The original iteration of Anecdata was a place to “publish” my fiction that I didn’t have another place for. I wanted to write quickly, to get everything out of my system as fast as possible, and I felt like risking humiliation was a good way to keep myself honest. I’m revamping it now because I want to get better at writing criticism. I often only belatedly encounter the things that intrigue me enough to foster an urgency to write, or I only develop ideas about long after they first come out. What makes a newsletter appealing is that it just allows me to focus on writing, without having to worry about deadlines or topicality.
I’m a little more self-conscious now than I was then (and I’m under more financial pressure), so I’m paywalling the essays and criticism I’m going to write here1. If you subscribe to the free tier, you’ll get one email a month that provides a quick, no-frills update on what I’ve published, what I’m working on, etc. (This is a good way to keep up with me if you don’t use social media.) For $5 a month, you’ll get three emails a month — the update, a longish semiformal essay or review, and a set of four short “capsule” reviews about new-to-me art and culture.
This email will contain my first update post, and the next one will come in early October.
<3,
Emily
september update
writing/editing
I wrote about Katherine Packert Burke’s debut novel Still Life and the inner lives of trans writers for Xtra.
I started editing two (!) new titles for LittlePuss Press, where my official title is “Editrix-At-Large.” I can’t talk too much about them yet, but needless to say I’m very excited to be doing this work.
events
The mostly-queer reading series I run with Joyce White2, “Figure it Out,” is having its fifth (!) monthly event on a rooftop in Ridgewood tomorrow (or maybe next week sometime if it rains). This month, we have Leyla Çolpan, Holden Seidlitz, Ben Rose Porter, and Mia Arias Tsang. If you’d like to come, you can follow our Instagram page for regular updates.
Over the five months(!) we’ve been doing this, it’s really evolved into a showcase of all the talented people in our community. For the last few, we’ve had a “community gallery” of photographs curated by K.S. Ross, a photographer who runs the photo development company Futsch Emulsion and Light, and from the start we’ve had some dancing afterwards, with my brilliant and beloved ex-girlfriend Hannah DJ-ing. This is the last one we’re doing outdoors, and we’re looking for a venue for it for the fall/winter months. If you book events at bookstores or other venues (preferably in Ridgewood or Bushwick) that could preserve at least some of the magic of this event, please reach out to Joyce or myself.
If you’re in NYC on Sunday the 29th, LittlePuss and Invisible Publishing are doing a launch party at Starr Bar for the new “portable” edition of Meanwhile, Elsewhere, as well as the English translation of Barrack Zailaa Rima’s graphic novel Beirut.
Also, if you’re going to be at the Brooklyn Book Festival that day, I’ll be at the LittlePuss table in the afternoon.
personal/etc
I started a new job at an indie press. I’ve been precariously employed / unemployed for a few years and this is a huge relief.
Speaking of things that are a huge relief, I took my AC unit out of my bedroom window yesterday.
Inspired by my friend Willem Helf’s new handmade personal website, I’m coding a website from scratch in my free time as a way to have something non-literary to focus on. I’m hoping to have it done sometime next month.
links
Charles Koechlin’s Quatre Petits Pieces (1894-1907)
“The best literary masturbation scenes of all time”
next: capsule reviews; a review of June Martin’s Love/Aggression
If money is a serious obstacle (I get it) just shoot me an email.
You might know about her from her invention of “Lez Out July.”