2004: Vasectomy #2 In a creative writing workshop in college, I wrote an essay about being groomed by one of my high school teachers. (Maybe you did, too. It is…
Contemporaries Essays
Introduction: Abortion Now, Abortion Forever
“Abortions will not let you forget.” The opening line of Gwendolyn Brooks’s famous poem “the mother” compels its reader to recognize and remember the fact of abortions now, in the…
“Fuck It Let’s Do it, Despite the Odds” — A Very Eclectic Survey and Some Thoughts on Contemporary Magazines
I’m tired. (Without formality, wouldn’t every academic article begin like this?) Because of my tiredness, which is both physical and conceptual, I devised a ruse to get me out of…
Interview with Susan Sherman
Introduction IKON was founded with the goal of synthesis, and part of its lasting value lies in the unique ways in which it accomplished that goal — and kept changing….
Ondobondo‘s Visual Publics: Small Print Culture in Papua New Guinea
On the cover of a 1984 issue of Ondobondo, a male figure turns his back to readers, his gaze fixed on the chains in his hands. Dressed all in yellow,…
“We refused to stop publishing Cuban artists”
In 1962, Sergio Mondragón (b. 1935) and Margaret Randall (b. 1936) founded their literary journal El Corno Emplumado (The Plumed Horn) in Mexico City.1 A bilingual, transnational production, it stands out…
Trafficked! Indian-American little magazine networks and the Arvind Krishna Mehrotra / Howard McCord correspondence
Although Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is one of the most remarkable contemporary poets of India, he has consistently refused to be constricted by the obvious or prescribed signs of Indianness. One’s…
An Elegy for Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” (1984–1989)
The house of knowledge is bookended by a poetics of death. In issue one of Jimmy & Lucy’s House of “K” (1984-1989), the reader learns of two such passings. The…