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Issue Two Filth

There is a moral element to filth. It is both what we have been taught to hide, and the subversive pleasure in revealing it. Many of the writers in this issue are queer or trans or otherwise outsiders. When you are taught that an intrinsic part of you is shameful, you find power in that shame. All that filth, compressed by the pressure, sparkles like diamonds when you let it into the light. Have you ever felt the relief of telling your own secrets? There’s a reason why people revel in their own filth. It’s a place for reveling.

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Issue One Ecstasy

To the ancient Greeks, ecstasy — ekstasis — meant standing outside yourself. You stand outside yourself and a god enters you, or a new language. You slip powder into a water bottle and music enters you. This is what reading offers: the chance to forget the hands that hold the page, to inhabit the hand that held the pen. Contributors such as Terrance Hayes, Mieko Kawakami, Fernanda Melchor, Kim Hyesoon, Sayaka Murata, Ottessa Moshfegh, Solmaz Sharif, Dorthe Nors — and many more — enter into a conversation that rejects borders. Here you will encounter writers who have lived in many different countries, who speak through all of them, speak for none of them, who don’t speak your language, yet speak directly to you.

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