cultural wasteland of the late nineties, all rendered in JoAnna Novak’s crazed, slang-stilted, glinting prose.”—Teddy Wayne, author of Loner
"JoAnna Novak's I Must Have You is a rhapsodic, tumbling, yet rigorously controlled excavation of the secret worlds within us all. Her characters hurtle toward the painful pleasure of self-destruction, uninterested in stopping themselves, determined to find the next prick to make them feel alive. It's a visceral process, like picking off a scab. This is a necessary book."—Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star
"I Must Have You is a tragic, funny, and moving coming-of-age story. It was impossible not to be swept up in JoAnna Novak's gorgeous, inventive prose, or to stop yourself from falling in love with her irreverent, wild, and ultimately human characters. I loved every word."—Anton DiSclafani, New York Times Bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party
"Novak looks unflinchingly at the precarious attachments between female peers, mother and daughters, during some dangerous, inchoate transitions. With exacting prose she explores the the shadow terrain of female attachment, one that is uncertain at best, dangerous at worst. This is a book you'll want to look away from for its familiarity and its honesty, but you won't be able to. This story is nothing if not a disorienting mediation on the tangle of self-loathing, loneliness, and a desire for oblivion that so many women privately hold."—Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel
JoAnna Novak's debut novel I Must Have You will be published in May 2017 and a book-length poem, Noirmania, will be published in 2018. She has written fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism for publications including Salon, Guernica, BOMB, The Rumpus, Conjunctions, and Joyland. She received her MFA in fiction from Washington University and her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy. She lives in Los Angeles.
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Jarett Kobek published his first novel, I Hate the Internet, last year with a small indie publisher and it immediately took on cult status. Kobek received a rave review from Dwight Garner in The New York Times, who described the novel “as a glimpse at a lively mind at full boil.” Jonathan Lethem declared Kobek “as riotous as Houellebecq,” and Bret Easton Ellis was photographed reading it in bed. Viking is thrilled to be publishing Kobek’s brilliant and epic follow-up novel, The Future Won't Be Long, a provocative, ecstatic story of friendship, sex, art, and ambition in the twilight days of New York City’s East Village (1986-1996).
The Future Won't Be Long centers on Adeline—featured years later in I Hate the Internet—a wealthy art student in New York City who chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat. The two begin a fiery friendship which propels them through a decade of New York life punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, by the Tompkins Square Park riots, and by the rise of club kid culture. Adeline is fiercely protective of Baby, but he soon takes over his own education. Once just a kid off the bus from Wisconsin, Baby soon finds himself at the center of the club kid social scene, cavorting with Michael Alig and James St. James at The Tunnel, Limelight, and Alig’s infamous “Outlaw Party” at a midtown McDonald’s. As Adeline and Baby both develop into the artists they never expected to become, Kobek pays tribute to the last gasps of the gritty, drug-fueled scene of the East Village as gentrifiers begin to trickle in. Kobek, himself a graduate of NYU, writes with a native’s sensitivity to New York, especially about those who come here with hope and those who come to escape their pasts. Riotously funny and wise, The Future Won't Be Long is a euphoric, propulsive novel coursing with a rare vitality, an elegy to New York and to the relationships that have the power to change—and save—our lives.
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish American writer living in California. He is the author of the novel I Hate the Internet (2016) and the novella Atta (2011)
James St. James who was once dubbed a "celebutante" by Newsweek magazine, now leads a quiet, sedate existence in Los Angeles, far from the madness that he writes about.
Thursday May 03, 2018
Thursday May 03, 2018
A provocative and wildly funny look at parenthood, the empty nest, and sex in the suburbs.
Eve (the eponymous Mrs. Fletcher) is a single mother, divorced and raising her amiable but clueless son Brendan in the suburbs. When he heads off to college, they must both contend with life on their own. Eve takes a gender studies class, braves the local dating pool, and vastly expands her social–and sexual – circles. Brendan discovers that what impressed high school girls (being a jock, being popular) might not be so enticing to college women.
Along with Eve and Brendan, Perrotta introduces us to a cast of flawed but deeply sympathetic characters, many of whom are stretching themselves and enjoying it. There’s Amanda, Eve’s employee at the local senior center, beleaguered but doing her best to provide the seniors with stimulating programming (at times, a little too stimulating). There’s Margo, Eve’s transgender professor, whose dark personal history is belied by her ebullient nature. Amber, Brendan’s college girlfriend, is a softball-playing social justice warrior whose romantic impulses conflict with her politics. And then there’s Julian, a smart but troubled kid from Brendan’s class, whose life becomes entangled with both Brendan’s and Eve’s. Perrotta brings all these characters vividly to life with great generosity and compassion.
