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Art & Kinship: Garrard Conley’s All the World Beside

Image shows the authors Maud Newton and Garrard Conley standing behind a poster for Conley's memoir, BOY ERASED.

My latest newsletter is on Boy Erased author Garrard Conley‘s first novel, All the World Beside, a singular and magnificent work of art: tender, hopeful, shot through with dour fundamentalist judgment and a painful sense of separation, but also numinous and earthly connection. Also considered: the sins of the fathers, Puritan ancestors, epigenetics, queer kinship, and the musicality of his prose.

The image above shows Garrard Conley & me at the Boy Erased launch in Brooklyn, at Book Court (RIP), 2016.



Art & Kinship:  Emily Raboteau’s Lessons For Survival

The first subject of my new Art & Kinship series is Emily Raboteau, whose work I’ve been reading with admiration for almost two decades. Her new book—Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”—is out today. In my latest newsletter, some thoughts on her work broadly and this book in particular, along with photos of Emily and her ancestor wall, and her reflections on creating this memorial to them after the passing of her dad as she wrote.

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A Conversation With Idra Novey

I’ll be speaking with Idra Novey for the paperback launch of her exemplary novel, Take What You Need, on March 14, at the Barnes & Noble on Atlantic. I’ve read it three times and now I have a reason to read it again.

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Family stories we “can’t tell”

I’m teaching a creative writing workshop—Family Stories We (Tell Ourselves We) Can’t Tell—for the Miami Book Fair, as part of the festivities around the 2024 Miami Big Read featuring Madeline Miller’s Circe. We’ll gather in person at the Miami-Dade Wolfson campus. The workshop is priced for accessibility and size-limited for intimacy. For more details, or to register, go to the Miami Book Fair site.

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