#Stephen Whitehead

[brokehorrorfan]

Silver Bullet's soundtrack will be released on vinyl on October 4 via Real Gone Music. Pulled from "superior sound sources," the score is composed by Jay Chattaway (Maniac, Maniac Cop).

The album is pressed on scarlet and gray colored vinyl, limited to 600 for $25, and infinity splatter, limited to 100 for $35. It's housed in a jacket featuring artwork by Devon Whitehead.

[bunnimew]

Made of Win Pt 5

"You look nice tonight, Stephen," Matt said.

Stephen looked confused. "Can you… see it, somehow?"

"No." Matt smiled. "But Frank's temperature just went up point three degrees and his heartbeat is erratic, so I'm assuming."

Stephen looked at Frank.

Frank looked at Stephen.

Stephen turned back to Matt. "Thank you."

[22thumbs]

New York City in TLOU

Is New York City ever mentioned in the Last of Us game (don't remember if the city was ever mentioned on the show)? I'm curious what happened to NYC.

The Last of Us Universe basically is our world but diverges when the fungal apocalypse happened. In the HBO show, the outbreak happened in 2003 and in the game, it was 2013.

So just two years after the World Trade Center collapsed in the show version or 12 years in the game version, you would have characters not only from NYC but also around the world who were in the area that survived 9/11, only to be killed or somehow survive Outbreak Day on September 26.

The show and the game does a really good job of portraying the chaos of Joel, Sarah and Tommy not knowing what was going on while trying to flee Austin, TX with the highways blocked and people running from the infected. Leaving any of the NY boroughs, would be a nightmare.

New York City is the most densely populated city in the U.S. The only way to get out of the city with a vehicle is by tunnels and bridges. You could also leave by ferry and boat (Being stuck on a ferry not knowing who could be infected seems horrific).

Thinking more on this, the likelihood of anyone in NYC surviving the fungal outbreak is probably slim. The city gets shut down during catastrophic events. I imagine residents would have to flee immediately before gridlock or stay in place until they're able to leave.

If anyone is interested in reading novels that has a setting in NYC that deals with a zombie apocalypse or a pandemic, I'd recommend Zone Zero by Colson Whitehead and The Stand by Stephen King. Zone One takes place a few years after the apocalypse and follows the main character as he helps clear Manhattan of zombies to make it livable. The Stand has a character who makes his way out of NYC after a deadly virus shuts the world down. If anyone has written fanfiction about a character in the TLOU universe being from NYC, it would be interesting to read.

[macrolit]

NYT's Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

FROM FROM by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A HOUSE FOR ALICE by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

THE ILIAD by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

KANTIKA by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

MONICA by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

THE NEW NATURALS by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

NOT EVEN THE DEAD by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

THIS OTHER EDEN by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

THE UNSETTLED by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

WITNESS by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.

[aperiodofhistory]

Books to read in autumn

Historical novels

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: England in the 1520s

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: Building the most splendid Gothic cathedral the world has ever known

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: A back-in-time Scottish romance

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland: A novel of the plague in the year 1348

The underground railroad by Colson Whitehead: Enslavement of African Americans through escape and flight

The God of small things by Arundhati Roy: A family drama in the 60s located in India

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: A powerful reminder of the horrors of world war II

Fantasy

A Game of thrones by George R. R. Martin: A Fantasy epic run by politics, strong families, dragons

Red rising by Pierce Brown: A dystopian science fiction novel set in a future colony on Mars

Babel by R.F. Kuang: Student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: A fresh take on fantasy staring an orc and a mercenary

Jade City by Fonda Lee: A gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: A tale of hope and magic, with brave maidens and scary monsters

The Atlas six by Olivie Blake: A dark academic sensation following six magicians

Mysteries & Horror

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by various authors: Short stories perfect for the Halloween mood

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon: The story of Vern, a pregnant teenager who escapes the cult Cainland

The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher: A noted cultural critic unearths the weird, the eerie, and the horrific in 20th-century culture through a wide range of literature, film, and music

Holly by Stephen King: Disappearances in a midwestern town

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas: Supernatural western

The good house by Tananarive Due: A classic New England tale that lays bare the secrets of one little town

Nonfiction

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey: The trail of America's ghosts

What moves the dead by T. Kingfisher: A gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry: A journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America

All the living and the dead by Hayley Campbell: An exploration of the death industry and the people―morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners―who work in it and what led them there

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more

[librarycards]

hello everyone, and welcome to my slightly-belated quarter 2 2023 book recs! i spent the last 2ish weeks in europe both sighteeing and attending the amazing FAC No Borders Summer School, and am still getting back into the swing of being home, getting over jet lag, etc. since coming back, it's been really nice to take stock of the books i've read since March, and rediscover some gems. So, without further ado, here they are (links are to my reviews of each book - let me know if you like being linked directly to my reviews! I also do this on my Substack)!

Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northern (eds.), Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

Joshua Whitehead (ed)., Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

jia qing wilson-yang, Small Beauty

Srikanth Reddy, Voyager

Paris Green / frog k / @play-now-my-lord , how about a little kiss?

Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow The World We Want

Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus

tagging people whose faves i'm interested in below, but as always, anyone can make their list and tag me -- i love seeing what you're reading!

@gwenderqueer @discworldwitches @aldieb @tamagotchiplanet @probablymoons @capricornpropaganda @killyfromblame @myalgias @oatsmilk @secretcircuit @closet-keys @fatehbaz @sawasawako @takemyrevolution1997 @tirragen @trans-axolotl @llleighsmith @bioethicists @smokedsalmoniloveyou @materialisnt @grimesapologist @vawoolf @kissedbytheriver @twinkubus @sadhoc @hamath @thedyke @endure @osmanthusoolong @heavenlyyshecomes @stephen-deadalus @querxus @pf2e @coffinbutch @punkkwix @r00tvegetables @abstractlesbian @handweavers @r-ob-yn @mastincala @campgender @feypact and anyone else who wants to!

[marleneoftheopera]

London’s 36th Anniversary - Audio Gifts!

In honor of the 36th anniversary today, I thought it would be nice to share some previous POTO London anniversary audios! Many if not all of these are fairly common so you may have them already, but nice to have them in one spot!

The link is below and cast info will be beneath the ‘keep reading’ tab (and of course on my site).

Enjoy!!

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/dq3wt4rvqb07h/London_Anniversaries 

Matthew Cammelle (s/b), Rachel Barrel, Oliver Thornton October 4, 2004; London 18th anniversary performance in London.

Earl Carpenter, Rachel Barrell, David Shannon, Wendy Ferguson, James Barron, Sam Hiller, Annette Yeo, Rohan Tickell, Naomi Cobby October 9, 2006; London 20th anniversary performance. Includes speeches by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Ramin Karimloo, Leila Benn Harris, Alex Rathgeber, Wendy Ferguson, James Barron, Sam Hiller, Heather Jackson, Benjamin Lake, Lindsey Wise October 9, 2007; London 21st anniversary performance. Highlights.

Ramin Karimloo, Gina Beck, Simon Bailey, Rebecca Lock, Barry James, Gareth Snook, Nicky Adams, Rohan Tickell, Emma Harris, Stephen John Davis October 9, 2009; London 23rd Anniversary performance, includes speeches.

Ramin Karimloo, Sierra Boggess, Hadley Fraser, Wendy Ferguson, Barry James, Gareth Snook, Liz Robertson, Wynne Evans, Daisy Maywood October 2, 2011; London Audio of the 25th Anniversary Concert. Includes speech and encore performances. Official CD and audience recording.

Ben Forster, Celinde Schoenmaker, Nadim Naaman October 10, 2016; London 30th anniversary performance.

Ben Lewis, Kelly Mathieson, Jeremy Taylor October 9, 2017; London 31st anniversary performance.

Josh Piterman/Adam Robert Lewis (u/s), Kelly Mathieson, Danny Whitehead, Ross Dawes, Richard Woodford, Britt Lenting, Paul Ettore Tabone, Sophie Caton (u/s), Georgia Ware October 9, 2019; London The 33rd anniversary show. Josh had to leave the show after Act 1 due to illness and was replaced by Adam Robert Lewis.

