Some Things I've Learned from Miranda July
Writing, reality-description, sequels, Substack, and more
Hi, everyone! I am thrilled to share an online version of my conversation with Miranda July last May, for the paperback release of All Fours, via Pioneer Works Broadcast. (The conversation also appears in the gorgeous new print issue of Broadcast, along with new writing by, among others, Catherine Lacey and Chris Kraus.)
In very tangentially related news, it is now once again possible to purchase a Chris Kraus baseball cap (after a bold, pro-literary-baseball cap stance taken by a recent New Yorker interview with Kraus). There is also an Elif cap available here. (In the interests of transparency, I will note that I declined the seller’s offer of a share of the profits—though I did gratefully accept the gift of an Ursula K. Le Guin T-shirt. (I kind of wanted the Sheila Heti cap, but I hear Zadie already has one.)
Speaking of Sheila… I truly cannot wait for this event that she put together in Toronto in February, with Patricia Lockwood and Gwendoline Riley. It looks like we will be talking for a whole hour, so I confidently expect us to get to the bottom of what imagination is.
Another event I wanted to let NYC people know about is Press Play, a two-day “fair of books, records, art, ephemera, talks, and workshops” this weekend (December 13-14) at Pioneer Works. Coming up after the paywall, I will be sharing a special Elif Life promo code for free admission to Saturday’s many amazing events, including a panel where Silvia Federici will be talking about Zohran’s NYC and autoreduction. Federici, of course, is the legendary author of Caliban and the Witch.
Speaking of witches: a couple of years ago, I wrote a short novella Tituba (a mini-Selin sequel, set in 2000-01: she takes a year off from grad school to try to write a novel about Ivan, but it somehow ends up being about the Salem witch trials). Some version of this text will appear in the novel I’m currently working on. Another version of it now exists as an attractively bound art book, including some experimental stuff that probably won’t make it into the novel (e.g. a long poem by Selin, using only 16 letters of the alphabet), PLUS a sumptuous enclosure by the painter Louise Bonnet—now available through the Gagosian Gallery shop, as part of the Picture Books series.
Coming up after the paywall: 3700 words of thoughts I had on rereading the Miranda interview! Subjects discussed include: simultaneous reading of Miranda July and Oksana Zabuzhko • Fredric Jameson on Hemingway and “the art-sentence” • Flesh by David Szalay • “content warnings” • MJ’s killer Substack • novels versus personal correspondence • a tiny bit about the next Selin novel.
Thanks for reading!
