It’s been a busy year for Born Ruffians. The group is reading their new album Beauty’s Pride, which is set to be released on June 6. From there, the group is set to tour extensively in the U.S. and Canada in the second half of the year. I chatted with frontman Luke Lalonde about the genesis of this new album and what a certain memoir by Vladimir Nabokov has to do with it all.
In our morning reading: revisiting a Percival Everett novel, an interview with Marisa Crane, and more.
In our afternoon reading: thoughts on books by Paul B. Preciado and Ocean Vuong, an interview with Brad Listi, and more.
Broadway Audition
by Azure Brandi
I emerge into the elevator. An old man tries to come in with me. I let him – he’s too geriatric and, I think, too gay to attempt anything. We go up to the same floor. I am heading up to a Broadway audition. Not a dance audition, not an acting audition. A movement audition. I have not encountered one of these before. I consider myself a mover. My interest is piqued.
In our morning reading: thoughts on books by Moshtari Hillal and Saul Steinberg, an interview with Jessica Hoppe, and more.
In our afternoon reading: thoughts on Julia Elliott’s new collection, Lincoln Michel on novels with bold structures, and more.
At the end of The Seers, Sulaiman Addonia reveals the meaning of the title. “Seers” are gender-fluid, trans, refugee outsiders. They are the traumatized, deracinated war victims who understand England better than longtime Londoners. In the words of the Seers, “We had to see ourselves the way we are from the inside first, from the moment we were born, before we learnt the rest of the world.”
“This is an important work” is not something you can say about many books these days. But I can and will say it about Frank Pizzoli’s Passionate Outlier: Gay Writers and Allies on Their Work.