Read The Third Chapter Of Gideon Jacobs' & Brad Phillips' New Serial Novella →

Over the next year, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments will go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 3: Luridly Liminal / Liminally Lurid.

Read Our Review Of Kim-Anh Schreiber's New Book Fantasy

text by Summer Bowie

When planning a pregnancy or discussing the process of birth, we often hear about the rebirth that the mother experiences—her renaissance as woman with child, giver of life, and newborn unto herself. It’s such a beautiful image when you ignore the suicide that was planned for the woman who once was. Thus is the balance of life and death, and it's one that some of us contend with more readily than others. Nothing is more apparent than this in Kim-Anh Schreiber’s Fantasy, wherein the book’s titular figure is the daughter of a mother who never stops mourning the life she should have had; her inescapable Karma. 

This cross-genre novel is a disembodied lung desperately inflating and deflating itself with stale cigarette smoke and the decades-old dust of whatever room you’re sitting in. It’s a work of autofiction that is equally exposed and pregnable as it is a fictitious hallucination woven like a cosmic braid with scenes from Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 film, House. The intergenerational sorority of aunts, mother, and grandmother that represent the author’s Vietnamese refugee matrilineage become interchangeable with Obayashi’s highly Westernized depiction of archetypal Japanese schoolgirls and the dubious matriarchs who haunt them. The spaces within the house hold formative and traumatic memories alike. They contain cultures of sexually repressed, sisterly perversions that are devoid of sexuality, yet brimming with desire. Schreiber is wont to illustrate scenes in much the same way as Obayashi—little comedic horrors that drip with Agent Orange and irradiated uranium (respectively) over postwar rubble both seen and unseen. House makes a perfect companion for this book in the way that it depicts the domicile as a metaphor for the body. A cell that contains the bodies of all the women who have kept it.

In Fantasy, mother tongue is laced with the mysterious motherland in a braid that spans the Pacific Ocean. A language spoken between grandmother and granddaughter flourishes and fades in this boat they call home, its orbit so wide one forgets that it’s indeed moving. Only her mother’s constant motion is detected as she skirts in and out on an outlet designer dingy, leaving an inexplicably large wake each time on her way out. You can trace the roots of words that have died in the wisps that fly out of one loop or the next, having provided the foundation of their intercontinental bridge, they take an unceremonious bow and quietly escape the lexicon of their nomadic identity. “Ever since I was a little girl, I have lived in a fantastic theatron: a seeing place whose walls keep disappearing, transforming to mask, fly, tease, or torment, and beyond the walls are nothingness, and three generations of women live with me, entering through the door to rehearse their magical future, every character brought down by their character, by the desire to look good as themselves for themselves, and I alone see them, I alone beholding my house, my body, my ghosts and my gods, and my screen that is suddenly a cannibal.”

Am I really so porous that someone could just bleed into me? asks Khaos, a recurring figure whose only identifying characteristics are Daughter Flower, pregnant. Flowers constitute the form of certain characters at times, nourish them at others, and press their withering bodies into the pages of a history book from a forgotten land. Having meticulously studied a smorgasbord of allegories that portray women stuck in houses such as Mekong Hotel, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Pretty Little Liars, The Virgin Suicides, and so on, Schreiber takes an incisive look at the corporal quality of our deepest psychic understandings and the umbilical cord that carries our identity from one body to the next. She is indefatiguably distinguishing one X from the other in her chromosomal set, knowing that there isn’t a corpus callosum dividing her dual identities, but rather an extensive sequence of yins and yangs swirling; an infinite loop of chain-smoking daisies propelling the turbine of life and death. Like the avatars of an ancient goddess, they circulate the dust that gathers in the corners of the epigenetic house, floating ubiquitously through the air, carrying traces of every dead and living thing that ever graced it with their presence.

Fantasy features cover art by Sojourner Truth Parsons and is published by Sidebrow Books. Click here to preorder. Follow Kim-Anh Schreiber on Instagram.

Read The Second Chapter Of Brad Phillips' & Gideon Jacobs' Serial Novella →

Over the course of 2020, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 2: Guillermo’s Funeral.

Read The First Chapter Of Gideon Jacobs' & Brad Phillips' New Serial Novella →

Over the next year, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments will go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 1: G & B.

