Twisted Roots by A.G. Parker (Reconnecting Rainbows)
A.G. Parker is a queer disabled writer/performer/editor/disability consultant based in London who’s been published in Mslexia, The F-Word, Financial Times, Human/Kind Press, Arachne Press, and Aeva Magazine. They are a Best of the Net-nominated poet, a workshop facilitator, and the co-founder of Queer Stage Revolution. Parker is also the host of A. G. Parker’s Cabinet of Curiosities podcast and an editor for Angeprangert! Spoken Word, as well as the co-host of Rebel Riot Poetry. In 2022, they were crowned Disabled and Queer Artist of the Year with their comedic-political spoken word drag act, George the Dragon.
This interview focuses on their latest book, 2023’s Twisted Root, published by Reconnecting Rainbows (which was founded in 2017 as an initiative to promote LGBTQIA+ mental well-being by encouraging participation in the arts).…
Perhaps no one has phrased this better than Michael Burkett, also known as “Fat Mike,” the lead singer of NOFX and co-founder of the San Francisco-based indie label Fat Wreck Chords. “I signed a fucking band; I didn’t sign an artist!” Fat Mike is quoted as saying in the last chapter of Dan Ozzi’s book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy that Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007).
“If I’m gonna give you hundreds of thousands of dollars, help me sell the fucking records!” The punk singer and businessman is describing his frustration with Against Me! (the Florida band known for songs like Sink, Florida, Sink and Baby, I’m an Anarchist!) and their choice of album artwork for Former Clarity, featuring a black and white photograph of a single palm tree, which according to Fat Mike, was not a cover that would sell records.…
We are all happier in many ways when we are old than when we are young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage. —Winston Churchill
When I’m in other peoples’ homes, I’m automatically drawn to their bookshelves. Books reveal a good deal about a person. Shelves full of Dean Koontz, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, and John Grisham logically suggest that their owners enjoy action, intrigue, murders, car bombings, and the challenge of solving crimes. We read for entertainment, information, and enlightenment. We read to learn what we need to learn about ourselves and our world.
Who has not wandered over to their own bookshelves and run their fingers across the spines, looking for just the right one—perhaps a volume remembered to hold epiphanies, comfort, lessons on the importance of forgiveness or the components of happiness?…
Within the first ten seconds of You Won’t Be Alone, an intriguing-enough sounding movie with Noomi Rapace concerning a witch in Macedonia, a cat is eaten alive by some creature off-screen. I didn’t find out what the creature was because I turned off the movie after listening to its little bones get pulverized in the monster’s maw.
And ya know? I’m fucking tired of watching cats die in movies.
It feels like this piece has been a long time comin’.
On-screen cat deaths are usually a punchline, a mistake, or the product of a sadist’s gruesome machination. They are the animal equivalent of the dead prostitute who is merely a stepping-stone to catching “the killer”.
In Dogtooth, a criminally sheltered teenager stabs a cat to death with a pair of garden shears because his father told him they are evil.…
The Smoke is me, Burning by Constantine Blintzios, is the story of a family surviving on the edge of a pine forest in Harmswood, Arkansas. Crops have been corrupted by an outbreak of parasites in the rye. Livestock and buzzards alike are dying, so decay is left to spread unchecked. Blake and Jamie Ackerman have grown up on the lip of these woods. Raised by an alcoholic mother and a Vietnam-war veteran uncle, they have grown up believing in gods beyond the chicken-wire fence of their backyard, gods that steal children from their beds. When they are little, Jamie sees something in the woods and blinds his brother in one eye to keep him from seeing it, too.…
I met Jessica O’Dwyer when we were both MFA students at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately taken by her kind and giant heart—and her beautiful writing. I am not alone in my regard for Jessica and her work. Mother Mother: A Novel has received much deserved critical acclaim: it has been named the winner of the 2021 San Diego Book Association Awards in general fiction, a finalist of the 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards in general fiction, a Distinguished Favorite of the 2021 Independent Press Awards in women’s fiction and was awarded third place in the 2021 Feathered Quill Awards in literary fiction.
Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, JessicaO’Dwyer’s powerful account of her family’s experience with international adoption, was named Winner of Best Memoir San Diego Book Publishing Awards in 2011 and one of the Top 5 Adoption Books by Adoptive Families Magazine in 2011.…
Jenn Bouchard’s debut novel, First Course, was published by TouchPoint Press in 2021. It has been the recipient of nine awards and distinctions, most notably as a finalist in the American Fiction Awards and the Independent Author Network Awards. Her short stories have been published in Litbreak Magazine, the Penmen Review, and the Little Patuxent Review, with an additional story forthcoming in MARY. She has presented at the Fall for the Book Festival, the AWP conference, and the Annapolis Book Festival. She is a high school social studies teacher of twenty-two years and lives with her family in the Boston suburbs. She is seeking representation for her second novel, Palms on the Cape.