​Killian Donnelly, Holly Anne Hull (alt.), Rhys Whitfield, Saori Oda, Matt Harrop, Adam Linstead, Francesca Ellis, Greg Castiglioni, Ellie Young October 9, 2021; London 35th anniversary show in London. Killian Donnelly (Phantom), Lucy St Louis (Christine), Rhys Whitfield (Raoul), Saori Oda (Carlotta Giudicelli), Matt Harrop (Monsieur Firmin), Adam Linstead (Monsieur André), Francesca Ellis (Madame Giry), Greg Castiglioni (Ubaldo Piangi), Ellie Young (Meg Giry) October 11, 2021; London Audio of the 35th Anniversary gala night, celebrated 2 days after the actual anniversary. Includes speeches and Happy Birthday at the end​

[theblob1958]

Al @ghostpunkrock and Jones @localpubliclibrary tagged me to talk about the books that stuck with me this year! yay!

Row 1: Moby Dick by Herman Melville; Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo; East of Eden by John Steinbeck Row 2: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones; One the Dirty Plate Trail by Sanora Babb & Doulas Wixson; The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones Row 3: Zone One by Colson Whitehead; Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead; Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

if you can't tell, I think you should read Colson Whitehead's books. i also just highly recommend everything on this list xoxo

i'm gonna tag @breedablejackles @legzeppelin and @saw09 if you guys want to talk about the books you read :)

[soupmetal666]

TRANSGENDER, NONBINARY, GENDERQUEER and TWO-SPIRIT POETS YOU SHOULD READ!

Here's a non-exhaustive list in alphabetical order by author last name. The majority listed here have published full-length poetry collections and/or chapbooks, but some have not, and have published poems in publications you can find online. Some also write in other genres, as well, and/or make art in other mediums. Consider reblogging it and adding to it if you so desire. My background is primarily in "academic" poetry, for better or worse, and I'm less knowledgeable about slam poetry/poets who don't publish in avenues approved by the academy or are not in academic circles. I've only listed poets here whose work I have read. So there are certainly people worth reading that I'm missing.

Andrea Abi-Karam

Samuel Ace

Jada Renée Allen

Justice Ameer

Ryka Aoki

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Noah Baldino

Ari Banias

Kay Ulanday Barrett

Oliver Baez Bendorf

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Stephanie Burt

Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Jos Charles

Ching-In Chen

Travis Hedge Coke

CAConrad

jayy dodd

J Jennifer Espinoza

T. Fleischmann

Kay Gabriel

Aeon Ginsberg

torrin a. greathouse

Kamden Hilliard

Stephen Ira

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson

Rickey Laurentiis

Dawn Lundy Martin

Noor Ibn Najam

Trace Peterson

Raquel Salas Rivera

Trish Salah

Danez Smith

TC Tolbert

Chrysanthemum Tran

Joshua Whitehead

Kit Yan

In addition, two wonderfully edited trans poetry anthologies published by Nightboat Books that include many of these writers' work:

Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson

We Want it All: A Radical Anthology of Trans Poetics, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel

Also, some online literary journals regularly publishing trans and nonbinary poetry:

https://foglifterjournal.com/

https://www.peachmgzn.com/

https://beestungmag.com/

The current moment is a very exciting time for trans poetics. These are brilliant poets and thinkers publishing work that's worth your time. Poetry is not everyone's cup of tea, certainly, but I wish more people knew about how many awesome trans poets are out there right now making amazing and important art.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

“I was in such spirits when I landed in my fine red coat, that I laid a wager with one of the passengers that I would kiss the first female that I should meet on the shore. It was a handsome young girl clad in a scarlet cloak: I marched up to her politely, told her the wager I had laid, expressing a hope that she would not suffer me to lose it. To my great astonishment she yielded with a good grace, and I triumphantly pocketed the money I had so agreeably won. Thus I was first wedded to this country.”

— “Notes and Documents: The Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, by Peter Stephen Du Ponceau and James L. Whitehead,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

[kwebtv]

The Cleopatras - BBC Two - January 19, 1983 - March 9, 1983

Historical Drama (8 episodes)

Running Time: 60 minutes

The Cleopatras:

Michelle Newell as Cleopatra III and Cleopatra VII

Elizabeth Shepherd as Cleopatra II

Caroline Mortimer as Cleopatra Thea

Prue Clarke as Cleopatra Selene

Sue Holderness as Cleopatra IV

Pauline Moran as Cleopatra Berenike

Amanda Boxer as Cleopatra Tryphaena, Queen of Syria

Emily Richard as Cleopatra Tryphaena, Queen of Egypt

Francesca Gonshaw as Arsinoe IV

The Ptolemies:

