politics

Image Credit: God’s Acre at Old Salem, Winston-Salem, NC by Brandy Reeves   I left my job more than three years ago. It was not a particularly good job, but…

We arrive just in time to catch the tail end of the Youth Talent Showcase, drawn through the maze of fried-food stalls and dim animal-smelling warehouses by a thin, brave…

It would be wise, I think, to keep these introductory comments brief. Steve Erickson’s innovative, eloquent, and downright visionary fiction has been inspiring other storytellers* for over 30 years. His…

Session Report is a monthly series that explores the intersection of narrative and broader themes of game design by focusing on a specific tabletop game each month. This month’s game…

—by which I think you mean—you’ll correct me if I’m wrong—that the arts aren’t really, if we get down to it, necessary. With that, I’m inclined to agree. Neither is…

DIMITRI is a full-time working/struggling artist from Providence, RI., with representation in Florida, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. He’s a staff illustrator at The Rumpus and has published book covers with Canarium…

Have you been searching for the perfect glass of vino to pair with each pending Senate confirmation? Well look no further. We’ve created the most comprehensive, qualified list of anything…

White hate won last Tuesday night. There is no other way to say this. Since then, I, like many of my fellow Americans, have been waiting to wake up from…

You know, the typical publishing story. I was sitting in a bar in the year 2000 with some freak I knew from a miserable job I had at the time and he turned to me and said, “I want to start a press and you should be the editor because you are very outgoing.” I downed my tenth or so beer and told him that was a great idea and he could count me in. At this miserable job, I had written a novel called For Fucks Sake, and we decided to launch the press with my book. At the same time, I started dating my future wife Elizabeth, who already worked in publishing, at a literary agency. The three of us spent the next two years meeting at the freak’s apartment with occasional assorted other freaks making detailed plans on how we would publish our one book; after the meetings, we would all go to dinner and get drunk.

Heading into the summer of 2014 I was psychologically exhausted. I’d survived a rough spring scraping by as an adjunct and working side-hustles. In December 2013, the Republican congress cancelled…

Dead Youth, or, The Leaks by Joyelle McSweeney Litmus Press, 2014 90 pages – Litmus / Amazon   As a wild and pulsing parable of the Anthropocene, Joyelle McSweeney’s Dead Youth, or,…

I’ve never wanted to outwardly define Penny-Ante beyond the obvious: “Penny-Ante is a book publisher and an art-based project company.” It’s fairly simple. The press acts in earnest to develop projects we feel deserve an audience. I don’t think a further directive would do any service to the authors. All our authors are independent thinkers and unique personalities who speak boldly for their oeuvre; one of many reasons the press serves their efforts.

Sylvère Lotringer started Semiotext(e) with a group of friends and grad students at Columbia University in 1974. It quickly evolved from a journal of semiotic theory to a popular magazine, juxtaposing high theory and underground culture, after the publication of the “Schizo-Culture” issue in 1978. The issue brought together artists and thinkers as diverse as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, William Burroughs, and Lee Breuer.

Essayist Nancy Janchill being frisked. Photograph by Gordon Parks, who was working a piece on the Black Panthers. From Life magazine, Feb. 6, 1970.   Radical Descent: The Cultivation of an American Revolutionary by…