Nobody Passes

Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of “passing.” In a pass-fail situation, standards for acceptance may vary, but somebody always gets trampled on. This anthology seeks to eliminate the pressure to pass and thereby unearth the delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation that might create. Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, has a history of editing anthologies based on brazen nonconformity and gender defiance. Mattilda sets out to ask the question, “What lies are people forced to tell in order to gain acceptance as 'real'.” The answers are as varied as the life experiences of the writers who tackle this urgent and essential topic.

How would any of us feel if we could meet our teenage selves, a ghost on the road? Everything Passes, Everything Remains is a confluence of journeys, made by Chris Dolan, his friends, and writers before him. It’s a bit about cycling, a bit about walking, and a bit about buses. It’s a kind of travelogue, over time, and through some lesser-known parts of Spain. It’s an obsession with Spain’s writers and its history, from the Inquisition to the Civil War to the questions it faces as a country today. What makes a nation, or a family for that matter, or a group of friends? In many ways it’s as much about Dolan’s native Scotland as Spain. But mostly, it’s about the highs and lows of growing up and growing older – how the past plays merry hell with the present. About friendship, loss, music, memory, and the demons that follow us as we try to make sense of our history and our place in the world.

Combining transgender studies with the ’neomodernist’ architectures of the internationally renowned firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) and with modernist writers (Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf) whose work anticipates that of transgender studies, this book challenges the implicit ’spatial models’ of popular narratives of transgender - interiority, ownership, sovereignty, structure, stability, and domesticity - to advance a novel theorization of transgender as a matter of exteriority, groundlessness, ornamentation, and movement. With case studies spanning the US and UK, Transgender Architectonics examines the ways in which modernist architecture can contribute to our understanding of how it is that humans are able to transform, shedding light on the manner in which architecture, space, and the spatial metaphors of gender can play significant - if often unrealized - potential roles in body and gender transformation. By remedying both the absence of actual architecture in queer theory's discussions of space and also architectural theory's marginal treatment of transgender, this volume constitutes a serious intervention in the field of ’queer space’. It draws on modernist literature in order to reckon with and rebuild the architectural ideas that already implicitly structure common understandings of the queer and transgender self. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in queer theory, the body and transformation, gender and sexuality, modernist writing and architectural theory.

This region - which marks the meeting of China and post-Soviet Central Asia - is increasingly important militarily, economically and geographically. Yet we know little of the people that live there, beyond a romanticised 'Silk Road' sense of fraternity. In fact, relations between the people of this region are tense, and border violence is escalating - even as the identity and nationality of the people on the ground shifts to meet their new geopolitical realities. As Steven Parham shows, many of the world's Soviet borders have proved to be deeply unstable and, in the end, impermanent. Meanwhile, the looming presence of Modern China and Russia, who are funneling money and military resources into the region - partly to fight what they see as a growing Islamic activism - are adding fuel to the fire. This lyrical, intelligent book functions as part travelogue, part sociological exploration, and is based on a unique body of research - five months trekking through the checkpoints of the border regions. As China continues to grow and become more assertive, as it has been recently in Africa and in the South China Seas - as well as in Xinjiang - China's borderlands have become a battleground between the Soviet past and the Chinese future.

Medieval Crime Comedy is now a thing. With multiple No 1 Best Sellers and nearly a quarter of a million sales, Howard of Warwick continues to muck about with the detective monk. But this one is a very funny sort of medieval mystery. Brother Hermitage wants there to be a murder? This can’t be right. In all of his previous excursions, he’s been pretty meticulous about avoiding the things. When an instruction arrives from the Normans to find a missing person, Hermitage seems keen to shirk his duty. At least that’s a familiar theme. But he’s the King’s Investigator, he doesn’t do missing persons, that must be someone else’s job. Knowing where the person may have gone missing might explain the trepidation. The clue’s in the title; De’Ath’s Dingle. That grim and dreadful monastery, which looms over Hermitage’s life like a falling loom, is calling him back. Perhaps he can try not listening. It will only be full of the old familiar faces, up to their old revolting tricks. And if someone has gone missing there, all hope is gone. But a shadow gathers in the west and the monastery is falling into darkness. Well, more darkness than normal. With Wat, Cwen and Bart, Hermitage tramps his reluctant path back to the Dingle, always hopeful that someone might be murdered on the way as a distraction. When he finally gets there, things are not at all as they should be. They should be truly awful, but this is simply peculiar. There is obviously something going on. Hermitage can see it, so why doesn’t anyone else believe him? And even when there is a murder, it doesn’t help much. Previous volumes have received comment. “Very good indeed, brilliant” BBC 5* Everything has to stop for a Hermitage book! Hilariously funny. 5* Yet another hilarious adventure for Brother Hermitage and his companions. 5* All the tales of the adventures of Hermitage the monk are genuinely funny and contain an intriguing plot