<div><B>New writings on our fear of&mdash;and fascination with&mdash;the &ldquo;other&rdquo; from Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, and more.</B><BR /><BR /><I>Alien</I> is a powerful and flexible word. Aliens are &ldquo;other.&rdquo; Aliens are the stuff of science fiction and fantasy. Aliens are traditional literary figures that cause us to see ourselves anew. Indeed, when we witness our &ldquo;normal&rdquo; lives through these strangers&rsquo; eyes, we become the unfamiliar ones.<BR /><BR /><I>Conjunctions:67, Other Aliens</I> collects works of speculative and literary science fiction: innovative short stories, poetry, interviews, letters, and essays that explore the vast precincts of unfamiliarity, keen difference, weirdness, and not belonging.<BR /><BR /><I>This provocative issue includes contributions from an all-star lineup, including Leena Krohn, Jeffrey Ford, Julia Elliott, John Crowley, Laura Sims, Valerie Martin, Lavie Tidhar, Samuel R. Delany, Matthew Baker, Paul Park, James Tiptree Jr., Michael Parrish Lee, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Madeline Bourque Kearin, Jean Muno, Jonathan Thirkield, John Clute and John Crowley, Joyce Carol Oates, S. P. Tenhoff, Brian Evenson, Jessica Reed, E. G. Willy, and James Morrow.</I></div>

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Other Aliens

<div><B>Exploring the myriad ways in which we go about preserving what might otherwise be forfeited.</B><BR />  <BR /> Whether trained specialists or lay people who <I>care </I>about something, preservationists come from every stratum of life. The archivist, the linguist, the local town historian. The paleontologist, the heirloom seed-saver, the family photographer, the Monuments Men. Old two-by-two Noah and taxonomist Linnaeus. The suburban girl who collects enough yard sale books to build up a library and thereby safeguards that most fragile of things: knowledge. All can be preservationists.<BR />  <BR /> This issue includes contributions from Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Robinson, Peter Gizzi, Kyra Simone, Heather Altfeld, Richard Powers, Arthur Sze, Joanna Ruocco, Andrew Ervin, Julia Elliott, Jessica Reed, Peter Orner, Erin Singer, Daniel Torday, Toby Olson, Mary Jo Bang, Troy Jollimore, Maya Sonenberg, Rae Gouirand, Mauro Javier Cardenas, Nam Le, Maria Lioutaia, Bryon Landry, Rae Armantrout, Robin Hemley, Madeline Kearin, Donald Revell, S. P. Tenhoff, Debra Nystrom, Donna Stonecipher, Robert Karron, Andrew Mossin, J&rsquo;Lyn Chapman, Frederic Tuten, and Marshall Klimasewiski.</div>

Sanctuary

<div><B>Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Diane Ackerman, and more explore the double-edged sword of curiosity . . .</B><BR /><BR /> Curiosity is as central to life as breathing. And like breath itself, when it ceases, the vibrancy of life fades and disappears. Curiosity leads to discoveries both beneficent and, at times, destructive. It often occasions wonderment, but also terror. It prompts the precise scientist, but also the nosy gadfly. A double-edged sword, curiosity has forever held a crucial role in myth, literature, science, philosophy, history&mdash;nearly every field of human endeavor. While most of us know the old saying about curiosity killing the cat, we must also remember that &ldquo;satisfaction brought it back.&rdquo; Curiosity incites and compels, taketh away and giveth.<BR />  <BR /> In this issue, curiosity impels a personal assistant to learn hidden truths about her deceased employer&mdash;a famed playwright&mdash;and his relationship with the woman who directs an Italian arts foundation to which he donated his priceless library of first editions. A novelist, inspired by a different kind of curiosity, studies the traditional teachings of his Cherokee forebears after reading the notebook his beloved grandfather possessed when he died. Elsewhere, a young boy removes his clothes and, driven by dangerous curiosity, crawls into the gaping darkness of a sewer pipe, where he mysteriously vanishes, altering the lives of everyone who knew him. While most of the stories, poems, and memoirs here investigate the places where curiosity transports us&mdash;from forgotten burial grounds to natural history museums, from alluring lakes to postapocalyptic seaside shanties&mdash;<I>A Cabinet of Curiosity </I>also features a singular visit to an archetypal curiosity cabinet in Amsterdam with its treasury of specimens, of oddities in jars and on shelves, of things pinned and things afloat.<BR />  <BR /> Curiosity in all its guises is the wellspring of revelation. It is a prime mover behind our deeds, good or evil, simple or complicated. While the thirty-one writers gathered here individually explore many of the ways in which curiosity drives and defines us, together they propose that the realms of curiosity are, finally, inexhaustible.<BR />  <BR /> A Cabinet of Curiosity <I>includes contributions from Laura van den Berg, Ann Beattie, Brandon Hobson, Eleni Sikelianos, Greg Jackson, Julianna Baggott, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, William Lychack, Joanna Scott, Catherine Imbriglio, Dave King, Lauren Green, Can Xue (Translated by Karen Gernant, Chen Zeping), Nathaniel Mackey, A. D. Jameson, Quintan Ana Wikswo, Lynn Schmeidler, Samuel R. Delany, Kelsey Peterson, Sarah Blackman, Gerard Malanga, Martine Bellen, Maud Casey, Gregory Norman Bossert, Stephen O&rsquo;Connor, Matt Bell, Madeline Kearin, Bin Ramke, Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Hand.</I><BR />  </div>

A Cabinet of Curiosity

<div><P>In God's Gym, the celebrated author John Edgar Wideman offers stories that pulse with emotional electricity. The ten pieces here explore strength, both physical and spiritual. The collection opens with a man paying tribute to the quiet fortitude of his mother, a woman who "should wear a T-shirt: God's Gym." In the stories that follow, Wideman delivers powerful riffs on family and fate, basketball and belief. His mesmerizing prose features guest appearances by cultural luminaries as diverse as the Harlem Globetrotters, Frantz Fanon, Thelonious Monk, and Marilyn Monroe. As always, Wideman astounds with writing that moves from the intimate to the political, from shock to transcendence.</P></div>

God's Gym

<div>A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Algeria&#8217;s war for independence. His last book, <I>The Wretched of the Earth</I>, published in 1961, inspired leaders of diverse liberation movements: Steve Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the Black Panthers in the States.  Wideman&#8217;s novel is disguised as the project of a contemporary African American novelist,Thomas, who undertakes writing a life of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay, part love story, Fanon introduces the French film director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon&#8217;s legacy through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to rectify.</div>

John Edgar Wideman
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Books By John Edgar Wideman (2 Books)

God's Gym

Fanon

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John Edgar WidemanFollow this author

Books By John Edgar Wideman (2 Books)

God's Gym

Fanon

Get weekly updates and deals from Early Bird Books

More from

Corporate

© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

John Edgar Wideman
Follow this author