Summertime, and the living is…not easy. Many book-lovers are heartbroken over new revelations that the recently deceased fiction writer Alice Munro, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, covered up her husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter. Andrea Robin Skinner’s July 7 essay in the Toronto Star describes how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began molesting her
July Links Roundup: Surviving Without Heroes Read More »
Happy Pride Month! Or, if you prefer one of the other so-called deadly sins, how about Rainbow Sloth Month? “Diversity leads to resilience, and it is the reason we, and every other living thing on the planet exist,” says Ames Reeder at the Sloth Conservation Foundation. At the ecology-minded literary journal Terrain, Ana Maria Spagna’s
June Links Roundup: Speaking for the Trees Read More »
Happy May, readers! I have been traveling a lot, writing a little, and gluing things together. Remember how, during the pandemic, those of us stuck at home went through a Little House on the Prairie phase of cooking and handicrafts to stay grounded in our bodies in our suddenly virtual social world? My Instant Pot
May Links Roundup: Have a Good Time with Bad Art Read More »
Happy cruelest poetry month, April, etc. Speculative fiction pioneer Samuel R. Delany, who is still going to gay sex parties at age 80, wants you to stop treating the terms “literary fiction” and “high art” as synonymous. One is a genre description, the other is a value judgment. He explains in this 2019 interview with
April Links Roundup: Contested Histories Read More »
So much good stuff from the online journals I’ve been reading lately, I had to make a separate links post! At Frontier Poetry, Chris Watkins queers George Herbert’s tradition of Christ-haunted sonnets in “Prayer (II)”. Prayer—even now, secular,every poem you write, a knees-bent childleaning on their mattress. The mouth molecular.The porno of your guilt. A Girls
March Bonus Links: Notable Poems and Short Fiction Around the Web Read More »
In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of…blowholes. “Humpback sex photographed for first time–and both whales were male,” The Guardian newspaper reported in February. Despite decades of research on humpback whales, sightings of the male’s penis have been rare. Copulation by the species had not been documented by people – until
March Links Roundup: Baby Got Humpback Read More »
The groundhog may have seen his shadow today, but did he recognize it as himself? You may have noticed the cute “rat selfies” making the rounds on social media last month. CBC Radio has the backstory about Canadian artist Augustin Lignier, who built a photo booth for his rats Arthur and Augustin to make a
February Links Roundup: Do You Know You’re a Rat? Read More »
I have nothing to say about President Claudine Gay’s resignation except that Harvard is a terrible place and I feel sorry for anyone who works there. Writer, AIDS activist, and historian Sarah Schulman was interviewed last month by Sally Tamarkin in the queer magazine THEM. Among other points, Schulman discussed what supporters of Palestinian human
January Bonus Links: Israel-Palestine Read More »
Welcome to 2024! I’ve been storing up a lot of Palestine links, but let’s start the year off with something enjoyable. Stay tuned for cancellable political takes in a future post. The Winter 2023 issue of Orion, the environmentalist literary journal, profiled illustrator John Megahan’s contributions to biologist Bruce Bagemihl’s groundbreaking study of same-sex relationships
January Links Roundup: Animal Lovers Read More »
In this season of Hanukkah, which, like many Jewish holidays, commemorates resistance to eradication by a more powerful empire, it’s difficult but necessary to recognize the paradox that one can be an oppressed minority in the wider world and simultaneously an oppressor in a local context. It’s agonizing to imagine the sexual violence and other
Israel-Palestine: Further Thoughts, Links, and a Prayer Read More »