Bücher veröffentlicht von Soft Skull Press

An embittered dog walker obsessed with a social media influencer inadvertently puts a curse a young man--and must adventure into mysterious dimension in order to save him--in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming debut novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the emergent future.The year is 20__, and Penfield R. Henderson is in a rut. When he's not walking dogs for cash or responding to booty calls from his B-list celebrity hookup, he's holed up in his dingy Bushwick apartment obsessing over holograms of Aiden Chase, a fellow trans man and influencer documenting his much smoother transition into picture-perfect masculinity on the Gram. After an IRL encounter with Aiden leaves Pen feeling especially resentful, Pen enlists his roommates, the Witch and the Stoner-Hacker, to put their respective talents to use in hexing Aiden. Together, they gain access to Aiden's social media account and post a picture of Pen's aloe plant, Alice, tied to a curse:Whosoever beholds the aloe will be pushed into the Shadowlands.When the hex accidentally bypasses Aiden, sending another young trans man named Blithe to the Shadowlands (the dreaded emotional landscape through which every trans person must journey to achieve true self-actualization), the Rhiz (the quasi-benevolent big brother agency overseeing all trans matters) orders Pen and Aiden to team up and retrieve him. The two trace Blithe to a dilapidated motel in California and bring him back to New York, where they try to coax Blithe to stop speaking only in code and awkwardly try to pass on what little trans wisdom they possess. As the trio makes its way in a world that includes pitless avocados and subway cars that change color based on occupants' collective moods but still casts judgment on anyone not perfectly straight, Pen starts to learn that sometimes a family isn't just the people who birthed you. Magnificently imagined, linguistically dazzling, and riotously fun, Future Feeling presents an alternate future in which advanced technology still can't replace human connection but may give the trans community new ways to care for its own.

This witty memoir traces a touching and often hilarious spiralic path to embracing a gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo—from a cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to cities across the U.S.—and the bath houses, night clubs, and drag queens who help redefine prideI’ve always found the definition of machismo to be ironic, considering that pride is a word almost unanimously associated with queer people, the enemy of machistas . . . In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival, but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others. A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez’s uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor’s office where he was diagnosed a “high-risk homosexual.” With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself he was taught to keep hidden. His story is a scintillating, beautiful reminder of the importance of leaving space for joy.

From one of the most exciting and risk-taking new literary voices, Richard Chiem's debut novel King of Joy is the triumphant, electrifying story of one woman's quest for survival against all odds, told in the author's inimitable prose style.

Part Are You There God, It's Me Margaret and part Taxi Driver, this creepy, unsettling, and absolutely addictive novel is at once a penetrating character study, a meditation on the zeitgeist of the '80s, and an unflinching depiction of violence, both intimate and sensational.The year was 1981. The US was entering a deep recession, Russia was our enemy, and John Hinckley, Jr.'s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan shocked the nation. It was also the year author Andrea Kleine learned her close childhood friend had been violently murdered by her socialite mother, Leslie DeVeau. Both events took place in Washington, DC. Hinckley and DeVeau were both sent to St. Elizabeth's hospital, guilty by reason of insanity. It was there that they met, and later became lovers.These two real-life, and ultimately converging events inspired Kleine's jaw-dropping, spine-tingling novel, CALF. Made up of dual narratives and told over the course of one year, Kleine's account follows a fictionalized John Hinckley Jr. as he stalks a young actress in the lead-up to the assassination attempt, and eleven-year-old Tammy, whose friend is murdered in her sleep.

"Chuck had ambitions. He doesn't know how he ended up as the creepy 43 year old guy with the drugs, or the guy who's too old to be at the party doing everyone else's drugs, but if it ain't broke ... Well, he manages to make it to work at the dwarf whale distributor every day. He may hate that his dearly seedy San Francisco has become overrun with Starbucks, startups, and Lululemon moms, but he makes due every month for the rent-controlled apartment he shares with roommates he never sees. It's not perfect, but it's livable. In the end, though, every addict has that one special vice that can tip them from relatively functional to completely unhinged. For Chuck, it's a new drug that doesn't even have a name yet; it's just a smokable, everlasting gobstopper of mellow high. But when chunks of time begin to disappear and rearrange themselves altogether, he wonders if this really is just another life-ruining drug, or if it's something straight out of a Philip K. Dick universe. Word on the street is that this little black marble is actually altering users' timelines, but that's impossible, right? That's just something the schizophrenic homeless guy on Guerrero screamed at customers outside Tartine, isn't it? Isn't it?!"--

A twelve-year-old boy, middle son in a wealthy, politically and culturally prominent San Francisco family, watches his city disappear in the earthquake and fires of 1906. His father him that nothing has been lost that cannot be swiftly and easily replaced. He quotes Virgil: “Nothing unreal is allowed to survive.” The boy turns this stark Stoic philosophical “consolation” into the radical theater practices of the day, in the course of which he involves himself with radical labor struggles: anarchists, Wobblies, socialists of every stripe. He learns that politics is meta-acting, and he and his girlfriend—a Connecticut mill girl who is on the verge of national recognition as a spokesperson for workers—embark on a speaking tour with a Midwestern anti-railroad, pro-farmer group and take their political, philosophical, and artistic ethos to the farthest limits of the real and the unreal, where they find there is no useful distinction between the two.

