Conjunctions Series

Literary spins on the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres—from Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, China Miéville, and many more.   Over the past three decades, the most adventurous practitioners of the literary arts of science fiction, fantasy, and horror have been transforming those genres into something all but unrecognizable. In Conjunctions’ game-changing New Wave Fabulists issue, guest editor Peter Straub has put together an anthology of innovative literary reinventions of traditional “pulp” forms. Contributors range from Jonathan Lethem to Neil Gaiman, from John Crowley to Kelly Link, from Elizabeth Hand to China Miéville. Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute contribute essays on the ongoing evolution of genre, while the brilliant cartoonist Gahan Wilson has created the cover and original frontispieces for each story.

Rick Moody on John Cheever; Ben Marcus on Dr. Seuss; Mona Simpson on Henry James: Forty-five essays by great writers, about great writers.   For Tributes, Conjunctions invited a number of contemporary writers to pay homage to American literary masters who made something possible for them—whether that was the act of writing itself, writing a certain book, writing in a particular manner, or living in a way that was consonant with the act of writing. This is an anthology of personal enthusiasms, a colloquium Whitman might have seen as a progress of vistas. John Sayles offers an appreciation of Nelson Algren, Robert Creeley of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Nathaniel Mackey on Walt Whitman. And then there’s Rick Moody on John Cheever, Ben Marcus on Dr. Seuss, Mona Simpson on Henry James, Ana Castillo on Anaïs Nin, Anne Waldman on Jack Kerouac, Lydia Davis on Edward Dahlberg. All in all, forty-five authors share compelling tales of their adopted literary parentage.

New writings on defectors and deportees, migrants and refugees, and the feeling of being far from home.   From the moment homes and homelands came into being, exile ensued. While narratives of exile share themes of banishment, loss and longing, they are as diverse as the human experience itself. Writers as different as Homer and Heinlein, Aeschylus and Camus addressed this subject. In The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie conceives of exile as “a dream of glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back.” Its permutations know no bounds. The political dissident deported, or jailed, under house arrest; the defected spy; the classic prince banished by his royal father from the city gates; the communal exile of the diaspora. Through cutting-edge fiction, poetry and essays by emerging voices and contemporary masters, Conjunctions: 62, Exile explores the ramifications of expulsion and ostracism. Contributors include Edie Meidav, Peter Straub, Can Xue, H.G. Carrillo, Ales Steger, Maxine Chernoff and others.

New takes on nature by award-winning poets and writers, from Russell Banks to Lily Tuck and many more.   In Natural Causes, a provocative collection of radical reinventions of the genre of nature writing, we encounter shrimp farms and spoonbills, maize husks and Austrian woods, tarantulas and eels, multitudinous winds that pollinate or desiccate—nature in all its myriad forms, right down to photons, neutrons, neutrinos, and, yes, even Godzilla, the Sasquatch, and some of nature’s other fictive and folkloric monsters.

Little-known literary works by Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, and more: “[An] extraordinary collection of inexplicably forgotten treasures.” —New York magazine   Radical Shadows collects lost, forgotten, suppressed, rare, or unknown works by major literary writers from the late nineteenth century forward. From previously unpublished work by Djuna Barnes and Truman Capote (his earliest known story), to writing by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Kawabata, Musil, and other world-class authors, the issue is a celebration both of the art of translation and of the breadth and depth of the many revelatory discoveries that can still be found in the historical literary archive.

Essays, fiction, and poetry reflecting on truth and illusion in a world filled with deceptions both treacherous and benign.   Children deceive, as do grownups, and many are the moments when all of us even deceive ourselves. People of every age and stripe, whether rarely or often, dissimulate, bluff, and beguile. The writer who fabricates and populates worlds is a deceiver, as is the artist whose triumph is to trick the eye, to alter perception. The honest magician's livelihood is based on deception; so is the dishonest thief's. And consider the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva who wrote, "A deception that elevates us is dearer than a legion of low truths," thus complicating the subject entirely. This special issue of Conjunctions gathers a wide spectrum of essays, fiction, and poetry on the classic subject of deception, exploring in original and thought-provoking ways a world in which truth is a most fragile, elaborate, and mercurial thing. Contributors include Edie Meidav, Terese Svoboda, Yannick Murphy, Paul Hoover, Bim Ramke, Eleni Sikelianos, Magdalena Zyzak, and many others.

