Les Figues is an independent, nonprofit literary press. Les Figues creates aesthetic conversations
Operating as usual
RSVP by midnight tonight for Mrs. Porter's next Virtual Art & Literary Salon on Sunday, Nov. 7, 3-5pm PT. Join restless souls from around the world as they share their current work (or work that inspires them) with an intimate community of strangers. RSVP: https://echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/ Echo Theater Company
a theatre company
RSVP by tomorrow midnight for Mrs. Porter's next Virtual Art & Literary Salon on Sunday, Nov. 7, 3-5pm PT. Join restless souls from around the world as they share their current work (or work that inspires them) with an intimate community of strangers. RSVP: https://echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/ Echo Theater Company
a theatre company
Feeling isolated? Join Mrs. Porter's merry group on Sunday 3pm Pacific & see what we create together. There are only a couple spots left in our Echo Theater Company Zoom Room - RSVPs are due midnight tonight!
a theatre company
Mrs. Porter is howling at the moon again - that dame cannot be tamed! Join us for her infamous art & literary salon this Sunday, 8/29, at the Echo Theater Company Zoomosphere. RSVPs due by midnight Thursday: https://www.echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/
We'll be blue-mooning with Mrs. Porter on August 29th - RSVP by Thursday to save your spot at her rousing Art & Literary Salon in the Echo Theater Company Zoomosphere.
https://www.echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/
Mrs. Porter found a poem and now she’s saying dammit. You can dammit, too. RSVPs are now open for the August 29 salón. Limited spots - RSVP here: https://www.echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/
What in the world, Mrs. Porter? Or rather: Mrs. Porter is out and about. Lady Smotherman snapped this pic in Cairo, and while Lady S tried to speak to Mrs P, she simply couldn’t meet more than her shadow. Though later, Mrs P sent a postcard saying: Shadow work! It’s time! Also, this Sunday, June 27, she is hosting a salon in the Echo zoomsphere.
RSVP: https://www.echotheatercompany.com/mrs-porters/
What happened, Mrs Porter?
Oh don’t you want to know.
Mrs Porter resurrects in the Echo Theater Zoomsphere. Feb 28, 3pm PST.
RSVP++ required!
Save the date: 3pm PT February 28th. Link in bio.
Just released: An Austrian Avant-garde!
A collection that re-visions the Austrian avant-garde, translated and published for the first time in English.
After 1945, a vibrant literary avant-garde emerged in Austria that has remained mostly unknown outside of the country. Their first publications appeared in a cultural and political environment still largely determined by seven years of Na**sm (1938-1945) and four years of Austrofascism (1934-1938). Its writers drew on traditional and experimental methods to hollow out existing literary conventions and propose new ones, using montage, appropriation, satire, irony, and nonsense. Despite many shared intentions, though, the Austrian avant-garde was far from unified. Some of its writers repeated the authoritarian gestures and practices of the fascist period; others contributed to the creation of feminist and q***r counterpublics by creating alternative presses, new kinds of literary events, and political writers’ collectives.
An Austrian Avant-garde offers a critical survey of experimental writing from Austria that captures the tensions inherent in the history of the avant-garde. Starting with texts from the 1950s by the Vienna Group, the anthology offers a survey of the complex, contested landscape of post-1945 Austrian literature, with an emphasis on the work of women writers. The editors’ preface and their introductions to individual texts offer contextualization and commentary that make the anthology accessible to a wide readership.
Cover art: Lora Sana III, 2005, by Carola Dertnig
Happy Birthday to Elfriede Jelinek! She is included in our new anthology “An Austrian Avant-Garde,” the first feminist collection of Austrian experimental writing in English. Photo credit: Renate Mangoldt
“An Austrian Avant-Garde” includes “After Nora” by Elfriede Jelinek. It’s a continuation of Jelinek’s first play, “What Happened After Nora Left Her Husband; or Pillars of Society,” from 1979, based on characters from Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” “After Nora” looks at women’s work in an age when most clothing production has been moved out of the wealthiest countries and takes place “elsewhere, always elsewhere.”
Elfriede Gerstl (1932-2009) is a key figure in contemporary Austrian literature. Her poetic sensibility of resistance is sometimes startlingly direct, sometimes ironic and even cheery. “An Austrian Avant-Garde” features three of her texts, including “yes sir, doctor! a selection of medical finds,” a transcript of her doctors’ misogynist utterances, and “pop song text,” an ironic paean to normalcy. “I demand that Elfriede Gerstl’s work be read for the next hundred years (and even longer). Hers is a voice in Austrian literature that can never fall silent.” – Elfriede Jelinek @ Vienna, Austria
Forever Figues! Took this pic and realized Rosetti near Dennis Cooper is oh so right.