Using as its epigraph and unifying principle Luc Sante’s notion that “Every human being is an archeological site,” Field Recordings from the Inside provides a deep and personal examination at the impact of music on our lives. Bonomo effortlessly moves between the personal and the critical, investigating the ways in which music defines our personalities, tells histories, and offers mysterious, often unbidden access into the human condition. The book explores the vagaries and richness of music and music-making—from rock and roll, punk, and R&B to Frank Sinatra, Nashville country, and Delta blues—as well as the work of a diverse group of artists and figures—Charles Lamb, music writer Lester Bangs, painter and television personality Bob Ross, child country musician Troy Hess, and songwriter Greg Cartwright.Mining the often complex natures and shapes of the creative process, Field Recordings from the Inside is a singular work that blends music appreciation, criticism, and pop culture from one of the most critically acclaimed music writers of our time.

Bold, beautiful and fierce-Dael Orlandersmith delivers a riveting story in Black n Blue Boys / Broken Men. This gritty play portrays five unforgettable male characters, linked by their efforts to forge identities in families fractured by abuse. Each relates a story that transforms these challenges into a celebration of our capacity to survive. Orlandersmith created this piece after working at a shelter for homeless youth in the 1980s, and her writing brings these characters roaring to life. At once powerful and heartbreakingly poetic, Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men will leave you breathless.

In this devilishly clever collection of short fiction, renowned humorist Owen Egerton leads us on a wildly surprising, darkly comic, and often heart-wrenching ride into the terrible beauty of life's end. With razor wit and compassionate insight, Egerton has a crafted a work that brilliantly explores the pain and wonder of life, knowing that with the turn of any corner death could be panhandling for your soul.

In this “often riotous, ultimately moving Cat’s Cradle for our time,” a Texas couple prepares for the apocalypse (Kirkus Reviews).In Austin, Milton and Rica are expecting their first child. It’s four days and counting. Not for the baby. But for the end of the world. Evidence: Haydon Brock, a godless television star has suddenly traded his Hollywood fame for salvation. A prophetic hermit crab is embarking on an unfathomable cross-country quest. Planes are dropping from the sky. And the president and first lady disappear. No omen is too inexplicable to Milton. He’s learned for a fact that our planet is one vast asylum for the incurably insane. And its cosmic guardians are about to close down the whole damn thing.Then Milton receives one more premonition: to seek out Haydon now holed up somewhere in Marfa. To what end Milton hasn’t a clue. To find out, Milton, Rica, and their best friend head west across an increasingly cataclysmic landscape of inter-dimensional time travelers, Jesus clones, sleep-deprived monks, ghosts, and angels in an epic and manic quest to outrun the last days on Earth.Combining humor, philosophical inquiry and an unforgettable cast of characters, “this sharp-witted satire” (Booklist) “is a future classic, and people will be reading [it] decades from now. I know I will” (Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe).

As teenagers today navigate increasingly fluid identities and choices, there is a demand for an accessible, interactive tool to help share knowledge about sex and sexual health; one that demystifies the facts and speaks frankly about experiences whose lessons often fall into the grey areas.Since 2008, Miller and Bley have held an open call for young people to create comics that address a variety of topics involved with sex education. We have since produced several issues of a sex-ed comic called Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf. The work is chosen from a vastly varied group of submissions and attempts to challenge hetero and gender normative practices in sex education. The comics address topics like body image, safer sex, consent, and relationships, from positions that have historically been left out of sex education.These graphically illustrated personal narratives address different themes, such as “Firsts,” “Bodies,” “Health,” “Age,” and “Endings.” The book will bring together the best of the material from the Not Your Mother’s Meatloaf comics, along with new graphic stories and writing by the editors providing personal and sociological background.

