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.
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.
We’re pleased to present an excerpt from Josh Denslow’s new short story collection Magic Can’t Save Us, available now from University of New Orleans Press. Acclaimed author Sequoia Nagamatsu had this to say about the book: “With the fabulist hand of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell and the humor and irreverence of Steve Almond, Denslow masterfully juggles crumbling relationships and beings of myth in a whirlwind of awkward silences, deceit, and failure to love.” Read on for a glimpse of what’s inside this new collection.
Q. Are we excited about new books due out in May?
A. Yes.
Q. Why are we excited about new books due out in May?
A. Because they look excellent.
Steve Cuzor is no stranger to telling stories about men at war. His bibliography includes the Black Cotton Star series of graphic novels, which tell a story that spans centuries, including sequences in both the Revolutionary War and World War II. Now, he’s returned with his adaptation of Stephen Crane’s novel The Red Badge of Courage, due out this month from Abrams ComicArts.
The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.