Mal Readings: That Obscure Object

To mark the launch of Mal, an online literary journal themed around sexuality and erotics, writers and poets Anne Boyer, Juliet Jacques, Saskia Vogel and Hannah Sullivan present readings of new essays, fiction and poetry on desire and its objects.

 

Mal Readings presents a series of texts that examine the projected and imaginative dimensions of writing about desire. Readers explore a range of ideas from écriture trans-féminin or trans writing as genre, and infatuation as creativity, to controllable violence and negotiating intimacy.

 

The readings are followed by a drinks reception hosted by MAL in the ICA Bar. All are welcome.

Anne Boyer is a U.S. poet and essayist. She is the inaugural winner of the 2018 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and holds the 2018 Whiting Award in nonfiction/poetry. She is the author of A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (UDP, 2018), Garments Against Women (U.S., Ahsahta, 2015; U.K, Mute, 2016), My Common Heart (Spooky Girlfriend, 2011) and The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House, 2008). Her next book, The Undying, is forthcoming from FSG in 2019.

 

Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London. Her most recent book was Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015); her latest short film, You Will Be Free (2017), has screened in galleries and festival worldwide. Her short fiction, essays and journalism have appeared in Granta, Frieze, Wire, Sight & Sound, The Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books and many other publications.

 

Hannah Sullivan lives in London and has been teaching English at New College, Oxford, since 2012. She has a PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard and taught as an Assistant Professor at Stanford. Her debut collection Three Poems was published in January 2018 by Faber. She has also written a book on modernist writing practices, The Work of Revision (Harvard, 2013), and is working on a new book about free verse.

 

Saskia Vogel a writer and translator. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, The White Review, Sight & Sound, The Offing and others. Her debut novel Permission is forthcoming from Dialogue Books in 2019.

 

Mal is supported by Feeld, the alternative dating platform open to all genders and sexual identities, and operates with full editorial independence and without ads.