If you're like me, you have about thirty browser tabs open right now. One of them is playing music; maybe it's set to Radio Plastique. Half of those tabs are articles you've been meaning to read all week. Half of those are articles you meant to read last week and you're a little afraid to restart your browser. Some of those you've printed to PDF, multiple times.
I want to fight this feeling, so I'm gonna try this out: a semi-regular feature I'll call Closing My Tabs, in which I'll post links to the things that have caught my attention through the week. Maybe then I'll read them!
But before we do that, I want to thank you again for joining me on this jaunt. It's been a little grueling to force out the writing I've done this week, but I've needed to build momentum. Your support has really meant a lot.
Free subscribers, I'm gonna scale back the frequency after this week so that I'm not flooding your inbox.
Paid subscribers, I'll probably see you this weekend, and if you've gone for the daily double, I've got a real treat in store for you next week.
Without further ado, I'm going to CLOSE MY TABS
- I'm going to be running a workshop at the Tulsa Glitterary Writers Conference in a couple of weeks alongside Courtney Harler and Chen Chen, who this week reposted his article Craft Capsule: Against Universality, in Praise of Anger as part of a fantastic thread about the deployment of the idea of "universality," which has been weighing on me quite a bit this last year. Highly recommend this essay, and to read it down to the final footnote.
- I can't tell you how much I admire Hugh Ryan. Hugh is the one that turned me on the term "freelance adventuress," which is the most specific term for my gender ever invented. Hugh's got a new book out called The Women's House of Detention which is definitely going to be one of this year's beach reads. At this writing I've made it part way through this piece he wrote for the Washington Post about the disproportionately imprisoned LGBTQ population,
I stopped because I got distracted this other piece, an excerpt from the book in question, talking about the Stonewall sister riot held on the same day, a bottle's throw away, inside the Women's House of Detention. And part of that uprising was Afeni Shakur — known to many as Tupac's mom — who later on would live just up the street from where I write this now. It's a story I wish I had heard many years ago.
3. This is a nice essay in the Paris Review by Imogen Binnie about being a trans dyke in the 90s. There really weren't a lot of us then. I liked this piece a lot.
4. I've so far only skimmed this New York Times article about trans phalloplasty but the subject seems adorable and I was thrilled to see that the article profiles my surgical team; I might save it for when I go on vacation.
5. Finally, if you go to see Linda Franklin's EYEMAGINATION show at Gallery 1448 in Baltimore, you'll get to see Her and Him. You really should go.