Malcolm Gladwell in Conversation with Flea @ The Palace Theater In Los Angeles

For the first-ever live version of the popular KCRW podcast, Malcolm Gladwell and Flea discuss his new memoir, Acid for the Children, to be released on November 5, 2019, by Grand Central Publishing. Malcolm and Flea will journey through the rock star’s childhood love of jazz, punk, and funk, what it was like working with Rick Rubin on the classic Red Hot Chilli Peppers albums of the ’90s and ’00s, how he became the signature rock bassist, and other riveting topics. Malcolm Gladwell will be in Conversation with Flea on Wednesday, November 13 at the Palace Theatre 630 S. Broadway Los Angeles. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit: kcrw.com/brokenrecordlive

Getting Off: Read Brad Phillips' Interview With Author Erica Garza On Her Journey Through Sex & Porn Addiction →

In the following interview, Brad Phillips speaks to author, Erica Garza about their mutual experience with sex and porn addiction. Challenging the stereotype that sexual addiction is within a man’s nature, and for a woman, the result of sexual trauma, in Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, Garza recounts a life of “revolting” fantasies both imagined and realized. She lays out a lifetime of orgasmic pressure begging to be released, and she courageously traces her road to recovery. Throughout the conversation, Phillips and Garza share their experiences of responding to fans who look to them for guidance, the benefits of being triggered, and the sexual taboos that continue to plague our sense of moral authority. Click here to read more.

Highlights From The Printed Matter LA Art Book Fair @ MoCA Geffen

Initiated in 2013, Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair (LAABF) is the companion fair to the NY Art Book Fair. Free and open to the public, the two fairs are among the leading international gatherings for the distribution of artists’ books, celebrating the full breadth of the art publishing community.

Held at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles over three days, the 2019 LA Art Book Fair hosted 390 exhibitors from 31 countries, including a broad range of artists and collectives, small presses, institutions, galleries, antiquarian booksellers, and distributors. The event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year. With a commitment to diversity and representation, the fair serves as a meeting place for an extended community of publishers and book enthusiasts, as well as a site for dialogue and exchange around all facets of arts publishing. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Growing Up In Wallace Berman's World: Read Our Interview With Tosh Berman →

Wallace Berman carves a mysterious, counter-cultural figure in the cave wall of Los Angeles folklore. His legend is enhanced by a tragically early death on his fiftieth birthday as a result of an automobile crash with a drunk driver in Topanga Canyon, further cementing his myth as the beatnik of the Southern California chaparrals.

In a new memoir, entitled Tosh, Berman’s son opens the opaque curtain on the enigmatic artist through a bildungsroman of the Beat Generation and hippie counterculture, a childhood on the frontlines of 1960s Los Angeles and San Francisco freakdom. Tosh Berman and Jason Schwartzman got together for a public conversation at Skylight Books to discuss his memoir and growing up in Wallace Berman’s world. Click here to read more.

Read An Exclusive Excerpt From D. Foy's New Novel "Patricide" →

Suicidal, apt to crumple on a dime in fits, I was flown out to my father’s in his dustbowl town, where nothing was expected, said my father, the place would be all mine, take a job when you’re ready, said my father, or anything you like. I’m looking for my own work, said my father, but we’ll fix you up, and if you need it, said my father, we’ll go find it, that’s what really counts. You’ve only got to get here, said my father, that’s it. We’ll be together then, and together we’ll be good. Click here to read more. 

Read An Exclusive Excerpt from Matthew Binder's Tour De Force Debut Novel "High In the Streets" →

"One day Lou Brown decided to kill himself. But when he sat down to craft a suicide letter, the simple act of committing words to the page was like opening up a window to his mind, allowing the whole world to shine. His book went on to become a runaway bestseller, making him a literary icon, earning him all the trappings of the American Dream. It’s now five years later and the obligations that come along with great success have robbed him of the freedom he values above all else. When Lou suspects his fiancé of an infidelity, he moves into the Frontier Motel, setting himself up for a week-long adventure where he’ll once again learn to buck convention, indulge in his honest appetites, and follow his uninhibited instincts." Click here to read the excerpt. 

Watch The Trailer for "So Sad Today" A Book of Personal Essays by Melissa Broder

Mellissa Broder has been at the cutting edge of the poetry world for a decade publishing titles such as Meat Heart and When You Mean One Thing and Say Your Mother. Melissa Broder always struggled with anxiety. In the fall of 2012, she went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread that wouldn't abate for months. So she began @sosadtoday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings, and which quickly gained a dedicated following. In her new book, So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into the existential themes she explores on Twitter, grappling with sex, death, love low self-esteem, addiction, and the drama of waiting for the universe to text you back. Here she is "ballsy and beautiful, aggressively colloquial and achingly poetic" in her book trailer that's goth as fuck. Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including the forthcoming Last Sext (Tin House, 2016). Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Guernica, and The Iowa Review, among other journals. She lives in Venice, California. Click here to preorder So Sad Today. 