***rlit
An ideal during a pandemic
Here we are—Still Mess Boom—ten years after Douglas Kearney made this interactive text as part of Not Content—a year-long Les Figues’ curation at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 2010. While planning, Doug and I spoke about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier that year. A study published this year documents the long-term heath effects of that spill, including increased levels of anxiety, depression, and respiratory issues among people living on the Gulf Coast.
Who is watching the town halls tonight?
Reading Figues. A bit from Ilse Kilic’s “Monika’s Chaos Protocol.”
@ Los Angeles, California
An Austrian Avant-garde, edited by and Sabine Zelger is finally here. Anti-authoritarian writing for these authoritarian times. Or: bring in the q***rs and femmes and, as Ann Cotten writes in “Florida-Rooms,” “Truth arrives strangely, in cardboard costumes.”
We're thrilled to announce the publication of Dalia Rosetti’s novel Sueños y pesadillas (dreams and nightmares) (trans. Alexis Almeida)! The edition is bilingual with Spanish and English on facing pages. iSueños chronicles the adventures of Dalia Rosetti, who is transported from her Catholic high school in Argentina to Yotemia, a space where language and desire control the fabric of reality. On her journey, Rosetti meets saints, mafiosas, monks, knights, punk rockers, club kids, and figures from her past. Thanks to Alexis Almeida for her beautiful translation of Fernanda Laguna’s novel, and to our translation series editor Patrick Greaney for selecting this wonderful work for publication!
This beautiful dossier made by Evan Kleekamp will tell you everything you want to know about the book and its authors! It features an interview between Alexis and Fernanda translated by Kit Schluter and much more!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RBtbMosqL9Zx_QlpiLtf3IXDyMwV27pv/view
congrats to LFP editorial board member Lazz Kinnamon, dissertation fellow in Women's Studies for her project "Attention, Marxism, and the Politics of Presence!!!"
https://woodrow.org/news/2019-womens-studies-fellows-named/?fbclid=IwAR0RXkUrS3lwmOsbhj5sZEX35OBgL1u8cARhyPt59rTHjXecU7DLkurBI1Y
NEWS RELEASEFOR RELEASE: Wednesday, May 1, 2019CONTACT: Susan Billmaier | Program Officer, WW Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies[email protected] | (609) 945-7872 Frances Hannan | [email protected] | (609) 945-7886
LF co-director Evan Kleekamp with an essay for X-TRA that resonates beautifully with Divya Victor's, posted below!
"I believe these objects emit a hidden vitality, that they are fugitives. The visual presence of a body is not the sole possibility for embodiment in a work, and should not be held as a criteria for assessing affect" --Evan Kleekamp
https://www.x-traonline.org/online/some-trees
beloved LF author Divya Victor with a must-read!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/04/woman-wailing-on-the-problem-of-representing-trauma-as-a-brown-woman-within-the-institution-of-poetry
Liao Yiwu: How do you manage to wail and howl over a stranger? Li Changgeng: I entered the mourning profession at age twelve… Having a basic foundation enables a performer to...
congrats to Sawako Nakayasu on being awarded a WPR fellowship--we're very excited to see what you do, Sawako!!
http://woodberrypoetryroom.com/?p=4537&fbclid=IwAR0t7sTpo9hsatCieoIz4KZHTFuT65Jl0vda3clSuu61DmBMdkHBh12645I
The Woodberry Poetry Room is pleased to announce that the recipient of this year’s WPR Creative Fellowship is Sawako Nakayasu for her project, “Sounds of War and Not-War, 1941-1945.R…
Jean Yoon's micro-review of Ryoko Sekiguchi's adagio ma non troppo (trans. Lindsay Turner) now up at Kenyon Review!
https://www.kenyonreview.org/reviews/mar-2019-micro-reviews/
Miguel Ángel Bustos. Vision of the Children of Evil. Trans. Lucina Schell. co·im·press, 2018. 304 pages. $19.95. Vision of the Children of Evil brings the words of Argentinean visionary and poète…Continue reading →
Buy LFP books directly from LARB BOOKS.
https://larbbooks.org/imprints/les-figues/
LARB Books
Events with Myriam Moscona, John Pluecker and Jen Hofer, celebrating the excellent Tela de sevoya!
