“Each time they told me to smile I felt at risk for oblivion, as if it wasn’t me that they were looking at but, rather, some bright reflection of themselves, some aspiration gnarled against their own self-perception.”

In her latest book, Girlhood, the essayist examines her own coming of age and finding the words to forge a new self.

Cinematic portraits of the Indonesian lengger dancer and choreographer, Rianto.

The filmmaker on visibility, connection, and dialogue.

The author and translator of Brother in Ice confront Romantic notions of genius, dysfunctional family expectations, and other challenges to self expression.

The poet on confronting societal limitations about the body, navigating the language of fatness, and celebrating friendships that embrace the joy of food.

He used a specific verb, which I forgot to write down: screw.  With the bottles screwed into your breasts… It all started with screwing, what does he make of that.

Scientists, motherhood, and other probings of the female body.

Lynne Tillman’s first novel in twelve years, Men and Apparitions, follows a narrator ruminating on his own subject position: Ezekiel “Zeke” Stark, a cultural anthropologist, conducts a study of men’s reactions to and impressions of the changing nature of masculinity in America today. 

Re-imagining antiquity and complicating gender binaries for the modern reader.

The first thing my Godsent said when I came through the door was, “I think I have this damn thing on backwards.”

Two artists creating hybrids

Satirizing the “late-capitalist late-patriarchy” in Catherine Lacey’s The Answers

The actors chat about performing masculinity, transitioning, and Blackwell’s one-person show They, Themself and Schmerm.

Through sewing, weaving, and embroidery, two artists probe the boundaries between texts and textiles.

It’s Corey Haim here—‘80s heartthrob, teen idol, and tragic girlish boy next door. What’s up, Schmerm?

This First Proof contains five poems by Kirsten Kaschock.

With the release of Martha Wilson Sourcebook, the artist looks back on her 40-year career and discusses the origins of Franklin Furnace, the flexibility of identity, and the difficulty of staying visible with age.

The first thing of Mary Gaitskill’s I ever read was a short statement she made at the back of The Best American Short Stories, 1993 about her story “The Girl on the Plane,” in which a man tells a woman in the airplane seat next to his that he once participated in a gang rape.

Josiah McElheny on how Holly Zausner’s videos explore the limitations of our physicality and “our struggle with the physical and psychic burdens of the body.”