Most of all, though, Mrs. Fletcher is all about Eve. This is a coming of age novel in which the character who grows and changes is (refreshingly!) not an eighteen-year-old but a forty-six- year-old. Eve comes a long way, and her journey is a brilliant, funny story of sexual awakening in unexpected places.
Praise for Mrs. Fletcher
“From the thrill of learning of its existence, to the feverish turning of pages, to the contemplative afterglow that comes from having finished: there’s nothing like a new Tom Perrotta novel. Mrs. Fletcher is all you dream it will be: hilarious, provocative, (a little too), relatable and every moment a joy ride.”— Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Today Will Be Different
“Tom Perrotta has always been a smart, fearless writer, a wet-your- pants funny satirist who will in the very next sentence ambush you with genuine emotion. Buckle your seat belt and surrender your dignity, because Mrs. Fletcher is a romp.”— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofEmpire Falls
Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of eight works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into critically acclaimed movies, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into an HBO series. He lives outside Boston.
Tuesday Apr 24, 2018
Tuesday Apr 24, 2018
Join LA-based cartoonist Mimi Pond for the launch of her highly-anticipated graphic novel The Customer Is Always Wrong. Told in the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, The Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young naïve artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Taking place in Oakland in the late seventies, Pond’s story details the trials and tribulations of Madge’s daily grind as a waitress at the Imperial Cafe.
Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. She has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen magazine, National Lampoon, and many other publications. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full-length episode of The Simpsons, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”, and episodes for the television shows Designing Women andPee Wee’s Playhouse. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.
Wayne White was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Originally White built his reputation as a world-class illustrator, animator, puppeteer, cartoonist and art director in New York and Los Angeles. He is most well-known as the Emmy-award-winning set and puppet designer of the seminal and influential 1980s children’s TV show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” In the last 16 years, White’s reputation in the art world has been firmly established with his masterfully created word paintings and for his rollicking, site-specific installations. He lives in Los Angeles.
Tuesday Apr 24, 2018
Tuesday Apr 24, 2018
A father searches for his addict son while grappling with his own choices as a parent (and as a user of sorts)
Achingly funny and full of feeling, Eat Only When You’re Hungry follows fifty-eight-year-old Greg as he searches for his son, GJ, an addict who has been missing for three weeks. Greg is bored, demoralized, obese, and as dubious of GJ’s desire to be found as he is of his own motivation to go looking. Almost on a whim, Greg embarks on a road trip to central Florida—a noble search for his son, or so he tells himself.
Greg takes us on a tour of highway and roadside, of Taco Bell, KFC, gas-station Slurpees, sticky strip-club floors, pooling sweat, candy wrappers and crumpled panes of cellophane and wrinkled plastic bags tumbling along the interstate. This is the America Greg knows, one he feels closer to than to his youthful idealism, closer even than to his younger second wife. As his journey continues, through drive-thru windows and into the living rooms of his alluring ex-wife and his distant, curmudgeonly father, Greg’s urgent search for GJ slowly recedes into the background, replaced with a painstaking, illuminating, and unavoidable look at Greg’s own mistakes—as a father, as a husband, and as a man.
Brimming with the same visceral regret and joy that leak from the fast food Greg inhales, Eat Only When You’re Hungry is a wild and biting study of addiction, perseverance, and the insurmountable struggle to change. With America’s desolate underbelly serving as her guide, Lindsay Hunter elicits a singular type of sympathy for her characters, using them to challenge our preconceived notions about addiction and to explore the innumerable ways we fail ourselves.
Praise for Eat Only When You're Hungry
"[A] commanding narrative . . . A savage tale of parenthood and squandered hope from an author whose unsparing eye never ceases to subvert the mundane." —Kirkus
"Hunter's absurd Floridian landscapes and darkly tender moments are keen and hilarious, exposing the complexities of addiction and an overweight man with a weak heart but unfailing love." —Booklist
"The frailties of the human body and the human heart are laid bare in Lindsay Hunter’s utterly superb novel Eat Only When You’re Hungry. There is real delicacy, tenderness, and intelligence with which Hunter tackles this portrait of a broken family of people who don’t realize just how broken they are until they are forced to confront the fractures between them and within themselves. With this novel, Hunter establishes herself as an unforgettable voice in American letters. Her work here, as ever, is unparalleled." —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
"This novel takes us on a road trip with an American Everyman into the heart of American hunger—for freedom, for connection, for junk food, for love. Hunter has a brilliant sense for the perfectly telling image, and her humor is so biting and smart it was almost a surprise, at the end of this engrossing book, to realize how thoroughly she had broken my heart.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
"Compassionate, claustrophobic, gut-wrenchingly observed, Eat Only When You’re Hungry probes the fine lines between hunger and addiction, addiction and desire. In perfectly nuanced prose, Lindsay Hunter observes the human ability to go on in the face of the unexpected, the unknown, the regretted, and, perhaps most important, the mundane." —Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade
Lindsay Hunter is the author of the story collections Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s and the novel Ugly Girls. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Chicago with her husband, sons, and dogs.
