Nda An Autofiction Anthology

An exciting new anthology of autofiction featuring a wide range of today's best writers, both established and up-and-coming. Collected autofictions from mainstays of literary art and internet avant-garde writing. The contributors in this anthology produce a contemporary, subversive primer of works engaging the relationship between the writer and the text. Featuring: Aiden Arata Nathan Dragon David Fishkind Aristilde Kirby Tao Lin Chris Molnar Vi Khi Nao Elle Nash Gina Nutt Brad Phillips Sam Pink Darina Sikmashvilli BR Yeager

The first major book from a longtime legend in underground literature; known by citation and word of mouth, but only now emerging with a work that will earn a broad audience. “Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is why I want to read. There are few books at all that expand the exploration of family, outsider sex, animal love, therapy and surreal vision and even fewer writers who do it as well as Claire Donato. My mind and heart are thankfully changed forever.” —JAMIE STEWART of Xiu Xiu and author of Anything That Moves “Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts moves and feels like a novel of ideas, yes, but also a lookbook of Rorshachs; a concept cookbook for famished phantoms; a fragmentary tour de force a la Duras. On every page, it lines the mind with vibrant space, as extraordinary in its candor about desire, artifice, and intimacy as it is with wordplay, wit, and social theory. “Death is a mirror of time, and life is not as heavy as it seems,” Donato writes, beckoning us forward through the void of realism as might an imaginary friend we thought we’d lost—or should I say ‘guardian angel’?” —BLAKE BUTLER, author "In Claire Donato's fiction, I am both looking in and being looked at. The depths of desire are on display, laying bare the complexity and the ugliness that often comes with it." —MOLLY SODA, artist "Claire Donato's prose is at once playful and masterful, charming and haunting—I loved these short stories with huge imaginations." —CHELSEA HODSON, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else "Love is a source of radical questioning whose only enemy is indifference. Claire Donato’s fever dream of a novel goes toe to toe with today’s anomie, stretching our only resource left, language, so we can navigate a 21st century landscape of violently changing relationships, with one another, with the natural world, and with our bodies." —JAMIESON WEBSTER, psychoanalyst and author In the disquieting stories of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a fractaled Claire Donato contemplates grief and disgust in heterosexuality, deconstructing the romance myth and the illicit fantasies which reflect our haunted selves. These fictions are populated with Lynchian characters, draped in memory and the subconscious mind, who imagine their way out of the painful limits of their world: a turtle retreats into its shell and becomes a real girl. A porn addict turns into a baby boy in the arms of his barren cyber-girlfriend. And a digitally-marred depressive joins forces with the ghost of Simone Weil to kill a chicken. Donato’s fictions are precise and cutting, seamlessly integrating a vast knowledge of art through sharp criticism and a history of cult traditions: Donnie Darko, Wings of Desire, Daisies, and Twin Peaks and artists including Clarice Lispector, M.F.K. Fisher, Sibylle Baier, and The Velvet Underground. Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts concludes with "Gravity and Grace, the Chicken and the Egg, or: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", a novella-in-vignettes that frames cooking as an entrypoint to light, awareness, and connection. With associative lyricism and a preternatural ability to gaze into the void with tenderness, Donato relays an indescribably strange perception of our world, in which maniacal grief turns to a gleeful protest before becoming, against all odds, a love letter to what remains. Cover photo: Jimmy DeSana Contact Paper, 1980 Vintage C-print © the Jimmy DeSana Trust Courtesy of the Jimmy DeSana Trust and P·P·O·W, New York

