Welcome to Staff Picks!, a selection of the authors and artists our staff are currently reading, viewing, and loving. Here are their thoughts.
Claire Zlotnicki is reading:
Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
“Robin Coste Lewis’s National Book Award winner, Voyage of the Sable Venus, is a book of poetry that sticks with you. I read it for the first time early this year, and its complex, racially charged, powerful poems are still bouncing around my head, causing me to check the book out of the library again a few days ago. The middle of three sections is written entirely using titles of works of art depicting black women, and remains the most unique piece of verse I’ve encountered. Voyage of the Sable Venus is the kind of book it takes a lifetime to truly understand, but I’m working on it.”
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Morgan Bradham is reading:
Love and Information by Caryl Churchill
“Love and Information by British playwright Caryl Churchill is a groundbreaking contemporary work of abstract theatre. This seven-section piece is divided into a variety of smaller scenes. In each scene, two new characters search together for an answer to a question or discuss factual information between themselves. The piece prompts critical thinking on love’s relationship to the sciences and mathematics, for example, we’re asked to ponder how love moves through time in comparison to factual information moves through time. The play was first performed in September 2012 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. It received its off-Broadway debut at the Minetta Lane Theatre in February 2014.”
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Michael Williams suggests:
Alok Vaid-Menon, a contemporary poet and activist
“Alok Vaid-Menon is nonbinary transfeminine writer, entertainer, and performance artist. They encapsulate the definition of an artist in the 21st century in which the political, social, and aesthetic are combined. Having published essays and poems in many different organizations, like The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Alok confronts systemic oppression of neoliberalism, racism, transphobia, and eurocentrism. Using their voice to show how the personal is deeply political, Alok captures the individual struggle to survive and resist widespread violence and dehumanization.”
Here is their website: https://returnthegayze.com/
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Tim Housand is reading:
River House by Sally Keith
“After running, the wind you make returns to you.” So states the speaker in one of sixty-three new poems from Sally Keith. River House doesn’t merely work as woman reflecting on the early death of her mother—it also serves as Keith’s bold thesis on grief, and the limits of an individual’s intelligence in dealing with that grief. Coping is treated here not as a line, but as an incomplete circle: something that endlessly repeats, but is never fully resolved. Composed of unbelievable wit and humor, strength and clarity, it is still the inescapable terror of loss that sticks with you the most after reading River House.
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Cassie Cantrell is reading:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
“An oldie but a goodie, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice follows Elizabeth Bennett as she pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in the 1800’s. This book is a classic and an extremely forward-thinking novel for its time, and it is definitely a must read if a high school English teach hasn’t already assigned. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, however, is not for everyone, but author, Seth Grahame-Smith does stay true to Austen’s original plot line and diction, obviously with the added fact that zombies are raiding England. Certainly of the farfetched persuasion, this novel is great for anyone looking for that classic with just a little more action.”
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Alex Peeples is reading:
Greasy Lake & Other Stories by T.C. Boyle
“These stories are very much a product of someone who came of age in the sixties and seventies, all the way to Bruce Springsteen-referencing title of the collection. There’s an innate darkness and a sort of “Americanism” to all of the stories and the characters that inhabit them, from wannabe James Dean types to president Dwight Eisenhower himself. And Boyle’s a genius when it comes to description, particularly with his settings, you can get an entire understanding of the tone of one of his stories just through one description of place.”
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Celeste Caldwell suggests:
Ernesto Neto– “I think that not thinking is healthy; it’s like breathing itself”
“We all think a lot—okay, maybe some of us more than others—but for those that relate, it is really exhausting and often isolating. I could think about a thirty-minute sequence of my life for approximately three years and I was a bit of a late bloomer in realizing that that is probably useless. I have thought about it, obviously, and was led to the conclusion that this is the reason I love art. I stop thinking about my own little space of the world and start thinking on another plane, or maybe don’t think at all (*gasp*), which is a solace that not even a deep-tissue massage can grant me. Ernesto Neto, Brazilian Conceptual sculptor, creates a place of refuge in his sensory-based exhibitions. I was surprised, like most other viewers, while exploring his work at the Hirshhorn Museum to discover that you are encouraged to touch, poke, and walk on his biomorphic sculptures made primarily from a white, stretchy material filled with Styrofoam pellets or aromatic spices. Walking through/on his installations is transportive and all-consuming; leaving his installations is thought-provoking, often examining topics of human relationships and behaviors. Sometimes contemporary art can seem pretentious or hard to approach, but once and a while we all need to step outside ourselves and into the spandex-y mindscape of another because that is well, pretty ‘Neat-o.’
P.S.: I had to stop my mom from buying a shirt that day that said “ipster” on one side and “you’re missing something—Hirshhorn” on the other side.”
McKayla Conahan is reading:
State of Wonder by Anne Patchett
“I actually got this book because Emily Clark recommended it for a concept Patchett covers within it called ‘moss time.’ I haven’t gotten to learn about moss time yet, but this book has truly taken hold of me. It has been a while since I’ve read something so compelling and all-engrossing. We follow a Dr. Marina Singh from Minnesota to the Amazon in an effort to locate the body (alive or dead) of one of her coworkers who had traveled down there to do research under one of Marina’s former professors. At only 67 pages in we’ve gained a tremendous understanding of our narrator– her past and present, strengths and vulnerabilities, and empathy for all she’s been through. I believe in you, Dr. Singh.”
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Jules Kaempf is reading:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
“Readers who enjoy Jane Austen’s observations of social interactions and how people balance their introspections with their outward behavior should tryMiddlemarch by George Eliot. This novel, set in an English town in the early 1800s, is an examination of individuals’ relationships and how their decisions weave their paths together. It is long but worth the perspective you’ll gain on how people think and how challenging relationships are dealt with. ”
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Jozie Konczal is reading:
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
“In Bluets, Maggie Nelson explores her obsession with the color blue, her friend’s quadriplegia, and the pain the body experiences after the loss of a lover. Her soft yet iron voice is honed and directed by the lyric memoir form, which allows the collection to call on philosophers, musicians, and the speaker’s own experience with pain. This was the first book of Nelson’s I ever read, but certainly not the last. Her insight into self, and her utilization of brave forms and content have had a tremendous influence on my own writing, as well as my own handling of emotional pain. Her pursuit of truth whether or not it ends in solace is something to be admired for its beauty and its integrity. Nelson was also awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (also known as a genius grant) this year for her stunning works of nonfiction. She and her work are surely something to be admired.”