Too Much to Dream" places the story of a young man's drug addiction inside the larger history of psychedelics and popular culture. Bebergal's story gives a personal face to the examination of cultural history, offering a radical vision regarding the complex relationship between drug addiction, popular culture, and the religious experience. 224 pp. Buyer's Choice"

A journalist’s travelogue of war-torn Sri Lanka “brings refreshing clarity and enlightenment” to our understanding of terrorism (Robert Young Pelton). Armed with a map and a motorcycle, Mark Stephen Meadows ventures to Sri Lanka’s war zone to interview terrorists, generals, and heroin dealers on their own terms. He seeks only to understand the conflict and witness the civil war’s effects on the country. As he travels north through Colombo, Kandy, and the damaged city of Jaffna, Meadows discovers an island of beauty and abundance ground down by three decades of war. He is invited into an ancient culture where he learns to trap an elephant, weave rope from coconut husks, cast out devils, and even have afternoon tea with terrorists. Meadow’s story and take on the war focuses on the interconnectedness of globalization, the media, and modern terrorism in what Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, calls “an excellent undertaking.”

From mom-and-pop general stores to big-box, strip-mall chains, it is impossible to consider the American experience without thinking about the buying-and-selling retail culture: the sales and the stockrooms, the shift managers, and the clock punchers. "The Customer Is Always Wrong" is a tragicomic and all-too revealing collection of essays by writers who have done their time behind the counter and lived to tell their tales. Jim DeRogatis, author of "Let It Blurt," for example, describes hanging out with Al himself at Al Rocky's Music Store, while Colson Whitehead explains how three summers at a Long Island ice cream store gave him a lifelong aversion to all things dessert-like. This book not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail culture but finds the delight in it as well.

The human race has invented nearly every toxin imaginable. In our food, there are chemicals that kill pests, make foods ripen faster and grow bigger, and lengthen shelf life. In our clothing, chemicals make fabrics soft, keep them from wrinkling, make them fire retardant and resistant to stains, and keep them from collecting static. In our kitchens and bathrooms, chemicals create suds, remove grease, stiffen our hair, make our skin feel smooth, stop us from perspiring, change our hair color, lengthen our lashes, and make us smell good. Unfortunately, many of these chemicals, designed to improve and simplify our lives, cause birth defects, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, attention deficit, early puberty, and developmental problems--to name a few. "The Pure Cure" takes readers to a new level of awareness regarding the dangers of the toxins in everyday products and services. Taking a thorough and comprehensive approach, the book guides readers through every room in the house and beyond, identifying problematic toxins and a course of action for eliminating them. The author also points to surprising new areas of concern, makes suggestions for healthy solutions, and provides a lists of products and companies that can offer safer alternatives.

Get ready for the most outrageous, unapologetically hedonistic rock-and-roll book ever. Combing the best nuggets of drug- andsex-related exploits from the lives of Motley Cru]e, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards, Michael Jackson, and dozens more of infamous rock-and-roll animals, sexpert Judy McGuire has compiled the mother lode of all books of lists. Beginning with health tips from Ozzy Osbourne and weeding its way through every possible vice, "The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Lists" leaves no Rolling Stone unturned in its quest for cheap laughs and mind-blowing trivia, especially when it comes to the debauchery of rock-star lives and the songs that make parents crazy. It's all here, and lavishly illustrated by comic book hero Cliff Mott, the genius behind "the outrageous drawings in the punk rock and heavy metal volumes in this series. The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Lists" is the ultimate trip for all rock-and-roll fans living life vicariously from the comfort of their armchair or toilet. But be careful . . . after reading this book, you just may just wind up in rehab!

Three generations of women struggle with oppression in this prize-winning historical saga from “a natural born storyteller” (Julia Alvarez).When I remember Russia, I ache with longing for the village of my birth, where the beloved grandparents magically produced candy in a handshake and told stories of long ago when God spoke to humans and enchantments filled the world . . . Two Jewish sisters, born in Russia shortly before the Communist Revolution, are forced to flee the pogroms and persecution and travel with their parents to British-occupied Palestine. The girls’ parents befriend a widower with two children and join forces, creating a blended family. When the girls are teenagers, World War II tears the family apart, sending the girls separately to France and America. Their lives unfold in tandem: babies are born, friendships forged, and cherry pies baked—despite the brutal backdrop of the Holocaust. As the family grows into the next generation, one of the daughters, an artist drawn to a bohemian lifestyle, surrounds herself with a multicultural circle of friends the likes of which her ancestors could not have imagined. Subsequently, the artist’s turns her passion to providing aid to Salvadoran refugees fleeing the death squads in their homeland, just as her own grandmother once fled the pogroms of Russia. As she follows her vocation of reversing the damage that torturers inflict on their victims, she must also overcome a past-life trauma that haunts her very core.A winner of the Fabri Literary Prize, Memories from Cherry Harvest spans seventy years and five continents, explores the physics of memory, and shows how the tenacity of good can ultimately withstand and overcome the memory of tragedy.“Like Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest novels, this story about fighting the injustices of the 20th century will engage readers of politically charged fiction.” —Library Journal