Russell Banks, Temple Grandin, and other renowned writers contemplate animals—and the way our own species interacts with them.   Conjunctions: 61, A Menagerie gathers essays, fiction, and poetry that imagine the world of our fellow beings, animals. Cultural mythologies and pantheons are populated with snakes, monkeys, cats, jackals, whales: a cast of characters whose stories reveal how complex and wildly contradictory our species’ relationship with other animals is. They’re friends, enemies, tools, food. Descartes deliberated about whether animals have souls, deciding they didn’t. Linnaeus cataloged them. Darwin connected us to them. Wild or tame, sinless or soulless, the animal is a chimera of shifting identities, both mundane and mysterious. Featuring interviews with William S. Burroughs and Temple Grandin, essays by animal experimenters Vint Virga and Dale Peterson, fiction by Russell Banks and Joyce Carol Oates, and work by many others, this collection of imaginative new writing offers uncaged access to the lives of the nonhuman creatures that surround us.

From a lineup of acclaimed literary talents, wide-ranging works centering on books and bibliophilia.   Writing about writing itself and about the books that are home to the written word. A library of ideas about language and the book in all their forms, Speaking Volumes collects poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction on historic, forbidden, repurposed, mistranslated, imaginary, lost, and life-changing books—books of every ilk.

“Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.” —The Washington Post   With work from the seventy-five poets who are the game-changing, bar-setting voices of our time first published in this volume, Conjunctions: 35, American Poetry is the definitive collection for the contemporary poetic landscape. Includes astonishing uncollected work from masters of the form, as well as breathtaking new ventures from risk takers such as Juliana Spahr and Kevin Young. Contributors include John Ashbery, Susan Wheeler, and James Tate.

New writings on our fear of—and fascination with—the “other” from Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, and more. Alien is a powerful and flexible word. Aliens are “other.” Aliens are the stuff of science fiction and fantasy. Aliens are traditional literary figures that cause us to see ourselves anew. Indeed, when we witness our “normal” lives through these strangers’ eyes, we become the unfamiliar ones. Conjunctions:67, Other Aliens collects works of speculative and literary science fiction: innovative short stories, poetry, interviews, letters, and essays that explore the vast precincts of unfamiliarity, keen difference, weirdness, and not belonging. This provocative issue includes contributions from an all-star lineup, including Leena Krohn, Jeffrey Ford, Julia Elliott, John Crowley, Laura Sims, Valerie Martin, Lavie Tidhar, Samuel R. Delany, Matthew Baker, Paul Park, James Tiptree Jr., Michael Parrish Lee, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Madeline Bourque Kearin, Jean Muno, Jonathan Thirkield, John Clute and John Crowley, Joyce Carol Oates, S. P. Tenhoff, Brian Evenson, Jessica Reed, E. G. Willy, and James Morrow.

New writings—on rooms, buildings, and the spaces and structures that surround us—from Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Scott, and more.   From huts to houses to high-rises, childhood bedrooms to churches, the spaces we occupy and pass through shape our memories and perceptions, often without our conscious awareness. These stories, essays, and poems from a wide variety of contributors draw on our sense of place to explore the literal and metaphorical meanings of the roofs over our heads, the walls that protect—and separate—us from others, and the caves and castles that humans have made their homes throughout history. Like the best architecture, they combine form and function in a beautiful balance.   Conjunctions:68, Inside Out includes original work by Joanna Scott, Andrew Mossin, Claude Simon, Cole Swensen, Robert Clark, Kathryn Davis, Elizabeth Robinson, Gabriel Blackwell, Monica Datta, Robert Kelly, Mary South, Brandon Hobson, Lance Olsen, Susan Daitch, Ryan Call, Nathaniel Mackey, Ann Lauterbach, Can Xue, Matt Reeck, Lisa Horiuchi, Elaine Equi, Robert Coover, G. C. Waldrep, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Lenhart, Mark Irwin, Justin Noga, Karen Hays, John Madera, Karen Hueler, and Frederic Tuten.