A gripping, unforgettable memoir from one of the best, most original writers of the 21st century. Blake Butler has changed the world of language with his mind-melting literary thrillers, and now he brings his abilities to bear on the emotional world. "Terrifyingly intense and eerily spiritual ...The best book I’ve read this year." —LOS ANGELES TIMES "[5 stars] ... Extraordinary and raw ... the triumph of his book lies in its compassion." —THE TELEGRAPH "Molly is a dark, gorgeously crafted read. It contains a tremendous amount of pain, and the loss of life, loss of potential, loss of what could have been weighs heavy. That Butler makes it out the other side whole enough to tell this story is the glimmer of hope that sustains the reader in the end." —ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION “Molly is so vital, so full of force ... [it] guts the cliché description of someone with mental illness ... [a] gorgeous, sad memoir." —SLATE "A powerfully sad book ... Writers are often praised as 'fearless,' but Butler is not. In Molly, he makes fear his companion. That is the only way to write, and to live." —THE NEW YORKER "Shattering ... The result is a brutal yet beautiful look at the ravages of mental illness and the complexities of grief." —PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY “I’m not sure I’ve ever been so totally consumed by any book—the way I was by Molly.” —INTERVIEW "The most immediate feeling of life I've ever had reading a book—a life lived at the desk and out in the world, a life of openness and secrets. "Make art for me," Molly wrote to Blake. "I will read it all." I breathed along with every word." —PATRICIA LOCKWOOD "How to praise a book of such wounded beauty as Blake Butler's phenomenal Molly? The same way one would a life lost early: with love and sincerity and anger and wonder and lithely elegant and observant insights that remind us and inspire us, as Butler precisely does, to live and to love ourselves." —JOHN D'AGATA "Molly is a brilliant and brutal book. Blake Butler fearlessly takes on love and grief and the mysteries of this world and the next." —EMMA CLINE "A dark miracle—actual evidence that what we can never know, what we could never imagine about the one we love, is what binds us to them, beyond death." —MICHAEL W. CLUNE "I was gripped from the start by this memoir's urgent honesty. Blake Butler turned a story that was almost unspeakable into a narrative at once brutal and loving, broken and solid." —CATHERINE LACEY Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was. A masterpiece of autobiography, Molly is a riveting journey into the darkest and most unthinkable parts of the human heart, emerging with a hard-won, unsurpassedly beautiful understanding that expands the possibilities of language to comprehend and express true love. Unrelentingly clear, honest and concise, Molly approaches the impossible directly, with a total empathy that has no parallel or precedent. A supremely important work that will be taught, loved, relied on and passed around for years to come, Blake Butler affirms now beyond question his position at the very top rank of writers.

unpublishable reading series;archways reading series;brooklyn reading series;short story anthologies;poetry anthologies;anthologies;experimental writing;mary boo anderson;daphne palasi andreades;steve anwyll;hratch arbach;arash azizi;james cañon;nifath karim chowdhury;naomi falk;john farris;jameson fitzpatrick;caitlin forst;jean kyoung frazier;chris gonzalez;evan gorzeman;mina hamedi;brent kite;jason koo;noah lebien;anya lewis-meeks;chris molnar;etan nechin;nicodemus nicoludis;kate olsson;erin taylor;joanna c. valente; “Being alive is just microdosing death.” Collected works from the notorious Brooklyn reading series, from notable and emerging writers alike. A famed underground reading series at POWERHOUSE Arena in Brooklyn, organized by Chris Molnar and Etan Nechin, Unpublishable draws hundreds of devotees eager to hear from authors known and unknown as they share their most unusual, unexpected and unpublishable work. It is a home and meeting place for "writing that excites you, that scares you, things that you delete from your browser history. The piece you can't submit but can't stop thinking about either, burning a hole in the bottom of your desk drawer. Writing from any genre that is uncharacteristic, outré, or offending of sensibilities, that is impossible to place or be published in some fashion." Writers from a range of cliques and communities participate, giving striking and unusual performances. Each event includes a chapbook of pieces read, and this anthology collects them together for the first time. Unpublishable has now become Archways, an even more hotly attended reading series which is the lifeblood of this imprint, and the barrier-defying ethos it represents is a critical part of Archway Editions' DNA. Contributors include Mary Boo Anderson, Daphne Palasi Andreades, Steve Anwyll, Hratch Arbach, Arash Azizi, James Cañon, Nifath Karim Chowdhury, Jessica Denzer, Naomi Falk, John Farris, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Caitlin Forst, Jean Kyoung Frazier, Chris Gonzalez, Evan Gorzeman, Mina Hamedi, Brent Kite, Jason Koo, Noah LeBien, Anya Lewis-Meeks, Chris Molnar, Etan Nechin, Nicodemus Nicoludis, Kate Olsson, Erin Taylor, and Joanna C. Valente.

