Fugitive Assemblage

Literature & Fiction

Calkins, Jennifer

Genre Fiction

The 3rd Thing

Literary Nonfiction. Drama. African & African American Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Performance Studies. Women's Studies. Is it possible--is it even ethical?--to make hopeful art in an unjust and chaotic world? In the tradition of artist-essayists such as James Baldwin, Anne Lamott, and Adrienne Rich, Sandberg-Zakian looks to her own socially-engaged theater-making practice alongside a diverse array of cultural influences (from slave narratives to popular musicals, Batman to "This American Life"), considering how we might reconcile our desire for hope and possibility, connection and transformation, with the necessity of navigating darkness, despair, hate and violence. The artistic coming-of-age journey of a contemporary theater artist in ten essays, THERE MUST BE HAPPY ENDINGS: ON A THEATER OF OPTIMISM & HONESTY is a smart, engaging and gently humorous contribution to the discussion of how we face art-making--and living--with hope and optimism, and an elegant, accessible, and satisfying companion to practical work in the world.

There Must Be Happy Endings: On A Theater of Optimism & Honesty

Sandberg-Zakian, Megan

History & Criticism

Poetry. Fiction. Drama. African & African American Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. THE HIGH ALIVE: AN EPIC HOODOO DIPTYCH, published tête-bêche (head to toe), is made up of "The Light Body" and "The Utterances." Together, they take up excess and extinction in speculative lyric. Page is transformed into space for a performative prose in this mythopoesis of blackness and queerness, of return and foray. "The Light Body" surveys the spiritual architecture of the site where longing encounters memory, and grief allows survival, inside and against the reverberations of war. Noah and Micah return to their home in rural Mississippi, where the lovers call upon--SHU--, a manifestation of the owner of roads and doors. The lovers embark on a journey that takes them from home to the woods to the desert to the wilderness. In "The Utterances," The War that Settled Dust reorganized the city. One thousand years later, Theory of Bessie, a cult devoted to recollection--of fragment, of breath, of sound--invite us to consider the besieged body, family, city. Moving beyond apocalypse, Theory of Bessie, invite us to consider collective redress; claiming, that amidst ruin, there is always possibility. "THE HIGH ALIVE marks the print debut of an essential voice and vision. Carlos Sirah's 'Hoodoo diptych' as much lyric assemblage as dramatic innovation, works its choreopoetic roots to cast an indelible spell. Watch and read THE HIGH ALIVE, and you will get lifted too!"--John Keene "Thank all there is for Carlos Sirah. He is showing us ways through the inferno. His tellings are harrowing, unsentimental and beautiful beyond measure. Angels wrestle in the bellies of killing machines. Lovers, kin, and perfect strangers gather razor-edged fragments of memory to piece a pathway. We have been waiting for wisdom like this. Carlos Sirah's voice--by turns titanic and gentle--extends the redemptive project of legendary writers Robert Hayden, Henry Dumas and Toni Morrison. He invites us to reclaim the page and the stage as holy sites of witness and remaking. This book will rearrange you. THE HIGH ALIVE is a breathtaking and breath giving achievement."--Daniel Alexander Jones "You have to be willing to flow in the broken open form of this work--to say yes to your own imagination and freedom--to read what the silences in the line breaks have to say--to be open to getting shook by da Holy Ghost n dem. You got to be grown, and willing to honor Blackness/queerly to receive all that this book is. This writer gots swagga. Makes me want to cuss and twirl...and hold this book tight."--Sharon Bridgforth "This is Carlos Sirah's magic-true world. This is Carlos Sirah, who we will know for a long time through this unforgettable book. Staged in the mind as well as in the found world, this brilliant, devastating, necessary literature takes us way past easy understandings of war. Echo-dogs are seedpods and shadows and legs, and nouns grow into lovers, and stories turn into vital poetries of inbreath and takes on what we barely grasp, even as it happens through us. Being alive floats in fields of bodies, and we are alive as theories of staying that way. This is Carlos Sirah's war, taking things back from all missing things, to show us the breath on the mirror."--Thalia Field

The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych

Sirah, Carlos

Dramas & Plays

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Film. Winner of the 2020 Nautilus Award's Gold Medal for Creativity & Innovation. In this fragmentary and fluent little gem--full of light and stunning, full-color images--writer and time-based artist Marilyn Freeman offers up her own contemplative practice of dowsing for and creating "opportune moments" of insight and healing. With humor and humility, Freeman reveals her innovative approach to making video essays, a process developed over years of art-making, study and personal searching--a process of waking up again and again to the extraordinary possibilities hidden in everyday existence. Freeman introduces a theory of "evocative" practice as an alternative to the conventions of narrative and non-fiction filmmaking--a risky and rigorous engagement with form that invites the audience to participate in the creation of meaning. Her examination of the dialectical relationship of sound and image takes us far deeper than just a critical study of audio/visual media--deep into the human heart with its dark traumas and its shimmering capacity for honest and compassionate reckoning. Transgressing disciplinary boundaries and trading authority for authentic inquiry, Freeman takes us with her on a foray into time-based art that leaps and wanders from movie theaters to museums to Instagram in search of the "illuminated spaces" where we encounter ourselves and each other. This book is an essential resource for artists who question the importance of their work in these dark times, and for anyone seeking wisdom and wonder in our ordinary world.

