Keetra Dean Dixon

Lauren Kelley, Upside (video stills, 2007)

“My most current body of work is rooted in the hopes of speaking to an audience that is engaged directly with popular culture via television. My stop-motion animation work is a series that has been crafted for my local public-access cable channel. With the hopes of thwarting channel surfers, one of my aspirations for this series is engaging with viewers in an all-consuming space.”

Norman Mailer – Badger

With his strong opinions and volatile disposition — not to mention a notorious bite — Norman Mailer bears a temperamental resemblance to the badger. Both are feisty and unafraid to show their claws when the occasion, or sudden impulse, calls.

Joan Didion – Nightingale

Her dainty, bird-like build belies a powerful voice, but Joan Didion is as paradoxically discreet and commanding as a nightingale. They also share a capacity to delight audiences with their pitch-perfect notes — whether poetic or musical.

Ernest Hemingway – Gorilla

Bold, brilliant, and with a capacity for brutishness, Ernest Hemingway is the writing world’s animal kingdom equivalent of a gorilla. Like Mailer, he was prone to physical force when words failed, but his defining linguistic prowess also matches our close cousin’s eloquent yet succinct communicative abilities.

Edith Wharton – Peacock

Edith Wharton’s propensity for flamboyant turn-of-the-century fashion evokes the eye-catching spectacle of a peacock’s display. That said, Wharton wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing the same dress as anyone else in her social circle — an insistence on originality that her avian counterparts don’t share.

Haruki Murakami – Cheetah

The speed at which Haruki Murakami writes his best-selling novels seems to be an inhuman feat — especially for an author who receives as much critical acclaim as commercial success. But in addition to his steady supply of incisive postmodern fiction, Murakami is also an avid runner, who coordinates his writing routine with marathon training, and even wrote a book about his twin passions.

Tom Wolfe – Egret

Always the picture of elegance in his trademark all-white suits, Tom Wolfe has the regal poise of an egret. Hardly one for ostentation, Wolfe’s characteristic look instead exudes effortless refinery similar to that of an egret’s long-necked posture.

Salman Rushdie – Cheshire Cat

Salman Rushdie always looks like he’s enjoying a private joke. The again, if you lived in Salman Rushdie’s head, you probably would too. Maybe it’s just the perennially arched eyebrows and bemused appearance, but this genre-defying writer brings to mind the Cheshire Cat’s cryptic comic expression.

Susan Sontag – Skunk

With a shock of white hair amid otherwise jet black locks, Susan Sontag’s visage is strikingly reminiscent of a skunk. Although her seminal cultural criticism didn’t exactly cause a — ahem — stink, Sontag’s sharp wit and insightful analyses command attention with the same authority as the latter’s unmistakable odor.

John Updike – Elephant

With dramatic facial features that strike a resemblance to an elephant’s characteristically oversized nose, ears, and kindly eyes, John Updike has all the inviting appeal of this emotionally sensitive beast as well as its formidable intellect — and unmatched memory — to boot.

The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin

Published in 1465, this medieval French farce was an immediate success for its criticism of social manipulation and dishonesty within the newly emerging state structure. Widely performed as a play, the story’s absurdist elements include false insanity, unaccredited lawyers, and a disastrous court case that brings all five players together. Though the author of this extremely popular story remains unknown, it proved to be a huge influence on French theater, most notably in the works of Francois Rebelais.

INTOLERABLE IMPOSITIONS
by Rae Bryant

She gnawed her arm off in the morning, before he woke. There was no way around it. Her forearm lay trapped beneath his thick neck, stubbled except for one irritated spot of skin, below the hairline where an infected pore rounded, tipped with puss. She had seen it the night before, the infection. She saw it in the dim bar light, pulsating, but the blemish did not matter after two glasses of cabernet. And besides, he presented so well from the front — pressed, suited, hip-but-not-too-metro tie, square jaw, and straight white teeth. His hair was thinning. Inconsequential.

So they left the bar together.

After a tolerable sexing — top, bottom, behind, over the edge of the bed — he turned his back and asked if she would find the ingrown hair on his neck because it hurt him, and he had no one to do it now that his mother had passed away three months ago. In the dark silence of their after-sex, he explained how his mother cleaned the area with hydrogen peroxide then extracted the infection, fishing inside with tweezers and a needle to find the offending hair. He spoke with soft words: “She could always find it so quickly. Now I have no one. Would you mind? The tweezers and the peroxide are in the bathroom cabinet.” It was a test, though he did not admit it. She had known other men like him — men who searched for a dedicated intimate, a partner, un-squeamish. It was their way of telling the keepers from the one-nighters.

She begged off the immediate task. “I’ll do it in the morning,” she said, smiling, as if the task did not disgust her.

*

She woke before him. The bulbous infection lay millimeters from her nose, an inch from her forearm. It would touch her if he rolled backwards, toward her. As long as he lay motionless, she was safe.

Pulling her arm in small increments, she worked it from beneath his neck, but each time her forearm moved, he moved, so that he inched himself backwards, forming into her an intolerable spooning. She had not consented to affections. There was no contract between them for this cuddling, nor was there provision for lovemaking, only sex implied, and she cringed at the familiarity of his back and buttocks and legs where they contacted her skin. It may have been different if he faced her. He was much prettier from the front.

So she rolled to her back, letting only her side and arm touch him now. She considered pulling the arm outright, facing his awakening before leaving a fake phone number. She considered pushing on his right shoulder so to roll him onto his belly, which may have released the arm, but still, it was risky, and would likely wake him that way, too. After endless scenarios imagined — pulling and pushing and facing the man she now loathed for no other reason than the cyst upon his neck — she considered loving him. She could simply stay and wake by his side then share eggs and coffee and the Washington Post before returning to bed again, but the venture brought the inevitable task of extracting the hair and the puss, and she found herself glaring at the thick, heavy neck with hatred. Only one thing to do.