Richard Griffiths as Potbelly

David Horovitch as Chickpea

Daniel Beales as Ptolemy XIII

Adam Bareham as Fluter

Lauren Beales as Ptolemy XV

Gary Carp as Eupator

Graham Seed as Ptolemy

Sadik Soussi as Memphites

Ian McNeice as Alexander

David Purcell as Alexander the Younger

Shelagh McLeod as Berenike IV

Francesca Gonshaw as Princess Arsinoe

Graham Crowden as Theodotus

Romans:

Robert Hardy as Julius Caesar

Christopher Neame as Mark Antony

Geoffrey Whitehead as Scipio Africanus

Donald Pickering as Lucius Licinius Lucullus

Phillip Cade as Gnaeus Pompey

Rupert Frazer as Octavian

Manning Wilson as Cicero

Godfrey James as Cato

Matthew Long as Ahenobarbus

Graham Pountney as Archelaus

Patrick Troughton as Sextus

Karen Archer as Octavia

The Seleucids:

Stephen Greif as Demetrius

James Aubrey as Grypus

Nicholas Geake as Seleucus

Colin Higgins as Seleucus

Donald MacIver as Alexander Zebinas

Granville Saxton as Cyzicenus

[waveridden]

4 and 19?

4. what is the plot bunny you've been carrying the longest?

oh man i'm so bad at keeping track of these things. uhhhh i have a couple of itch2 fics from 2020 that i've been trying to actively turn into something? i have old wip docs going back to 2014 in my gdrive but most of them are like... abandoned lol. i will be reading a bunch of them because of this question tho so thank you

19. what are some books or authors that have influenced your writing style the most?

stephen king, hands down. i haven't even read a ton of his stuff but it's him. the first two specific books that came to mind alongside that were the book thief by markus zusak and sag harbor by colson whitehead.

[glassprism]

What If Scenario. The Pandemic never happened, but the renovations at Her Majesty’s eventually did. During that time, they put together a concert-like production of Phantom like they did with Les Mis in 2019. Who would you have cast in each part? Feel free to include Ensemble & Understudies

I think I answered something very similar before where I said that I'd love to have had an international celebration, with recent, fan-favorite, or long-running members from productions all over the world given an opportunity to perform and do, like, one song each, along with the then-current cast at the time. So I guess it might be something like:

Phantom: Josh Piterman (London), Ben Crawford (Broadway), Derrick Davis (national tour), Osamu Takai (Japan), Alexander Goebel (Vienna), Colm Wilkinson (Toronto), Peter Karrie (Canadian tour), Peter Joback (Stockholm), Ian Jon Bourg (Germany), Anthony Warlow (Australia), Henk Poort (Scheveningen), Juan Navarro (Mexico City), Hans Peter Janssens (Antwerp), Tomas Ambt Kofod (Copenhagen), Hong Kwang Ho (Seoul), Juan Carlos Barona (Madrid), Sandor Sasvari (Budapest), Saulo Vasconcelos (Sao Paulo), Damian Aleksander (Poland), Carlos Vittori (Buenos Aires), Marian Vojtko (Prague), Stephen Brandt Hansen (Estonia), Ivan Ozhogin (Moscow), Ilkka Hamalainen (Helsinki), Adrian Nour (Bucharest), Nikola Bulatovic (Belgrade), Vladimir Grudkov (Sofia), Jonathan Roxmouth (World Tour), Espen Grjotheim (Oslo), Ben Forster (Greece), Killian Donnelly (UK Tour)

Christine: Kelly Mathieson (London), Meghan Picerno (Broadway), Emma Grimsley (national tour), Sae Yamamoto (Japan), Luzia Nistler (Vienna), Rebecca Caine (Toronto), Teresa DeZarn (Canadian tour), Emmi Christensson (Stockholm), Valerie Link (Germany), Ana Marina (Australia), Joke de Kruijf (Scheveningen), Irasema Terrazas (Mexico City), Inneke van Klinken (Antwerp), Sibylle Glosted (Copenhagen), Kim So Hyun (Seoul), Julia Moller (Madrid), Barbara Fonyo (Budapest), Lina Mendes (Sao Paulo), Edyta Krzemien (Poland), Claudia Cota (Buenos Aires), Monika Sommerova (Prague), Maria Listra (Estonia), Tamara Kotova (Moscow), Sofie Asplund (Helsinki), Irina Baiant (Bucharest), Mirjana Matic (Belgrade), Vesela Delcheva (Sofia), Claire Lyon (World Tour), Astrid Giske (Oslo), Amy Manford (Greece), Holly-Anne Hull (UK Tour)