New writings on the topic of friendship from Stephen O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Clark, Elizabeth Gaffney, Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, and more. Aristotle proposed that a friend is, in essence, “another self,” and it is indisputable that our relationships with our friends are nearly as complex as the ones we have with ourselves: One minute we’re in perfect accord, another we’re uncertain. Friendships are as mercurial as they are essential. We form friendships that are fraught, friendships that fade, and friendships that are as important to us as our very lives. Conjunctions: 66, Affinity investigates the phenomenon of friendship in its many forms through innovative and provocative fiction, poetry, and essays by writers of every ilk. This collection includes contributions by Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, Robert Coover, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Elizabeth Gaffney, Andrew Ervin, Stephen O’Connor, Gilles Tiberghien, Michelle Herman, Robert Clark, Jonathan Carroll, Sallie Tisdale, Robert Duncan, Jedediah Berry and Emily Houk, Diane Josefowicz, Brandon Hobson, Charles B. Strozier, Spencer Matheson, Paul Lisicky, John Ashbery, J. W. McCormack, Isabella Hammad, Tim Horvath, Roberta Allen, M. J. Rey, Elizabeth Robinson, Matthew Cheney, and Joyce Carol Oates.

The human body is admired, displayed, and dissected in this eclectic collection of stories, poems, and essays from Rick Moody, Edward Carey, and more.   Being Bodies is an exploration of the complex circumstances of our flesh-and-blood existence. Our bodies dance; they’re inked; they contain prosthetics and implants. Our bodies are gendered, though not always correlative with how we perceive ourselves. Some use bodies for violence; some sacrifice their bodies for others. Our bodies are mortal, their days numbered. We do with them what we can and what we will.   Through innovative poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction, thirty writers consider bodies as subjects; bodies as objects; bodies as loci of politics, illness, nature, artifice, performance, power, abuse, reward, disgust, and desire.   Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies includes contributions from Rick Moody, Edward Carey, Carole Maso, Bin Ramke, Dina Nayeri, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Sallie Tisdale, Stephen O’Connor, Sejal Shah, Maud Casey, Samantha Stiers, Forrest Gander, Kristin Posehn, Nomi Eve, Rosamond Purcell, Alan Rossi, Aurelie Sheehan, Peter Orner, Gregory Norman Bossert, Mary Caponegro and Fern Seiden, Anne Waldman, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Jena Osman, Michael M. Weinstein, Emily Geminder, Elizabeth Gaffney, Jessica Reed, Michael Ives, and Kyoko Mori.  

Exploring the myriad ways in which we go about preserving what might otherwise be forfeited.   Whether trained specialists or lay people who care about something, preservationists come from every stratum of life. The archivist, the linguist, the local town historian. The paleontologist, the heirloom seed-saver, the family photographer, the Monuments Men. Old two-by-two Noah and taxonomist Linnaeus. The suburban girl who collects enough yard sale books to build up a library and thereby safeguards that most fragile of things: knowledge. All can be preservationists.   This issue includes contributions from Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Robinson, Peter Gizzi, Kyra Simone, Heather Altfeld, Richard Powers, Arthur Sze, Joanna Ruocco, Andrew Ervin, Julia Elliott, Jessica Reed, Peter Orner, Erin Singer, Daniel Torday, Toby Olson, Mary Jo Bang, Troy Jollimore, Maya Sonenberg, Rae Gouirand, Mauro Javier Cardenas, Nam Le, Maria Lioutaia, Bryon Landry, Rae Armantrout, Robin Hemley, Madeline Kearin, Donald Revell, S. P. Tenhoff, Debra Nystrom, Donna Stonecipher, Robert Karron, Andrew Mossin, J’Lyn Chapman, Frederic Tuten, and Marshall Klimasewiski.

Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Diane Ackerman, and more explore the double-edged sword of curiosity . . . Curiosity is as central to life as breathing. And like breath itself, when it ceases, the vibrancy of life fades and disappears. Curiosity leads to discoveries both beneficent and, at times, destructive. It often occasions wonderment, but also terror. It prompts the precise scientist, but also the nosy gadfly. A double-edged sword, curiosity has forever held a crucial role in myth, literature, science, philosophy, history—nearly every field of human endeavor. While most of us know the old saying about curiosity killing the cat, we must also remember that “satisfaction brought it back.” Curiosity incites and compels, taketh away and giveth.   In this issue, curiosity impels a personal assistant to learn hidden truths about her deceased employer—a famed playwright—and his relationship with the woman who directs an Italian arts foundation to which he donated his priceless library of first editions. A novelist, inspired by a different kind of curiosity, studies the traditional teachings of his Cherokee forebears after reading the notebook his beloved grandfather possessed when he died. Elsewhere, a young boy removes his clothes and, driven by dangerous curiosity, crawls into the gaping darkness of a sewer pipe, where he mysteriously vanishes, altering the lives of everyone who knew him. While most of the stories, poems, and memoirs here investigate the places where curiosity transports us—from forgotten burial grounds to natural history museums, from alluring lakes to postapocalyptic seaside shanties—A Cabinet of Curiosity also features a singular visit to an archetypal curiosity cabinet in Amsterdam with its treasury of specimens, of oddities in jars and on shelves, of things pinned and things afloat.   Curiosity in all its guises is the wellspring of revelation. It is a prime mover behind our deeds, good or evil, simple or complicated. While the thirty-one writers gathered here individually explore many of the ways in which curiosity drives and defines us, together they propose that the realms of curiosity are, finally, inexhaustible.   A Cabinet of Curiosity includes contributions from Laura van den Berg, Ann Beattie, Brandon Hobson, Eleni Sikelianos, Greg Jackson, Julianna Baggott, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, William Lychack, Joanna Scott, Catherine Imbriglio, Dave King, Lauren Green, Can Xue (Translated by Karen Gernant, Chen Zeping), Nathaniel Mackey, A. D. Jameson, Quintan Ana Wikswo, Lynn Schmeidler, Samuel R. Delany, Kelsey Peterson, Sarah Blackman, Gerard Malanga, Martine Bellen, Maud Casey, Gregory Norman Bossert, Stephen O’Connor, Matt Bell, Madeline Kearin, Bin Ramke, Diane Ackerman, Elizabeth Hand.  

This spring 2019 edition of Bard College’s literary journal explores the fascination and mystery of night through stories, poems, essays, and memoirs. Scheherazade famously spun stories for a thousand and one nights in order to sustain her life. In recognition of how vital it is to voice our own stories, the stellar works collected here—including entries by Sallie Tisdale, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others—address our myriad experiences from dusk to daybreak.   In this volume, readers will encounter the monster of Kowloon, which relies on the imaginations of children in order to exist. Three men embark on a hallucinatory journey into the snowy pitch-dark night of the soul. Purgatory can be found here, along with ghosts, alternative universes, an East Village bar that doubles as a portal to another life, and a personal chronicle of a visit to Burning Man in Black Rock Desert.   Also included are the nightbird Nycticorax, musical nocturnes, night thoughts at solstice, wheeling galaxies, and the cosmos itself. The pioneering nocturnal photography of George Shiras is celebrated in these pages, and the dichotomous world of night versus day in equatorial Uganda is observed by an ethnographic eye.