Böcker utgivna av Squares & Rebels

We are not your metaphor.“Sometimes ableism is so embedded in our culture that it’s hard to recognize that it’s there. Getting people to be aware of it is like asking them to think about the air that we breathe in. It’s subtle; it’s often unconscious and not meant to be hurtful. Yet it often perpetuates untrue and demeaning images and stereotypes. That can fester and, without conscious awareness, form misperceptions about disabled people."For poets, one example of this is the ableist metaphors used so often in poetry to describe disabilities or those of us with disabilities. How often have you read poems that use blindness as a metaphor for spiritual ignorance, unthinking faith, or moral failings? Or deafness used as a metaphor for isolation, aloneness—a failure to emotionally communicate? Think: world of darkness. Deaf ears. Crippling rage ...” —Kathi WolfeWith this anthology, eleven poets with disabilities prove themselves to be far more than metaphors. Leading off with excerpts from Kathi Wolfe’s speech on metaphors, the anthology features the following poets: Viktoria Valenzuela, Gaia Celeste Thomas, Elizabeth Theriot, Zoe Stoller, Jessica Suzanne Stokes, Margaret Ricketts, Naomi Ortiz, Raymond Luczak, Stephen Lightbown, Stephanie Heit, and Genevieve Arlie.Proceeds from this book will be donated to Zoeglossia, a nonprofit organization created to foster a community of disabled poets.

Walt Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass, was born in 1819. The Stonewall riots happened 150 years later. On the bicentennial of Whitman's birth and the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, over 80 poets pay homage to not only Walt Whitman, but also to queer poets and queer poetry and the vast and various events, revolutions public and private, that have shaken our world since 1819: who we are, where we are, where we have have been, and where we might be going in the 21st century."This wide and impressive range of poetry echoing the spirit of Walt Whitman and his literary forebears demonstrates the essential embrace of community that we've always needed to feel whole with ourselves and among others, especially now during these tumultuous times. Celebrating what had to be largely hidden from view during Whitman's day, the living queer male poets who grace the pages trumpet a glorious and unforgettable spectacle of passion and compassion." -Richard Blanco, Presidential Inaugural Poet

Bobby Quinn has been haunted by two enigmatic people for most of his adult life: Ben Morrissey, a sexy Don Juan who becomes a famous photographer in late 1990s Manhattan, and Monika Lilac, a beautiful cinephile femme fatale who is consumed by her love for silent-era films. This is a story about romantic obsession and cinematic obsessiveness, and a portrait of young people falling in love and trying to make their mark before the party is over."That Was Something-a profound, delicate, emotionally involving novel-gripped my attention by accurately evoking certain lost moments in queer urban life. I admire the book's taut structure and tenderly direct diction: The Great Gatsby on poppers. In high-contrast, horny chiaroscuro, without clutter, Callahan documents the chemical reaction that occurs when gayness and bi-curiosity greet each other in the dark room." -Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen's Throat and Jackie Under My Skin"Known for his superb books about the art of acting, Dan Callahan brings all his piercing insight to the tale of Robert, who yearns for photographer Ben Morrissey, who in turn has a yen for Monika Lilac-sometime blogger, silent-film devotee, and mistress of self-dramatization. That Was Something itself takes on the wild comedy and vivid emotions of a silent movie, as the characters swirl through the bars and parties and screening rooms of Manhattan 20 years ago, a world of artists and others obsessed with 'the important things: Love, Death, Love again.'" -Farran Smith Nehme, author of Missing ReelsDan Callahan is the author of three books. This is his first novel.

With equal parts wit and empathy, lived experience and cultural criticism, Kelly Davio's It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability explores what it means to live with an illness in our contemporary culture, whether at home or abroad."When the body attacks itself, the crisis is not just of bones and blood, but of beauty and boundaries. 'Strange men have had their hands on me for days,' Kelly Davio observes during a plasma treatment. Her skillful portrait of myasthenia gravis does not exist in a vacuum. It's Just Nerves is in keen dialogue with the world around us-critiquing modern health care, pub seating etiquette, alarming election outcomes, smarmy meditation culture, and caricatures of illness in ads and on screen. 'Oxygen is delicious,' Davio reminds us, before the fire breaks out. A brisk, funny, and at times startlingly poetic memoir." -Sandra Beasley, author of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life"Kelly Davio's It's Just Nerves feels like the book I've been waiting for all my life. If you want to know what it feels like to be a person with a disability in the 21st century, read this book. From mindfulness to yoga pants, Davio skewers ableist fabrications and brings us to a vital, ebullient, and sometimes terrifying reckoning with our real and shared human experience. She is a very funny writer and also a fearless one. Once I started reading these essays, I couldn't put them down; they resounded through me like poetry or truth." -Sheila Black, author of House of Bone and Love/Iraq"Kelly Davio's got so much ¿incredible ¿stuff brewing together on every page of these nimble, shapeshifting essays: meditations on the politics of illness¿, ¿the body in crisis, the spirit in ¿bloom, David Bowie-all of it filtered, carefully, through the lithe sensibility of a poet. ¿¿The results are equal parts witty and wise, heartrending and rapturous. Man, I loved this book." -Mike Scalise, author of The Brand New CatastropheKelly Davio is the author of Burn This House. She lives and writes in New Jersey.

In The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips, Raymond Luczak recounts his unrequited love for a gardener while examining how Walt Whitman (1819-1892) lived as a gay man 150 years before. Inspired by the earthy passions abundant in Whitman's work and the vast social changes between his era and ours, the story becomes an urgent love letter in more ways than one. "The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips is an unabashed celebration of one man's relationship to Walt Whitman: poet, publisher, lover, impromptu nurse, artistic creation, organism, man in full. Like Whitman himself, Raymond Luczak arrives at an unified vision of love in all of its poetic manifestations: sensual, sexual, and textual, a source of electric vistas and voluptuous possibilities of spiritual renewal. He provides precisely the kind of tender reassurance we cannot find words for some nights, but which we so desperately need." -Eric Thomas Norris, co-author of Nocturnal Omissions "In The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips, Raymond Luczak has awoken entwined in the arms of the American bard. And here is the bed chat and letters from one poet to another, a communion of fleshly living. Luczak has created a work in the tradition of Ginsberg's Odyssean dreaming of the lost America of love-a vibrant examination of what Whitman called a 'richest fluency' of historical gaiety and modern loving, and a clear transmission of honest affection across the ages." -Dan Vera, author of Speaking Wiri Wiri

"Featuring fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics by 48 writers from around the world, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology proves that intersectionality isn't just a buzzword. It's a penetrating and unforgettable look into the hearts and souls of those defiant enough to explore their own vulnerabilities and demonstrate their own strengths. Here is a gathering of people with the transformative--and political--power of love that transcends gender and ability." -- Back cover.