Photo by Liliane Calfee
Roxane Gay is the author of the novel An Untamed State, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction; the essay collection Bad Feminist; Ayiti, a multi-genre collection, the collection of stories Difficult Women and the memoir, Hunger. She is at work on a comic book in Marvel’s Black Panther series. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, the New York Times, the Guardian, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award, among other honors. She splits her time between Indiana and Los Angeles. She can be found online at www.roxanegay.com and on Twitter @rgay.
Wednesday Apr 18, 2018
Wednesday Apr 18, 2018
A colony of honeybees mistakes seventh-grader Zinnia’s hair for a hive — and that’s the least of her problems. While Zinnia's classmates are celebrating the last day of seventh grade, she's in the vice principal's office, serving detention. Her offense? Harmlessly yarn-bombing a statue of the school mascot. When Zinnia rushes home to commiserate with her older brother and best friend, Adam, she's devastated to discover that he's gone — with no explanation. Zinnia’s day surely can't get any worse . . . until a colony of honeybees inhabits her hive-like hair! Infused with magical realism, Danielle Davis delivers a quirky, heartfelt debut, exploring both the complex life of a young loner and a comical hive of honeybees. Together, these alternating and unexpected perspectives will touch anyone who has ever felt alone, betrayed, or misunderstood.
Danielle Davis grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong and now lives in Los Angeles where she reads, writes, and roller skates. She’s earned an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing and her short stories have been published in literary magazines. She’s had the privilege of teaching English to middle school and community college students and currently volunteers with literary organizations in L.A. Zinnia and the Bees is her first novel.
Tuesday Apr 17, 2018
Tuesday Apr 17, 2018
Times Square, 1986: the home of New York’s red light district where strip clubs, porno theatres and petty crime prevails.
When a chance encounter for Peepbooth worker Roxy Bell leads to the brutal murder of a public access pornographer, the erotic performer and her punk rock ex-partner Nick Zero soon find themselves under fire from criminals, cops, and the city elite, as they begin to untangle a complex web of corruption leading right to city hall.
Like The Naked City, there are eight million stories in The Deuce. This is one of them.
Praise for Peepland
"Don’t let the bright lights in PEEPLAND’s pages fool you into thinking this story is sweet. This graphic novel is rife with pain, suffering and death. There are some moments of rightful justice, tender warmth, and laugh-out-loud humor. PEEPLAND is a story that I would not hesitate to call beautiful. However, it’s not for the faint of heart. This story is surprisingly honest, realistic and harsh in how it handles the fate of its characters. Writers Christa Faust and Gary Phillips, along with artist Andrea Camerini, craft a beautiful work of art together. So, cash in your token and sit down. You’re about to read something you won’t forget."--Mya Nunnelly, Comicverse
Gary Phillips has published various crime novels, short stories, edited anthologies, written comics and radio scripts and whatever else he can to forestall his appointment at the crossroads.
Christa Faust a hardboiled crime writer who has worked in the Times Square peep booths, as a professional dominatrix, and in the adult film industry both behind and in front of the cameras. Born and raised in NYC, she is now living as an ex-pat in La La Land.
Monday Apr 16, 2018
Monday Apr 16, 2018
A gritty, fast-paced thriller, Safe hurtles readers toward a shocking conclusion that asks the toughest question of all: how far would you go to protect the ones you love?
Ricky 'Ghost' Mendoza, Jr. is trying to be good. In recovery and working as a freelance safecracker for the DEA, the FBI, and any other government agency willing to pay him, Ghost is determined to live clean for the rest of his days. And maybe he could, if the most important person in his life hadn't gotten into serious financial trouble. To fix it, all Ghost has to do is crack a safe and steal drug money from under the noses of the gangs and the Feds without getting caught. Or killed.
Rudy 'Glasses' Reyes runs drugs and cleans up messes for the baddest of bad men. When Ghost hits one of his safes, Glasses must hunt him down or be held accountable. But Glasses is worried about more than just money. The heist puts everything in his life at risk--his livelihood, his freedom, even his family.
Ryan Gattis is the author of Kung Fu High School and All Involved, a novel about the 1992 L.A. riots. He lives in Los Angeles.