Read An Exclusive Excerpt From Amber Sparks' Much Talked About Novella and Collection of Short Stories

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories―populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors―form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Click here to read the excerpt. 

Read Shane Jones' Short Story "Maneesh in Los Angeles" →

       On Saturday mornings Maneesh tells Sarah things. They have lived together for six months. Sarah refuses to define their relationship, so Sarah is just Sarah and she lives her life saying she has a cold. Maneesh doesn’t understand why Sarah always has a cold, but she says she does and she likes to talk about it. Once a week Sarah works for a veterinarian who makes house calls. The only reason he makes house calls is to put dogs to sleep. The only reason he employs Sarah is to have someone in the house if the dog is too big. Click here to read more.  

Read Kate Wyer's Short Prose Piece "The Pollinator" About Self Piercing and Cultural Barriers →

We are all migrants here. Working with our thumbs and hands in the organic orchid field. We are all brown with the sun and some from family. We do not all speak Spanish. I speak some, enough. I dream it and can tell when I’m the butt of another’s joke. To know slurs and insults, to roll with the subtle, confusingly slow brushes against my backside as I lean into the plants. Click here to read more. 

The New Gay Novel Of Our Times: Luke Goebel Reviews Garth Greenwell's Incendiary New Novel

Happy New Year Autre Readers,

I want to tell you about a book that you should read in 2016. I have never written a book review before, but I’ve read a lot of them and had my own book reviewed a couple dozen times, and therefore know that I hate them—they are too long, usually, and too bombastic and too laudatory and too much too much. They either show off or get goopy or refer to too many old works or take shots at the work or as is usually the case are written by friends of the author and biased and shit.

Let’s talk about cocaine. There is hardly any of it that is real anymore. Agreed? I am sober, as in I don’t do drugs anymore, but let’s say that I did have a little taste of toot the other night, as fiction, let’s say that, and that the taste on my tongue was definitely watered down, i.e. stepped on, meth coke bullshit. It’s everywhere, right?

We don’t want our funk stepped on. If there was real coke, in the fiction, I would as a fictional character done a line, and as the Byrds sing, would offer you to take a whiff on me, which is what I will do later in this review. I’ll offer you to take a whiff on me of some real coke.

Garth Greenwell has got your coke, and I’m going to give you a little whiff of his supply, in the sense that Garth has the straight numb your face off wake up powder in the novel he is releasing this month with FSG titled, WHAT BELONGS TO YOU.

This novel, and no I don’t know Garth, was recommended by an author I admire, Alex Che, and so I asked for an ARC (advanced reader’s copy) from Grant and he agreed and sent me over a copy. I read the first page and was keenly aware that Grant has the coke. This masterpiece of his begins in a public bathroom underneath the Sofia National Palace of Culture in Bulgaria where the narrator tells us he first spied the object of his lust and desire, a hustler of charisma with a jagged tooth who is rolling a joint in a stall with another man when the narrator first pays the hustler to let him suck the hustler’s cock in the bathroom. The book goes from there with the intensity of interpersonal drama and identity that brings to mind Oscar Wilde, Fitzgerald, Plath, Nabokov, and is nothing short of our first masterpiece…there I go again doing the thing I hate, the book is a masterpiece. I’m going to give you those tastes I promised now, but as you will see, this book and the writing are something we don’t get anymore. They are a taste of real coke, only without the gasoline, murder, death, guilt, corruption that goes into cocaine. Writing like this simply doesn’t come around anymore. The majority of what we get to read from living authors is part meth at best. This is the pure shit. Enjoy. Text by Luke Goebel. We were going to include some excerpts from the Greenwell's new novel, but all the lit mags, like the Paris Review, claimed dibs, so you may as well just purchase "What Belongs To You: A Novel" here

A Glimpse Into the First Issue of The Feros Review, An Erotic Notebook From France

Sometimes sensual, sometimes sexual, Feros a call to awake the senses. Firmly rooted in this time, the erotic review explores an obsessive look aesthetic and contemporary fascinations for impulses living being. The publication stands out as the need to reveal the principles of a contemporary eros which seeks and is constantly renewing itself, without manipulating representations. In each issue, art and literature intersect, align and interact freely. Wild beauty and sought: Feros. The first issue includes contributions from Julian Feeld, Apollonia Saintclair, Mirka Lugosi and more. You can purchase the first issue of Feros in a standard edition and limited edition here.