Michelle Tea: Black Wave

Michelle’s story, stanched for so long, came quickly and clearly, page after page it came, the story of Michelle and her tiny life made big, her blunders and foolishness made human, sometimes noble, her struggles redeemed, momentarily, and her love. That Michelle was the kind of person who loved felt good in those moments of writing. Michelle’s fingers bounced against the keys like hail. She banged the story of her life into the computer, telling it until the words before her vanished and the very world around her was gone.

Much gratitude to the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Center for Cultural Innovation for their support of this project. Many thanks to Ali Liebegott and Beth Pickens for their work in creating the Radar LAB Writing Retreat, where the majority of this book was created. Thanks also to my writer roommates that first year; your excellent creative vibes are in this book: Lucy Corin, Nicole J. Georges, Thomas McBee, Sara Seinberg, and Myriam Gurba. For early reading and support I again thank Ali and Beth as well as Tara Jepsen, Amanda Verwey, Daniel Handler, Eileen Myles, and Emer Martin. The humblest of thanks to Dia Felix, Rocco Kayiatos, Bretton Fosbrook, Cari Campbell, Sash Sunday, and Sini Anderson. Thank you, Laura Mulley. Thanks to Lindsay Edgecombe for her daily wonderful support. And thanks to Jennifer Baumgardner, whose enthusiasm for this project from day one has been incredible. Much thanks to Jennifer, to Kait Heacock, Lauren Hook, Suki Boynton, and the entire Feminist Press team for their amazing vision, care, and work on this. I could not have hoped for a better home for this book.

And the deepest thanks to Dashiell Lippman, for making everything possible, always.

MICHELLE TEAis the author of numerous books, including Rent Girl, Valencia , and How to Grow Up . She is the creator of the Sister Spit all-girl open mic and 1997–1999 national tour. In 2003, Michelle founded RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees queer-centric projects.

EAT MY HEART OUT

Zoe Pilger

Half-liberated, half-drunk, Ann-Marie is twenty-three, broke, and convinced that love — sweet love! — is the answer to all of her problems. Then she meets legendary second wave feminist Stephanie Haight, who becomes obsessed with the idea that she can save Ann-Marie and her entire generation. From Little Mermaid-themed warehouse parties and ritual worship ceremonies summoning ancient goddesses to disastrous one-night stands with strikingly unsuitable men, Ann-Marie hurtles through London and life. Fiercely clever and unapologetically wild, Eat My Heart Out is the satire for our narcissistic, hedonistic, post-postfeminist era.

ZOE PILGERis an art critic for The Independent and winner of the 2011 Frieze International Writers Prize. She has appeared on BBC Newsnight’s The Review Show , Channel Four’s Sunday Brunch , and Sky News. Eat My Heart Out is her first novel. It was published in the UK by Serpent’s Tail to wide acclaim, garnering positive reviews from publications such as Marie Claire, The Daily Mail , the Financial Times , and the New Statesman .

GIVE IT TO ME

Ana Castillo

Recently divorced, Palma, a forty-three-year-old Latina, takes stock of her life when she reconnects with her gangster younger cousin recently released from prison. Her sexual obsession with him flares as she checks out her other options, but their family secrets bring them together in unexpected ways. In this wildly entertaining and sexy novel, Castillo creates a memorable character with a flare for fashion, a longing for family, and a penchant for adventure. Give It to Me is “Sex in the City” for a Chicana babe who’s looking for love in all the wrong places.

ANA CASTILLOis one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Chicana literature. She is the author of So Far From God and Sapogonia , both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, as well as The Guardians, Peel My Love like an Onion , and many other books of fiction, poetry, and essays. Her newest novel, Give It to Me , won a 2014 LAMBDA Literary Award; her collection, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma was re-released as a 20th anniversary edition in November 2014; and the award-winning Watercolor Women, Opaque Men was re-released in a new edition in the fall of 2016 by Northwestern University Press.

Castillo’s teaching posts have included the Bread Loaf program with Middlebury College, the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at MIT, the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College (UT), and the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University (IL). Other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Lifetime Achieve Award by Latina 50 Plus.

ZIPPER MOUTH

Laurie Weeks

A comic yet startling recreation of obsession and unrequited love set in the lurid 1990s East Village, Zipper Mouth chronicles the exuberance and mortification of a junkie. Between ranting letters to Judy Davis and Sylvia Plath, and glimpses of a desolate childhood, Weeks captures the frenzy and futility of the bright lights and big city.

LAURIE WEEKShas been an underground superstar in the New York downtown writing world since the 1980s. Her fiction and other writings have been published in The Baffler, Vice, Nest, Index, LA Weekly , and Semiotext(e)’s The New Fuck You . She has taught in writing programs at UC San Diego and The New School, and has toured the US with the girl-punk group Sister Spit.

The Feminist Pressis a nonprofit educational organization founded to amplify feminist voices. FP publishes classic and new writing from around the world, creates cutting-edge programs, and elevates silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people.

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