It took her the better part of an hour to gnaw through the bone. The flesh was easy — soft, pliable, seasoned with skin creams and the experience of her near thirty years. The blood, however, threatened to give her away. It pooled on the mattress beneath them, and he nearly woke from the wet.

As she snuck out of the bedroom, she turned to watch the sleeping man who now clutched her forearm. He pulled it to his chest and hugged it like a child’s teddy bear. She remembered mornings when, she too, clutched forearms to her chest. It wasn’t so bad. At least they had left her something before leaving. She tied off the left sleeve of her coat then moved out of the apartment and into the hallway, missing the forearm already, but resolved to leaving it. Waking him and his cyst would certainly turn into the day, the week, a year and before long she might consider him more than a fancy.  He would fill her life with a series of cystic burdens. He would seize her entirely. A single forearm was well-worth the escape.

Papyrus

What is it: Although designer Chris Costello wanted to create the hypothetical look of ancient English script — had it been, say, written on Egyptian parchment two millenia ago — Papyrus has become synonymous with lazy pretentiousness. The faux-archaic feel of this calligraphy-inspired script has become a staple for short hand self-seriousness.
Common uses: Avatar’s subtitles, coffee shop signs, wedding invitations

While Mortals Sleep

Kurt Vonnegut’s posthumous prolificacy continues with another collection of unpublished short stories. The 16 selections featured in While Mortals Sleep are drawn from Vonnegut’s early career, and illustrate his initial experimentation with themes that carried on throughout his writing — particularly a preoccupation with the relationship between technology and isolation. The collection’s foreword is written by Dave Eggers, whose own work is heavily indebted to this supposedly “hippie Mark Twain.”
Release date: January 25

Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence

Although Elizabeth Bishop kept her private life guarded from the prying scrutiny of close readers and poetry critics alike, this collection of correspondences between Bishop and her New Yorker editors reveals the former poet laureate’s critical approach to her craft. Bishop’s detailed back-and-forth with Katherine S. White and later Howard Moss can be exhaustive — “punctuation is my Waterloo,” exclaims Bishop at one point — but in the process she reveals private autobiographical gems, ranging from her artistic process to her life in Brazil.
Release date: February 1

The Strange Case of Edward Gorey

Although Edward Gorey’s charmingly macabre illustrations and stories are recognizable features of mainstream pop culture, Gorey himself has long remained a private and enigmatic figure. Novelist Alexander Theroux’s memoir of his friendship with the late artist paints a tender portrait of Gorey the man: a thoughtful eccentric, film and ballet lover, avid collector of curios, and papier-mache puppeteer, who struggled with his sexuality and sense of place in society. This is a hardback reissue of the original from Fantagraphics.
Release date: February 11

Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin’s nomadic lifestyle brought him to each of the Earth’s inhabited continents — and often to their most remote corners. Although he published only five books and one essay collection in his lifetime — each of them hailed a “masterpiece” upon release — his reputation for ostentation and his affection for obscurity made him a cult-like figure both before and after his death from AIDS in 1989. Edited by Chatwin’s wife Elizabeth and his authorized biographer, Nicholas Shakespeare, this collection of letters shows the author’s evolution from 8-year-old schoolboy to husband and intellectual icon.
Release date: February 17

The Pale King

The anticipation over David Foster Wallace’s unfinished posthumous novel has reached a fever-pitch as its publication date looms on the horizon. Although the late author’s obsessive fans and admirers are no doubt eager to enjoy his as yet unseen work, the book will also be an  interesting window into the creative process of the philosophically inclined writer — both for its rough-around-the-edges qualities and the morbid appeal of its finality.
Release date: April 15

Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003

With his writing mostly all translated for consumption in the English-speaking world, Roberto Bolaño has now become a ubiquitous fixture of the international literary scene. Taking a break from the experimental short stories and sweeping novels for which he has heretofore been synonymous, Between Parentheses presents a collection of the Chilean authors essays, articles, and speeches from 1998 until his death in 2003.
Release date: April 20

To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays

Written in 1940, partially released in 1957, and now fully published as Gertrude Stein originally intended, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays is a complex children’s book that doesn’t have an age limit. Featuring text and accompanying illustrations, Stein’s volume offers names and verse stories to accompany each letter of the alphabet. Although this may seem like a simplistic tome, it illustrates a youthful playfulness from one of the most formidable intellects of the Lost Generation.
Release date: May 31

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood marks the birth of the narrative-driven nonfiction genre. A decided departure from his earlier books like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote’s account of a quadruple family homicide in Kansas is a bleak but fascinating case study of criminal psychology as he gets immersed in the minds of the murderers themselves.

Beverly Cleary

Inspired by book-starved kids at the library where she worked in the late ’40s, Beverly Cleary set out to write stories that would be more accessible and relatable to her young patrons. Her resulting stories — beginning with Henry Huggins and later including favorites like The Mouse and the Motorcycle and the Ramona series — offered a combination of wit and charm that was rare among children’s and young adult literature. Still writing at age 94, Cleary continues to be honored as both an author and champion of librarianship, with honors and awards as varied as her characters: National Drop Everything Day is a promotion of sustained silent reading that takes place on her birthday (April 12th) every year, she’s received both the national Medal of Arts and the Library of Congress Living Legends award, and there’s even a dorm at UC Berkeley named after her.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Anointed by both The New Yorker and Granta, Karen Russell’s literary star has already been established with short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. In Swamplandia!, she expands upon one of these stories to chronicle the unraveling of the Bigtree family, a clan of alligator wrestlers in the backwoods Everglades.

Release Date: February 1