The Weird Sister Collection

Collecting the best of the underground blog Weird Sister, these unapologetic and insightful essays link contemporary feminism to literature and pop culture. Launched in 2014, Weird Sister proudly staked out a corner of the internet where feminist writers could engage with the literary and popular culture that excited or enraged them. The blog made space amid book websites dominated by white male editors and contributors, and also committed to covering literary topics in-depth when larger feminist outlets rarely could. Throughout its decade-long run, Weird Sister served as an early platform for some of contemporary literature’s most striking voices, naming itself a website that “speaks its mind and snaps its gum and doesn’t apologize.” Edited by founder Marisa Crawford, The Weird Sister Collection brings together the work of longtime contributors such as Morgan Parker, Christopher Soto, Soleil Ho, Julián Delgado Lopera, Virgie Tovar, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, and more, alongside new original essays. Offering nuanced insight into contemporary and historical literature, in conversation with real-life and timely social issues, these pieces mark a transitional and transformative moment in online and feminist writing.

Poetry. "Rarely am I so submerged in the details of a poet's mind and world as I am with Marisa Crawford's work. It's bright and glitter roll-on scented, with a pitch-perfect 90s soundtrack. It's nostalgic, dark, surprising yet warmly familiar. I mourn for the girlhood of this book. In REVERSIBLE, Crawford has created an incredibly moving and vivid archive of growing up--part monologue, part lyric, part ethnography--distinct, striking, tender, and enchanting."--Morgan Parker "Marisa Crawford's poems give me a kind of ecstatic pleasure, as all the sensory and social strangeness of 90s youth come flooding back. I will never understand how she can remember all these details and evoke them with such feeling--she must have an off-the-charts EQ, and also an off-the- charts whatever the 'Q' is that measures the ability to remember every outfit you ever wore. 'E' is also for empathy: in Crawford's poems, everything that happens to her friends happens to her. And then I'm in their glow, and everything that happened to Crawford and her friends happens to me. Her poems also know, better than any I've ever read, that fashion is imagery; ditto for friendships and stickers and backyard pools and the things girls do to their bodies in their bedrooms late at night. It doesn't matter that the box of old cassette tapes that you hope will be in your parents' basement might not be findable: all we want to do is go searching alongside her, following her flashlight beam as it lights up the feelings inside the objects we put away or gave away or forgot we ever had."--Becca Klaver "Dear M,

The beloved New York Times bestseller from acclaimed author Eleanor Brown about three sisters who love each other, but just don't happen to like each other very much. Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can't solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father—a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse—named them after the Bard's heroines. It's a lot to live up to. The sisters each have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents' frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them...

A new edition of a National Book Award finalist follows a black faith healer whose shrewd observations about human nature are told with the rich lyricism of the oral storytelling tradition. From the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing follows Harlan Jane Eagleton as she travels to small towns, converting skeptics, restoring minds, and healing bodies. But before she found her calling, Harlan had been a minor rock star’s manager and, before that, a beautician. Harlan retraces her story to the beginning, when she once had a fling with the rock star’s ex-husband and found herself infatuated with an Afro-German horse dealer. Along the way she’s somehow lost her own husband, a medical anthropologist now traveling with a medicine woman across eastern Africa. Harlan draws us deeper into her world and the mystery at the heart of her tale: the story of her first healing. The Healing is a lyrical and at times humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love. Slipping seamlessly back through Harlan’s memories in a language rich with the textured cadences of unfiltered dialogue, Gayl Jones weaves her story to its dramatic—and unexpected—beginning.

Perhaps Bernadette Mayer's greatest work, Midwinter Day was written on December 22, 1978, at 100 Main Street, in Lenox, Massachusetts. "Midwinter Day", as Alice Notley notes, "is an epic poem about a daily routine". In six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day -- morning, afternoon, evening, night -- to dreams again: "a plain introduction to modes of love and reason, / Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season / Now I've said this love it's all I can remember / Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December".

Poetry. Fiction. Drama. Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Marie Buck's new Roof Book UNSOLVED MYSTERIES collects a group of short prose pieces that mashup stories from the television show Unsolved Mysteries and her reminiscences growing up in rural South Carolina. Buck's work unravels not only the mysteries of the tv series, but also how American popular culture portrays the working class. The violence of the lives and deaths of people named Dexter and Kari Lynn in the tv show inspire in Buck ambitions for social justice, revelatory sexual engagements and hope for clarity in documenting what really happens to people in contrast to the cleaned-up versions of more commercial narratives. Buck keeps hoping people will be alright, but she knows they died in pain and their deaths cause unending sorrow to their families. Such clear and poignant social texts are rare among today's poets, especially when they converge honesty and sympathy. Readers will find no sentimentality in UNSOLVED MYSTERIES, but they may find themselves.

From the online phenomenons the Astro Poets comes the first great astrology primer of the 21st century. Full of insight, advice and humor for every sign in the zodiac, the Astro Poets' unique brand of astrological flavor has made them Twitter sensations. Their long-awaited first book is in the grand tradition of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, but made for the world we live in today. In these pages the Astro Poets help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. If you've ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting "u up?" at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won't). Both the perfect introduction to the twelve signs for the astrological novice, and a resource to return to for those who already know why their Cancer boyfriend cries during commercials but need help with their new whacky Libra boss, this is the astrology book must-have for the twenty-first century and beyond.

From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon. The Weird is the winner of the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Archival material from the 1990s underground movement “preserves a vital history of feminism” (Ann Cvetkovich, author of Depression: A Public Feeling). For the past two decades, young women (and men) have found their way to feminism through Riot Grrrl. Against the backdrop of the culture wars and before the rise of the Internet or desktop publishing, the zine and music culture of the Riot Grrrl movement empowered young women across the country to speak out against sexism and oppression, creating a powerful new force of liberation and unity within and outside of the women’s movement. While feminist bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile fought for their place in a male-dominated punk scene, their members and fans developed an extensive DIY network of activism and support. The Riot Grrrl Collection reproduces a sampling of the original zines, posters, and printed matter for the first time since their initial distribution in the 1980s and ’90s, and includes an original essay by Johanna Fateman and an introduction by Lisa Darms.

Presents thirteen twisted versions of such familiar fairy tales as Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.