Irreverent, cultishly adored, and dearly missed, the music writers at cokemachineglow produced some of the greatest, weirdest, funniest, sharpest criticism of the 21st century, and have gone on to write for major publications. In that sweet spot online before streaming and social media, people discovered music on blogs and webzines. A few have gone corporate, and nearly all the rest have disappeared. None are more missed than cokemachineglow - founded by a Canadian music writer in 2002, it grew to encompass a motley crew of brilliant, idiosyncratic writers and draw an intense readership of music fans. These critics have now published books and written for outlets like The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Village Voice, Film Comment, Pitchfork, Esquire and GQ, among many other accomplishments, but there's never been - and never will be - another masthead so beloved and anarchic, writing that isn't just describing music but creating a culture, a narrative, a way of speaking that is hugely influential in how we hear, talk and tweet online. Featuring a brand new introductory essay by editor Clayton Purdom.

"Anyone who looks beyond the bestseller lists can see that the literary landscape outside its commercial walls is just as varied as that of visual art, just as wild, just as conceptual: novels in the form of dioramas, narratives read through virtual-reality glasses, or told as a series of tweets, stories told as recipes, poems in skywriting, genetic code, pixels, skin-as well as print and sound. The 100+ prose works and poems that make up Conceptualisms all have the strangeness authors have always given ordinary speech in order to transform it into literature. In fact, this strangeness, or unfamiliarity, may be the very core of what makes writing literature, and pushed to its boundaries, what makes literature conceptual. Experimental, conceptual, avant-garde, hybrid, surfiction, fusion, radical, slip-stream, avant-pop, postmodern, self-conscious, innovative, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing, alternative, anti- or new literature.... Across the years, a variety of names have been used to describe fiction, poetry and hybrid writing that, like conceptual visual art, foregrounds its ideas, explores new forms, challenges mainstream writing traditions, strives for ways to speak to the present. Along with whatever else they do, they ask, Why isn't this also literature?-and keep the boundaries of literature flexible and unresolved. Now, for the first time, here is an anthology that offers an overview of this other tradition as it lives in the early decades of the 21st century. The first major anthology of this other tradition, Conceptualisms presents writing by over 90 authors, across three generations, representing a plethora of aesthetics and approaches to their subjects. Readers will recognize authors who have shaped the nature of contemporary writing, such Lydia Davis, Charles Bernstein, Nathaniel Mackey, David Foster Wallace, and Claudia Rankine. They'll also find authors, and responses to the canon, that they haven't yet encountered. Conceptualisms is a book of ideas for writers, teachers and scholars, as well as readers who wonder how many ways literature can live"--

A NOVEL BASED ON AN ALBUM IS A BOOK WITH A KILLER SOUNDTRACK A musician with a bad case of writer’s block and a secret past he can’t discuss… A silent neighbor with a hidden agenda… A roommate and a girlfriend with single-letter names… A fairy-tale middle straight from the heart… For fans of Say Anything, Slow Century, Quantum Leap, Being John Malkovich, The Fearless Freaks, Lovers & Other Strangers… With appearances by Paul Simon, David Letterman, James Bond, Carlos Santana, Jan-Michael Vincent, Bogo the Clown, the Dalai Lama, Benji Hughes and more… Exotic locales including Jamaica, Hawaii, France, Dairy Queen, Didicur’s Hardware Store, the Circus, and Inner/Outer Space… Taking place in the vicinity of Halloween, Xmas, April 17th, the past, and the future… Buddy comedy, love story, epic fairy tale, album-oriented fan fiction... All this and more. It gets a little extreme... L EXTREME: An original novel by JL Civi, based on the songs of Benji Hughes

Literary Nonfiction. Film. Religion & Spirituality. How does one participate (read and write) from within the membranous precinct between our multiple bodies, from within the larger rhizomic field of resonances, where much is sounding and also unsounded? By employing various "divinatory generators" (instructions, methods, trances), the essays in IDEAL SUGGESTIONS: ESSAYS IN DIVINATORY POETICS genuflect to practices that celebrate engagement with uncertainty while cultivating strategies through which one might collaborate with both rupture and rapture.