Raoul: Danny Whitehead (London), John Riddle (Broadway), Michael Maliakel (national tour), Kanji Ishimaru (Japan), Thorsten Tinney (Vienna), Laird Mackintosh (Toronto), Kip Wilborne (Canadian tour), Anton Zetterholm (Stockholm), Nicky Wuchinger (Germany), Alexander Lewis (Australia), Peter de Smet (Scheveningen), someone who's not Jose Joel (Mexico City), Michael Shawn Lewis (Antwerp), Christian Lund (Copenhagen), Son Jun Ho (Seoul), Armando Pita (Madrid), Zoltan Miller (Budapest), Nando Prado (Sao Paulo), Marcin Mrozinski (Poland), Nicholas Martinelli (Buenos Aires), Tomas Vanek (Prague), Koit Toome (Estonia), Evgeny Zaycev (Moscow), John Martin Bengtsson (Helsinki), Florin Ristei (Bucharest), Slaven Doslo (Belgrade), Denko Prodanov (Sofia), Matt Leisy (World Tour), Carl Lindquist (Oslo), Nadim Naaman (Greece), Rhys Whitfield (UK Tour)

Is that way too many cast members? Probably! Are there even enough scenes for each of them to perform together? Unlikely! Did I give up doing supporting, ensemble, and understudies because it was too exhausting? Definitely! Do I even know who some of these people are or if they want to come back at all? Not really!

But you have to admit - it's a huge and very international cast!

[kattra]

What I’m Reading

BOOKS OF APRIL A Long Stretch of Bad Days by Mindy McGinnis ** Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edited by Joshua Whitehead (SS) A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers ** VenCo by Cherie Dimaline **  Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey (about a divorce)  Abandoned Alberta by Joe Chowaniec (NF) ** Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater **  Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror edited by John F.D. Taff (SS) Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones **  Final Girls by Riley Sager **  Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead Tatouine by Jean-Christophe Réhel  Come Closer and Listen by Charles Simic (P)

Graphic Novels: Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Vol.4-6 by Aka Akasaka  My Dress-Up Darling Vol.7-8 by Shinichi Fukuda **

(61 books read / 125 books goal)

currently reading:  The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (P)  Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much by Jen Winston (NF) Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (SS)  A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo  Only A Monster by Vanessa Len 

* - re-read // ** - 4+ star-rating (recommended) GN - graphic novel // NF - non-fiction // P - poetry SS - short story collection // AB - audiobook 

TBR: Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons (SS) The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce  Making Love With the Land by Joshua Whitehead (NF)  The Renunciations by Donna Kelly (P) Himawari House by Harmony Becker (GN) Graveneye by Sloane Leong & Anna Bowles (GN)

WHAT ARE YOU READING? :D

Find me on: GOODREADS | THE STORYGRAPH

[nightlyponder]

top five short stories? uwu

gotta think real hard on all the short story collections and anthologies i've read

the jaunt by stephen king - a cosmic horror type short story but not in terms of monsters but in spacetime travel

the star by arthur c clarke - a religious scifi story

andwanikadjigan from the anthology Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, by Joshua Whitehead - while i cant remember what it's about, i rated it 5/5 on my storygraph so yea

the lottery by shirley jackson - absolute classic, had to create an art project for it in high school and it was one of my favorite assignments

the ones who stay and fight from the short story collection How Long Til Black Future Month by nk jemisin - her response to ursula k lein's short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

[hplovecraftmuseum]

THE OCCULT LOVECRAFT, by H. P. Lovecraft and Anthony Raven. Illustrated by Stephen Fabian. Published by Gerry de la Ree, 1975. Lovecraft was NOT an expert on the occult and never claimed to be. HPL took inspiration from many diverse sources. Established religious dogma, folklore, psuedo science speculation, and even cryptozoology. He had little respect for the practitioners of Satanism or those who claimed to be spiritualists. He had nearly as much dislike of those who practiced or promoted any established religious beliefs. That being said he was friendly with Revernd Henry S. Whitehead, author of several horror stories. Some of the best of these were collected and published by Arkham House after his death. JUMBEE and Other Uncanny Tales was released in 1944. (Exhibit 104)