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 7:00pmAdd to CalendariCalendarOutlookGoogleYahooThis event takes place at the Jewish History Museum, 564 S Stone Ave, Tucson, AZ 85701. Join us for a trilingual reading in Spanish, English, and Ladino with Tela de sevoya (Onioncloth) author Myriam Moscona along with tr...
we're very very excited to be publishing Andrea Abi-Karam's (Andrea Wolf) Villainy in early 2020--until then, read this amazing interview in BOMB and get EXTRATRANSMISSION from Kelsey Street Press!
"I see books as book projects because I'm not a lyric poet...These projects try to tackle large political issues and bring themselves in conversation with other literature and art tackling the same issues. I have to be implicated in it because it's necessary for the emotional register to work."
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/andrea-abi-karam-1/
The writer on kill bro poems, cyborg transformations as erotic experiences, and implicating the self.
we're thrilled to share this essay, "The Mole and the Hyena," by one of our new co-directors, Evan Kleekamp!
"Today I am the mole. I enter the institution, burrow into its confines, exploit its use of space, peruse its archive. I issue a report from the field. But tomorrow I am the hyena, the female hyena. My ge****ls don't correspond to the popular idea that splits the sexes in two."
https://goo.gl/CCK2Mv
…the blue infinite straight line which must pass under what is below and over what is above... — Jacques Lacan, Seminar XII I am twenty-six years old and
beautiful friends of Les Figues, we're fundraising! please check out our crowdrise to learn about all the exciting projects we need your help with and share and/or donate! it's an especially great time not to give your money to the feds; give it to us instead! we're a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and so your donations are fully tax-deductible. please support presses run by women and help us to keep publishing incredible books by incredible authors! we're so grateful for all your support.
https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/support-les-figues-2018
Support Les Figues Press Les Figues Press was started in 2005 by four women who wanted to circulate work dismissed by the mainstream publishing industry and create an alternative community for artists and writers in Los Angeles. Since its inception, the press has been publishing genre-defying ...
today is the official publication date of Ryoko Sekiguchi's adagio ma non troppo! thanks to Lindsay Turner for her beautiful translation and Sawako Nakayasu for writing such a wonderful introduction! if you want to learn more about adagio and read some excerpts of Sekiguchi's writing from I'll Drown My Book, the adagio dossier is available here!
(and don't forget you get 20% off right now through SPD's Handpicked sale!)
https://bit.ly/2MJrTNS
Ryoko Sekiguchi's adagio ma non troppo (trans. Lindsay Turner) is included in SPD's Handpicked this month and we're ecstatic! get 20% off with code HANDPICKED...official publication date is tomorrow, but why wait even a second longer to get this book!
https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/CategoryCenter/HDPK/Handpicked.aspx
WINNERS!!!! we're incredibly happy to announce that the results of the 2018 NOS Contest are in! Judge Simone White has selected Andrea Abi-Karam's (Andrea Wolf) Villainy as the contest winner and our 2018 NOS Editorial selection is Josef Kaplan's Loser! We can't wait to publish these amazing books and are very grateful to all who submitted!
we're completely blown away by Les Figues author Divya Victor's must-read essay on language and decolonization: "This is about a gash in the earth--a geographical fissure that allows one country to erupt into another. This is about a poetics formed in a moment of catastrophe."
https://aaww.org/sugar-on-the-gash
We are our skins; we are our hides. But my skin, and the skin of others like me, has been torn. It is at the site of this gash that our identity coheres, that our identity is espied.
PRESALE ALERT! In honor of Fernando Pessoa's 130th birthday and Gemini season, we're offering our brand-new trilingual edition of Ryoko Sekiguchi's adagio ma non troppo (trans. Lindsay Turner) for just $10 until June 20th!
adagio takes the letters Pessoa wrote his would-be fiancee Ophelia Queiroz as its source material and reconceives the Lisbon they describe in their correspondence as a map, over which rendezvous, affairs, and liasons can be continued through writing. We're so excited to be publishing the first English translation! get it here:
http://lesfigues.com/book/adagio/
Les Figues Press is a Los Angeles-based, independent, nonprofit publisher of poetry, prose, visual art, conceptual writing, and translation.
The NOS 2018 Book Contest closes at midnight tonight! We're excited to read your work--submit now if you haven't already!
http://lesfigues.com/nos-2018-open-for-submissions/
Les Figues Press is a Los Angeles-based, independent, nonprofit publisher of poetry, prose, visual art, conceptual writing, and translation.
@ LARB, 6671 Sunset Boulevard , Suite 1521
Los Angeles, CA
90028
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: let's go back to the beginning : it is always beautiful on a catastrophic day : the city lay in ruins : how long can a body last? : Get a sneak peek of Mariko Nagai's forthcoming Irradiated Cities in this haunting book trailer. http://lesfigues.com/book/irradiated-cities/
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