May 2013
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Baby
an excerpt from Lee and Elaine by Ann Rower
One of Iris’s pictures of Hannah didn’t come out right. She needed to reshoot it. She insisted on coming back for a second visit. The next morning we went to Green River for a little while but by the time we got back to the house, though we were hungry, the kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes from last night and more than that, cemeteries, like I said...
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The Wall
by Sara Renberg
“I did a reading at Bluestockings in New York City about four years ago, and there was a big discussion afterward about how frustrated I was that younger lesbian writers are not having lesbian content in their work. I know why they’re not doing it: because you can’t have a career if you have it. But unless people keep submitting that material, it’s never going to change. What we...
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"Her broken heart had something to do with the...
Freud, existentialism and Empathy
by Caty Simon
“Most gay people find out about gay things from the mainstream media.”
-from “What I Learned About Empathy” by Sarah Schulman, in the Arsenal Pulp edition of Empathy
I was one of the last generation of queer teen girls doomed to library lesbianism. I searched yellowed index cards (index cards!) for any mention of...
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April 2013
9 posts
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Shit My Cats Read: UNI: “It’s a regular Spring... →
shitmycatsread:
UNI: “It’s a regular Spring awakening over on Greene Ave…We’re juggling a nervy and titillating novel by Tamara Faith Berger (thanks, Chris Kraus!) with a collection of essays by Eileen Myles, three novels by Colette, and a shiny-covered collection of poetry by Ariana Reines. …
These cats need a subscription to Emily Books, stat.
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What I've Learned from Empathy
This essay is from the appendix of Arsenal Pulp Press’s reissue of Empathy, which is our April pick. (Buy)
by Sarah Schulman
The MacDowell Colony, August 15, 2005
I’m trying to remember when I first got interested in juxtaposition, which is the experience at the core of this novel: relations between ideas, word fragments, genres, lovers, and relational existence as a fallback position for...
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March 2013
9 posts
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““Is it always the same story, then? Somebody loves and somebody doesn’t, or...”
– Miranda Popkey interviewed Renata Adler about the rerelease of Speedboat and Pitch Dark.
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Alone online
by Kate Axelrod
I’d known Tom* peripherally for years. We’d run into each other at birthday parties, at unbearably crowded bars in the city, once outside of the train station in Greenpoint. But something shifted between us when we saw each other at a barbeque one balmy June night. I liked the slightly goofy lilt in his voice, his glasses – these thick round frames –and the way he seemed to be...
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February 2013
9 posts
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“The book, like the [titular] essay, had the contours of a confession but it was...”
– From Meghan Daum’s new Introduction to the first ebook edition of My Misspent Youth, available now exclusively at Emily Books.
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“If you’re lucky, you might have had a great boss, teacher, leader, guru,...”
– Longreads is offering a fascinating excerpt from Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez as a member exclusive. Take it for a test drive, then buy the book here.
January 2013
8 posts
4 tags
A State of Fiction
by Zan McQuade
Barbara Browning came to life before me on a chilly gray Sunday, as I lay under the bedsheets, dressed in wool for warmth. I’d just finished Sheila Heti’s How Should A Be?, a book that left me feeling a little bit empty and angry. I was in the mood to read more, it was a day made for reading, and so I followed it with Tove Jansson’s Fair Play, a book about artists...
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“Two of our bestselling books are Glory Goes and Gets Some by Emily Carter and...”
– Talking about Glory Goes and Gets Some and Making Scenes with Brooklyn Magazine’s Kristin Iverson
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“I’d sent her three little webcam photos of me masturbating while reading an...”
– An excerpt of The Correspondence Artist from FANZINE
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“Then there’s the thing about who sits where, which I can’t stand either; it’s...”
– from _Glory Goes and Gets Some_ by Emily Carter (emilybooks has totally changed my life—well, my year, anyway)
December 2012
12 posts
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“I was really energized and wowed by Emily Gould and Ruth Curry’s curation of...”
– Kate Zambreno’s Year in Reading featured Making Scenes, I’m Trying To Reach You, Maidenhead and Promising Young Women, plus many other books that should and maybe will be Emily Books someday. Thank you, Kate!
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“If Bomer’s harsh portrayal of modern parenting and marriage were water, it...”
– from Minna Proctor’s review of Paula Bomer’s story collection Baby. Also applicable to Nine Months.
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"The Internet works like the subconscious": An...
Caty Simon is an activist and multi-platform blogger who we assigned to interview Barbara Browning via email about I’m Trying To Reach You. This interview contains spoilers, but you should read it anyway. It also contains a footnote.
CS: First question—Maybe it’s too tedious or too politically correct to mention it, but the racebending in this book is more convoluted than the...
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Birthday cake. →
ellenwillis:
It’s my mom Ellen Willis’ birthday today. She would have been 71. Every year, I figure the best way of honoring her is to read my favorite pieces she’s written—things that push me to consider every moment of my life, and to fit together cultural forces like puzzle pieces. Here’s what I’m reading this year:
Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life, which Susie Bright once read...
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"You had to write a NOVEL to talk yourself out of...
EG: What surprised you, if anything, about reaction to Nine Months?
PB: Well, I wasn’t surprised to get that one-star review that was like “this is disgusting!” A friend of mine checked out all the other books that person read and they were all, like, bodice-rippers. So that’s just not my audience, and I’m fine with that person thinking it’s disgusting. And I got a lot of “the narrator’s not...
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“It’s not the story itself — the agonizing wake of a breakup — that’s...”
– the buddhist was the best book Jenna Wortham read in 2012
<3 <3 <3 