The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory & Contemplative Practice of Media Art

Arts & Photography

Freeman, Marilyn

Photography & Video

This tête-bêche (head-to-toe) book is more than the sum of its parts: two poetic accounts of Empire by two different writers. Assembled from Senate documents detailing the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole, Quenton Baker's "we pilot the blood" considers the position of blackness and the ongoing afterlife of slavery. Paul Hlava Ceballos's "Banana [ ]" collages declassified CIA documents, corporate reports, horticultural papers and personal accounts into a bloody portrait of multinational exploitation. Between these lyrical interrogations is a contemplative interval conducted by the writer and scholar Christina Sharpe in collaboration with Torkwase Dyson's "Hypershapes." Poetry. African & African American Studies. Latinx Studies. Art.

Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood

Sharpe, Christina

Ceballos, Paul Hlava

Baker, Quenton

Dyson, Torkwase

Poetry

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. Diane Exavier's book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, of a family, of a country, of a diaspora. The sum of one life reveals the permutations of many: daughters, sisters, lovers. The cost of one death is uncountable. Exavier's voice has the heart-stilling gravity of a weary prophet. With THE MATH OF SAINT FELIX, she has continued the work of generations. This book is ledger and legacy.

The Math of Saint Felix

Exavier, Diane

An anthology of Black art, poetry, prose, scores, scripts and silences This anthology is a poly-vocal, visually stunning answer to the question, What are the sounds of community and how they are handed down? A home for Black art and culture in Seattle's Central District, with this anthology Wa Na Wari makes a home for the essays, poetry, scores, scripts and silences of the Black poets, musicians, artists and scholars assembled by editors Rachel Kessler and Elisheba Johnson to wonder about the time-traveling, place-making power of sound. Contributors: Anastacia-Reneé, Kamari Bright, Thione Diop, Mary Edwards, Rachael F., Aricka Foreman, Rell Be Free, Amir George, Chantal Gibson, Walis Johnson, JusMoni, Anaïs Maviel, Larry Mizell Jr., Okanomodé, and Christina Sharpe Poetry. Fiction. Anthology. Diaspora.

Joy Has a Sound: Black Sonic Visions

United States

An illustrated proposal, manual & field notes for activation & complication. Cardboard sculpting how-to, karaoke songbook, naturedrag theorization, 450-million-year-long love letter to horseshoe crabs, field guide to a different future--BLOODTIDE proposes exactly what we need in a form we never imagined: a new kind of holiday in homage to the ancient Horseshoe Crab. BLOODTIDE is drawn from the author's own need for new cultural practices and extended as an offering for anybody to use with hopes of contributing to collective liberation. It attempts queer futurity, without mythologies of settler innocence and with sustained recognition that time extends through our ancestors: recent ones and ancient. BLOODTIDE promotes horizontalist structure-building practices through pageantry, crabaoke, cardboard sculpting, feasting and other hands-on, locally oriented, commemorative & survivalist practices. BLOODTIDE posits that homage and attention to horseshoe crabs might further all repair efforts and other insufficient necessities for our collective and individual healing/transformation. "It is radical, it is wise, it is alive."--Agnes Borinsky "BLOODTIDE gifts us a river to wander down where we can drift away from the bullshit through the fugitivity of fun, fellowship and inter/trans species abolition."--brontë velez "Brimming with irreverence, delight and full-throated urgency on every page...there has never been a more compelling case to radically re-imagine our relationships to more-than-human animals and our environment. My family and I are plotting our BLOODTIDE activations already!"--Sarah Benson Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Art.

Bloodtide: A New Holiday in Homage to Horseshoe Crabs

Nixon, Eli

An illustrated guide to celebrating alternative futures today! Second Edition. Cardboard sculpting how-to, karaoke songbook, naturedrag theorization, 450-million-year-long love letter to horseshoe crabs, field guide to a different future--BLOODTIDE proposes exactly what we need in a form we never imagined: a new kind of holiday in homage to the ancient Horseshoe Crab. BLOODTIDE is drawn from the author's own need for new cultural practices and extended as an offering for anybody to use with hopes of contributing to collective liberation. It attempts queer futurity, without mythologies of settler innocence and with sustained recognition that time extends through our ancestors: recent ones and ancient. BLOODTIDE promotes horizontalist structure-building practices through pageantry, crabaoke, cardboard sculpting, feasting and other hands-on, locally oriented, commemorative & survivalist practices. BLOODTIDE posits that homage and attention to horseshoe crabs might further all repair efforts and other insufficient necessities for our collective and individual healing/transformation. "It is radical, it is wise, it is alive."--Agnes Borinsky "BLOODTIDE gifts us a river to wander down where we can drift away from the bullshit through the fugitivity of fun, fellowship and inter/trans species abolition."--bront" velez "Brimming with irreverence, delight and full-throated urgency on every page...there has never been a more compelling case to radically re-imagine our relationships to more-than-human animals and our environment. My family and I are plotting our BLOODTIDE activations already!"--Sarah Benson Literary Nonfiction. Essay. Hybrid. Poetics. Environmental Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Art.

Essays & Correspondence

Sift

Hattman, Alissa

Literary

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